Why only two parties?

In the United States we are locked in to two political parties, and the way we talk about it, one might think that it was ‘designed’ that way. But there is no designer. Our parties – the right wing one and the weak opposing party – are all that we have left after meaningful opposition to corporate power is drowned out, demonized and marginalized.

Most other ‘democratic’ countries (the term only loosely applies to us) have developed at least three powerful factions, sometimes more, and governance is a matter of negotiation where minority parties have a voice because they are often needed to form majorities. If we had a public media and if more voices were allowed to penetrate public consciousness, something similar would happen here.

I imagine that our disaffected non-voters, our progressives and trade unionists would form a powerful coalition resembling the British Labor Party. (A third minority faction would also form, and what we call “Democrats,” stripped of progressives and labor, would be our equivalent of the British Liberal party.)

So we are left to Democrats and Republicans because of opinion management, but it is corporate media that “manages” our ideas. They decide which candidates are “viable,” ignoring any who might threaten entrenched power. They are the image makers, the ones who decide which ideas have traction. They own our TV’s, and TV acts as a gatekeeper for power.

Health care, for instance, was on the public mind for decades, but was only allowed into the political sphere in 2008, and was then used to protect and enhance the power of the health insurance companies. Why then? Why not 2004 or 1956 or 1974? If we had a third party, we would have a public health care system.

Interesting indeed, as those progressives and trade unionists and disaffected voters were fighting for single payer, and then for a public option, but they never seemed to get a voice – they were demonized and marginalized and never got tracked. We got a corporate solution to health care. Weird, eh?

It’s not that we only have two parties. We have at least three. We only recognize two. When there is a movement from the grassroots to get that third party moving, the Democrats step in and work to stop it. Republicans are, oddly, comfortable with third parties. Democrats, on the other hand, have hissy fits and vomit blood at the thought of a Nader stealing their votes.

In the end, as in 2008, the Democrats absorb anything left of them, and render it moot. Democrats crushed single payer. Democrats give us Clinton and then Obama, and all of the right wing accomplishments of the administrations before Democrats are frozen in place. Assisted by corporate media, Democrats prevent the boomerang effect. They seal Republican victories, and act as caretakers until the next Republican Administration takes power.

They also prevent the ascendancy of our Labor Party.

So if at times it appears that I argue from consequence – that I imagine that our system was designed to be as it is – I do not. I merely assert that it is as it is because power does not allow it to be anything else. It is, in the end, all that is left after popular movements are removed from politics.