Last Fall, Donald Trump won our national presidential election and in doing so, really blew a hole in our national political party system. Well no he didn’t. It was Hillary Clinton’s political party that really blew a hole in our party political system when they tried to fix the nomination process for Hillary Clinton. Well, no they didn’t blow up the party system either. The parties themselves, blew up the parties.
I’ve witnessed the two party system showing signs of failure for at least the last decade, if not longer. The 2016 election just brought that fact more to light of the whole nation.
What happened is that Donald Trump had so much campaign momentum going that his party members had to nominate him or his chosen party would have appeared weak, disconnected and irrelevant to the American people. And Hillary Clinton had been so deep into the elite/corrupt D.C. political system that her party members had to nominate her, or her party would have appeared weak, disconnected, irrelevant with perhaps a few of them even unexpectedly committing “suicide”.
So both political parties acted to keep from losing power, but in doing so, I think they actually lost power. They lost face with all the crap that went on with both political parties, which in turn made it more difficult for the average American to have faith in the party system in general.
The way I visualize this by seeing our two major parties, each in their own forts with drawbridges up and gates closed. They are battling each other with catapults and cannons while the bulk of American’s are getting battered while living in the field separating the two forts. There we are, the bulk of America, living our lives caught in the cross fire between the two parties. I can see Hillary Clinton leaning over the side of her wall yelling down to us in her shrill voice, “Join me, I’m one of you, I will save you from the other party, they are the evil ones.” And there is Donald Trump standing with his party atop his fort’s wall (yeah, I know) tweeting down to us the exact same message as Hillary Clinton, that he will save us from the other party and that they are evil.
Does anybody want to live in either of those forts? Does anybody need an official party member standing next to them telling them who to hate? Yeah, me neither and it makes the word party into quite the misnomer. Look, I have no need for a party, if I want to know who to hate, I’ll just check Facebook. (That was a joke 😉 )
Really though, it may be time for the two parties to drop the drawbridge, open the gates, quit attacking each other, and start talking with each other before they move from irrelevant political parties to extinct political parties.