Sketch of the 7th Party System

[Hamster]

The Death of the Sixth Party System
Excerpt from Nine American Party Systems by Shreyas Farood

The exact moment at which the sixth party system was superseded by the seventh is easier to pinpoint then most transitions. The 2008 presidential election began a transformation which was completed. The election of a liberal as president represented the triumph of the liberal-left after two close defeats (the 2000 election of course mythologized as stolen) and before that, eight years of a "moderate" Democratic presidency.  The election of a black man to the White House deeply shook conservative white America. For them, Barack Obama's election represented the end of their political power, the death of Nixon's "silent majority" who dominated the sixth party system.

2008 is also a pivotal year because at that time the United States economy, and that of the world, was in one of the deepest recessions of the modern age. The United States government's decision to bail out troubled companies signified to many Americans that the interests of business and the wealthy were more important to their representatives than the struggles of ordinary people. This deep anti-government sentiment coupled with conservative America's recognition of their waning power led to the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party is a heuristic for the ultra-conservative faction which began to battle for the heart of the Republican Party in the 2010 primary elections.

Also in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission that the first amendment prevents the government from placing in restrictions on political expenditures by corporations, associations, or unions. This ruling massively changed the dynamics of campaign fundraising, giving corporate-friendly candidates massive advantages over their opponents and allowing millionaires and billionaires to pump heretofore unconscionable amounts of money into campaigns to support "their" candidates. The effect of this ruling was clear in the 2012 GOP primary battle, when donations from Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson kept Newt Gingrich's breathing long enough to score a victory in South Carolina, thereby prolonging the Republican primary battle.

The influx of money into politics was met first by popular outrage. The Occupy Movement, which began with an occupation of Zucotti Park in protest of corruption of Wall Street in September of 2011, morphed into a national expression of anger at the system, which to the protesters was clearly designed to benefit the wealthy. That initial burst of energy dissipated by winter, and Americans largely settled back into jaded resignation, a tone which would remain constant (with a few notable blips of public engagement) until the end of the seventh party system. However, Occupy also sparked a renaissance of the traditional (or "far") left, which had been underground for decades.

By 2012, the transition was complete. The impotence of white conservative America was realized when Mitt Romney failed to win the presidency, despite a record performance among white voters. The disproportionate influence of super-rich funders was made apparent in the GOP primaries. And less talked about, most serious campaigns in mimicked Obama's internet-savviness in 2008, making their case on social media with the aid of hyper-targeted ad capabilities, a product of the new industry known as Big Data. These forces characterize the new seventh party system, of which the 2016 election is certainly a part of.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I look forward to reading more of this! Excellent start!

[BaconBacon96]

Fascinating stuff.

[Hamster]

The Left, from the Great Recession to the eve of presidential politics 2016
Excerpt from The American Left in the 21st Century by Laurent Lewandowski

The Great Recession blew apart the neo-liberal consensus which dominated discourse since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The cataclysmic event encouraged academics and young thinkers alike to look to Marx, Bakunin, and the other great classical socialist philosophers for answers. This led to a renaissance in leftist dialog. Magazines like n+1 and The Jacobin allowed old and new ideas to interact in a way which had not been seen since heyday of intellectual Marxism decades ago. The revival of socialist ideology was matched by growing popular anger against the elites who had caused the financial crisis.

In September of 2011, activists inspired by the Arab Spring organized an occupation of Zucotti Park to protest a host of issues stemming from the ongoing crisis in capitalism. That occupation morphed into a world-wide movement with hundreds of simultaneous occupations. Occupiers popularized the 99% vs 1% rhetoric, a millennial understanding of class conflict which framed the struggle in terms of income rather than ownership. The leaderless movement popularized anarchist ideas of non-hierarchical organization and decentralized decision-making, evidenced by the proliferation of open general assemblies. At these functions, activists made connections which would form the basis of future campaigns and organizations.

The leaderless movement suffered from an inability to create a coherent narrative, and was ruthlessly attacked by the mainstream media. By winter, most occupations had either been forcibly removed or shrunk organically, as participants began to question the effectiveness of the occupation tactics. In the wake of Occupy, the left became rudderless. The American public as a whole seemed to feel Occupy's failure was proof of the immutability of the current system. Though they refused to join the occupiers, their discontent was measurable. Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page published an article which did just that in 2014, which was transcended the academic journals and received significant attention in the popular press. Their research showed that most Americans did not perceive the the political system to be one of majoritarian democracy, but rather some hybrid system dominated by economic elites and business interests.

Such popular convictions that the political system unjustly favored the rich gave leftist organizers a fertile field in which to work. The Occupy movement spun off into different projects like the Occupy Homes campaign which sought to prevent banks from foreclosing on homes, or the Strike Debt fund which bought up personal debt in order to forgive it. In Seattle, Socialist Alternative experienced massive growth which allowed their city council candidate, Kshama Sawant, to make national headlines by becoming the first socialist in living memory to win an election. That victory set off a national “Fight for 15” campaign to double the minimum wage, bringing raising the minimum wage to a living wage into the political discussion. In southern cities, the Moral Monday used Christian rhetoric to oppose conservative attempts to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act, among other issues.

Established leftist organizations also experienced a resurgence in activity. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), International Socialist Organization (ISO), and International Workers of the World (IWW) all saw a sharp uptick in membership numbers and donations. The Green Party made a lunge back into relevance by running a surprisingly successful gubernatorial campaign in New York against nominal democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo. As the 2016 Presidential election drew closer, there was widespread sentiment on the left that they needed a candidate of their own, that applauding the inevitable Hillary Clinton coronation would do nothing to further the struggle. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the independent and self-described “socialist” was the first politician to seriously toy with the idea of running for the Democratic nomination as an actual leftist candidate.

...