Party Time: Is Now Too Late For A New Opposition Party?

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

This is the sixth entry in an increasingly-long series:

And I’m gonna answer the title question with the same cop-out answer as in the previous post: yes, and also no.

It really depends on what you mean by too late.

It is obviously too late to stop the coup from taking power in the first place; that was on the Supreme Court and the voters in the 2024 election.

It’s also obviously too late to stop the damage the coup has done to the country in its first year; that was on the Congressional Democrats.

Both of these opportunities have come and gone, and the Supreme Court, the 2024 national electorate and the national Democratic Party have all failed to do their jobs when they had the chance.

But it’s not too late to achieve anything.

A new opposition party, committed to no policies other than stopping the coup and fixing the issues with our system that let it happen in the first place, can still make some critical contributions.

After all, there will be elections in 2026 and 2028, though they will almost certainly be as corrupted as the coup can make them in the time that it has, but they will happen. The Democrats could very well be convinced to actually use they power they’ve been given. And at the worst, having a non-partisan opposition organization around could matter a lot.

It could win the elections, you never know.

A lot of Republicans dislike the coup and want to see it stopped, but will never vote for a Democrat; a lot of Democrats dislike the coup and want to see a much stronger opposition to it; a lot of independents and third-party members feel that way as well.

A significant majority of the country overall opposes the coup.

That’s a large pool of voters who, seeing that the Democrats are putting up no substantial opposition and in fact are often voting for the coup’s funding and legislation, could be convinced to vote for a party that has no other goals than stopping this.

It could give the Democrats some spine.

The national Democratic Party does follow along when it sees the public commit to something; a strong demonstration of public sentiment, like a large number of voters switching their registrations to a dedicated opposition party, could be enough to convince them to actually use their positions in Congress and the various state governments.

The Democrats could have stopped much of what the coup did in its first year by simply never voting for it and using the established rules of procedure to grind the increasingly-fascist State to a halt.

They still have that power, and will likely have more after the elections, so it’s possible that they can be convinced to actually use it.

In the worst case scenario, we’ll need an organization.

The days when a coup that takes over the organizations of a country can expect to transition smoothly from one concept of the State to another are over in the modern countries. Modern States are vast, complicated systems with few highly-centralized points from which control over them can be imposed.

The coup is pushing very, very hard for the citizenry to just allow them to turn America’s democracy into a dictatorship without offering any effective resistance; that’s probably not going to happen.

They will be opposed, and if they keep pushing it will almost certainly move on from coup to civil war. Many of the coup’s organizers already view it as being one.

In that scenario, having an organization already existing with no political commitments other than opposing the coup would be very helpful indeed.

So, no, it’s not too late.

It is certainly too late to prevent the coup from taking control of all three branches of the federal government and from doing a lot of damage in the year that it’s had that control, but it’s not too late to stop it from destroying everything that made the United States worth having.

But it probably will be quite soon.