We Need 3 Major Parties

[LuvNewcastle]

Here lately, I've seen a lot of articles written about the divisions in the Republican Party. They're having a battle between the radical Teabaggers and the plain Conservative members of the party. I think they're headed for a split, and Democrats need to be careful about how we react to it.

There's a chance that some Republicans might want to defect and become Democrats. We don't need to let that happen. I think plenty of Democrats think the party is already too conservative. If we allow Republicans to join, they will drag the party even further to the right. I think the Democratic Party needs to stand for liberal values. If Republicans are allowed to join the party, there's a likelihood that it could cause a split in the Democratic Party also.

The Teabaggers or the Conservatives should be forced to form their own party. We would have a party that would vote along with us at least some of the time and it would end this gridlock that's causing very serious problems for our country. The Democrats might be able to strike deals with regular Conservatives and possibly drag them a little bit toward the left. If they come into our party, they will poison the well. Progressives might defect and it would be even harder to pass liberal/ progressive legislation.

New people in an organization do not necessarily strengthen it. In fact, they often can highlight fractures that were already there. For once, lets hope the Democratic Party shows some shrewdness and forethought.

[JaneyVee]

1. They'll become Independents long before they become Democrats.

[LuvNewcastle]

3. Let's hope so.

I fear that there are some elements in the Democratic Party who would welcome them, however. Let's nip that shit in the bud.

[JaneyVee]

6. I completely agree.

[procon]

28. That wouldn't change anything

Independents still have to choose which Party to caucus with, and if they can't bend enough to support liberal causes then they'll be voting with Republicans.

[randr]

2. What we need is one that works

[steelmania75]

4. The Tea Party Christian Right will never separate from the business sector of the GOP

That'll divide their numbers nationally from 50% of the vote to most likely 10% for the far-right and 40% of suburban/business conservatives up against 50% Democrats, that's a landslide for the Dems.

[LuvNewcastle]

8. I think there's more of them than that.

They've taken over the GOP. Every time a Conservative votes with the Dems, they run a teabagger against him in the primaries and the teabagger usually wins. The GOP has become so radical, I think the Conservatives are the ones who will have to leave.

[socialist_n_TN]

7. I've thought about this a lot.............

IF the Republicans split first, then I think it's inevitable that the Dems will split too. There's too wide an ideological gap in the "big tent" between the ConservaDem/Third Way types and the FDR Dems. There's been a growing tension between these camps for at least 20 years.

I'm pretty sure it's inevitable that we wind up with FOUR parties instead of two. The Dems won't split before the Republicans do though. There's too much of a danger of getting a "Tea Party" takeover of government that way. Four parties might actually be a good thing. That will force coalitions to be formed for ANY legislation to be passed, but will still give representation to all of the groups we have politically today.

[LuvNewcastle]

10. All I know is, we'll definitely have 4 parties if

Republicans are allowed in. I think the Dems could hold it together as long as the party isn't dragged any further to the right.

[socialist_n_TN]

17. Well it's inevitable then..........

The problem with the Democratic Party is that it has ALWAYS tried to be all things to all people. Or at least most things to most people. It's a bourgeois political party that also claims to represent the working class and those two classes are enemies. They will always have competing interests that can never be reconciled. During the good times of capitalism, it's more of a "Cold War" type of adversarial relationship, but during times of capitalist crisis, it becomes MUCH hotter and that's when the Democratic Party model is stressed to the max.

It's inevitable because there is no way that the "big tent" philosophy will keep out Republicans who want to join.

[datasuspect]

13. some republicans might start finding out they

probably have more in common with run of the mill liberal democrats than either the extremist tea party faction or the third way corpodems.

[LuvNewcastle]

21. I don't think they'll change, at least not enough.

They're more likely to change the Democratic Party's agenda. They'll work with the DLC people and Progressives will have even less power. We'll keep the two-party system with a more conservative Democratic Party.

[former9thward]

9. You can't stop anyone from joining a party.

There are no principles that people have to agree to when joining a party. You are a Democrat if that is what you register to vote as. The party has no say so how people register.

[LuvNewcastle]

11. You can make them very uncomfortable.

Ask Joe Lieberman about that.

[former9thward]

15. Those are elected officials.

Nothing can be done with the voting base. I doubt Lieberman was very uncomfortable. He got elected as a Independent and the party allowed him to have all his committees in the Senate.

