While a two party system has, for all intents, ruled our political landscape for most of modern history, they are not completely immune from pressures on their peripheries. In both the past and present, we see evidence of new political quasi-parties forming not with the intent to make major electoral gains, but to change the center of political opinion within one of the two major parties. One major example is the Dixiecrat party which ran in no local elections and had next to no chance of prevailing in the national election. It is unlikely that Strom Thurmond actually believed that he was going to be president of the United States. Instead, his candidacy and his party existed to move the political center of the major parties. As we saw in Downes, if a 3rd party comes into play one or both of the major parties in a two party system will shift to try to capture the new outlier mode. While a 3rd party has no real chance of success itself, it can succeed in shifting the opinion of the major party towards its position to capture its voters.
In the modern day we see examples of this with the Tea Party, and in an infantile stage the Wall Street Protesters. The Tea Party has fared poorly when their far-right candidates face mainstream republicans in primaries, and have encountered disastrous consequences when running against Democrats in general elections. Despite their relative lack of electoral success, they have succeeded in pulling the mainstream Republican Party to the right. Even moderate republicans seek the votes that the Tea Party commands and fear being denounced by them. While much is yet to be seen, the Wall Street Protesters have many of the same signs of being a young Tear Party of the left. Will they succeed in dragging the Democratic Party further to the left? Our studies tell us that should they gain enough clout to begin to form a coherent voting bloc, the Democrats will be compelled to move their median to the left to gobble up the “Wall Street Protester” vote, and ensure that we remain largely on a bimodal spectrum. Whether they do in fact form a coherent voting bloc has yet to be seen however.
1 comment:
This is a very interesting point, Kyle. It is wild to consider the possibility of the protesters creating a solid voting bloc. It seems that hypothetically, according to Downs, if the recession possibly moved the modal center of the US political spectrum to the left, and the new, hypothetical, Occupy party gained enough support, the current Democratic party would be caught between the Republican party and the protesters, and the Democractic party would have to change ideologically to keep all its voters. This does not seem outrageous; according to Downs, "some parties - founded by perfectly rational men, are meant to be threats to other parties."
I don't believe, however, that the original goal of the protesters was to be a threat to the Democratic party. According to this article in the Wall Street Journal - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504577000320434317092.html?KEYWORDS=occupy+wall+street - the protesters are gaining some financial support, but lack the organization or leadership to make important decisions that will move them forward. So even though it is not unfathomable for them to influence the Democratic voting bloc, it was not their original intention. Like you said, it is too early to see if the protesters will have a true influence.
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