How parties die

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I thought that Likud would be the biggest party?
Have things changed a lot in the past year?
I've not really been paying that much attention to Israeli politics recently...

[Gustaf]

I thought that Likud would be the biggest party?
Have things changed a lot in the past year?
I've not really been paying that much attention to Israeli politics recently...

Yeah, I thought that, unfortunately, Likud was in complete control currently?

[M]

Sorry, what I meant was second largest party, which completely changes the meaning of the post. Oops!

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

I STRONGLY support Shinui - the whole concept of having a party that actually gives a damn about liberty is a nice thing in any country.

[Gustaf]

I STRONGLY support Shinui - the whole concept of having a party that actually gives a damn about liberty is a nice thing in any country.

Yeah, I agree, they look nice, they are secular, aren't they?

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

yes

[M]

Most Israeli political parties are democratic and if they gained a majority would continue to have free and fair elections. There are a few exceptions- Chadash, the mostly Arab communist party (3 of 120 seats in Knesset), UTJ, a far right religious party that wants a "jewish" system of government since democracy is Christian (five seats), possibly two other Arab parties (2 and 3 seats respectively). So the vast majority of Israel "gives a damn about liberty".

Shinui's platform is committed to economic liberalization, secularization of government, and the idea that peace with the Arabs, including Palestinians can be reached only when they become democracies and renounced terrorism. Committed to the Road Map, members and strong supporters of the current Likud-lead ruling coalition.

[Gustaf]

Most Israeli political parties are democratic and if they gained a majority would continue to have free and fair elections. There are a few exceptions- Chadash, the mostly Arab communist party (3 of 120 seats in Knesset), UTJ, a far right religious party that wants a "jewish" system of government since democracy is Christian (five seats), possibly two other Arab parties (2 and 3 seats respectively). So the vast majority of Israel "gives a damn about liberty".

Shinui's platform is committed to economic liberalization, secularization of government, and the idea that peace with the Arabs, including Palestinians can be reached only when they become democracies and renounced terrorism. Committed to the Road Map, members and strong supporters of the current Likud-lead ruling coalition.

Sounds good to me.

[M]

They also have fifteen seats to Likud's 40 and Labour's nineteen, so they would probably have be the second party if snap elections were held today.

[jravnsbo]

M: I'm out here recruiting.  I like you did not look much at the Atlas elections, but they are almost through the nominating process I see and I am out whipping up support from Republicans.  We sure would appreciate your support and vote whent he time is right.  Thanks.  I'll let you know when it is and not disturb you about it besides.  

They also have fifteen seats to Likud's 40 and Labour's nineteen, so they would probably have be the second party if snap elections were held today.

[Gustaf]

Hmmmmmmm....I am not going to comment on this non-serious post infringing a serious debate...

Are these the kind of tactics we can expect from you in this campaign?

M: I'm out here recruiting.  I like you did not look much at the Atlas elections, but they are almost through the nominating process I see and I am out whipping up support from Republicans.  We sure would appreciate your support and vote whent he time is right.  Thanks.  I'll let you know when it is and not disturb you about it besides.  

They also have fifteen seats to Likud's 40 and Labour's nineteen, so they would probably have be the second party if snap elections were held today.

[Verily]

Well, Labor is involved in a very unpopular government that will hurt it once more, the Conservatives look about to lose yet another election (at the time of this thread they had only lost two; now they've lost three), and the Democrats are back in power, so things are a mixed bag.

Oh, and Shinui is dead, largely replaced by Kadima, which is probably doomed at the next election.

[Nym90]

Very interesting thread. Obviously in retrospect the idea of the Democrats dying is clearly now absurd, but we may say the same thing about the Republicans 4 years from now. Such is the nature of politics.

What Dazzleman said about blacks and the Democrats, while definitely having a bit of truth to it, could just as easily apply to the "religious right" for the Republicans.

[Person Man]

Very interesting thread. Obviously in retrospect the idea of the Democrats dying is clearly now absurd, but we may say the same thing about the Republicans 4 years from now. Such is the nature of politics.

What Dazzleman said about blacks and the Democrats, while definitely having a bit of truth to it, could just as easily apply to the "religious right" for the Republicans.

you mean a pet cause that basically defines your party and isolates you to only certain areas?

Just as the dems were isolated to cities over 500000 between 1980 and 2005, could the GOP be isolated to the northern plains and the south in the next 20 years, say between 2010 and 2030?

