Where, oh Where, Has the Center Gone?

D.Eris at Poli-Tea has posted a follow up post on responses to a NYTIMES letter to the editor calling for a centrist third party.  He summarizes the nine reader response letters. I'm summarizing his summaries below (w. comments).

1) Historical determinism: Third parties have failed, and therefore will fail. It is better to work within the two-party system. (change. the. election rules.)

2) We need a diversified multi-party system with campaign finance reform. (pragmatism, not perfectionism)

3) Third parties need to focus on making concrete "less-is-more" victories rather than focusing on the presidency. (not enuf focus on election rules.)

4) The establishment would corrupt third party representatives, but not Democrats and Republicans trying to reform their respective parties and institute campaign finance reform.

5) The problem isn't lack of centrists, it's obstructionism on the part of Republicans. We need a progressive third party to change the system. (How about trying to force a schism in the Republican party and then hoping for a Progressive-Green-Democratic and a Libertarian-Republican party to replace our two major parties?)  

6) Our current system makes Third Party presidential candidates not electable, independents must moderate the major parties through their primaries. (Independents need more options.)

7) We need to give voice to our marginalized third parties so voters get real choices. (We also need our marginalized third parties to play smarter politics.)

8) The Democratic Party is already "the" centrist party. Republican obstructionism is the problem. History implies that third parties will not win and act as spoilers. (History implies that if you change the election rules then we shall change all three of the above.)

9) The Democrats are already "the" centrist party. We need multiple viable alternatives to the major parties. For that to happen we need serious electoral reform: campaign finance, voting systems, etc. (We also need to prioritize and to set realistic short-run goals for our system.)

I also wrote my own letter today.

The problem is that currently the two major parties are centered around the de facto center, instead of the "real" center and they are unable to cooperate because of how much both of them want to game our first-past-the-post system to dominate the other.

With better election rules, the de facto center would be much closer to the "real" center and with FairVote's American forms of Proportional Representation, we could handicap the rivalry between the two major parties so they are given more incentives to cooperate to maintain their privileged major party status against potential contenders.

Thus, true centrists should want better election rules that would lead to the development of two new major parties who must re-position themselves regularly around the changing, real center to keep their privileged, duopolistic positions.

If I could write it again, I would add that through American forms of Proportional Representation, we could give third parties a more constructive role in our two-party dominated system.  Elevated voice and some representation for third parties would tie us to the mast to redress our many terrible, historical failures in the protection of ethnic, economic and ideological minority rights.




dlw