For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System
It might be wishful thinking. I might just be poisoning my brain with social media, but the absolute slop I’ve been reading on twitter for the past couple weeks is leading me to believe we may be witnessing the death of the Sixth Party System. Liberals framing recent events as “Working Class Joe” locked in a battle against the DNC Elites, calling publications like the New York Times and Axios fake news chaos agents. Long established alliances between institutions and constituencies seem to be falling apart in a way I have never seen before. It has been such a captivating dumpster fire to behold.
I know “Dems in Disarray” is a common election-season trope, but I have never seen this level of disarray in my life. This shit surely has to be cooked, right? Like this is boiling down to QAnon vs. BlueAnon at this point, with no tangible attachment to policy prescriptions, or even reality. We’re supposed to re-elect an octogenarian genocidarie with a life-long political record of strangling the working class while building up the police state to stop fascism. We’re supposed to not lose a single election until I’m 80, toothless, infirm, but still working overtime in 110 degree heat on an orange plantation in Yukon to pay my rent to Blackstone while waiting for all the Trump 45 judges to die?
Most policy distinctions on race, immigration, class, labor, religion, LGBTQ+ rights, bodily autonomy, foreign policy, the war on drugs, militarism, incarceration, and economic rights have been reduced to NOTHING but lip service for a long time now, and with the supreme court holding veto power over the other two branches, the era of pedantic liberal proceduralism isn’t even a convincing fairy tale. Between the splintering of political constituencies and institutions, and the inevitable fait accompli which is necessary to bypass the impasse of the US’s constitutional institutions, I really think this thing is toast. Am I drunk?
Well put, we can’t divine the future but your correct in feeling like these are weeks where decades happen.
If we’re optimism posting I hope this is the death knell of the Democratic Party and perhaps in my lifetime even the constitutional order. The Republican Party is similarly vile but one crucial distinction is that I don’t think the Republican Party would go out of its way to save the Democratic Party. But if you reverse the circumstances I can absolutely see the democrats fighting tooth and nail to save the republicans from self destruction. Look at the way they elevated the “never trump republicans” even though they were just as vile or worse in some cases. The democrats really do seem to be on a collision course with a deeply delegitimizing defeat and Joe Biden refuses to take his hands off the steering wheel even as their self preservation instincts keep trying to turn the nose up.
Of course like I said, we can’t divine the future, this is just game theory bullshit. All I’m saying is that as someone who dreams of seeing the constitutional order of the United States brought to an end, I feel a glimmer of that most dangerous of feelings.
And of course the chaos that ensues will not be pretty. I do not relish that and no one should. However the time to work together to build a credible alternative has always been yesterday.
And to that end, I often wonder how much of a credible alternative CAN even be built as long as the gaping maw of the Democratic Party exists to Hoover up all social movements, capitalize on them, and smooth off all the sharp edges so they’re palatable to suburban fence sitting white people.
Even within the existing constitutional order, I truly believe from the bottom of my heart that the left as a social movement will continue to be stymied and sapped of talent and capital until the Democratic Party either implodes or is just completely de-legitimized.