Our political quote of the day comes from the Washington Post’s Charles Lane, who wonders if the United States now effectively has a new four party system.
Here’s the beginning and end of his piece which needs to be read in its entirety:
I can’t remember a more breathtaking 48 hours in politics since Barack Obama’s election in November 2008. Byron Dorgan is out; Chris Dodd is out; Bill Ritter is out. Who would have thought that just one year into Obama’s promising presidency, the Democrats who had pinned their hopes on him would be dangerously close to political meltdown?
No doubt this has to do with all the factors you’ve read about: the lousy economy, public concern about the messy health care compromise, renewed fear of terrorism, the usual cyclical problems of the incumbent party in an off-year election.
But much, much deeper forces are at work — tectonic shifts in the American electorate that also explain why Republicans are at war with one another and thus unable to take full advantage of the Dems’ woes (though the GOP will do well in November if present trends continue).
Dick Morris sees a “New Two-Party System” in which centrist Democrats are getting squeezed out of a liberal party that has no real place for them any more.
That’s about half right. It’s more like we have four political parties stuffed into two. Roughly speaking, the Democrats consist of a liberal wing (epitomized by, say, Howard Dean) and a centrist wing (think of Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln). The Republicans include a conservative wing (e.g., Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio) and an ultra-conservative wing (Sarah Palin). These are not recent developments. Both parties have been ideological and regional coalitions for decades.
Lane looks at the historical roots of these fou political party tendencies and then ends his analysis with this:
Dodd, Dorgan and Ritter are victims of the four-way crack-up in the following sense: off-year elections are low-turnout affairs that often hinge on who has the most motivated voter base. In 2010, the Democratic left is turned off while the Republican right is fired up. These three political warhorses could not win under those circumstances. But if the Republicans benefit this fall, their gains may be transitory: their own internal split may flare up once they have to decide how to use their new power.
Small wonder that we are seeing so much churning in the political class, as various incumbents either switch parties or retire prematurely — while both parties emphasize recruitment of fresh blood and contemplate such unorthodox measures as the Democrats’ rumored courting of Tennessean Harold Ford Jr. to run for U.S. Senate in New York.
Where could it all lead? The past is not prologue, but party instability of this magnitude could be the harbinger of even bigger changes. The U.S. political system actually fractured into four major parties in 1860 — and we all know what happened next.
Meanwhile, there is another factor that is worth noting:
It isn’t just that the political content of American debate has changed and divided into parts, its that the concept of political dialogue has made a major shift as America moves into what promises to be a tempestuous and troubling 21st century. It’s a shift into what I call the “talk radio political culture.”
It’s not just a matter of tone, then of apparent intent. It’s no longer engaging a “worthy opponent” and trying to win a given debate. Now it’s all about taking the other viewpoint, idea, politician, media person, infooutlet or writer out.
Politics now seems less about the need to present, discuss and convince than the need and passion to define, deconstruct and discredit. And the 24/7 news cycle and popularity of politics today as almost a kind of verbal professional wrestling means that the premium is on the memorable statement or charge quickly delivered not on a pause to think thing through and talk about solutions to problems that might gain wider support if discussed without partisan or ideological rancor.
If you view all of this together as a seeming trend, precisely where are we going as we move more into the 21st century?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.