A table just for two

Originally printed in the Batesville Daily Guard

If there’s something that has become pretty obvious this election it’s that many, many Americans are not happy with their choices.

First, you have the major parties, the Republicans and Democrats, running two of the most unpopular candidates in history. According to RealClearPolitics.com, which averages several different polls, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is averaging 52.4 percent as far as unfavorability and Republican nominee Donald Trump averages 60.8 unfavorable. 

That isn’t a good sign for the winner of this election, as the 2018 midterm elections will probably see their party lose seats in both the House and Senate.

Sure, there are options that aren’t Democrat or Republican, the most prominent being Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party. The thing with them is that winning the presidency just isn’t that realistic.

Of course, a lot of that can be blamed on our electoral system. Unlike most modern democracies, the U.S. uses the electoral college, which means we don’t directly vote for president, instead we vote for electors to cast a vote for us on behalf of the winner, who takes all the electoral points in a given state. The winner doesn’t need to have a majority of the popular vote, which is 50 percent-plus one, they just need an 269 electoral votes, which means they’ll get all of the state’s electors whether they win with 90 percent of the vote or with 43 percent of the vote.

But the lack of success of third parties can’t be blamed solely on the electoral college. Instead, they can also be partially blamed on the nature of the parties themselves.

You see, many of the third-parties are ideologically based, like the Libertarians and Greens. That means that they don’t have as much room to wiggle around and stay true to their base at the same time, unlike big-tent parties like the Republicans and Democrats, which are each made up of a variety of different stripes but remain flexible enough to target the all-important moderate voter in the general election.

This is hard to do for parties based on ideological principles instead of vote-winning. Expanding the tent can mean bringing on new members but also alienating old members who demand a certain level of purity. It’s also a challenge to reach out to moderate voters who tend to be less-focused on ideology and more concerned with issues that require a certain flexibility that many parties can’t provide.

And of course, the presidential debates, or in reality joint press conferences, also shut out other voices. You can thank the Commission on Presidential Debates for that.

The most successful third-parties in the U.S. have had the “big tent” potential, like the Bull Moose Party of the 1910s and the Reform Party of the 1990s. But those parties, which had opportunity to grow, quickly fizzled out when the strong personalities, like Theodore Roosevelt and Ross Perot, that founded them were no longer the driving force.

Now it seems more people want to support a third party more than ever. Unfortunately, you also have a polarizing election where people are willing to go the “lesser of two evils” routes because they know who they don’t want in office. It’s an election where many people are voting against someone instead of for them.

The problem is then not people desiring a choice, but often a lack of what they see as viable choices. That’s not a good way to inspire faith in our democracy.

So what’s it take for a third party to get somewhere? Probably a big tent that won’t blow over after one election. But it’s also got to have resilience to fight the establishment, whether it be the two-party system, electoral college or lack of coverage from the national media.

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Primaries test endurance, patience

By Joseph Price • June 22, 2016

You could say the worst is over.

Originally published in the Batesville Daily Guard

General election season is upon us. Pretty soon, we’ll be bombarded by nonstop advertisements — not only from the Clinton and Trump campaigns, but also the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, state, county and municipal campaigns.

Sure, we’ll get a short break once the election is over with, but probably not for long. It seems that campaigns start earlier and earlier every cycle. This time around, we had candidates forming exploratory and political action committees as soon as November 2014 for this election.

The first official candidate for the 2016 presidential election, Ted Cruz, declared his candidacy on March 23, 2015. That’s 596, or 1.6 years, before the election! That early start didn’t pay off for him as no one is bothering to talk about him since he ended his campaign in May.

Of the remaining major party candidates, Hillary Clinton has been at it the longest, declaring her candidacy for the Democratic nomination on April 12, 2015, or 436 days ago, and Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination June 16, 2015. I might as well mention Sanders because he’s not officially ended his campaign; he’s been in it since April 30, 2015.

Of the two larger, so-called minor parties, Gary Johnson declared his candidacy for the Libertarian Party on Jan. 6, 2016, and Jill Stein declared hers for the Green on June 22, 2015.

Before this action, if that’s what you want to call debates and speeches, kicked off, potential candidates were busy behind the scenes trying to round up donors and support. Our system of election still relies on money, like most other developed countries, so we’re not unique in that. What sets us apart is that we have a system that limits donation limits but not spending limits.

Of course, there are loopholes in regards to that spending, best known as Super PACS which raise and spend as much money as they want as long as they don’t give it directly to a candidate or other political committees that give directly to candidates, nor coordinate how it spends its money with a federal candidate.

But that’s behind the scenes. The money exchanging and handshakes aren’t really that interesting to people, unless of course, somebody shines a light on some excess or finds contributors with some particularly interesting baggage.

I really lay a lot of blame on the broadcast media for making these election seasons feel so long. They’re holding the first of their numerous debates earlier and earlier every year. This year, Fox News kicked off the debate season on Aug. 6, 2015, with its Republican debate. There was so many candidates that they divided it into an opening act, featuring lower-polling candidates and a main event featuring the Top 10.

With 16 total candidates, it was the equivalent of a mosh pit where any new arrivals would find the circle too crowded to push their way to the spotlight, being shoved to the peripheral instead.

The Democrats were able to avoid much of this. They still had room on the stage when they held their first debate on Oct. 3, 2016, with just five candidates. Within just a couple of months, it was down to just two.

For me, the debates were one of the most excruciating parts of the process. Honestly, I’m hard-pressed to find one debate interesting enough to watch, let alone five or six. But, big media and political pundits love sound bytes and they got plenty of them by digging out a few minutes from each of these snoozers.

And finally, the big culprits are the primaries themselves. It seems that the states that are not Iowa, New Hampshire, Carolina and Nevada keep trying to one up each other for who can be earliest, though they can’t ever be scheduled before March. The earlier your primary, the more influence your state has after all.

So instead of having these primaries arranged in some orderly fashion that makes sense, they’re held on different days of the week, are sometimes caucuses, sometimes open or closed — just all over the place. All that seems to be for sure is that California is the last one for Republicans and Washington, D.C., is the last for Democrats.

After all, it’s pretty rare that you hear, “It’s down to what California decides!”

But admit it, by the time it’s over in June, you probably stopped paying attention. Your state primary was in March after all.

Personally, I’m not a fan of primaries. This year was a primary example (yuk yuk) of why that’s the case. It’s one of the examples of where I’d prefer either reform or things go back to the “good old days.”

By the “good old days” I’m referring to those smoke-filled back rooms where deals were made between party bosses or those battles on the convention floors between delegates who were actually members of the party.

Sure, the open primaries may be more democratic, but it’s become pretty obvious that often what the voters who turn out want and what party leaders want are often different.

It was not more obvious this year. The establishment by and large wanted someone that was not Donald Trump, while the people who turned out for primaries, who were not all card-carrying Republicans, did. There was a similar story with Clinton, the establishment wanted her, the primary voters made it not-so-clear cut.

So I often want to ask party leaders “if you don’t want these candidates then why do you let them run? If you’ve already got your preference, then why bother with a primary?”

Looking ahead, do we want this same endurance challenge in 2020 and 2024? Instead of this exhausting and boring primary season, can’t we just let the parties battle it out at their respective convention?

Maybe we can talk about that before the 2020 primary season starts Nov. 9.