What if there were no political parties?

Are you serious?

As a hypothetical question, yes I am serious.

Quote Real Music:
I imagine that would mean only very wealthy people could run for high office.

Ordinary working class people such as school teachers or community organizer would have to find some type of mechanism to fund and run their campaign. There would have to be a whole lot of bake sales. There would have to be a whole lot of knocking on doors. Knocking on doors and bake sales may have some success on local races, such as mayor or city council. As far as higher office such as Governor or President, there would be no mechanism that a school teacher or a community organizer could utilize to fund and run his or her campaign

That's what I mean. Locally, a person can not be rich but still locally famous in his or her neighborhood for doing some good things. For statewide offices or President, it isn't going to happen, unless some rich person "adopts" them to do what they want.

If they got someone rich to sponsor their campaign with deep pockets, the candidate would ultimately owe that person big favors in return. I'm not sure if some type of PUBLIC funding mechanism could work.

Rich people would end up buying every victory. Kind of like it is now. So not much difference really.

I was shopping a few days ago & ended up talking to a fellow customer at the registers. He said that that the politics in America was the same as England. I disagreed he asked why. I explained that for starters the parties in England try to work together for the good of the country, its not a pissing contest ie I will not vote for your bill because we did not think of it!! (that's what goes on here). He agreed, I also said that there was little or no accountability here, he agreed on that also. He then asked me what I though the biggest issue was? I replied that here it was way to "pc" everyone was scared of "upsetting" someone else! He said you hit the nail right on the head! No-one is going to like everything all the time & that's certainly something that needs to be considered nowadays but politicians certainly need to get rid of there agendas & do what is right for the majority irrelevant of any party lines. I am not really sure if we have any parties now because they all seem to do what they like & look how that is working out.

That essentially makes the very existence of political parties an absolute necessity for ordinary working people to ever have a chance of successfully running for higher office such as Governor or President.

One exception would be famous people with name ID could successfully run for higher office. Famous athletes, singers, actors, comedians, or anyone who is famous.

Would it really make a difference, the very rich and powerful and big business already own both houses of congress, the presidency, and the supreme court. Also the majority of both partied.

For starters, we couldn't vote a straight party ticket. Might be good if we actually had to look at the candidates. For those that vote the party ticket, I mean.

I'm sure I read pretty much exactly this a number of years ago. Although as has been mentioned, the wealthy do appear to "rule the world" today, I believe the founders had a desire and intent to limit the powers of the aristocrats of their day. Perhaps oddly though, George Washington was famously against political parties, and made quite the empassioned case in his farewell address. It's a good read, if not disheartening when juxtaposed against the current state of political discourse by even our elected officials

Quote Real Music:
Most people who are famous are pretty wealthy themselves. The stars of the entertainment industry are usually connected up to people with really big money. So we're right back where we started.

Also, not too many people with normal jobs run for office anyway above the local level.

One guy who looked good for awhile some decades ago was a sheriff or police chief in Ohio who refused to evict people who were laid off during the big recession of the early eighties. He ended up going to Congress. His name was Jim Trafficant. Unfortunately, in addition to being humane to workers caught up in an economic downturn, Jim also had his hand out for anyone who felt like giving him a bribe. He ended up in jail for seven years. So giving power to the common man is not necessarily an improvement.

If people could use the internet to talk about their ideas, political platform, and get support, it would be much more democratic than our current oligarchal system.

Bernie showed it can be done. Others can do it. Americans need to disabuse themselves if the idiocy of name recognition and read about the issues and candidates’ plans to address them.

We’re just disgustingly complacent and afraid of change.