[Michael Z]

I don't think that the Democratic Party is in danger of dying out(it's far too strong at state level for that to happen) and I think that Stephens is letting his personal views cloud his judgement over this(translation: it's wishfull thinking), but the Tories are literally dying on their feet and Aavoda are not really any more socialist than Likud these days(remember: in Israel left and right is all about stance on the peace process. This means that Am Ekhad(socialists) are often described as centrists)

I agree with that. Regarding another point Stephens made, it's also worth considering that the Whig Party didn't "die", but was effectively replaced by the Republican Party in the 1850s.

EDIT: I've just realised that the original post was written in 2003, when for a brief period it really did look like America would turn into a one-party hegemony (*shudder*). And there was me thinking "What the heck's this fella on about? The Democrats won the Congress." Why bump these ancient threads? So we can discuss them with the benefit of hindsight?

[Person Man]

Who knows, if the GOP can turn around the economy, make a case for the wars then this original post might be relevant again. Then again, if that doesn't happen, this thread is a pipe dream for some silly hillbilly.

[pbrower2a]

Political parties die when they lose their relevance. I can see a course of events that leads to the demise of the Republican Party -- that the GOP becomes a marginalized party of extremists. In essence, moderates go elsewhere. Some remain marginal for decades -- like Prohibition and Communists, who have a cadre of true believers who believe that the rest of the world is wrong and will eventually "come to their senses". The Libertarian Party and Green Party may fit this pattern; they have yet to win an electoral vote or significant Presidential votes (although both were able to make the difference in two States in the 2008 election; Bob Barr (L) took enough right-leaning votes in NC to throw the state to Obama, and Ralph Nader (G) took enough left-leaning votes in MO to give the state to McCain. The effects were a wash).

Does anyone remember Strom Thurmond's National States-Rights Party? After Thurmond took away enough votes from Harry Truman to prevent a landslide in 1948, the party dwindled as it lost mainstream (by regional standards) membership.  The American Independent Party took over its role for one Presidential candidacy and somehow lost most of its membership.. and has since become an irrelevancy.

In the early part of this decade, at least one poster suggested that the Democratic Party was itself doomed to demographic trends -- but such a prophecy showed itself terribly premature. Some GOP figures thought that the wave of the future was one Republican nominee after another winning the Presidency and right-wing Republicans like Senator Rick Santorum and George Allen becoming the norm in America as Democrats refused to pander to the Religious Right. Moderates would have to make their compromises with the Hard Right just to get such federal aid as highway projects, farm subsidies, and flood relief by joining the Hard Right or voting for GOP candidates who would become the only ones capable of delivering the political goodies in accordance with the "Majority of the Majority" practice of Karl Rove.  That fell apart in 2006.

The GOP came to depend upon the Religious Right for political support just as demographic trends ceased favoring the Religious Right.  In 2008 the GOP put up a respectable performance for one of its comparative moderates as the Presidential nominee by winning over poor whites in the South. That constituency has proved shaky support for any electoral coalition. The Religious Right has been losing membership as it hemorrhages youth who flee at the first opportunity. Although the GOP can rely upon the Corporate Right, such support is good for funds but not for votes. The GOP seems perfectly attuned for an America that no longer exists -- a rural America in which people show more concern with tax levels than with the quality and effectiveness of public services and infrastructure.  Suburbia has come to need much the same things as the more usual urban America.

It's hard to see how poor whites have appreciable differences in needs from those of poor blacks and Hispanics and how the GOP can appeal to them as it loses badly to Democrats among poor non-whites. Could it be "race"? Should the GOP lose poor whites as a constituency in 2010 and 2012, then the GOP is in serious condition -- if one wants a medical analogy.   

 

[Rob]

Then again, if that doesn't happen, this thread is a pipe dream for some silly hillbilly.

Be nice- Don was probably tweaking or drunk on moonshine when he took this garbage seriously. Funny article, though.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Six years later, how different has everything become!

[??????????]

Six years later, how different has everything become!

Yep, just proves that "OMG The ___________ Party is on its' deathbed" hype is just that, hype.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Six years later, how different has everything become!

Yep, just proves that "OMG The ___________ Party is on its' deathbed" hype is just that, hype.

Yeah, unless you were in the 1850's saying "OMG The Whig Party is on its' deathbed", then you would have been right

[??????????]

Six years later, how different has everything become!

Yep, just proves that "OMG The ___________ Party is on its' deathbed" hype is just that, hype.

