The Whole Truth with David Eisenhower

Announcer: Amid an increasingly divided political landscape, recent polls show that most Americans view the politics of both the Democratic and Republican parties to be either to the left or the right of their own views, With only about 1/5 saying either party's politics were about the same as their own.

Meanwhile, a growing proportion of voters are registering as nonpartisan or independent.

Are we coming to the end of the two-party system as the United States has historically known it?

This episode of "The Whole Truth" was made possible by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Education, William and Susan Doran, CNX Resources Corporation, and NJM Insurance.

Over 1/3 of U.S. voters now call themselves independents or nonpartisans, slightly more than identify as either Republicans or Democrats.

This group includes almost all of the voters subject to possible persuasion in political campaigns.

They provide the vast majority of the swings, which determine whether Republicans or Democrats hold power, but because of rules written by elected officials, who are themselves either Republicans or Democrats, in over half the states, this largest and most important group of American voters by virtue of being unaffiliated with a specific major party is rendered incapable of being involved in the primary elections.

What this means is that nonpartisans in many states have no input as to the candidates, who, because they represent the two major parties, end up in the general election ballot and ultimately go on to win nearly all of the offices.

Today on "The Whole Truth," we'll discuss the disenchantment in many quarters with America's two-party political system but also the great challenges to anyone seeking to change that system.

Joining me here today to discuss the future of the two-party American political system is Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America.

And I guess question number one-- we are talking about polarization-- question number one is whether Americans in some way are not being represented.

There have been-- I notice a lot of variability in the polls, that is party identification.

What would you make of that, by the way?

I notice for Republicans, way up these days.

Democrats have been way up.

How seriously do you take party identification?

How firm does that-- how many voters do you think are really up for grabs?

Very few voters are really up for grabs, you know.

Maybe 5% of voters at this point are swing voters.

Now, the other--the big trend that's happened in party identification is that the number of people identifying as independent has grown steadily.

It's now, you know, between 45 and 50% depending on the poll.

And, you know, the numbers, you know, bounce around a little bit.

It depends on, you know, response rates and how people are feeling.

But, you know, the basic has been, you know, about 40%, or plus, independents have been the most popular party identification in America for quite a while now.

So Americans are really saying that we don't like the two parties.

You poll people, and you ask them, Would you like a third option?

And I've done this polling.

You get, you know, 60%, 65% of people saying, you know, "We'd like a third option.

We're really unhappy with these two parties."

We have a two-party system that emerged at the very founding of the United States.

So I guess one question I would have--would be, What accounts for the durability of our two-party system in this country?

The second is a sort of "ought," not what, but ought, whether that has been a good thing or not.

But what accounts for the durability?

Well, I mean, the main thing that accounts for the durability of our party system is the way that we hold elections, which is we hold elections using winner-take-all, single-winner elections, single-winner electoral college.

And as we know through, you know, a lot of political science, comparative political science, when you have single-winner elections, you wind up, typically with just two parties because third parties are spoilers, wasted votes, et cetera.

Now, the reality is we've had a two-party system in the U.S., you know, going back.

But, you know, we've had multiple two-party systems.

I mean, the original two parties were the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists.

Then we had the Democrats and the Whigs.

And, you know, really since the 1860s, we've had the Democrats and the Republicans.

But those have been these sort of broad national parties that didn't, you know, at a national level, didn't really stand for all that much.

And they are teams, but, you know, there were really multi-party systems within those parties.

There were a lot of third parties that came and went.

What we used to have is a very multi-dimensional party system in which you could assemble different coalitions on different issues, and people worked together, got to know each other.

There wasn't this geographical sorting, there wasn't this epistemological sorting, and Democrat and Republican didn't mean all that much.

You know, I didn't know a lot about who you were if you were a Republican or a Democrat.

But now if you told me you're a Republican, I feel like I know so much about who you are.

If you tell me you're a Democrat, I feel like I know so much about who you are or what you believe in.

And that has really happened over the last 30 years.

And it's really-- I would say really in the last decade or so that we've had something truly radical in the system, which is a two-party system with no overlap, two fully sorted parties in which everything has been flattened out into this single us-versus-them dimension.

Everything is an us-versus-them issue.

There's this performative aspect of politics.

Everything is about winning the next election.

And this is part of the cycle, is that everybody is trapped.

You can't say nice things about the other side because then you're a traitor to your side...

I would say that this was in place by about 2000.

Yeah, I mean, you know, 2000.

