Anti-partisanism
The newfangled approach to politics that could save America
It’s all been leading to this.
Almost every AWDHEO post to this point has built on each other, gradually forging an argument. Initially, we examined why millions of partisans do hate each other, tracing it back to the imperative of political parties to win elections and policy fights, which incites parties and partisans to do and say despicable things to achieve victory. This embitters both their opponents, who are infuriated by their tactics, and their supporters, who actually believe the despicable things that are said about their opponents and thus believe that the stakes of any election or policy fight are life or death. The mutual fear and loathing, in turn, leads to mutual escalation of despicable tactics and a perpetuation of the cycle.
Later, we explored the contrast in how our politics would work if it was infused with a spirit of cooperation rather than cutthroat competition. If policymakers pursued solutions instead of victories. If instead of picking and choosing between stakeholders who each have worthy concerns, lawmakers were united in trying to legislatively address them all. If policy proposals were no longer designed to codify the view that some American lives matter more than others.
Along the way, we confronted some fallacies that reinforce the partisan status quo. At the outset, we showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans are revolted by the turn our politics has taken. We also tackled the enfeebling notion that we are powerless to do anything about it. And we condemned the most damnable lie of all: that dismantling our partisan hellscape requires us to pass judgment on what each side has done to build it and denounce the side that has, at one time or another, laid the most brimstone.
In its last entry, AWDHEO showed one of its cards. Through the words of the U.S. Founders and other historical sages, the engines of our dystopian politics were identified: political parties. Parties were faulted for their quest to impose partisan agendas on nations, for their intolerance of disagreement with their agendas, for weaponizing governance, for spreading division in every sector of life and for withering the moral fabric of individuals and countries.
Americans Who Don’t Hate Each Other believes that the existence of parties is one of the primary reasons why many Americans hate each other. We are divided because we divide ourselves.
But, now it’s time for AWDHEO to reveal the rest of its hand. The site isn’t just against parties. Logically so, as most of the articles, to this point, have been distilled versions of points made in my coming-soon book, The Anti-Partisan Manifesto. And, as the Manifesto makes clear, making America anti-partisan will take more than just eliminating our parties.
In a 2016 poll of Brazilian voters, 72% of respondents reported feeling no ties to any of their nation’s political parties. Analysts of Brazilian politics use the word “anti-partisan” to describe the widespread anti-party attitudes that can periodically crop up there.
The term is also occasionally used to lament the quality of parties available to voters. In a May 2020 post on his personal website, Denton Lee III, an unaffiliated, North Carolinian candidate for the state legislature in 2020 and Congress in 2022, wrote that it means that “there are no parties worthy of [his] allegiance.”
However, the views of candidate Lee and the Brazilian electorate could more accurately be called “anti-partyism.” Such sentiments, of course, are in line with the early beliefs of America’s major Founding Fathers.
“Anti-partisan” has also been used to condemn hyper-partisan politics in pro-party contexts. In his own December 2020 blog entry, Andrew Kalloch, an Oregonian, Democratic congressional candidate in 2022, declared that “being anti-partisan is not about a renunciation of political parties.”
And if we limit its meaning to a literal reading of the term, then being anti-partisan doesn’t require a person to be against parties. Merriam-Webster defines “partisan” as “feeling, showing, or deriving from strong and sometimes blind adherence to a particular party, faction, cause, or person.” Being against intense or unconditional devotion to something doesn’t necessarily imply opposition to its existence.
But, parties’ fundamental need to win is what makes them intensely and unconditionally partisan. With due respect to candidate Kalloch, this fact alone makes being anti-partisan incompatible with support for party systems.
Here are some more:
Because parties exist, partisans constantly attribute malice to legitimate ideas of their opponents and try to discredit these proposals by linking them to partisan bogeymen.
Because parties exist, partisans who are out-of-power are inclined to root against national progress, as voters are inclined to reward the parties that are in power for successful governance and prosperity.
Because parties exist, the majority of voters preselect candidates based on their party.
Because parties exist, voters sort themselves into opposing tribes whose conflict extends beyond candidate and policy preferences to permeate almost every part of life.
Because parties exist, these tribes create their own separate, rival institutions and cultures.
Because parties exist, people are divided into groups of winners—those whose concerns are addressed by the side in power—and losers—those whose concerns are ignored or even trampled.
Because parties exist, they pick and choose between real stakeholders in the process of assembling their coalitions.
Because parties exist, officials don’t govern in the interest of people who aren’t part of their coalition because they aren’t seeking those people’s support.
Because parties exist, lawmakers focus on winning policy fights instead of solving problems.
Because parties exist, lawmakers don’t seek to find the best policies but only to enact their own side’s policies.
