Money and the Straight Party Line
True confession: I am a lifelong Democrat. Ever since my Mom pinned a JFK for President button on my sweater in 1960, I’ve supported Democrats, worked for Democrats, and campaigned for Democrats. Just wanted to get that off my chest.
There are a couple of times in the forty-four years of voting (I’m pretty sure I never missed an election – even drove back to Cincinnati one time to vote) I’ve actually voted for a Republican. It was always personal, in the sense that I knew the Republican running, and that they were a better choice than the Democrat, and it was invariably for a local office.
In the old days (and probably still in some cities) you could pull a lever and vote for every candidate of one party or the other. Straight party voters didn’t make individual choices, they simply supported “donkeys or elephants.” It was a lot quicker.
But the more typical American voter reserves the ability to choose “by person” in each office. Most Americans vote “for the man, or for the woman” rather than by political affiliation. Many spend a great deal of time actually studying the ballot, knowing the candidates, and choosing individuals. We have been taught from our earliest lessons the power of a single person to change history. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, King, and more recently the re-telling of the Alexander Hamilton story: all were individuals who powerfully made a difference in America’s story. From that tradition we see the individual as crucial in the government, and want that individual to hold office, choose the path of government, and make a difference.
So having made that seemingly obvious case, I’m going to tell you to do something different. For Federal and State offices, you should vote straight party line this time.
Our Federal and State governments have followed a Constitutional model, with three separate branches of government. As such, we have always depended on the tensions among those competing branches to serve as a check to the power of the government.
This is as opposed to a Parliamentary system, where the legislature chooses the executive who then chooses the judiciary. In a parliamentary system the political party is ascendant: a majority in the legislature means control of all of the branches of government. In countries with a parliamentary form of government, Party is everything.
Today our Constitutional governments at both federal and state levels are acting more like parliamentary bodies. This is in part because of the power of money; to hold office even at a district level it costs huge amounts to win. The influence of those who can provide that money is such that fealty to their causes has become the primary factor for a candidate.
Ask Susan Collins, whose position on abortion absolutely made Brett Kavanaugh an unacceptable choice. But because she was a Republican, depending on Republican funds to continue in office, she did the “mental gymnastics” of convincing herself that Kavanaugh would leave Roe v Wade as “settled law.” There is nothing in his judicial history to show that will be true, and everything to show he would support overturning the decision. But it didn’t matter, because Collins couldn’t stand against him. She literally couldn’t afford to.
Money has placed the three branches of government into the control of one party, both here in Ohio, and in the United States. Voting for the “good” member of a party that doesn’t represent your ideals, is simply putting the other party in power. Individuals don’t exercise power; at least not for long. While we have the trappings of a Federal system with checks and balances, we have practically become a Parliamentary system.
Our party tensions are narrowly balanced, with the Presidential popular vote in the negative for the winning candidate, the Senate 51-49, and the Supreme Court 5-4. In the State of Ohio, where one party has almost unanimous control, the actual voting patterns are near even as well.
As such, you need to vote your party, not the individual. To put the system back into balance, and to have your ideas represented, you currently don’t have the luxury of voting for “the person.” Someday, when we find a way to get the money (on both sides) out of the system; in a world where ideas, not cash, make a difference, we should go back to our historic view of individualism: but not today.