[LuvNewcastle]

16. That's one thing they do right here in Mississippi.

We don't register by party; for all intents and purposes, we're all independents. You can choose to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary, but you must vote in the same party's primary in the runoff. Makes sense to me.

[LuvNewcastle]

23. I'm taking about the run-off in the primaries.

There's usually so many people running for each party in the primaries that no one gets a majority. There's a run-off between the first and second place candidates.

[LuvNewcastle]

26. They nominee has to win a majority here.

[Savannahmann]

12. Not sure that's a good idea.

Let's say that the Tea Party forms it's own third party. We respond by moving the Democratic Party left, and the more conservative members, aka DINO's leave our party in response. We end up with at most 40% of the seats in Congress. The Speaker is chosen based upon a coalition, and that coalition governs until the split becomes so wide as to be unbridgeable. Then there is a shake up, and once again a new coalition is formed.

On the other hand, if we did take in more conservative members, we could get a majority in the House, and much as we had before, with Speaker Pelosi, have control of the process and our people running the committee's. Yes we were stymied by some legislative agenda items by those conservative DINO's, but we controlled the process, and the committee's. We found it easier to get notional friends to go along with us than avowed opponents.

[LuvNewcastle]

18. I'm not talking about dragging the Democratic Party

to the left, although I would like to see some better ideas come from the Democrats. All I'm saying is that we can't go any further to the right, because if that happens, we'll split. I believe we can hold it together if we just keep Conservatives out. I guess we'll find out soon who the real Dems are.

[Scuba]

76. You're overlooking the vast number of potential voters who are further left, waiting for ...

... someone to represent their interests. Moving left will pick up more votes than moving right.

[bigwillq]

20. The more choices, the better.

The two-party system has ruined America.
Politics has become way too partisan.

[BlueCaliDem]

22. The Winner-take-All system doesn't allow for a 3-party system in our government.

But even so . . . can't we agree that we already have a three party system of government? The split isn't in the Republican Party but in the Democratic Party. Republicans are more unified than Democrats. On our side we see the most split votes on major legislation, usually among the CorporateDems and WeThePeopleDems.

So although not in name, we already have a 3-party system in our Congress.

[LuvNewcastle]

25. Our liberals are nowhere near as radical as the Teabaggers.

Democrats can disagree and work things out, usually. Teabaggers don't really allow dissent. It's their way or get primaried. Our politicians aren't in constant fear of losing their jobs if they don't follow in lock-step. If a Republican is going to be not-so-radical, he has to take himself out of the Republican primaries. The only way to do that is to leave the party.

[graham4anything]

27. How will that work with the electoral votes? Look at 1968 for instance.

The George Wallace wing of the party took I think 47 electoral votes, and Nixon won.

Actually, I myself want an 80-20. Let the extremists render themselves politically obsolete at the polls.

[LuvNewcastle]

29. I think the electoral college would favor us.

It will be close, no doubt about that. The Teabaggers will be loyal, but there would be crossover between the Conservatives and Dems. If the Dems split, Progressives will be loyal. Presidential elections will be very interesting, and i think the candidates will be taking about the issues more. People will likely read up more on the issues. Anything could happen.

[stevenleser]

51. You dont get it. You need 1 more than 50% of electoral votes to become President. Otherwise...

the Presidential election gets thrown into the House of Representatives and the Vice President is selected by the Senate.

There are 538 electoral votes. Party A's candidate doesn't win if they get 250 electoral votes and Party C and D's candidates each get 144 electoral votes. Whoever controls the House state delegations at that point would appoint the President.

Any more than two major parties means that there is a huge chance the House of Representatives will select the President on a regular basis.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

30. I suspect three-party systems are inherently unstable.

As soon as one party gets noticeably smaller than the other two, its followers are likely start defecting to the party that they still think can win that is closest to their views.

[LuvNewcastle]

31. If by "unstable" you mean a greater chance of change,

you're right. It's a mathematical fact. Absorbing Republicans into the Democratic Party would ensure that the party would continue on the rightward path it's been traveling since Reagan. Things must change if we're going to change the country's course. Either we change or we can continue to expect the same results we've had for the past 30 years.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

34. No, I mean "collapse into two-party systems, and stay that way". N.T.

[LuvNewcastle]

36. You could be right or you might be wrong.

We don't know because we haven't tried any thing else, at least not for about a century. Things are more likely to change if we start doing different things.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

43. How many political parties there will be isn't a decision made by any "we".

It's a *result* of many separate individual uncoordinated decisions, not a choice to be made in itself.

