By Michael Gold
Sometimes it feels as if both our major political parties are burn out cases.
President Trump says the economy is the best ever, when gas is more than $4 a gallon, and diesel fuel more than $6 a gallon. Expensive diesel pushes up trucking costs to transport trivial things like food.
Even if the economy has enjoyed some solid job growth, things feel squirrely. We have inflation and high interest rates.
The President is offering voters $5,000 to keep Republican majorities in Congress. We can’t afford this latest Trump payout scheme, if it ever comes through. It’s wildly inflationary and will push up our monstrous national debt, which Trump has done so much to increase.
“While presidents and congressional majorities of both parties bear responsibility for the growth in the national debt, President Donald Trump’s first term and the opening half of his second term have seen the debt grow by more than $11.5 trillion combined to date, according to Treasury Department data,” states a Fox Business article published in late August.
I’m not much good at math, but that $11.5 trillion on Trump’s watch is more than one-quarter of the total debt load we’re currently carrying. (To compare, Biden approved $4.7 billion in debt, says the Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget – CFRB.)
When Fox, which is the President’s most shameless media cheerleader, lays it out in a way that clearly lays so much blame on Trump’s doorstep, he should know we are in deep fiscal trouble. Yet he has no thoughts on how to deal with our frightening increase in debt.
“Last year the Federal government spent nearly $1 trillion on interest,” states the CFRB, in an email they sent out September 14th. That’s $1 trillion reasons why interest rates are going up.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has declared economic war on Canada, which will continue to push prices up, and is engaged in a weird phantom war with Iran. Some days we bomb, some days we just scream at them, which is very productive. He’s obsessed with building his ballroom and a giant arch and renaming things like Lake Ontario and New Mexico. Meanwhile, Costco is rationing sales of motor oil.
The other, fiercely ugly anti-democratic thing the Republican Party is engaged in now is voter suppression, election manipulation and election denial. Trump just tried voter suppression with his effort to determine who can and cannot get a mail-in ballot. Nobody should think that he’s going to stop trying to rig the vote, or that he won’t scream the Dems cheated if the Republicans lose the House and/or Senate November 3rd.
Also, another aspect of the Republican Party that should not be a winner going forward is its emphasis on white identity as a marker of superiority and exclusion of everyone else. People of color make up 40 to 42 percent of the population of the U.S.
Putting aside Trump for the moment, if we look at the last forty-six years of the Republican Party’s history, the pattern is clear – their major economic platform has been to cut taxes over and over again (Trump’s tax cuts from 2025 overwhelmingly favored the wealthy.). When you do that, you must then cut spending. Republicans are really good at cutting taxes, and terrible at cutting government programs. And, so here we are, with a $40 trillion debt. This has to stop.
The Democrats are licking their chops at the prospect of a blue wave in November, but don’t count on it. In the last decade, before this election cycle, they had truly lost their way, spending too much time on issues on the margins, such as transgender rights, what it means to be “non-binary,” and dividing people into strict racial, ethnic categories while pretty much ignoring the working class and rural citizens.
President Obama saved the U.S. auto industry, navigated a difficult economic recovery after the mortgage crisis in 2008, and got the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance plan passed that helped give 20 million Americans health insurance. The ACA health insurance plan demonstrated that Obama cared about working Americans struggling with health care costs, paying a mortgage and trying to raise their kids.
Since Obama left office, too many Democrats started talking about being “woke.” Woke proponents, such as Ibram Kendi, were saying the U.S. is structurally a racist nation. The general public was not amused. The woke proclamations that came from progressives still lurks in many minds.
It’s a historical fact that we have treated black people terribly in this country. They’ve suffered from being enslaved, terrorized, lynched, and treated as an inferior species of humankind, particularly in the South. This nation’s ancestors massacred native Americans and took their lands. Hispanics, Asians and other minorities have frequently been met with prejudice, discrimination and violence.
However, to acknowledge that does not give you license to say that rioting is justified if you have no access to clean water, as U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) told a radio show in 2019, or to abolish the police.
Thankfully, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has directed the 2026 Democratic candidates to talk about the affordability of food, gas and housing and healthcare and government corruption. However, I don’t see any Democratic candidates talking about reducing our debt, working for improved economic opportunities for everyone, or gaining better access to a quality education, whether that’s college or a vocational school.
Now, we also face the specter of the rise of a handful of Democratic Socialists trying to radically shift the Democratic Party, away from centrist politics, just as MAGA ideology invaded the Republican Party.
With the two major parties too often losing focus on the needs of the mainstream working class, the question becomes, can someone start a new political party?
There are plenty of other political parties. They’re mostly small, often ineffective, and hardly known to the public.
In a way, the most successful third-party effort in recent times was Ross Perot’s run for the Presidency in 1992. Perot, who founded a successful data processing services company, ran on the Reform Party ticket and won almost 19 percent of the vote. Perot talked about the need to balance the Federal budget and stop our long-term debt from growing (We were running a deficit of $293 billion, which feels quaint now.). He also wanted us to stop sending jobs to foreign countries. Perot ran again in 1996 but didn’t do as well. However, his campaign message had taken root.
What Perot accomplished more than anything was to promote the idea that we needed to get our financial house in order. He didn’t win, but his campaign had an effect on the man who got elected President in 1992 – Democrat Bill Clinton, and then the Republican Congress that took office after their landslide in 1994.
Clinton had also talked up reducing the deficit, but Perot’s urgent, plain-spoken campaign reinforced the message to the public. Plus, Perot wasn’t running for office for personal glory. The man cared about the future of the country.
Despite their contentious relationship, Clinton and Congress worked together to balance the Federal budget in 1998. The budget was balanced or in surplus for three years, through 2001. Perot was such a pain in the neck, he managed to somehow move the needle in Washington. Clinton gave Perot credit for advocating his ideas about reducing the deficit.
In a 1992 speech, Perot said of Washington, DC, “This city has become a town filled with sound bites, shell games, handlers, media stuntmen who posture, create images, talk…but don’t ever accomplish anything. We need deeds, not words….”
Perot pinpointed the problem with our politicians. Far too many are focused on their own careers. Our current batch of political leaders have preoccupied themselves with staying in office forever or moving up the ladder to a higher position. So, they dodge and weave for the cameras, and they try to look and sound good on TV and social media.
A successful third party today could have the same effect as what Perot did in the 1990s – it might push the political system to change, so we can finally grab hold of our problems and do something about them.
If I could design a new political party’s message from scratch, I’d have it focus on reducing our massive debt, expand educational and vocational training opportunities, help our children more, make housing more affordable for young families, and revive the idea of the American dream. I’d condemn the culture war vitriol and the attempts to carve us up by color or ethnicity.
We need a third party that believes in the future again, invests in the American people, and inspires the country to work toward building a future of shared prosperity. The Democrats and Republicans might get the message.
Michael Gold is a columnist for The Yonkers Times. His work has been published in The New York Daily News, The Albany Times-Union, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, The Hartford Courant and other newspapers.