It's not a singular event.

I mean, if I think about it as a doom loop, it's a process, it's an escalating cycle.

You know, it builds over a while, but, you know, like a snowball picking up steam, you know, it starts-- this is exponential.

Would this era in any way resemble the post-Civil War era?

What's different is that in that period, the federal government didn't do all that much.

I mean, you know, tariffs, post offices, you know, federal lands, but, like, most policy was at the state and local level, and politics was largely a patronage log roll.

There's a sort of school of thought, I think, that the political effects of the American Civil War can be compared to the political effects of the Vietnam War.

And what the Civil War did was it put America on a long trajectory of dealignment followed by realignment.

One of the reasons that we have an impasse in this country is we do not have a... we have very, very even elections.

One of the challenges in this moment is that because the stakes of every national election feel so high, it forces this--you know, "We have to come together for this common enemy."

And the parties are both, in a sense, are both running on fumes, you know, barely stand for any policy other than the other side is a threat.

Now, that creates some potential for cleavages, but what it really does is it puts tremendous pressure on the foundation of our entire democratic system of self-governance, which relies on the legitimacy of elections as an alternative to violence.

OK, so that leads to a two-step question.

I think I know the answer to the first based on the title of a recent book, "The Doom Loop," and so forth.

Do you see a kind of salvageable order within a two-party system?, number one.

Number two-- What would be the barriers to something different?

And C--What would be better?

Well, so I think you know the answer.

But just so we've set that premise, No.

I don't see a salvageable order within the two-party system.

Now, am I correct about this, that generally, the more advanced nations in the world have parliamentary systems?

Is that correct?

Mostly, yeah.

I think, mostly yes.

Yes.

So in other words, the United States, in a sense, is a kind of anomaly, aren't we?

Having a presidential system.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

We do have a presidential system.

France has a presidential system-- well, semi-presidential.

But, yes, among similar, you know, advanced industrial democracies, we're somewhat unusual in having a presidential system.

Now, of course, the powers of the presidency are constitutionally weak compared to a lot of other presidential democracies.

In fact, I'm sure you remember Richard Neustadt's famous line about the presidency, that the power of the presidency is the power to persuade, which is not a, you know, particularly, you know, strong constitutional power.

But, nonetheless, because of various aspects of our political development, particularly, you know, the self-lobotomy that Congress has given itself, you know, the presidency has become more important.

Which is where the partisan divide really is most telling, isn't it?

It's rendered the Congress ineffective...

Yes.

It's rendered the Congress ineffective.

which means that we have now a presidential government not only by design but by default.

Right.

But you could imagine something closer to a cabinet-style presidential government, which is, you know, in some ways, what we've had something closer to in an earlier era in which Congress is a partner and, in fact, is the first branch of government.

I mean, it was designed as the first branch of government.

That was, you know, the vision.

I have a feeling you're an expert on this as well, with the corporate lobbying and so forth.

What is the institutional drag that prevents us from getting to-- All right.

Another question.

What catalytic event could you foresee that would bring on, say, irresistible pressure for a third party?

The Republicans, I think, were technically a second party in 1860, but slavery was a catalytic event.

Sure.

Slavery split the parties.

Split the parties.

So is there a catalytic event, number one, number two--short of that-- reforms that can create the openings or space for a sort of third-party alternative?

Well, there's a few things we can do, you know.

And there's no reason-- I mean, the idea that we have single-winner districts, two-party system, it's not any part of our constitutional design.

There's nothing in the Constitution, you know, that said we should do it this way.

In fact, it was just never discussed.

And the Framers thought they were designing a system that was going to do away with parties, but the reality is that in order to have a modern mass democracy, you need political parties to organize and structure politics.

Otherwise, it's chaotic.

So parties stipulate that parties are essential to modern democracy.

But when you have just two completely sorted national parties in a system, particularly, you know, a checks and balances system like we have, it just doesn't work.

That's where we started--parliamentary, you know, parliamentary politics, checks and balances, divided, you know, system.

So the party system that would work with that, I think, is a multi-party system, which has worked when we've effectively had a multi-party within our two-party system.

But we're going to have to create that.

Now, what could we do?

You know... OK, so you're saying this is something-- so not three-party which is, I think, the automatic assumption.

You're saying four-party.

I'm saying five or six parties, right?

You know, I mean, the problem is we think that there's a third party out there, but a third party would be a spoiler.

But you change the rules to allow five or six parties, and now you can form new coalitions.

