To preface, obviously the solution is not
as simple as waving goodbye to parties as a whole because things would need to be done to make getting ballot access feasible for those intending to run and start their campaign from the ground up but ill go into why I think this needs to happen and the problems we face with political parties.
To start, across history we see that this system fails constantly, particularly when things inevitably devolve into a 2 party system as we see today. People begin to vote in fear of the other party, leaving room for parties to get hijacked by opposing interests using age old ideas as a mask for darker intentions, just like we see today. Additionally, when people begin voting in fear they become easy to control, politics becomes fear mongering, intending only to make the other party look worse than them as the candidates devolve when competency no longer becomes a factor.
If we didnt have political parties, and people could simply run on their own ideas, things would inevitably be different. Without party backing as a basis for a candidates policies, with no ability to infiltrate a parties accepted values they dont believe in(which no candidate ever 100% represents their partys values so its useless to see it that way anyways), people would be unable to form party loyalties or coalesce around a single candidate, and have no choice but to consider a candidate based on the vision and ideas they present. Even if that vision mirrors a former candidates it wouldnt be nearly as easy to hijack and parrot them if you dont believe in them.
Lastly I should add, the situation we see today with parties at odds and all they can do is insult and lie about each other, with people too ignorant to realize they dont have to settle for the “main 2” parties(we were NEVER a 2 party system), or too scared to vote any other way, simply pushing it off by saying year after year: “This election is too important to vote a 3rd party”. This was something predicted by George Washington, the first president over 200 years ago as you can see in his farewell address, calling it one of the greatest threats to the nation.
This needs to be a gradual thing, that happens as a natural consequence of adopting a better system. Simply yanking parties out of the process is not something voters will adapt to quickly; they use party labels as a shorthand for the brand of candidate they’re voting for.
We can debate the specific systems that would do this, but I have a few ideas I’d like to make contributions for, so I’ll hold off for now.
Practically speaking, parties are an inevitability.
If you read the Ron Chernow “Washington” biography, it’s telling that even as Washington warned against political parties and even as he was officially independent, even from the beginning political parties formed over the direction of the country and Washington himself sided with one of those parties over the other.
The reality of the situation is that even if they aren’t ‘officially’ allowed, political parties will always exist in some form, and the smartest people in politics will find ways to get around the limitations in a way that undercuts the supposed benefits of doing away with political parties.
Ultimately, all banning political parties would do is benefit the political insiders who make politics their life while making things more difficult for political outsiders. Much like so many ideas built on good intentions, the people who would be hurt the most by this would be the people that it is supposedly meant to help.
I’ve never really understood why we have political parties. I’ve always felt like the reason nothing ever gets accomplished is because each party is fight so hard against each other. Never fighting together for the American people. I’m definitely ready for a change.
That’s somewhat true with the current two-party system, but if we could have five or six parties the idea of party loyalty would be far less captivating. But I wouldn’t want to go beyond that, otherwise politics just becomes too complex for the average person to engage with.