The Fix Is In, or, Everything Would be a Lot Easier if We Lived in a Dictatorship

At The Washington Post's 'The Fix,' Chris Cillizza does his duty as a shill for the two-party political establishment in an analysis of new polling data showing that self-described independents now far outnumber the co-dependent dead-enders of the Democratic and Republican Parties:

The latest Post poll shows 42 percent of the sample describing themselves as independents, more than double the number who called themselves Republicans (20 percent) and even far ahead of the 33 percent who referred to themselves as Democrats. While three of the last four Post surveys have shown the independent number over 40 percent, as recently as last year independents comprised just 31 percent.

Cillizza remarks that third party and independent candidates for office are having a significant impact on the New Jersey gubernatorial election as well as the special election in NY's 23rd, but then notes: "it's important to remember that talk of a third party and the reality of it are too far different things." Indeed, let's keep this in mind as we ponder Cillizza's regurgitation of duopolist memes and establishmentarian mystifications. He begins:

First, while people like to describe themselves as independents, there are actually very few people who are entirely unaligned politically . . . That means that the vast majority of independents -- roughly eight in ten -- are not in fact the sort of people who would be building blocks for the creation of a third party.

The fact that independents are not an ideological monolith is little more than a triviality, one I've touched on here on more than a few occasions. Further, it is an equally trivial point that if independents voted for actual independents there would be fewer Democrats and Republicans in office. Yet, declaring one's independence from the two-party political charade is the first step toward real political autonomy. In this context, Cillizza's conclusion is a non-sequitur. Why would one assume that a highly heterogeneous segment of the electorate, united only negatively, by their collective disgust at the politics of the two-party state, would or could come together to form one single "third party"? The answer is simple: because you are incapable of conceiving a politics that is independent of the two-party charade, each faction of which is motivated by nothing more than collective disgust for the partisan adversary, and united negatively under the banner of the lesser evil. If independents vote for third party or independent candidates independently of one another, this would likely lead to something entirely different from "the creation of a third party," for instance, the empowerment of a plethora of third party and independent alternatives to the stooges of the political establishment offered up by the Democratic and Republican Parties. Cillizza continues:

Second, the institutional hurdles to the creation of a new party -- or even running a third party candidacy for president -- are massive. The most basic challenges are from a financial and organizational standpoint where each national party has spent decades honing their approaches and have deeply entrenched advantages that would take years for a new party to learn.

The institutional hurdles to third party and independent activism are massive indeed. However, Cillizza's incomprehensible focus on "the creation of a new party" is typical of the duopolist ideologue who apparently believes that third parties do not exist because they are ignored by the mainstream press. There is, of course, no need to "create a third party" because there are literally dozens of extant alternatives to the Republican and Democratic patronage machines, a significant number of which have already overcome many of the "institutional hurdles" to third party activism. Let's also not forget that these "institutional hurdles" to third party and independent activism and the "entrenched advantages" of the major parties are not simply aspects of a neutral political landscape, but rather the result of biased and discriminatory laws, rules and regulations written into law by representatives of the Democratic and Republican Parties themselves in order to ensure their continued duopoly on elected offices. However, there is no reason to think it would "take years" for any number of minor parties to achieve significant levels of success, all it would take is for voters to cease believing the propaganda spewed by the major parties and their mouthpieces in the mainstream political press, and stop supporting the Democratic-Republican political charade, which they can do in the very next election by voting for third party or independent candidates for office. Though it is true that it would likely take years for a new party to gain ballot access in all fifty states, there are numerous alternative parties that have been active for years, decades even, and have already overcome many of these hurdles. Again, just because the mainstream media ignores third parties, this does not mean they do not exist.

At the end of the piece, we are treated to the conclusion Cillizza had been aiming at all along, which is symptomatic of the authoritarian fetishization of the executive common among partisans of the duopoly parties and their enablers in the American media:

Yet, even if a third party candidate does emerge in 2012 or 2016 there is no guarantee that such a candidacy would lead to the creation of a legitimate third party (Perot's candidacies, for example, did not serve as the jumping-off point for another political party.)

Apparently, in Cillizza's mind, a political party only exists to the extent that it participates in the glorification of the office of the President of the United States. His silent assumption all along, as is obvious from his conclusion, is that the aim and end of all political activity is to control the executive branch of the federal government, which is exalted above all others. I see little difference between this attitude and practical monarchism. As former President George W. Bush put it: everything would be a heck of a lot easier if we lived in a dictatorship.