You do that through proportional representation.

There are a lot of forms of proportional representation if we want to get in the weeds, but the basic idea of proportional representation is simple, is that parties' votes in the electorate should reflect its share of seats in the legislature.

And what that does, in effect, is it makes it easier for more parties to form without being spoilers.

And we know this is a well-shown property of electoral science, that the larger the district size, assuming we allocate the votes proportionally, the greater the number of parties.

So, you know, if you do it like the Netherlands and have the entire country be one electoral district with very low threshold, you can wind up having 13 parties in parliament.

You know, Israel, as well, has a similar system which, you know, frankly, a lot of people say, you know, "Look at the chaos in Israel."

But after--you know, it did take them four elections, but now they've managed to have a very interesting governing coalition in which a bunch of former enemies have formed a surprisingly stable coalition, that it has put aside the divisive, you know, cultural politics and actually focused on government.

You alluded to changing the rules.

Let me ask this question.

Neustadt, about the presidential power to persuade, is actually referring to working within the established constitutional structure, changing things, so to speak.

Yes, yes, yes.

Could you see changing rules within the current constitutional structure that we have?

One thing that comes to mind when you mentioned the proportional thing was this Interstate Compact, which has been developed... Yeah.

So that's on the Electoral College.

It's a separate issue, so I'm focused on...

It opens the door to a third-party winner.

Yeah, it could.

When I talk about proportional representation, I'm talking about Congressional elections.

We could get into presidential elections.

And there, you know, we'd probably need some form of national popular vote or a vote compact maybe.

But, you know, I think you're going to see the new parties starting not at the presidential level but at the Congressional and at the state legislative level.

So, proportional representation.

I've started a new organization recently called Fix Our House.

You can go to FixOurHouse.org to learn more about our work for proportional representation.

I mean, you know, it's not gonna happen overnight, but there's more, more, and more interest in this as I think people realize that we're at this fundamental impasse with the two-party system and we need to get out of this binary, zero-sum thinking that is really just driving us absolutely crazy.

But in the more immediate term, there's something that we can do called fusion voting, which actually used to be quite common.

All states used to have this.

And it used to be-- and, in fact, New York and Connecticut do have this now in which you can have multiple parties on the ballot, but they endorse the same candidate.

So in New York, for example, you could vote for the conservative or the Republican party line for Donald Trump.

You could vote on the Democratic... And then you get...Trump.

Yeah.

And then you know where your votes come from.

But, you know, it used to be the province of more extreme parties, but now it's the center that's been left out.

So what you could imagine would be like a moderate party forming, and then the candidate that's more moderate would get that endorsement, and you can imagine some other parties forming, and that creates a way in which parties and new party identities can start to form.

And, you know, over time...

I think that's exactly what you're talking about, moderate politics, and the need to restore it in some way.

Yeah.

But I guess I have a question because... Good.

we listen to all these back and forth and the talking heads and so forth.

Is there... how do you galvanize something like that?

In other words, parties rally people, bring record numbers to polls and so forth by defining differences.

Right.

And, generally, that stands in the way of moderate government.

So how does a moderate party galvanize the electorate?

I mean...so... the way in which the, you know, there's a difference in campaigning in a multi-party system and a two-party system, right?

The two-party system, you campaign as the lesser of two evils.

And that's become, you know, even clearer today.

That's really the dominant way of doing things today.

But in a multi-party system, there's no phrase "lesser of three evils," right, except as a joking parody on lesser of two evils.

But you campaign on a single issue... You campaign on-- you don't have to campaign on a single issue.

I mean, look at campaigning in multi-party systems, and, yeah, there's a little bit of, you know, throwing shade at folks, but mostly, it's "Here's what my party is going to promise to do," and you mobilize people by your positive vision instead of the threat of the other party.

And Republicans are just, "Well, Democrats are terrible."

You know, "We're going to stop all the horrible things Democrats are doing."

Well, what are you gonna do?

"We're going to stop all the horrible things Democrats are doing."

You know, how did Democrats campaign in the 2018 midterms?

Well, you know, "We got to be a check on Trump.

"Trump is..." you know, "The Republicans are doing all these awful things.

We're going to protect your health care."

So... All right.

Well...

So it changes the way that-- it fundamentally changes how you do campaigning.

So the question is, How do we get--move in that direction?

I can see two alternatives.

One would be more evolutionary, which would be new laws, new practices, new habits.

Right.