[FarCenter]

59. Two party systems are also unstable

Most local governments are run by one or the other party. When the dominant party screws up, it is usually punished by an internecine revolt within the party leadership nomination process or by primary challenges, and only rarely by an electoral sucess by the minor party.

Successful politicians either work their way up the existing patronage system or lead a successful internal challenge. Only rarely does a politician emerge by running a successful campaign in the other party's territory. Instead, candidates move to a place where they can run with a registration advantage.

State governments are more and more locked in by one of the two parties.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

60. On the national scale it seems stable.

Notably, both the US and the UK have two-party systems that have persisted even though the parties themselves came and went.

[FarCenter]

66. In the US each party has enjoyed long stretches of control

In Congresses 1 - 6 the Federalists controlled 6 Senates and 4 Houses out of 6.

In Congresses 7 - 36 the Democrats controlled 27 Senates and 25 Houses out of 30. Only in the 27th Congress did the Whigs control both chambers.

In Congresses 37 - 72 the Republicans controlled 31 Senates and 24 Houses out of 36. Only in Congresses 46, 53, 63, and 64 did the Democrats control both chambers.

In Congresses 73 - 103 the Democrats controlled 26 Senates and 29 Houses out of 31. Only in Congresses 80 and 83 did the Republicans control both chambers.

In Congresses 104 - 113 the Republicans controlled 5 Senates and 8 Houses out of 10. Only in Congresses 110 and 111 did the Democrats control both chambers.

I believe that PM Cameron leads a Tory and Lib Dem coalition against the Labour Party opposition in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses

[Ter]

32. I think we should have 5, all in the debates

Last edited Sun May 26, 2013, 03:06 PM - Edit history (2)

Democrat, Republican, Constitution (far-right paleo-con), Green (far left), and Libertarian (to balance it out).

[LuvNewcastle]

35. I agree.

The two major parties might think they own this country, but they don't. There's nothing about them in the Constitution. It should be illegal for them to keep other parties out of debates.

[graham4anything]

44. I personally don't think there should be any debates anymore. All they are is gotchas.

If I advised Hillary, I would say no to any debates.

And with early voting, people vote anyhow long before the debates take place.

Leave the debates for before the primary (but again, I would advise Hillary not to do any in 2016).

Time is better spent organizing and getting the voters to vote.

[LostOne4Ever]

78. Provided its real libertarians

And not the "we are republicans who want to smoke dope" Libertarian Party.

[woo me with science]

84. The two corporate parties seized control of the debates

after Ross Perot scared the hell out of them by challenging their domination of the political process.

From the '70's until 1988, the League of Women Voters managed the Presidential debates. During this time, it was easier for third parties to gain access, and there was at least some effort to provide a format that included some genuine substantive questions, time for responses, and follow-up questioning.

That all changed when Ross Perot ran for President and shocked everyone by gaining popular support as an Independent, running on issues including the corporate "sucking" of jobs overseas and environmental destruction. The two parties took quick action together to seize control of the debate process, including the entrance rules and the format and substance of the debates. The League of Women voters withdrew in disgust and issued a strongly worded press release (see bolded below). Their warning was absolutely on target:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential...

Control of the presidential debates has been a ground of struggle for more than two decades. The role was filled by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters (LWV) civic organization in 1976, 1980 and 1984. In 1987, the LWV withdrew from debate sponsorship, in protest of the major party candidates attempting to dictate nearly every aspect of how the debates were conducted. On October 2, 1988, the LWV's 14 trustees voted unanimously to pull out of the debates, and on October 3 they issued a dramatic press release:

"The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates...because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."

The same year the two major political parties assumed control of organizing presidential debates through the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The commission has been headed since its inception by former chairs of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee.

Some have criticized the exclusion of third party and independent candidates as well as the parallel interview format as a minimum of getting 15% in opinion polls is required to be invited. In 2004, the Citizens' Debate Commission (CDC) was formed with the stated mission of returning control of the debates to an independent nonpartisan body rather than a bipartisan body. Nevertheless, the CPD retained control of the debates that year and in 2008.

We need to reform the entire damned system. We need to get the money out of politics and the corporations out of the parties. The two corporate party system we have now is specifically designed to prevent other voices from being heard.

