Host a conversation on Political Parties with lee dr utman and the author of a most recent and a paper about democracy reform. Why do we have Political Parties in the first place and considering the state of politics right now, might it do better to do away with parties . Guest i understand people are frustrated with the performance of our two parties. But mass Representative Democracy cannot be done without Political Parties. They are inevitable and in the states where we are getting Ballot Access, there are five so far, weve had a tremendous response from people in those states who signed petitions to have a Ballot Access and have no labels. We are not ready to declare a candidate or nominate a candidate, as i said, after super tuesday, we are not running a protest campaign. If we decide to run somebody for president or Vice President then you become a protest and we dont want to become a protest candidate. Host that was sunday on the program. Your thoughts. Guest i confess to being perplexed by the no label efforts. I understand the demand. That is clear. Most people want more choices. However, a president ial level, third parties are always going to be line for democrats. Caller im going from East Berkshire vermont. My first election i voted in in 1980 was in burlington. At one time there was a gentleman named bertie Bernie Sanders running for mayor and he won by six votes. Back then, i voted for ronald reagan. Lets go back 50 years, then i am watching what is going on with ralph nader and jeb bush and catherines parents and all of them. I did vote democrat back then. Host bring me to the question. Caller the question is, my point is that in 2000, because we had a third party candidate, i year over meter ralph nader , we are on the trajectory that we are on today that actually culminated in the january 6 debacle. Host let me take that up. Guest 2000 forward, what from 2000 forward, what should be see today . Guest the polarization we are expressing in this moment is a culmination of many trends that have been playing out really for 60 years and particularly accelerated over the last three decades. That is the sorting of our Political Parties. Timothy is from vermont and this is a trivia question, but the state of vermont was the state in which there was eight senate seat held by republicans for the longest continuous period of any party in the u. S. , from 1856 through the time when jim jeffords switch from republican to independent i think was in 2001. Cap as the seat longest held by republicans. In 1936, vermont was 1 that was the longest seat held by republicans. Ron had a long liberal to moderate Republican Party. Also there was a moderate to conservative Democratic Party. Now what you have is, you have a collapse of the party system. Now you just have liberal democrats and conservative republicans. You have urban, cosmopolitan places represented by democrats and traditional rural places represented did by republicans. Alongside that you had the nationalization of our politics. Cap a few thousand votes here or there, gore would have been president instead of george w. Bush. When you combine the sorting of the politics and the nationalization you have a recipe for hyperpartisan winner take all polarization both parties are trying and it never actually seems to sustain itself. Rather than if zerosum winner take all us versus them fight that is destroying this country and splitting us in half, we try Something Different in which we have multiple parties and no one party is trying to dominate and gain total control. Instead what we are working towards is a system in which there are compromises and coalitions and very few permanent entities. That is how our country used to work when we had a multisystem party. Host this russian from tom in erie, pennsylvania. If we had more Political Parties, how that play out with the Electoral College component of our elections . Guest went we think about our elections we tend to think only about the presidency, even though there are congressional and set it as an senate because of the winner take all nature of a Single Office and the Electoral College means we will probably still orient towards two major parties and what that would mean they multiparty congress is a major president ial parties would try to build would try to build coalitions back to 1960, jfk basically not a lot of difference between them. For a long time, democrats included prominent publicans in their cabinet and republicans include some prominent democrats in their cabinets. They had a bipartisan overlap and i think that is what you would have if you had multiple parties in congress because the broad coalitions, you break that doom loop whether it is either at my side or your side and you expand. Nobody ever says the lesser of three or four or five peoples. Host to martin in las cruces. Caller as a 30 year green, we have had Major Party Status in the state of new mexico. I have found from the twoparty system there is no representation. There are more than two positions on any policy. My political vote is not represented. When they say 40 is unrepresented and independent, that means they are not represented by a political party. The third party gives people a voice. The question is, do we have a presented tip democracy . When people are not represented and marginalized, went Political Parties use their power to block other forms of representation, what you have is a topdown system that predicates the rules, regulations, requirements to get on the ballot. Whether you are running for governor, dogcatcher or president , same boombox will block other Political Parties. I have seen it in new mexico back in 2002. We had a Republican Party are for 250,000 in order for the green party to run strong candidate in the special