The other would be abrupt, which would be the appearance of some, as you say, issue that transcends parties or divides both parties.

Looking down the road, breaking out of the doom loop, what is more feasible in your mind?

And if there is an issue out there, what is it?

Well, let's start with what the issue might be.

I think, to me, the one issue that could do that would be like a major climate disaster that is, like, you know, so, so massive that it, you know, kills millions of people in this country, or maybe like a global war or something.

You know, it would have to be of that scale.

But even there, I'm not sure that wouldn't divide the parties.

That might just... that might just turn us against each other, right?

I mean, like, look how we handled covid, right?

It just, it turbocharged partisan polarization.

Suddenly, you know, vaccinations are now a partisan issue?

Wearing masks to keep, you know, to keep the spread of a disease under control is now a partisan issue?

Like, at a certain point, just, like, every issue becomes a partisan issue.

So, like, it seems like, it could just be... Well, the covid debate in part was whether covid was that dangerous.

In other words, whether it approached... the kind of thing that you're talking about.

That isn't a climate disaster or an international war.

Well, sure, but, I mean...

But point well taken.

I think it would be the same thing.

That was an opportunity to unite, and we didn't.

It was.

Yeah, it was.

Well, how about in an evolutionary way?

Can you see changes at the state/national level... Yeah, yeah... What kinds of changes exactly?

So, I mean, you could see states starting to pass laws.

I mean, states are already doing this.

I mean, you know... ranked choice voting is one approach that's... to changing elections.

You know, when the single-winner context is pretty small, but, you know, it does start to open up the space a little bit.

You see that in Maine, Alaska, a bunch of cities, including New York City.

You know, I think you'll see over the next few years, more ballot campaigns, maybe for fusion, you know, in some states, maybe even for proportional representation statewide.

And I think as you see these reforms start to percolate and you see new parties forming-- and, you know, frankly, it's just a matter of understanding, you know, first, well, what is the nature of this problem?

I mean, in some ways, it's like this really strange puzzle because, you know, on the one hand, like, we're an incredibly prosperous nation.

Like, you know, I mean, we have disagreements, but, like, well, you know, mostly, we want the same things, you know.

We want a thriving economy, we want good schools for our kids... we want a prosperous future.

And also, like, you know, you talk to most people, Do you want to constantly be in this politics of hate and vilification and demonization?

No, no.

But... Another possibility would be radical, sort of, decentralization.

That would be sort of a devolution into, like, city-states.

You could start with federalism.

That would probably happen if the federal government just, like, basically shut down.

And, you know, a lot of folks will say...

Frankly, it was the local and state politics being more central to many people's imaginations than national politics that kept American democracy at a national level relatively stable for a long time.

But I don't know how to turn that clock backwards, because so many of the powers are now at the federal level, and whichever party is in control of Washington wants to use those levers.

So everybody talks about federalism when they're out of power and then suddenly, you know, forgets what they were saying... Well, Lee, I had some questions for your arriving.

First of all, "The Doom Loop," whether this was something that was inexorable, whether our partisan divide is unique or whether it's typical, whether it is unique in our history or whether it is typical.

You shed a lot of light on it.

You've given us a lot to think about, and very grateful that you were able to take time out for a discussion on this subject.

Well, I'm grateful to have this conversation.

It seems to me that we've been on a steady road towards a sort of paralysis in politics since the sixties.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I question whether it's something that is a phase in American history or whether this is-- there are structural things at root here.

And I think that you've given us a lot to think about on both counts, and it's the story of our times.

Yeah, it is.

We really have to come together on this.

Yeah.

Certainly do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It was great.

As we discussed, more than 1/3 of Americans decline to register to vote as either Republicans or Democrats, but the vast majority actually vote reliably for one of the two major parties.

And there are enormous institutional barriers, perhaps deliberately created by incumbent lawmakers from the two parties, which make viable third parties very difficult to get off the ground.

So despite measurable dissatisfaction with the two historic American political parties, it is by no means clear that a multi-party political system is about to be born or that one of the two legacy parties is about to be replaced.

There is also much to debate about whether multi-party democracies, such as in Europe, are, in fact, more stable or responsive to the wishes of their populations than has been the case in the American two-party system.

We leave it to you to decide the whole truth.

Thanks for watching.

I'm David Eisenhower.

Announcer: This episode of "The Whole Truth" was made possible by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Education, William and Susan Doran, CNX Resources Corporation, and NJM Insurance.