Yeah, unless you were in the 1850's saying "OMG The Whig Party is on its' deathbed", then you would have been right

Yes, but the masses weren't asses back then.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Interesting article from Bret Stephens, Jerusalem Post: "How parties die"
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1072326002291

EYES ABROAD: HOW PARTIES DIE
By Bret Stephens

How do great political parties die? By a great party, I am not referring to specimens such as the Liberal Democrats in Britain or the Free Democrats in Germany – parties that have never captured national leadership positions except as minority coalition partners – much less one-man-shows such as Ross Perot's Reform Party or Ralph Nader's Greens. I mean parties like the Whigs in 18th century Britain and 19th century America, or the Progressive Conservatives in 20th century Canada.

All of them decisively shaped their respective political landscape for decades. Then they vanished.

Today, at least three great political parties are in a bad way. One is Israel's Labor Party, the other Britain's Conservative Party, the third America's Democratic Party. This isn't to say that any of them won't exist in five or ten or even twenty years' time, although in the case of the Labor Party that's not such a sure thing. It is to say that they will either have to change radically, as Britain's Labour Party did under Tony Blair's leadership, effectively becoming a new party, or circumstances will change radically – and in their favor. Right now, neither possibility seems likely.

CONSIDER EACH party in its turn. In 1992, national elections were held in Israel, Britain and the US. In Israel, Labor took 44 seats in the Knesset.

Today they hold 19. In Britain, the Conservatives under John Major won 329 seats in Parliament.

Today they hold 163. In the US, the Democrats held 259 seats in the House of Representatives, to the Republicans 176, and 56 seats in the Senate, to the Republicans 44. Today, Republicans have 229 seats in the House to the Democrats 205, and 51 in the Senate to the Democrats 48.

Up to a point, one might say these are just the ups-and-downs that all great political parties go through. In 1999 it was the Likud that held 19 Knesset seats, not Labor. In 1997, the Conservatives were just coming off of 18 years in government and voters were plainly tired of them. In 2000, Al Gore won a majority of the popular vote.

But none of this explains the long-term trends. In 1996, Labor fell to 34 seats, then dropped to 26 seats in 1999, despite an impressive personal victory that year for Ehud Barak in the prime ministerial contest. In the 1997 British general election, the Tories dropped to 165 seats, which is where they more or less remain despite three changes in party leadership.

In the US, Republican congressional majorities have held for five consecutive elections. And as Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard observes, the trend is even more telling at the state level. In 1992, Democrats held 30 governorships; Republicans held 18. By 2002, the figures had flipped: 27 to 23. In state legislatures, Republicans have also gone from holding a minority to a majority of seats. Redistricting – the process of redrawing constituencies to reflect population changes – will only further add to Republican gains.

There's more. First, none of these parties is succeeding in attracting younger voters. The average age of the Conservative Party's 250,000 registered members is over 60, according to a recent report in the New York Times. The Labor Party depends increasingly on its aging loyalists – younger voters who incline Leftward are at least as likely to vote for the dovish Meretz or the bourgeois Shinui. As for the Democrats, Al Gore could do no better than to split the nine million 18-24 year old voters evenly with Bush. For a party that has traditionally relied on this demographic (Clinton won it by 19 percentage points in 1996), this is an ominous result.

Second, the parties have exhausted their leadership bench. The successive failures of Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Amram Mitzna as Labor Party leaders testifies to this weakness. The same goes for new Tory leader Michael Howard, a one-time has been who's been pushed to the fore mainly because he seems so clever next to his callow and weak predecessors. As for former Vermont governor Howard Dean, his frontrunner status speaks volumes about what the Democratic Party has become.

Connected to this is the heavy legacy of successful past leaders. Even now, the Tories cannot get out from under Margaret Thatcher's shadow – next to her, every Tory leader seems depressingly small. The Democrats remain in the thrall of Bill Clinton, whose personal popularity did nothing to stop his party's slide. And Shimon Peres still runs the Labor Party, testifying equally to his strength and his colleagues' weaknesses.

Third, the parties are beset by deep ideological rifts. For Labor, the question is whether the party is "Likud B or Meretz C," as former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer put it a year ago.

The Tories spent a decade tearing themselves apart over the peripheral question of Britain's status in Europe. The Democrats are divided between Clinton-style pragmatists and McGovern-style radicals. The trouble for them is that the first seem unlikely to win the nomination, and the second have no chance of winning the election.

These are the immediate problems. The deeper one is that Labor, the Tories, and the Democrats have been overtaken by history. Like an unwise investor, Labor put all its political capital into Oslo – that is, into trusting Yasser Arafat – and cannot recover from its failure or his treachery.

