I got one of those calls again — they come every six months — from a Silicon Valley hotshot who wants to use his brain and his wealth to fix what ails California. This investor asked the same old question: What measures might I put on the ballot to reform the state’s politics and governance?
On the phone, I was dismissive. Don’t you know, smart-rich guy, that California’s governmental dysfunction is built on top of ballot initiatives that don’t work? Passing more initiatives is like trying to fix the Winchester Mystery House by adding more rooms, dude. California needs a new system, with a new constitution, I told him.
Of course, I couldn’t tell him how to convince enough people to change the system because no one has figured that out yet. But soon thereafter, I was re-reading a book, “How America’s Political Parties Change (and How They Don’t),” by Michael Barone, who edits the Almanac of American Politics, when a thought occurred: If you want to make a big changes in California, you might need a new political party.
By conventional political wisdom, new parties are crazy ideas. As Barone wrote, America’s political parties are history’s most enduring; the Democrats are the world’s oldest political party. The Republicans are third oldest. These parties survive because our electoral system incentivizes having just two parties. Rare is the moment when a new party can alter the system.
Of course, we are now in a very rare moment. But rare enough to birth a true unicorn — a political party?
I dare to say the answer is yes.
California history tells us that new parties can bring the greatest changes — be they the Republicans who formed our state’s institutions in the 1850s, or the Workingmen’s Party that established our constitutional structure in the late 1870s, or the Progressive Party, which established women’s suffrage, independent commissions, and direct democracy in the 1910s.
Our present circumstances cry out for new parties.
The Republicans have cracked up, and reconstituted themselves as a club for conspiracy-mongering. Meanwhile the dominant Democrats, obsessed with national politics and owned by labor unions, pursue narrow policies instead of providing the basics Californians are lacking: education, health care, housing, stable economy, and energy that doesn’t shut off.
Since neither party can deliver life’s essentials; we need a new political force that can.
We need a Water Party.
Why Water? Because it’s something we all require. Because water puts out fires. And because it defines our state, and its dysfunction. Water — our rivers, our coast — is all around us, and yet we manage it so poorly that we don’t have enough of it.
But mostly, water is the metaphor that shows the way past our nasty contradictions.
Californians cling to old systems that aren’t working, from unemployment to prisons. But water can wash away the past.
California is divided between myriad governments that don’t fit together. But water naturally fills in the cracks.
In California, we often prefer to let decisions be made by algorithms and formulas. We’d be better off leaving more decisions to humans, who are half water.
Indeed, our state, so full of constraints and limits, should rededicate itself to the value of flexibility. Because we must be fluid to deal with the future’s difficulties. In this, the Water Party should adopt the philosophy of the San Francisco-born martial artist Bruce Lee, who famously advised:
Be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
Starting from scratch, a Water Party could flow with new ideas and practices to fit our age of apocalypse. It could experiment with “liquid democracy,” allowing voters to cast ballots themselves, or turn their vote over to personal proxies. Or, like Italy’s Five Star Movement, it could build online tools so its members could determine candidates and policy positions directly.
In his book, Barone predicted the continued dominance of the Democrats and Republicans, arguing that “the parties have been a force for stability.” But right now, the parties themselves feel unstable, with bitter fighting happening within both parties.
Around the world, traditional parties of left and right have split apart in recent years. It’s no longer hard to imagine the Democrats dividing between Democratic Socialists and Social Democrats, and the Republicans splitting between White Nationalists and Never Trumpers.
At a time of such uncertainty, a flexible, California-centric party, devoted to water and the other basics, would have enormous value. The nation’s rigid divide might crack up, but California would have a force fluid enough to shape a better future.
Be water, my party.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square. Email him at joe@zocalopublicsquare.org