There have always been political parties, they just were not always defined as political parties. Before the early 19th century, they were called faction. George Washington deplored what he called faction, and believed for the republic to truly offer democratic rule and justice, men of good will must avoid faction and focus only on the commonweal. The terms liberal and conservative as political labels, for example, only first appeared in the press in the early 1830s in England at the time of the first Reform Act. Thomas Jefferson is given credit by the Democrats as the founder of their party. That's not true. Arriving back in the United States from France in 1789, after the constitution had been ratified, he was disgusted to learn that it had been ratified and even though he took the post of Secretary of State in Washington's cabinet, he worked behind the scenes to interfere with policies he opposed, and especially made a failed attempt to sabotage Alexander Hamilton's financial measures as Secretary of the Treasury. Those who supported the ratification of the constitution were known as the Federalists, and if referred to at all, those who opposed the constitution were called anti-Federalists. Jefferson was enough of a politician to know that a faction--a political party--cannot succeed if it is defined only by what it opposes. So he founded the Democratic-Republican Party along with James Madison in the period 1791-93, Washington was so disgusted with the game Jefferson had played while a member of his administration that he never spoke to him again. Hamilton's Federalists were well enough organized to succeed in getting John Adams elected in 1796, but with men like Jefferson and Madison fanning resentments, the Republicans (as the Democratic-Republicans were usually called) were a steam roller, and the Federalists were doomed. They just didn't know it right away.

Jefferson won the 1800 election, and was followed after two terms by James Madison, who was succeeded by James Monroe. The Federalists were able to send people to Congress, but were virtually without national influence by the end of Madison's first term. The United States had become a one party nation. It was Andrew Jackson who founded the Democratic Party, and in the process created the first modern political party in the history of the United States. In 1824, Jackson and several other members of the Democratic-Republicans stood for President. The final field had four members--Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay (that is the order in which they finished in the popular vote and the Electoral College). As none of them had gotten 50% of the popular or the electoral vote, the election was thrown into the House. By the constitution, only the top three were to be voted on. Clay detested Jackson (he wrote to a friend that he didn't think that killing 2500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualified Jackson for the office) and Crawford was known to be a sick, old man, so he threw his support and considerable influence to Adams. Jackson despised Clay as much as Clay despised him, but he was a man who would get even as well as getting angry.

Jackson organized his new Democratic Party from the ground up. Men who had served with him in the Creek War of 1813, at New Orleans and during the invasion of Florida now became his precinct committeemen and county chairmen. The party was organized in the same manner in other states, and successfully because Jackson was already seen as a champion of the "common man." He trounced Adams in the 1828 election. In the 1832 election, on the wave of Jackson's popularity, the Democrats took over most state houses. It was at that time that states, with the constitutional authority to certify their own elections, began passing the winner-take-all legislation for Electors which make the Electoral College so pernicious today.

Clay and others organized the Whig Party, but they really didn't fully understand what Jackson had done. The Whigs were rarely a power in Congress, and only elected two Presidents--William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, both of whom died in office. The early success of Harrison's election in 1840 was not a harbinger of political power, and the Democrats dominated American politics until 1860. Only one other party in American history was organized from the ground (or grassroots) up in the Jacksonian manner, and that was the Republican Party of the 1850s, from which the modern Republican Party is descended.

Make no mistake, though, there has been faction, political parties in all but name, for more than 2000 years. It can be seen in the History of the Peloponnesian War written by Thucydides 2500 years ago; it can be seen in the history of the Roman republic. It can be seen in the history of the French revolution. When the royal family were brought back to Paris in October 1789, the National Assembly set up in the indoor riding arena at the Tuileries Palace. From the President's table, the constitutional monarchists were on his right and the anti-monarchical republicans on his left--which is why we call conservatives the right and liberals the left. There have always been and there will always be political parties.

Not if there were another way to fund campaigns. I think that’s what the campaign donation box in taxes is for. It’s just not used enough I think. I’m not sure how the plans work but I believe there are several proposals for how to fund campaigns that could be viable.

There's really nothing that can be done about campaign finance without amending the constitution.

I see two scenario's that would develop(well, in broad terms, that is). Most likely, it would become a sort of a mixture of both.

a. The rich would start running their own campaigns. They might aim to get the support from PAC's to help though.

b. People might rise to the top on internet fame. Strong, clever debaters with a large following on the net might make a bid for power, hoping that their popularity might result in the necessary votes.


Without any sort of political party to help people categorize their own views in the political spectrum, which in turn would help them decide whom to vote for, they would probably be more easily swayed by clever rhetoric and charisma, rather than by the strength of the prospective candidates individual believes.

I would wonder, however, in that hypothetical situation, how long the current institutions that form part of the government would continue to exist.