The Conservatives under Thatcher were all about dismantling the nanny state. Ironically, once that state was dismantled – and New Labour forswore any interest in bringing it back – they had nothing to offer voters. The Democrats, as American commentator Lawrence Kaplan writes, are stuck in a September 10 mindset. They have not yet come to terms with the September 12 reality.

There are historical precedents here. In Britain, the Whigs were the party that wanted to curb royal influence in politics, reform the system of parliamentary representation, and repeal the protectionist Corn Laws. All that accomplished (in the case of the Corn Laws, by the opposition Tories), the Whigs became a party without a cause.

In America, by contrast, the Whigs were a party of economic nationalism; they advocated high tariffs, infrastructure investment and a national bank. In Henry Clay, Daniel Webster (and in a young Abraham Lincoln), they had their share of outstanding statesmen. But they held no firm views on slavery, except to devise compromises over it. And as slavery became the central issue of American politics, the Whigs faded into irrelevance.

Although the analogies are inexact, the story of Britain's Whigs and of today's Tories are one and the same: Mission accomplished. Inasmuch as the Thatcher legacy lives on, it does so in the person of Tony Blair, not Michael Howard. Ironically, the same can be said of Israel's Labor Party. Having struggled so long to convince Israel of the need to withdraw from the territories, it must wait impatiently for Ariel Sharon to carry out his announced plans to do so.

As for the Democrats, it is still too soon to tell whether war on terrorism, like slavery, will so comprehensively define the times that any party on the wrong side of it will meet permanent irrelevance. Yet even if it doesn't, Democratic decline predates September 11, and the problems that beset the party then will continue to operate.

ALL THIS could change. A landslide victory by Bush over Dean will surely cause the Democrats to pick their candidates more soberly next time. Indeed, Hillary Clinton is already anticipating that outcome by espousing hawkish views on terrorism.

In Israel, a successful disengagement with the Palestinians will change the subject politically, put Oslo firmly in the past, and focus voter attention on issues where the Likud is weak. It's only with the Tories that one has a hard time seeing a way out, except if Old-New rifts in the Labour Party cause it to self-destruct.

Then again, things may not change. Republicans may once again assume the national political supremacy they enjoyed from Lincoln's election in 1860 until Herbert Hoover's defeat in 1932. Likud may become what Labor was in the early years of the state.

And New Labour, if it can maintain discipline, may yet dominate 21st century British politics the way the Tories dominated the 20th century. De facto one-party rule, even in robust democracies, is hardly unknown in modern times: Just look at the Gaullists in France, or the Christian Democrats in postwar Germany.

As a partisan Republican, and as a supporter of Likud, there's a side of me that can't help but want this. It's a temptation to resist. Parties are sharpened by opposition and in opposition. Political debate deteriorates when one side needn't pay heed to the views of the other. Political elites ossify when personal advancement depends mainly on party favors. One-sided control of government tends to breed radicalism on the opposition benches.

Politics is about substance. But politics is process. It is not only the laws that are enacted, but the to-and-fro that precedes their enactment. For that to work well, there's nothing better than robust government and healthy opposition. As in love and marriage, you can't have one without the other.

bret@jpost.com

LOL Democratic party is dying ? : D Terrorism is the main issue ? There's only a word to characterize that : ridiculous.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Whigs didn't "fade into irrelevence".  There collapse was quick. They didn't even nominate a candidate in 1856. There members became prominent members of other parties. The real reason for there sudden collapse was that it was composed of three distinct groups who were united in opposition to Andrew Jackson but had little in common. You had the northern middle class elites who feared rocking the boat and prefered the compromises of Clay and Douglas. This group latter joined the Northern Democratic or Know-nothing Parties. You had the idealists of all shapes and origins who wanted to use the Gov't as a tool in eradicating Slavery and Alcohol, these would join the Republicans. Then you have the Southern Whigs some of whom were plantation owners others were low income farmers in places like KY and Eastern TN. The former joined the southern Democrats while the latter stayed with the whigs the longest supporting the Constitutional Union Party in 1860 and after the civil war they became Republicans.

The collapse of the Whigs is one of the most misunderstood events in US history.

[Hash]

[...]

LOL Democratic party is dying ? : D Terrorism is the main issue ? There's only a word to characterize that : ridiculous.

Look at the date of the article.

Yeah, it's still a pretty stupid article however.