Don, I read your Thom Hartmann article, and it's brilliant. Absolutely right on....as his writings generally are.

I was particularly struck by this passage:

"When the delegates assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to craft a constitution, republican democracy had never before been tried anywhere in what was known as "the civilized world." There were also, at that moment, no political parties, and "father of the Constitution" James Madison warned loudly in Federalist #10 against their ever emerging.

In part, Madison issued his warning because he knew that the system they were creating would, in the presence of political parties, rapidly become far less democratic. In the regional winner-take-all type of elections the Framers wrote into the Constitution, the loser in a two-party race - even if s/he had fully 49.9 percent of the vote - would end up with no voice whatsoever. And the combined losers in a 3- or more-party race could even be the candidates or parties whose overall position was most closely embraced by the majority of the people.

The best solution to this unfairness, in 1787, was to speak out against the formation of political parties ("factions"), as Madison did at length and in several venues. But within a decade of the Constitution's ratification, Jefferson's split with Adams had led to the emergence of two strong political parties, and the problems Madison foresaw began and are with us to this day.


That's what I've been saying for five years or more on this forum, Don. I say that political parties, by their very nature, rapidly become a perversion of democracy, and they destroy democracy. And by golly, James Madison thought so too...at the inception of your nation!!! Awright. It's nice to have the support of James Madison on that point, and I shall in future remind people that the idea of a healthy, functioning democracy with NO political parties is not one that I came up with all by myself... ;-)

Be that as it may, the USA is presently stuck with the 2 huge parties it has, I foresee no possibility of changing that, and I think Thom Hartmann's ideas for revitalizing the Democratic Party are good ones. (sigh) They're the only way to go if the present fascist neocon movement is to be stopped in its tracks.

But, GOD, I wish the world had never even heard of the concept called "a political party". We'd be far better off without it.