Posted on August 29, 2020

Will Multiculturalism Break the Two Party System?

Chris Roberts, American Renaissance, August 29, 2020

The divisions within the Democrat coalition are many, but the most visible is between socialists and moderates. The nomination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has the left-most wing of the party unhappy. The presidential ticket opposes nearly all the policies Bernie Sanders supporters are most passionate about: Medicare for all, marijuana decriminalization or legalization, an end to foreign intervention, a minimum wage increase. On Twitter, it is easy to find condemnations of the Democrat nominees from the Left. Many go viral:

“Mass Incarceration ticket” refers to Sen. Harris’s reputation for being tough on crime when she was Attorney General of California and Sen. Biden’s support of the 1994 Crime Bill. Over 35,000 people liked this tweet.

This tweet is also an allusion to Sen. Harris’ support for allegedly authoritarian police. Nearly 60,000 people liked it.

Briahna Joy Gray was the National Press Secretary of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign. This tweet earned over 40,000 likes, as did an earlier one:

The internet does not perfectly reflect the real world, but tweets with 40,000 likes cannot be dismissed as online posturing. The winner in several states in 2016 was decided by about 40,000 votes. Moreover, since 2016, leftists unsatisfied with the Democrat Party have made gains. Members of the Democratic Socialists of America have won local races across the country. In 2018, two DSA candidates (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib) won primary challenges against moderate incumbent Democrats and then won the general election.

The Third World countries that white advocates fear America is becoming have more than two large political parties. South Africa has the centrist Democratic Alliance, the leftist African National Congress, and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters. Chile, Argentina, and Brazil all have dozens of political parties that win national legislative office. As the United States becomes more balkanized, it will become harder for large parties to stretch enough to keep very different groups of people together under one banner. This will be especially true of the Democrats, who are a party of minorities and outsiders.

In 2020, these trends might not be consequential, or even very visible. Moderates and socialists are largely, albeit uneasily, united by their hatred for Donald Trump, and no charismatic third-party option for socialists is on the ballot. But that isn’t likely to be true in 2024 and beyond. The Democrats have known for decades that mass immigration makes their party larger. In the short-term, this has been true, but some day, they’ll see that their brave new electorate is a double-edged sword.