"Washington" - used as a semantic place holder for "corruption", "incompetence" and "mainstream elites" is just another of a series of populist code words used in election years for the new elites that want to be elected and the old elites that want to keep their seats there.
Political parties have been declared dead and irredeemable in the United States for the last 250 years. Those who announce "a new paradigm" fail to explain what that "paradigm" means, and for good reasons. The same that kept the US Constitution and its institutions in its place all that time.
Political parties have been declared dead and irredeemable in the United States for the last 250 years. Those who announce "a new paradigm" fail to explain what that "paradigm" means, and for good reasons. The same that kept the US Constitution and its institutions in its place all that time.
"All parties are corrupt" speech is the most typical form of extreme, intolerant partisanship -opening the door to moral equivalence justifications of anti-constitutional behavior-
Lobbies regularly denounce other lobbies for ... lobbying, which is a legal activity with thousands of registered and audited firms installed in Washington, the West and the East coasts and around the country. Just look for the Mercer's family Foundation and its Government Accountability Institute, that proclaims to be "non-partisan" save for its funding of anti-Clinton books such as "Clinton's cash" and its support for Steve Bannon and Breitbart.
The "death" of the "establishment" parties is as old as the American Republic. And there have been third parties in many elections -from the days of the Republic-Democrats that was the name of Jefferson and Madison's anti-Federalist party
to Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose,
Or the populist-nativist Right-wing parties of William Jennings Bryant
Ross Perot's (and later Pat Buchanan's) Reform party -both of which made +20 percent of the vote and gave the presidency to the Democrat candidate they professed to like least- or the perennial Ralph Nader spoiler.
The truth is , as usual, far from those claims and more complex and nuanced.
Books like Scott Christmas "Washington's Nightmare: A Brief History of American Political Parties" and Kurt Andersen's "Fantasyland: How America Went Hawywaire: a 500-year history" may provide a good start.
Third parties are not a bad idea -Europe has plenty of examples of them- but far from a solution
In the case of contemporary US politics. we are witnessing a fight inside both traditional parties in which Left wing (socialist Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) and Far Right (Bannon) are trying to take over by replacing moderates with more extreme, populist and belligerent candidates to impose their respective agendas (impeach Trump, prevent impeachment and remove obstacles to executive power, respectively).
There are many parallels between Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson populist platforms
Recognized by Trump himself and other Right wing political pundits like Dick Morris (a former Clinton's advisor turner enemy)
Make no mistakes. Those seeking to take over the two traditional parties make no little plans.
Their common element is populism
It will hinge on the economy whether COTUS changes are significant in one direction or another.
But the "system" -as those who want to change it call the Constitution- is not the real problem.
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