Political Parties in American Government Not for the People - Free Essay Example

According to President Abraham Lincoln the government was made by the people and for the people. That being said, in my opinion democracy is not about policy, it is about process. It is about how you achieve the results of the policies that they want to implement on the people. Therefore political parties are seen by many as irrelevant to the political and governmental system because of a myth. This myth is known as the myth of party irrelevance, which has created mixed emotions within American citizens for good reasons about how they feel and see political parties today. Love them or hate them as of now the United States has a two party system which are Republicans and Democrats. These parties help the political and governmental systems to function but are not essential because there are alternative processes for a better political system. These parties are mainly utilized to keep order in the political world and control functions of the federal government but at what cost? Many believe that these parties have too much power than they should. Tough the objectives of these parties are the same there are many differences on the way they both think. This results in parties focusing on what is best for the parties and not for the people. In the world of polit ics power makes the world go round and round. But just how much power is bad? I get that for a successful democracy there must be power to create authority for there to even be a government. According to Edwards (2011) Patricians and party activist of these two parties control the outcomes of mostly everything within the political system not the votes of the people. Party activists control access to the ballot through closed party primaries and conventions; partisan leaders design congressional districts. Once elected to Congress, our representatives are divided into warring camps. Partisans decide what bills to take up, what witnesses to hear, what amendments to allow (Edwards, 2011). In other words political parties are so powerful that they found a way to out rule their votes over the peoples votes. This is done through political laws known as the sore loser laws that come in to play in the November elections. A candidate who losses during a party primary or convention is denied a place on the November ballot because parties activist have the ability to deny their endorsement to any candidate they see as a target or simply not like. By parties having so much power to be able to do this is just unreal and chaotic. Even if the majority of the peoples vote preferred the candidates that are eliminated those people that voted simply lost their opportunity to vote. According to Zuckerman (2014) by allowing partisan leaders to design the congressional districts, that puts the candidates that represent the rich districts on top and the candidates that represent the poor districts at the bottom. Edwards (2012) states that federal government also decides when to declare war establish tax policies, create federal programs, how much money and resources to spend on them, approve peace treaties, who will sit at the Supreme Court. These are all congressional powers that the people cannot interfere with. One has to remember that wealth in politics can get you a long way just like president Trump. For the Republicans and Democrat parties, it seems that power is their main priority and that just leads to a battle for power putting the needs of the people aside. The reality of the political system today is that the people are not the drivers no more. According to Edwards (2012) people have been limited to only being able to elect members of the senate and house representatives.