[octoberlib]

33. We need complete campaign finance reform. Until we have that and politicians

don't have to depend on donations from the wealthy and corporations to run for office, it's not going to matter how many parties we have.

[LuvNewcastle]

39. I'd like to see publicly financed elections, not a penny

allowed from private donations.

[woo me with science]

83. +1000000

[AlinPA]

37. Teabaggers and conservatives are different from "republicans"? They are all the same: Republicans.

[LuvNewcastle]

40. All of them are our political foes, certainly, but

there seems to be a struggle between the very radical and the less radical. We need to make sure their problems don't cause us more problems.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. The political system, by design, defaults to two.

I want proportionate representation and campaign finance reform. The former requires a constitutional amendment.

[LuvNewcastle]

41. I don't see why we can't have more than two parties.

Our system would not fall apart, but things would be different. I think the vast majority of Americans want change; things aren't working anymore. We have to change our actions or expect the same results.

Campaign finance reform is a must.

Do you want to abolish the Senate? I'm wondering what you mean by "proportionate representation."

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. It is the winner take all system

It s in the Constitution. As I like to joke, they wrote that part 70 years too early...before John Stuart Mill was born. He learned from it. And yes, we need to modernize the system, and this is why other countries have not adopted the winner take all system. It is also the reason why the 1917 Mexican Constitution did not adopt it. They did in 1824, it is almost translated word by word.

As to proportional representation you run a slate of candidates, and your party gets as many as it gets in proportion of the vote, with an absolute floor. So if the greens got 10% of the seats in the house, they get 10%, if the dems get 25, if the libertarians get 15 and so on and so forth.

It would require coalition building and parties to run coalition slates.

It has issues, all systems do, but it will prevent only two parties getting power for the most part.

[LuvNewcastle]

46. I would really like to see us have a constitutional convention.

We've faced some problems that nobody could have foreseen in 1789. Maybe this isn't exactly the right time to have one, not with divisions so deep and tempers flaring. The convention would probably end in a brawl, with some going their separate ways. We have some serious systemic problems that are only going to get worse if they aren't addressed, however. It might be too late to fix things if we wait much longer.

[nadinbrzezinski]

48. The other problem you have

is that the document is seen by quite a few as sacred, almost given by God to man. It is all kinds of funny given separation of church and state, but that alone complicates the necessary reforms. And somewhere Jefferson (who was not involved in the writing itself, he was in Paris serving as an Ambassador) is doing face palms. He believed the document needed a full reassessment once a generation. Sacred document, not so much

[LuvNewcastle]

53. The Constitution is holy writ to some people.

I've never had much respect for holy writ. All documents are written by men and should be judged by how useful or entertaining they are. If a document is neither of those things, it's time to write something more relevant.

[nadinbrzezinski]

56. Exactly, this is a serious problem

[piratefish08]

45. Corporations are only wiling to fund a two party system, so we're shit out of luck......

[LuvNewcastle]

47. You're probably right, but we've got to try.

We owe it to our ancestors, our kids, and our sense of self-respect.

[bhikkhu]

49. Mathematically, three parties doesn't work

...as in, you wind up with the least favorable outcomes for the majority. That's just the way it works - badly.

http://www.whydomath.org/node/voting/math.html

http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_11_00.html

http://www.colorado.edu/education/DMP/voting_b.html

...in a three-way race, far too often the one who wins is the one that is least-liked. The math doesn't work, and in the real world its pretty close to the worst way to do things.

[LuvNewcastle]

50. We had 3 candidates in 1992 and 1996.

Perot would have won a lot more votes in 1992 if hadn't dropped out and jumped back in. He had a real chance. Sometimes I wish he had won, although I voted for Clinton. I think any of those 3 men would have been respected by most people. Clinton didn't get a majority in either election, but he was pretty popular. He was impeached, of course, but that's the kind of behavior you expect from Republicans when their guy loses.

W. was wildly unpopular and a large part of the electorate hates Obama with a passion. There wasn't a serious 3rd party candidate in any of their elections. If the majority is doing well during a President's administration, they will like him.

Maybe 4 parties would be better. Who really knows? We can continue to do the same things expecting different results or we can change our actions and see what happens.

[markiv]

57. I was disapointed in Perot's pick of a senile VP, as well as his dropping out/in

that aside, my vote for him was the only enthusiastic vote i ever cast

[LuvNewcastle]

64. That VP choice was a major mistake.

I don't know what he was thinking.

