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?
Yeah, I think it broke.
Remember that Trump's election also broke the Republican party. They had a long stretch where they couldn't get their people into office because they weren't sufficiently frothing Q-anon weirdos. Now they have Project 2025 - a completely separate entity from the party - trying to market a policy package to its constituents and elected officials because they have millenarian religious beliefs in the place where policy usually goes. That's not a stable organizational system.
Meanwhile, the things the DNC claims to stand for are popular, and most people are still willing to believe in it without results, yet despite this incredible position, they can't put out compelling enough candidates to get people to vote. I think it's easiest to see how broken they are by imagining a DNC that functions properly. They'd find generically likeable junior politicians that are willing to follow the party line, get them featured on the national news, use national support to let them easily win senate positions, and then have a steady drip of palatable candidates who can run Hope And Change campaigns and then enact the policies the donors want. Every primary would offer you a sampling of different flavored Beto O'Rourkes. This is piss-easy and they can't do it, because the party is actually a collection of powerful families trying to play kingmaker to fan their egos, and they've spent so little effort on talent development that people are talking about Michelle Obama as a candidate. And that lack of stewardship also means a total power vacuum when the Clintons and Obamas and whatnot get too old and retire or die, if the party doesn't fall apart first.