The two-party establishment
In an April 2012 episode, attorney Larry Klayman told host Bob Zadek that the Democrats and the Republicans function as two divisions of a single league: “One’s the National League, the other’s the American League. They’re both part of the same baseball league or football league.” Klayman said that during his years in Washington he observed that the parties “scratch each other’s backs” and “protect each other,” and that their disputes are for political purposes. He cited the impeachment of Bill Clinton as an example, saying it was used politically “just to weaken the Democratic Party, not to knock Clinton out,” and that he was instrumental in helping to start that impeachment process. Klayman also said that Republicans were not unhappy about the passage of Obamacare because it gave them a political issue in 2012, and that they “played a rope-a-dope,” protesting but doing nothing to propose an alternative. Who’s Looking Out for Us? (2012)
Zadek framed the same episode around the corruption of the two-party system, noting that Freedom Watch, Klayman’s organization, has no clear political orientation and is not allied with any major political organization, though he suggested Libertarians would find themselves more in sympathy with its views because Democrats and Republicans are more establishment and Libertarians less so.
Personal freedom and the Democratic Party
In a September 2018 episode, Zadek said he has a libertarian orientation and looks for where the concept of personal freedom fits into political discourse. He said he saw nothing in the election conversation, and that there almost never is, where a candidate or philosophical point of view argues that its approach “simply makes Americans more free, less involved in government, with government taking less of a role in individual lives.” Zadek said that Trump has never spoken about personal freedom as an end in itself, and that “neither have the Democrats at all, and neither have most other mainstream presidential candidates.” The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018 (2018)
Guest Frank Buckley responded that America has almost the world’s most generous welfare policy in terms of money spent per capita, ranking number two or three in the world, with references in his book The Republican Workers Party, and that this is something to live with. Buckley said Zadek was absolutely right, and described the Trump campaign as a war fought on two fronts: against “extreme anti-nationalists in the Democratic Party, the Hillary people,” and against people like Ted Cruz on the right. Buckley said the campaign was not talking about freedom per se, though what it was saying mostly overlapped with a libertarian agenda, including removing regulatory burdens on small business, opposing crony capitalism as represented by Hillary Clinton, and opposing campaign finance laws. He added that in the 18 months since, politics had gone crazy, with no possibility of deal-making with the Democrats and a fractured party on the right still in shock.
The California monopoly party
In a May 2021 episode, Zadek interviewed Tom Campbell about the formation of the Common Sense Party in California. Zadek said that neither major political party “has any semblance of a political philosophy,” and that there are no great living or dead Democratic philosophers, because one cannot be a Democratic philosopher if the party has no philosophy other than self-preservation, getting re-elected, and getting power over other people. Restoring Common Sense to California (2021)
Campbell, described in the episode as a former Congressman, State Senator, and law and business school dean, said economics teaches that monopoly is inefficient and results in less output and less opportunity, and that applying that learning to government he finds a self-perpetuating monopoly. He said the dominant political party in California insists that candidates adhere to an orthodoxy that does not admit sensible other points of view, and identified that party as the Democratic Party. Campbell said the Republican Party has become largely irrelevant, that when he was a State Senator it served as a check the majority party had to consider, and that this is gone. He said the monopoly party has 77.5% of the Assembly and 75% of the State Senate, and every state office.
Campbell cited a Public Policy Institute of California poll of registered voters in which 56% of Democrats said a third party was needed because they felt shut out even of their own party, which he called the monopoly party; 53% of Republicans and 75% of independents also thought a third party was needed. He described the project as a party for the rest of us, driven by love of country and of California, and by the perception that people with much to give have no means of doing so because of the monopoly political structure.
On the mechanics of that monopoly, Campbell said that before the top-two primary, Democrats ran in their own primary and Republicans in theirs, with the winner running in November, so the most active in each party—to the left in the Democratic Party and to the right in the Republican Party—won the nominations. He said this produced a legislature composed of those extremes, and that when he was a Congressman the California delegation included Bob Dornan and Maxine Waters, people from the far right and the far left, making it difficult for members to find something to work on together for California. He recalled getting along fine with Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo and Tom Lantos, particularly Lantos, whom he called a real hero on human rights.
