The Oil Drum

Actually, the founding fathers didn't want political parties, and hoped that there wouldn't be any. What they anticipated was a multi-polar shifting set of coalitions amongst states, depending upon their various regional interests. They did realize that the slavery/non-slavery thing would be a big one, but they hoped that there would be other sets of interests as well (urban/rural, big gov't/small gov't, free trade/protectionist, etc.), and that it would all balance out.

What they didn't anticipate was that a multiplicity of interests might cluster together, and that two big clusters would quickly emerge and formalize into political parties.

It was an accident of history, totally unintended. However, once politics came to be dominated by two parties, a dynamic came into operation that worked to increasingly freeze the US into a two party system. The Civil War and its aftermath effectively completed the process.

Now, the only way that a new party could consistently rise above the single digit level would be for one or both of the two major parties to implode (as the Whigs did), or if there was a revolutionary constitutional restructuring (providing for European-style proportional representation, for example). The latter might happen in the aftermath of the peak oil induced crises, but is otherwise unlikely. The former might happen, but is likewise unlikely. Nevertheless, it might happen, so let's consider scenarios.

The Republicans are presently the most vulnerable to an implosion. Because they have been the dominant, governing party for so long, they are most vulnerable to a serious and vicious electoral backlash if things get bad enough. We here on the TOD have spun out all sort of scenarios, and one does not have to be a doomer to think that things could nevertheless get bad enough to make a lot of voters very angry at the party that would have been perceived as being the party of the wealthy elites & the corporations, the party of BAU and inaction. Could the Republican party survive not just the loss of the White House, but also of most of its Senate and HR seats and most governors & state legislators? It did when this happened to them during the Great Depression, but just barely. If FDR had not deftly maneuvered to simultaneously co-opt the left and secure the center, then room might have opened up for a new party to emerge from either the left or the center. This time around, the Republican party is even further to the right if anything, and also has an uncompromising religious right as a major player. One possible scenario would be for a split between the religious right and the secular/business right which has traditionally formed the GOP core constituency. The religious right party could become a permanent fixture, but would also be permanently stuck in the low double digits, and thus totally marginalized and ineffectual. The traditional rump might then find common ground with centrist and center right Democrats; Joe Lieberman is an example of someone that would probably be quick to join such a group.

The Democrats are a more diverse party than the Republicans, and always have been. It is somewhat surprising that they have held together all these years. If it were not for a strong opposition in the Republican party, they would have probably broken up years ago. It is thus hard to imagine a scenario where the Democrats would break up while the Republicans are intact. The only possibility would be if the tensions between the centrists and the left-wing became so irreconcilable that the leftists finally decided that they had enough and left to form their own party - maybe in coalition with the Greens, maybe not. Again, such a group would be small and marginal. I can't see a Green/Liberal/Socialist party ever getting more than about 20-25% of the vote at best.

Were both the Republican and Democratic parties to splenter, the existence of persistent left wing and right wing parties might force the centrists together into a single dominant party. There have been other countries where, for decade after decade, a monolithic centrist party won all the elections, and the opposition parties were noisy but powerless and marginal. The US constitutional system could accomodate such a future.

A cruise ship with several dozen captains suffering of PMS perhaps.

Kunstler found the perfect word to describe it.