The ‘choice of evils’ argument doesn’t work

There are valuable lessons for Malta in the ongoing, tumultuous US Presidential election campaign. Indeed, far too many to be included in any one article, no matter how long (and my articles do tend to be kinda longish, I am the first to admit).

So I will limit myself to only one for now: the implications of doggedly maintaining a two-party system merely for its own sake.

At a glance, there is enough superficial resemblance to warrant a comparison between America’s political model and ours. Both are dominated by two gargantuan and hegemonic (traditionally, at any rate) parties, that now struggle to explain their actual raison d’être to an increasingly sceptical and disenchanted public.

But that is only on the surface. It is when you try to make comparisons between the actual parties themselves – the Republicans and the Democrats in the States, and the Nationalist and Labour Parties in Malta – that the failure of both systems becomes manifestly visible.

Such is the extent of the identity crisis now tearing both Republicans and the Democrats apart, that direct comparisons are no longer even possible. In the past, one could argue (however unconvincingly) that the Democrats were more left-of-centre… thus inviting an ideological comparison with Malta’s supposed left-wing Labour Party. Meanwhile, the Republicans were always firmly on the conservative side of the spectrum; and like the Nationalists under Gonzi, they made overtures to the most loony and extreme factions of the religious right.

But any attempt to liken Donald Trump with Simon Busuttil… or any of his predecessors, or even anyone else in Maltese politics at the moment… will immediately fall flat. There is, quite frankly, no local correlative for the mess that the Republican Party has now become. Not even Tal-Ajkla or the late Spiridione Sant would come remotely close. 

As for Labour: under Joseph Muscat, the once Socialist party has become an economically neo-liberal machine, plugged inextricably to the same capitalist paradigm that Dom Mintoff once railed against from the podium as the ‘Europe of Cain’. This actually makes it closer to the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton than under Obama… but both are light years removed from the respective parties’ historic roots. 

If any solid analogy can be made, it would be with the political system that made this extraordinary transformation possible. What America is currently experiencing is the disintegration of a model of public administration that is at least a century past its sell-by date. Both parties have had to reinvent themselves beyond recognition since their historical origins: it was the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln, for instance, who fought for the abolition of slavery in 1865… though it seems hard to reconcile that with the blatant racism of the likes of Donald Trump today. Likewise, it was the Democrats, now under a black President, who opposed emancipation in the mid-19th century.

But this, too, reinforces the analogy. Now that the social and political struggles of yesteryear seem to have all but faded, neither Republican nor Democratic Party can be said to serve any real intrinsic purpose any more. Never mind the original purpose, which has naturally passed into history. Neither exists for any clear reason beyond merely winning elections; and both will happily resort to any measure – no matter how grossly reprehensible or downright politically unsound – to achieve that goal.

This week, for instance, the Democrats finally nominated Hillary Clinton after a long and acrimonious internal struggle. The highlight of the Democratic Party convention was undoubtedly Barack Obama’s endorsement speech… which, like most of his speeches, was typically brilliant in both content and delivery.

What everyone seems to have forgotten, however, is that this is the same Obama who had fought off Clinton to secure his own nomination in 2008. That, too, was an acrimonious and internecine struggle, in which the two antagonists tore into each other in every conceivable way. 

So everything Obama said in his speech this week – and I mean every single word – was a direct, inescapable contradiction of his own anti-Hillary campaign in 2008.What does this tell us about the identity and core aims of the Democratic Party, exactly? 

It tells me that it would say anything, no matter how contradictory, in order to get ahead in a two-horse race. Obama’s speech can in fact be summed up in a single sentence: ‘the only important thing is for us to win with the candidate we have… even if we hate absolutely everything about that candidate.’

And why is it so important, one might legitimately ask? ‘Because otherwise, the other side will win, of course. What a silly question…’ 

It is here that a comparison with the local political scene becomes not only inevitable, but important. Inherent in Obama’s speech is exactly the sort of political tribalism we are used to in Malta: ‘vote for us, because otherwise you’ll get them’. OK, so far, you might be thinking… well, so what? Isn’t that what any political party would be expected to say? Isn’t that what politics is all about, anyway?

Perhaps, but in this scenario there is a tiny, weenie snag. IT DOESN’T WORK. And the American election campaign has inadvertently exposed precisely why, too… not just in this election, but in every future one, so long as the primitive two-party structure remains artificially anchored in place.