[markiv]

52. most nations have more than 2 parties

whether you bought a dodge or a plymouth, you were buying a chrysler, and most dodge and plymouth buyer knew that

that's the difference between dodge/plymouth buyers and democrats/republicans, the understanding that they are buying from one corporation

[LuvNewcastle]

54. Good analogy

[bhikkhu]

68. A dozen parties where no party had a majority would be a good system

...that's where they have to form coalitions to govern.

Its also where compromise is the rule, and where no party gets its way...which seems to be the main complaint about the system we have now.

In any case, my simple point is that 3 parties fundamentally doesn't work.

[markiv]

73. well, the two party system isnt doing it for me

hard to see how 3 parties could be worse

anything would be better than what we have right now, a thinly disguised corporate dictatorship

[bhikkhu]

74. 3 parties would be worse - that's the point

with two parties, at least the guy who wins is the guy who most people support. As well explained, if you go to the links and read a bit, a three party system frequently leads to the guy who is least liked winning the election. How is that not worse?

[socialist_n_TN]

80. I don't think that it's a matter of whether it would be worse or not............

It's a matter of representation. When people don't feel represented by the two parties, EVENTUALLY another party springs up to represent that un or underrepresented mass.

And it wouldn't stop at three parties. IF the Republicans split, IMO it's a guarantee the Dems will split too. The leftish, FDR Dems haven't felt represented by the overall Democratic Party in a couple of decades now. Once the specter of a Tea Party Congress and President are gone by a split in the Republicans, those FDR Dems are gone too. Either that or they take back the Democratic Party and the Third Way neo-liberals leave. One way or another, the Dems split shortly after the Republicans.

[bhikkhu]

82. Why would the repugs split while they are a minority?

They would lose any hope of winning elections. They may be wrong-headed in general, but this has been going on a long time and they've shown every effort toward pragmatically broadening their base. If the party-line repugs split from the hard-right wingers then neither of the groups would stand a chance. Its a nice thought, but they aren't that stupid.

On the other hand, they all think wistfully back to 2000 when Nader took enough of the left-leaning vote to cost our party the election...which is what would happen over and over again if the democratic party split. If you think you feel under-represented now, imagine how it would feel under a succession of bush-repug in the WH, after losing the senate as well.

Not to be too pushy or fatalistic, but that is actually how things work.

[socialist_n_TN]

87. They would split BECAUSE they don't feel represented. Remember...

it's NOT about strategy, stability, or what works best, it's about representation and the feeling that you're NOT represented. Logic doesn't play a big role in it. If the Teabaggers don't feel like they're getting a fair shake in the Republican Party, it wouldn't surprise me for them to try and leave and form (or grow RE: Constitution Party) a new party that the DO feel like represents them.

Now, they might also feel like the FDR Dems and think that it would just throw the elections to the Democrats and hang in there. After all that "lesser of two evils" thing has kept the Dem party mostly together for 20 years or so now, despite the leftish branch feeling underrepresented. But they might split too.

One thing about the RWers that might be different is that there are fascist billionaires out there (the Kochs and Adelson are two) who probably wouldn't mind funding a fascist, John Birch Society RW party, whereas a party farther left than the Dem would have to be self funded.

Anyway, you don't have to worry about a mass Dem split until the Republicans do so first.

[mick063]

55. If there was an OWS party

I would vote it straight ticket.

[bvar22]

58. We need 3 Major Parties?

At this point, I would settle for 2.

We need a Party that represents Americans who must Work for a Living.
We used to have one,
but it is gone now.

Its been gone since 1992,
but, boy, back in the old days, we got some shit done.
We built the largest, wealthiest, most upwardly mobile Working Class the World had ever seen. It is very sad that all that has been thrown away.



[font color=firebrick][center]"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
I want a party that will STAND UP for Working Americans."
---Paul Wellstone [/font][/center]
[center][/font]
[font size=1]photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed[/center][/font]

[LuvNewcastle]

63. Huey Long had a good story about that.

He used to tell a story about a patent medicine salesman who sold two products, one called High Popalorum and another called Low Popahirum. Check out the first video at the link.

http://thehayride.com/2012/06/whats-with-the-high-popalorum-and-low-popahirum-on-the-front-page/comment-page-1/

[bvar22]

65. Thank You!

As a Louisiana Boy with Working Class parents, I have a special fondness for Huey Long.
I've saved those clips of Huey Long for later use.