Campbell gave registration figures: Democrats dominant at 46%, Republicans at 24.1%, independents at 23.7%, a figure that has switched back and forth with independents, or no party preference, sometimes higher in registration than the Republican Party. He said the top-two primary, adopted only in recent memory, has not yet fully had its effect, and explained that if a Common Sense Party candidate makes the November runoff against a Democrat, that candidate ought to pick up the support Republicans, Libertarians and other independents might have had, and have a real chance of winning. He said identifying just seven Assembly districts out of 80 where an independent-minded candidate can win would bring the monopoly party below two-thirds, and that as long as it has two-thirds it can put ballot initiatives to amend the Constitution to change Prop 13 without paying to gather signatures, and can raise taxes without the people’s approval.
Zadek observed that California had not always been as dark blue as it is now, that Ronald Reagan was one of its prior governors, and that the state had Republican governors in his lifetime, setting aside Schwarzenegger, whom he described as a pop figure who got to be governor and not significant as an elected official. He asked whether the Democratic voting control reflects the political makeup of 38 or 39 million Californians, and whether 76% of them are extremely progressive. Zadek also compared the parties’ legal protection to antitrust law, saying that if the same thing were done in business the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Act would come down on them and the FTC would be on their back, and that it is astonishing the country values breakfast cereal diversity more than political diversity. He said the two major parties are not held together by a set of principles, that the extreme elements control because of the primary system, and that the majority of people who identify as Democrats or Republicans are orphans along for the ride. He described the Common Sense Party as an orphanage for those abandoned by their parties, and said voting for the lesser of two evils is “kind of yucky.”
Progressive conservatism and the party’s future
In a July 2022 episode, Zadek asked F.H. Buckley why, in his book Progressive Conservatism, he started with the Republican Party and adjusted it by borrowing progressive values and theories of governance, rather than starting with the Democratic Party and adjusting it to fit the same ideal. Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022)
Buckley answered that he could have started with the Democrats if he could travel back to the 1930s and ’40s and talk about FDR, who said he was the best friend capitalism ever had because he thought he was trying to save it. Buckley recalled that this was a time of enormous economic distress, great unemployment, and collapsing conditions, when people were tempted by fascist and communist ideas, and that the country did not go there—thanks to FDR and not the Calvin Coolidge Republicans of the time. He called FDR a crisis manager who threw a lot of things on the wall, some of them not great ideas, but said there was an enormous turnaround in his first administration, with growth of 10% per annum per year for four years running.
Buckley then said the current Democratic Party is not salvageable, and that the reason he said the GOP can remake itself as a progressive conservative party and become the natural governing party is that the Democrats are on a suicide watch. He said they have dug into their extreme so far that he does not think they can rescue themselves, and clarified that he was not talking about mere socialism or about Bernie Sanders but about “the race and gender party,” people who have gone absolutely mad on the subject of abortion or on the subject of race. He said he does not think the Democrats are capable of pulling back from that, and that until there is a recovery of the Democratic Party, perhaps decades in the future, sensible Republicans will take over.
Across episodes: the party’s philosophy and its durability
The excerpts show the same charge argued in more than one episode, with the emphasis shifting over time. In 2012, Klayman described the Democrats and Republicans as two halves of one league that protect each other, and Zadek framed the episode around the corruption of the two-party system. In 2018, Zadek’s complaint was that Democrats, like Trump and most mainstream presidential candidates, never speak of personal freedom as an end in itself, and Buckley described the Trump campaign as fought partly against “extreme anti-nationalists in the Democratic Party, the Hillary people.” In 2021, Campbell and Zadek moved from a shared-establishment critique to a structural one, naming the Democratic Party as California’s monopoly party, citing its 77.5% of the Assembly and 75% of the State Senate, and proposing the top-two primary and seven Assembly districts as the mechanism to break it. In 2022, Buckley went further than any earlier guest, calling the current Democratic Party not salvageable and on a suicide watch, while locating a salvageable Democratic tradition in FDR. What changed between the earlier and later treatment is the movement from a claim about both parties as a single cartel to a claim about one party’s structural lock on a state and, finally, to a claim about the national party’s inability to reform itself; Klayman, Zadek, Campbell and Buckley each advanced a stage of that argument.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the Democratic Party’s founding, its formal platform, its national committee, or its positions on most specific legislation beyond the references to Obamacare and Prop 13. They do not state the outcome of any election, the text or holding of any case, or the fate of the Common Sense Party after the 2021 episode. No guest in these excerpts speaks for the Democratic Party or defends it at length; the party is discussed throughout by critics. The excerpts also do not cover the party’s history between the periods named—the 1930s and ’40s, the Clinton impeachment, the 2018 election, and 2021—except as the speakers characterize those moments.