In his New York Times column Bret Stephens calls for the creation of a “Liberal Party” in the U. S. because our two major political parties are increasingly being dominated by radicals. After noting that support for forming a third party is at an all-time high but there’s no general agreement on what sort of a third party is desireable, he remarks:
First, the Republican and Democratic brands are weak. Party decline is an old story. But in 2016 the Republican Party collapsed in the face of what amounted to a hostile takeover. Democrats are at less risk, helped by Joe Biden’s politically astute combination of leftist policies and a centrist tone. But the fact that the Senate majority leader is afraid of a second-term congresswoman from Queens also says something about the inner weakness of the Democratic Party establishment.
Second, the people who now seem most eager for a third party are at the political extreme. The striking, if unsurprising, finding of the Gallup survey is that Republican support for a third party jumped by 23 percentage points in the wake of Donald Trump’s defeat and his talk of forming a new party. The possibility of a full-blown G.O.P. split in 2024 is obvious.
Third, the neglected territory of American politics is no longer at the illiberal fringes. It’s at the liberal center. It’s the place most Americans still are, temperamentally and morally, and might yet return to if given the choice.
By “liberal,†I don’t mean big-state welfarism. I mean the tenets and spirit of liberal democracy. Respect for the outcome of elections, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and the principle (in courts of law and public opinion alike) of innocent until proven guilty. Respect for the free market, bracketed by sensible regulation and cushioned by social support. Deference to personal autonomy but skepticism of identity politics. A commitment to equality of opportunity, not “equity†in outcomes. A well-grounded faith in the benefits of immigration, free trade, new technology, new ideas, experiments in living. Fidelity to the ideals and shared interests of the free world in the face of dictators and demagogues.
or, shorter, he wants a political party that affirms the “Washington Consensus”. Whatever happened to that consensus? It prevailed for about 40 years but it’s hardly anywhere to be seen right now. The answer is that it flopped. It produced the situation we have now including two increasingly programmatic parties with opposing programs, a concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of a relative few people (in 1970 most wealth was in the hands of middle income people—people whose incomes were within a standard deviation or two of middle; that is no longer the case), offshoring of manufacturing and the jobs that used to go along with it, offshoring of an increasing number of jobs that aren’t protected by professional licensing and regulation, ever-increasing healthcare and educational spending, and, until quite recently, little income growth for people in the middle. That’s what happened.
But the reason his Washington Consensus Party idea isn’t going anywhere is that the Republicans and Democrats are baked into the system in a thousand ways. They’re all that matter. Districts are gerrymandered both for Republicans and Democrats to protect incumbents and both concentrate and dilute racial, ethnic, and political minorities. I’ll give you one example I know well. Here in Chicago judges of election must consist of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. There is no provision whatever for Greens or Libertarians. Just Republicans and Democrats. That in heavily Democratic Chicago that results in a significant number of people (something between 2,500 and 7,500) becoming Republicans for a day, conforming to the law in theory if not in practice, makes no difference.
If the number of Congressional seats were greatly increased so that, rather than representing districts of from 750,000 to 1.5 million people, they represented a more manageable number of people, it’s possible that might change but as things are Republicans and Democrats have no incentive whatsoever to change that. They like being the only two viable political parties and intend to keep it that way whether they actually serve the will of the people or represent them or not.