I found this interesting.

"
But our readers know that we’ll pick fights with Republican leaders as well as Democrats. And while we find Huey’s speechifyin’ entertaining, we regard him as a pestilence on this state – and his redneck-style fascism as a disaster we’ve not fully recovered from more than 80 years after he first came on the scene.

Oh Yes.
Educating all those ignorant Share Croppers,
feeding the children,
forcing the RICH to pay their fair share,
and dragging the state out of Grinding Poverty
was such a disaster.

It WAS a Playboy 1%er who killed The Kingfish.

[Sunlei]

61. republicans will never let their bagger 'squidges' (R-word not mine)free,they're not done USING them

besides the baggers are 100% koch funded and owned by the republican party. They never would be able to stand alone without republican funding.

[DevonRex]

62. That was made impossible by the framers of the Constitution.

Personally, I believe at least some of them knew it and wanted that outcome, just as they wanted parties to be totally private even as they railed against the very existence of parties in various Federalist Papers. I think that some of them knew quite well that in this new world they were the elite. They had money and power now. And influence. Perhaps they determined that they would rather their money, power and influence go unchecked by government in a private party system rather than in a parliamentary system which incorporates parties into the government, thus enabling the existence and influence of multiple parties. You see, in one step they have lessened the will of the people and increased their own power.
http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html
1790 Only white male adult property-owners have the right to vote.
1810 Last religious prerequisite for voting is eliminated.
1850 Property ownership and tax requirements eliminated by 1850. Almost all adult white males could vote.
1855 Connecticut adopts the nation's first literacy test for voting. Massachusetts follows suit in 1857. The tests were implemented to discriminate against Irish-Catholic immigrants.
1870 The 15th Amendment is passed. It gives former slaves the right to vote and protects the voting rights of adult male citizens of any race.

Read more: U.S. Voting Rights | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html#ixzz2UQpkpZtY

Think about it. Every step of the way, from deciding to revolt, all through gathering support for that revolt both here and abroad, they formed their own coalitions or parties, did they not? Of course they did. In the course of waging the war it was the same. In the period between the war's end and the final draft of the Constitution, there were many coalitions formed around all sorts of affairs of governance.

In drafting the Constitution itself, there were many changes. First the Articles of Confederation which wasn't sufficient. Then the they got serious and it went back and forth forever with people arguing and taking sides and banding together over issues. Yes, banding together. That's the nature of man. We band together for support and security. What's more we must come together for agreement in the end. So their railing about parties was nonsensical from the outset. Ridiculous even. Every person here who rails about people putting party above ideology will, in the end, vote for someone who belongs to a party. Why? Because they are necessary. But we can only have 2 major ones because of what the framers did.

[Sunlei]

67. those are very good points- "everything republicans do is legal" by sunlei 5/2013 and........

MLK said, oh so long ago. "Never forget, everything Hitler did was legal"

[DevonRex]

69. Exactly. They made slavery legal and ensured it'd be damned hard to get rid of.

And ensured the poor didn't have a vote from the start. Irish Catholics were given literacy tests in the northeast to prevent them from voting. Even when these atrocities were eventually done away with, the moneyed interests still have so much power that it barely made a difference. See all the poor RWers voting against their own economic interests to get my drift here.

Sometimes I wonder why on earth this country is held up as a beacon for democracy when I see it as having replaced the aristocracy with the moneyed and entrenched them more firmly in power.

[Martin Eden]

70. We need Instant Runoff Voting

Without ranked choice a third party would split the vote on the left, benefitting the right.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

71. Read this book:

The Strange Death of Liberal England, about how that party fell apart after the House of Lords no longer had a veto over the budget. The Liberals could no longer point at the Lords and say "They're even worse!" (http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Liberal-England-ebook/dp/B005XBAA8I/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369608378&sr=8-2&keywords=the+strange+death+of+liberal+england) The parallels of the old Liberal Party in the UK with the Democratic Party are pretty amazing. If there's a split in the Dem Party, what you saw in England would happen here: half would go to Labor (whatever the equivalent winds up being called), the other half to the Tories (Republicans). The Democratic Party itself would be reduced to a shadow of its former self.
Also, that book is seriously funny. Great entertainment.
As for the Republicans splitting, nope, never happen. In that book, the Tories threatened civil war if Northern Ireland was made a part of the Irish Republic. Not too dissimilar from the calls you see on the right presently in this country for the same in defense of "gun rights". The right is always threatening to split the country in two (they already did it once) and they are always united around whatever the issue of the day is. They really are willing to tear this country apart if they don't get their way. The left just doesn't have that crazy streak in it, either here or in the UK.

