Robert Reich wrote an article titled “America now has six political parties” that while technically correct for the present it should not going forward.
Robert Reich described the six parties as follows.
- Establishment Republicans, consisting of large corporations, Wall Street, and major GOP funders. Their goal is to have their taxes cut.
- Anti-establishment Republicans, consisting of Tea Partiers, the Freedom Caucus, and libertarians. Their goal is to have a smaller government with shrinking deficits and debts. Many of them also want to get Big Money out of politics and end crony capitalism.
- Social conservative Republicans – evangelicals and rural Southern whites. They want America to return to what they call “Christian” values.
- Establishment Democrats – corporate and Wall Street executives and upper-middle-class professionals. They’d also like a tax cut, but they believe in equal rights.
- Anti-establishment Democrats – younger, grassroots movement types, and progressives who still call themselves Democrats. Their biggest issues are widening inequality, racism, sexism, and climate change. They also want to get Big Money out of politics and they reject crony capitalism.
- The sixth party is Trump. This party consists of Donald J. Trump and his fanatical followers. Trump’s goal is to get more money for himself, get more power for himself, get more attention to himself, and get even.
The reality is that functionally we have two parties, the Haves Party and the Have-nots Party. We have is a system that uses cultural differences that have little to do with government to create chaos and factions to prevent good governance that allows the few to pilfer us all.
All the factions above have been infiltrated to prevent the unity of the masses. The goal should be to disassociate parties in the long run and force actions on middle-class centric policies.
Have you ever asked why the Democratic Party Leadership always seems timid in the manner in which they fight for the values of the Democratic Platform, a document that supports the masses? The answer is simpler than one might think. Americans are being played by the Democratic Establishment & Republicans alike.
Think about the left and right rails of a train track. They are both going in the same direction. If Progressives pull on the left rail too hard or Conservatives pull on the right too hard, there is a derailment. It is essential for the Plutocracy to give the semblance of democracy with two parties. Ultimately the Establishment of these two parties can only go so far in their ‘native’ direction, hence the rails that force each side to toe the line.
The differences between the Establishment Democratic absent Progressives & Republican parties are almost inconsequential based on their actions. Do remember that the Affordable Care Act is right out of the Heritage Foundation.
Progressives want a real egalitarian society. Conservatives just want things the way they used to be; where they disperse privileges in an unmeritorious manner.
The problem is that the establishment of both parties know that a successful Right would lead to another civil war where everyone loses. A successful Left would diminish the power of the capital class, corporations and these are the folks that fund both party establishments.
Neither the Democratic nor the Republican Establishment is going to save Americans from Trumpcare, bad bills, income and wealth inequality or anything. It requires that we empower ourselves outside the parties. Progressives must use the Democratic Party as the transport for their payload by engaging at all levels, from precinct chairs to running in primaries. They must infiltrate the guts of the Establishment. Many Progressives are starting to do just that. Instead of waiting for the party to change, they are fighting their way into governance to prevent the complete capitulation of the party.
The TEA Party and the Right Wing Evangelicals derailed the Republican Party. It is time for Progressives to bend the tracks leftward by working outside and within the Democratic Party completely disregarding a leadership that continues to fail the masses. It is time for a leadership change all levels. The work will be hard, tedious and with some failures, but it must be done.