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Regardless of political views, many will agree that the Republican/Democrat binary presents a false illusion of choice and impedes any meaningful policy from taking hold (i.e. stopping the endless wars in the Middle East). Having more than 2 mainstream parties would present real competition to the Reps/Dems and even if the other parties can't outright win, the Republicans and Democrats would be forced to enter coalitions and therefore adopt some of the other parties position, encouraging them to actually DO something good. While there are third parties like the Greens and Libertarians, they are tiny parties.
Is it even possible to get more parties into the American mainstream? If so, how can that happen?
No. The parties are too powerful. Look what they did to Trump. Any outsider will be treated this way. A single third party? Possibly, but it would have to be one that attracted moderate conservatives and moderate liberals. Ross Perot really had a chance but kind of blew it for a third party.
Is it even possible to get more parties into the American mainstream? If so, how can that happen?
No. And why does it matter? Do you think parliamentary democracy is some kind of utopia?
What is a political party anyway? Who controls it? What is the real difference from one democracy to the next? Or even between democratic and undemocratic countries?
Parliamentary Democracy is an option. Is it better? Hard to say
Right now we are not set up for it. The rules of congress don't really accommodate multiple parties, and the present two dominant parties don't seem to be motivated to change that.
Is having more parties really the best option or just having more races be non-partisan?
Many local elections already operate that way and I think it gives them a better, more results-driven contest. There are exceptions to that. Why do we need a partisan Register of Deeds?
The problem is that the machinery of government is complex.
I remember taking a poli sci class in college where the professor created a presentation on all the alphabet agencies in the federal government, what they were responsible for, where they overlapped, the relative budgets of each, and how each one was internally administered. It was a beast. I remember thinking at the time, "wtf do I need to know this for?" Turns out that was the most useful document of the entire class, and I was just intimidated by it because I didn't appreciate the scope of governing.
EVEN IF you could achieve third party control in Washington, meaning a trifecta, meaning at least three election cycles of success in the Senate, you'd still have the problem of the bureaucracy. Achieving third party success in the bureaucracy would take a generation of grooming officials and having them successfully hired and promoted to both partisan and non-partisan roles.
The last time a new party had success in the US was in 1860, and that event triggered a civil war. The only reason the Republicans survived is because the southern states seceded and removed their representatives from Congress. Even then the 1864 election was closely run.
The sad, dirty secret is that the US isn't really a democracy. We're an officialdom. The unelected bureaucracy and courts wield most of the power. Elected officials come and go and have little power compared to the entrenched insiders. The sad part is that elected officials are the most exposed to the will of the people, and also don't have much power, meaning the people don't have much power.
If you really want to change the direction of the country, you need to do something like the "March through the Institutions" the left has done since the 1960s, or the Federalist Society on the right. You need to groom and train thousands of faceless officials who are sympathetic to your cause and somehow install them in positions of power. Elections only matter insofar as they enable you to do this.
when asked if the senate could speedily pass a bill Harry Ried said sir, it takes the united states senate three days to flush a toilet...that poor toilet would never get flushed
That's like asking if your spouse will let you have other partners on the side. Not gonna happen. K street, Wall street, and the elites running this country would never stand for it. They have the plebes right where they want them/us with the two party system, and they will stop at nothing to keep it going this way. I'm surprised they let us have Trump for a full 4 years. That may have been the closet we'll ever get to an actual third party candidate as president.
The two old establishment parties fear them and will do ANYTHING to stop them. They have groomed and brainwashed the public over the years with things like 'it's a wasted vote' or a third party wouldn't be fair because the majority wouldn't be big enough.
Parliamentary Democracy is an option. Is it better? Hard to say
Right now we are not set up for it. The rules of congress don't really accommodate multiple parties, and the present two dominant parties don't seem to be motivated to change that.
I used to think parliamentary democracy was better because it seemed to provide representation to minority parties(IE minority views), but in reality all governments are coalitions. In a parliamentary democracy the representatives are directly appointed by the party and they all vote as a single bloc. Whereas in our democracy, the democrats and republicans can vote against their party because they are elected locally. So while our system seems less representative than parliamentary democracies, in some ways it is even more representative.
The main problem with all democracies is that they cost a lot of money. Every government is dominated by money. European countries are no less controlled by money than us. Likewise communist dictatorships.
Last edited by Redshadowz; 03-14-2021 at 09:28 PM..
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