Making Sense of American Political Parties in 2018

This post may seem off topic for a history blog, but history is irrelevant if the future is insecure.  In a constitutional republic such as ours, that confers an individual responsibility on each of its citizens to vote.**

2018 is a mid-term election year.  Nationally, that means 1/3 of the Senate and all of the House of Representatives are up for election.  In California and many other states, we are also electing a governor.  The primary election in California is June 5, though many of us are voting by mail before that date.

For those who aren’t aware, the primary has special importance in California, because we are not guaranteed one member of each party to appear on the final ballot this fall.  A few years ago, California adopted a “Top Two” primary system.  Every candidate appears on all the primary ballots, but only the top two vote-getters run in the final election.

One criticism of this system is that it automatically eliminates any candidate from a third or independent party.  In our state, we usually have a final choice of two democrats in the election.  That can be quite satisfactory if you generally agree with their policies.  If you do not agree, you should definitely consider voting for someone more aligned with your own principles.  Because of the top-two system, however, it is advisable to choose someone from one of the two major parties.

That makes it critical for people to know what the parties stand for.  To that end, I have created a short guide of sorts to help you sort out the differences between them.  Individual candidates can hold their own opinions, of course, but in Congress they tend to vote with their party.  That makes knowing party values important, so please feel free to download and share this brochure.  The more we the people know, the better our republic operates.

You can take action in three steps:

Step 1: Download the pdf.

The pdf is formatted so you can print and fold it into a tri-fold brochure.  The outside cover contains information about the 2018 CA governor election.  The inside spread is devoted to the differences between the two political party platforms published in 2016.

Step 2: Sign up for updates to The Novel Historian by clicking here.

This is so we can keep in touch, as I post new blogs from time to time.  I hate spam as much as you do, so I promise not to share your email address with advertisers!  The ‘subscribe’ button is set up to automatically send you an email.  This does two things: it complies with the law to make sure you really meant to click, and it confirms that I sent the email to the right place.

Step 3: When you click to confirm, you will receive another email with an additional link to download the brochure.

And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this.

**All right, I can’t resist giving you a historical tidbit about our constitutional republic.

The story goes that people were crowded around the exit to the Pennsylvania State House (later called Independence Hall).  They were waiting for word of what was happening inside the 1787 Constitutional Convention.  As Benjamin Franklin came out of the building, a woman called to him.

“Well, Doctor, what have we got?” she called.  “A republic or a monarchy?”

His reply was unequivocal.  “A republic, if you can keep it.”