political independents

[eirias]

Andrew Sullivan linked to a New York Times blurb showing that lots of people (esp. in the southwest) are uncomfortable with party labels these days, and that in a recent nationwide poll, a majority of respondants said they would prefer elections sans party labels. At first blush, this is interesting and maybe important -- but then I think about it and I realize I'm pretty sure that parties, labeled or no, are an emergent property of political landscapes. I have a strong suspicion that the two-party system is so entrenched here that even if we scrapped the current one, even if we abolished labels, an effectively two-party system would emerge as the new stable state within a few election cycles. I think that all that this might be signalling is disillusionment with the two current parties. What do you all think? (Bonus points for answers deeper than "Of course they're disillusioned; [party of choice] sucks!")

Comments

[kirin]

So, I was about to say: "Wait, wait... I was following your mis-reading up until 'prohibition'. Huh? Where'd that one come from?"

And then I went and googled some history and oh look, "Progressive" used to be applied to the "moral fabric" movement that gave us Prohibition. Huh.

You're right, I give up; political labels are completely useless.

(But yeah, as you figured out, *today's* meaning of the label Progressive tends towards the socially liberal and plenty of social programs sector. Not likely to be prohibiting much of anything.)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Progressive makes lots of sense in conjunction with prohibition! The temperance-movement types were generally women -- politically disenfranchised (I mean, literally, at first) with a burning desire to induce social change and betterment. Don't look at an axis of permissiveness vs. repression here; look at the underlying utopian themes in both temperance and modern progressivism. Both are strongly about imposing a particular moral vision on society in service to utopian ends -- ie in order to progress toward some imagined better future state -- even if the specifics of the moral vision differ.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I think that from your point, we can extrapolate some political advice: never assume that the axis you care about is the axis on which a particular party is operating.

(Gosh, I wonder what politics would look like if people followed this advice. Would it change anything?)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I am used to not making that assumption ;), but then again, I am a cranky third-party type. This is why I understand when people say "the major parties aren't really distinguishable" and get grumpy at people who yell at them for saying that ;).