Party Time: How To Be An Opposition Party

Get this party started (Ooh)
Get this party started
Get this party started right now

I wrote yesterday about the United States’ need for a genuine opposition party.

Because the Democrats are just not that.

But a single-issue party dedicated to no policies other than halting the current coup and preventing another one has a serious problem in that, while a majority of citizens do in fact support that policy any electorally-successful party would need to respond to lots of other issues as well.

And frankly there aren’t a lot of issues that a majority of us agree on.

Which is where coalitions tend to fall apart.

But it is possible to build a coalition that reflects its constituents’ views accurately; it just takes effort, like anything else.

And some tech; there’s always some tech.

So, first, you need a system that allows the party’s members to organize into sub-parties; in the world I normally deal with, this sort of thing is called a special-interest group (SIG) though that term has some negative connotations in politics.

So the party needs a web site (and phone app, presumably) that allows members to register as members of a SIG and to debate policy preferences within that SIG’s membership and to elect people to represent that SIG within the party.

The site should also have a mechanism for quickly taking a poll of the membership’s preference on a policy topic.

Once you have that you can run a real coalition party.

The party’s platform, and the commitment to it from each person elected to office as a representative of the party, would be:

at the federal level, to vote ‘no’ on any topic that does not (in order of preference):
- remove the perpetrators from office
- advance a specified set of constitutional amendments
- call and schedule a constitutional convention
- dissolve the federal government
at the state and local level (in order of preference):
- vote ‘no’ on any topic that interferes with the federal goals above
- vote whichever way a poll of the members within that representative’s electoral district goes
- if there’s no time for a poll, vote whichever way a poll of the SIG-representatives choose (weighted by how many members within the electoral district are members of each SIG)
- if there’s no time for that, vote how the representative thinks is most appropriate
the party will dissolve and its representatives resign when the main goal of either fixing the Constitution to prevent this recurring or dissolving the federal government is achieved

With a commitment to make every decision according to that system, the party could present a united front on the one issue that matters to all of us (dealing with this coup) while accurately representing the views of the membership on other issues that would have to be dealt with as well.

This is the only way to organize an opposition party.

You need to focus the party’s policies exclusively on the opposition to the coup and let the membership choose how to deal with other issues as they come up.

Otherwise, only voters who agree with opposing the coup and also with whatever other policies are bundled in will (or should) support your party.

And the point here is that we need a viable opposition party more than we need anything else right now.