Because parties exist, one party or the other will always try to block policies that are meant to address problems because the solutions being offered aren’t its own solutions.
Because parties exist, governments that serve millions of people are run by a group of people who are supposed to be unified in working together for the good of everyone but are actually divided and working against each other for the good of their own side.
“Anti-partisan” also has a regrettable, historical meaning that is linked to World II. During the war, “partisans” were resistance fighters against the Axis powers in Europe. Axis counterinsurgents were called anti-partisans.
In light of this association, “anti-partisanism” is a risky choice for the name of a philosophy whose purpose is to reconstruct our political system and create a better society. The fascist powers in World War II were also attempting to reconstruct their political systems and create what they saw as better societies. Also, contemporary partisans tend to define anyone or anything that doesn’t agree with them as “fascist,” and they certainly won’t agree with the ideals of anti-partisanism.
Still, those ideals are the animating principles of Americans Who Don’t Hate Each Other and The Anti-Partisan Manifesto, and the belief system they espouse can only be called anti-partisanism. To be anti-partisan is different from being bipartisan, or oriented toward compromise between parties; nonpartisan, or party-neutral; or even the more recently coined “post-partisan” and “transpartisan,” which seek to integrate parties’ positions on issues, not simply find compromise between them.
These newer approaches are similar to anti-partisanism in that they are based on a kind of cooperative politics. Unlike anti-partisanism, however, they see a continued role for political parties.
Yet, anti-partisanism is more than anti-partyism. Parties are vehicles that people who share one-sided political beliefs use to try to turn those beliefs into policy. Remove the parties, and the one-sided beliefs still remain.
How anti-partisanism should be defined, then, is in the literal sense, as in “against partisanism.” Merriam-Webster defines “partisanism” as “partisan spirit or conduct.”
Thus, anti-partisanism would eliminate not just parties but even the idea of taking a one-sided approach to politics, what might be called “we’re-right-they’re-wrong politics.” Anti-partisanism would do away with this typical, partisan brand of politics, where each side only promotes the cause of certain stakeholders and seeks to codify its own values, regardless of whether this results in effective policies.
To anti-partisans, the best policies aren’t conservative, liberal or centrist. The best policies are the ones that work the best. And those policies should be in effect—across the board.
So, for example, the proper economic and tax policies for the U.S. aren’t Keynesian and progressive, as the left thinks, or supply-side and trickle-down, as the right does. The right economic and tax policies are the ones that will lead to the most prosperous lives for the American people, whatever those policies are. And that determination must be made solely by collaborative, objective analysis and scientific testing, not ideology.
Similarly, the optimal healthcare system isn’t single-payer, which is favored by the left, or Obamacare, which is favored by the center-left, or managed health savings accounts, which are favored by the right. The optimal healthcare system is the one that produces the best health outcomes for all Americans at affordable costs.
But, anti-partisanism would go beyond this to even get rid of the notion of political sides, as in the oppositional factions whose conflict defines democratic politics. Under anti-partisanism, policymaking wouldn’t be a competitive endeavor but a cooperative one, and policymakers from different wings wouldn’t be opponents but partners. Liberals, conservatives and moderates would work together to make sure that all stakeholders are cared for and that life gets better for everyone.
Of course, in the real world, parties not only exist, but are seen as inseparable from democracy. Thus, policymaking is a competitive endeavor, no one works together, everyone picks their stakeholders, and life only gets better for the winners—and, even then, it only gets better until their side loses again.
The blueprint for anti-anti-partisan revolution is based on the theory that, once anti-partisanism is presented as a workable alternative to party politics—once folks grasp that there’s another option that’s not only viable but inarguably superior—people will embrace it in unimaginable numbers. As the movement expands, these ultra-majorities will begin to demand that institutions, politics and culture adapt to their values.
Simultaneously, anti-partisans will start to organize, and anti-partisan candidates will start to enter and win elections with rising frequency, as more and more Americans abandon parties and partisan politics. This will finally culminate in the election of the necessary federal and state majorities to amend the Constitution and rewrite federal and state laws, permanently codifying anti-partisan principles….
And then anti-partisans would disband. Once anti-partisan tenets such as cooperative politics, stakeholder-centrism and optimization come to define American politics and anti-partisan policy solutions are comprehensively applied to contemporary, political issues, at that point, anti-partisans would shutter their operations.
For a time, anti-partisans would have to function as a singular entity in order to kill off parties and partisanism. However, anti-partisans seek to get rid of the party system, not become embedded within it. Once their work is done, they would dissolve.
This overview still only skims the surface of what anti-partisanism is. But, it’s a spark that could ignite the movement that could save us all.
* Portions of this post have been adapted from my upcoming book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down (2024).
** Follow me on X at @antipartisanusa or on Facebook