election. Host i will let you comment on that. Guest the green party has been a third party basically a small third party that is mostly running protest candidates but that is what third parties are relegated to in a system of winner take all elections. Martin, i get your point. Like a lot of americans feel that you are unrepresented in our twoparty system. A lot of americans feel that way. This is why i think we should be supporting proportional representation for the u. S. House of representatives to create an opportunity for more Political Parties to form so that we can organize Political Parties that represent. This is a really big country. It is a diverse country in so many ways and the idea that every thing can be aggregated up to these two parties just doesnt make much sense in this contemporary moment. And trying to put everything into these two parties which makes it difficult for the parties to really maintain those coalitions, that creates this problem where the only way the democratic and republic of parties can hold the coalition together is bite saying the other party would be such a threat to this country that you have to vote for us whether or not you like it. Again, there is way too much focus on third parties at the president ial level and we should really be focused on getting third parties into congress where they can actually play a productive role in an election that is inherently winner take all in which they will just play the role of spoiler. Host martin, martin in louisville, kentucky, democrat. Caller i want to make an observation. In my opinion we have always had a three party system in america. Before the civil war he had the Republican Party and southern democrats. The southern democrats controlled american politics. After the civil war, the Democratic Party was controlled by the northern democrats. It wasnt until 19 76 when jimmy carter became president of the United States as a southerner, he made it clear racism is no longer welcome in the Democratic Party. That is when the white people who were democrats went to the Republican Party. Any attempt the Republican Party can nominate the candidate that is not a radical, they cant win. They have more people just like the democrats is to have. Guest martin, you are correct that we have had a multiparty system within our twoparty system for a long time. It wasnt until i would say about 2010 that we truly had a genuine twoparty system with no overlap. For a long time what we had were two overlapping coalitions and the southern block was always kind of a third party, regional parties then the twoparty system. I think in some ways the history of our country is actually as a multiparty system and i think in order for a large, complicated and Diverse Society to function, especially with a system of government that makes it hard to weed wheeled weild parties we can find a way to allow them to express themselves set of trying to assemble some tenuous majority based on very little. Host this is david from auburn, new york, republican. Caller interesting subject. You cant be all things to all people. You get one president and you have debates and the process, how to get the best candidate. And then it goes from there. This is the best you can do as it stands right now. You cant be all things to all people. You have one president and at some point someone has to be there. You cant be all things to all people. There are about 20 parties. Host i will give you the final two minutes. Guest certainly we need to have one president but in the legislature we do a better job of representing the diversity and someone who is advocating on their behalf. The challenge is in this political moment, we are in a moment of increasing crisis, in which it feels like each election is a moment in which everybodys Blood Pressure goes up for six months for the election and we have all of this fear mongering and if our side loses it will be the end of the public and democracy in america. That shouldnt be really true but when you keep telling people it is it starts to feel that way and then when it starts to feel that way, people might do outrageous antidemocratic things because they feel the stakes are so high. When you look in pulling on issue after issue, essentially, broad support for a lot of basic compromise policies. Most americans dont want to hate other americans but we have a political system further and further apart and keeps tamping down anyone who wants to find Common Ground that is what happens when you have the prolapse of the political center. When you have polarization that leads us to treat our fellow americans not as a political opposition in which we disagree if they win an election it is not the end of the world and then see them as an enemy or antiamerican that if they win it is a fundamental threat. Democracy is a fragile system and depends on a shared sense of fairness and these are the rules and we will play it by these rules and will accept these rules and instead what we have is this political system in which to compromise is to surrender, when to compromise is what it takes to govern. I think unless we change the underlying dynamics of the political system and allow for realignment, we are going to continue to go downhill as a nation, our economy will become more volatile, and living in america will become increasingly uncertain. I dont want to see that for myself and my children and my future grandchildren someday. I believe in this country and i believe in democracy and i think the way to maintain it and support it Going Forward is to allow the diversity of this country to be better represented and to break this binary us against them that is so poisonous to the ability to governors house collectively. Host the author of the book, this is where you