What I learned about the two-party system while working for Reuters
#35 Go ahead! Throw your vote away!
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Now, on to our story…
Mexico just elected a climate scientist and woman to be president, leaving many in the U.S. to ask: Why not here?
It’s a good question. Why not here?
If I may: it’s because an intentional system of bipartisanship, illusion of options, party entitlement, and mafia-like rule make it feel like it is impossible to break out of the two-party nightmare.
The reality is, as one of my great political mentors, Henry Stern, used to say, there really are only two parties in U.S. politics: the Ins and the Outs. Either you’re In, or you’re Out.
That’s it.
Any citizen can take the time to look at who is giving money to whom and see, yes, indeed, the power people are bought and paid for by the same people and businesses. Precious few (one that I know of for sure - Rashida Tlaib) eschew big donors and special interest groups, who give equitably across party lines.
Glorious wedge issues, like abortion, have been keeping citizenry thinking they have an option: Coke, or Pepsi, but one must be chosen, and neither is good for you. For example, the Democrats have been promising to codify Roe v Wade for decades, and continue to promise to protect abortion rights in this election. Yet they haven’t done anything more than promise to do it and whine, “Oh! But the Republicans!” since the 1970s.
Meanwhile, the Republicans promised to overturn it, and they played the long game, and they did it.
Understand: The party players of the Democratic party needed Roe to stay uncodified. How else could they keep getting re-elected on the threat that “the other guy” will take your right to an abortion away?
The Dems never meant to keep their promise. The promise served to get them elected, repeatedly, as they are promising the same ol’ thing now.
Wedge issues are just one tool used to solidify politics and power over people in the two-party system. It’s like Good Cop/Bad Cop in the political theater.
The media reinforces this two-party, good/bad, coke/pepsi binary. There was a (perhaps) stunning example of this when I was on assignment for Reuters:
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