The system as it stands has straitjacketed the entire country into a choice of only two candidates, whose only allegiance and interest is to themselves. Vast multitudes of voters, entire segments of the electorate, are simply ignored in the process… worse, they are bullied and browbeaten into helping a party to win power for itself, when they know a priori that their own interests will not be in any way represented or even acknowledged by the incoming government.

Inevitably, there comes a point when the electorate finally gets fed up, and refuses to play ball. 

This calls up another consideration: Bernie Sanders. If there was one thing that both Republican and Democrat campaigns illustrated beyond any reasonable doubt, it is that the American people really do want a change from traditional politics. Admittedly, not all Americans want the same kind of ‘change’, and clearly not all are tired of the status quo for the same reason. That explains why the demand for change, felt equally on both sides, resulted in the supply of two intrinsically incompatible ‘maverick’ candidates. 

Sanders and Trump cannot remotely be compared in any conceivable way… except one. They are both ‘anti-establishment’. And in the eyes of many ordinary Americans, Sanders is arguably an even bigger misfit than Trump. He is a self-avowed Socialist, in a country which makes no notable distinction between ‘Socialism’ of the European variety, and Maoist or Soviet-era communism. From this perspective, Sanders’ failure is easier to understand than Trump’s success. Sanders represented a far more radical version of ‘change’ than his Republican counterpart. 

What this also means, however, is that while the Republican Party capitulated to a popular (and populist) demand among its members… the Democrats did not.  Oblivious to a deafening cry for change, they went ahead and nominated a candidate representing ‘continuity’ instead. And as we saw from the leaked emails, there was all along a concerted bias against Bernie Sanders within the party machinery itself. 

Why would the Democratic Party work to elect Clinton at the expense of Sanders, anyway? One promises to preserve the system, the other to radically reform it. So by backing the ‘continuity’ candidate and sabotaging the ‘change’ candidate’s campaign… the Democrats effectively acted out of a concern for their current bureaucracy’s survival – i.e, the survival of the faction currently ruling the roost… with all the associated jobs and perks that self-preservation entails for the insiders.

Leaving aside that huge chunks of the Democratic voter-base were simply swindled in the process… the decision itself is likely to have severely damaging long-term consequences. Sanders may have lost his Presidential bid; but the movement he created and inspired is hardly going to just fade into obscurity as a result. 

This, too, is the inevitable consequence of demand and supply. If the Democrats refuse to supply this faction’s demands… the laws of economics decree that the disenchanted voters will inevitably look elsewhere. Some might look to the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. But we shouldn’t be too surprised if a few end up voting for Donald Trump. 

If their sole motivation is to destroy what they view as a morally bankrupt and failed political system… they could very easily conclude that Trump is actually the perfect man for the job.

Coming back to the local similarities, the resemblance is almost uncanny. Like the Democratic Party, both Labour and PN have an inherent tendency to just disregard the concerns and demands of their own voter-bases. The recent election of Simon Busuttil as PN leader was a classic case in point: he was the party delegates’ preferred candidate, but not the first choice of Nationalist voters. (A classic case of the voter always being right, if ever I saw one).

Likewise, in 1992 Labour could simply switch from the archaic version of Socialism represented by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, to the Blair-inspired brand espoused by Alfred Sant, without even sparing a thought for the disorientation this would inevitably induce among its Socialist grassroots. To this day, the Nationalists still refuse to acknowledge that this was, in fact, the overarching reason for the 1996 defeat.

Both parties have, in brief, evolved into election winning machines, destined to leave a trail of disillusioned voters in their wake. Much more pertinently, both consistently try to disguise their naked greed for power behind a mask called ‘the national interest’. 

Like Obama (and no doubt Trump too, once the campaign starts in earnest), they will invariably turn to us and say: ‘Whatever your own views are, they’re not important any more. The only important thing is that you swallow your own convictions, and vote for us. Otherwise, the others will win.”

Sorry, folks, but… no. That’s just bullshit, and we can all smell it. The desires and concerns of the electorate are indeed the only important things, in any self-respecting democracy; and any political party – in any democratic country, anywhere in the world that deliberately overlooks or distorts this fact, is only hastening its own destruction.