[applegrove]

72. Canada has had three parties or more for 70 years. We are a liberal country. We've

Last edited Sun May 26, 2013, 08:54 PM - Edit history (1)

never elected the party on the far left to government. Only the middle Liberals and right Conservatives have ever won nationally.

[Scuba]

75. The reason the Koch's formed the Tea Party was to drag the Country further right.

I agree: we should not welcome those Republicans. We should be courting those potential voters who are further left, waiting for someone who represents their interests.

[Democracyinkind]

77. We have 6 major parties.

Don't know if it helps though. Totally different system.

[fredamae]

79. All good ideas-But

Unless and Until We get Money Out of Politics/Democracy? Nothing substantial Can change, imo.
The Dem Party has already "adopted" way too many conservatives-and for Decades they've been moving right.
I'm "old"-Today's Dem Party talks/looks/acts/votes more GOP than the GOP did in the '60's.

[Jim Lane]

81. The system virtually locks in two parties, with change accommodated through primaries.

Tea Partiers who think establishment Republicans are insufficiently conservative haven't stomped off and formed a new party. (There is a Constitution Party but it's extremely fringe.) Instead, they run right-wingers in primaries, and sometimes succeed in nominating them, against the wishes of the party establishment, and electing them (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, etc.).

The same has occasionally happened in the Democratic Party, such as Carol Moseley-Braun's ouster of Alan Dixon. (Defeating an incumbent of one's own party is more difficult than winning an open seat, the way Cruz and Paul did, but it can happen.)

The classic formulation is that, if the rules establish single-member districts with plurality election, the result is a two-party system. The reason is that, if a third party forms, the most likely result is that the seat is won by the major-party nominee who is less acceptable to the third-partiers. When the defection to the third party produces this undesired result, people realize their error and the third party withers. The classic example is 2000. Nader's choice to run as a third-party candidate, instead of contesting the Democratic primaries, was widely seen as one factor in producing the Bush presidency. (Yes, there were other factors, yes, he had a right to run, spare me the usual arguments. Just read the next sentence to see the important point.) The result was that, in 2004, Nader's vote crashed, with the vast majority of his supporters from 2000 deciding not to vote for him again.

The Republican Party arose before there were primaries. The Whig Party leadership wanted to be able to contest the South, and so was reluctant to be strongly anti-slavery. If the same situation arose today, Whigs like Abraham Lincoln would run in the primaries instead of joining a third party.

For all its faults, this is actually a better system than what you seem inclined toward. With three or four major parties splitting the vote, there would be a significant danger that the seat would be filled by an extremist (on one wing or the other) who would not genuinely represent the will of the electorate. Runoffs (instead of plurality election) reduce this danger, but it's still a problem. If the vote in the first round is Socialists/Greens 28%, Tea Party 27%, Republicans (right-leaning centrists) 23%, and Democrats (left-leaning centrists) 22%, then the runoff between the top two is bound to produce a winner who is the last choice of more than two-thirds of the people.

By contrast, with plurality election and open primaries, each wing's challenges to the party establishment are fought out in the primaries. If the votes are there for a significant move to the left or the right, then that candidate wins the primary and the general. If the votes aren't there, then the candidate loses in the primary (like, to my sorrow, Kucinich) or wins the primary and loses the general (like several Tea Party candidates, such as Christine O'Donnell).

The role of money is a separate problem. Good electoral rules will produce a winner who's fairly representative of the electorate's preferences. If those preferences are warped by corporate money, you can't cure the problem by tinkering with the party structure.

[woo me with science]

85. What we need is reform of the system so that non-corporate voices can run and be heard.

It is getting harder and harder, and in some places it is virtually impossible, to run for national office without deep corporate pockets backing you. Big money donors select candidates with their checkbooks, and they WILL use those deep pockets to either co-opt or target with barrages of expensive negative advertising any upstart who tries to take on their choice.

And the elections commission, which has been taken over by the two major parties, severely curtails access to debates, deliberately limiting the national conversation to the two corporate-sponsored messages. Most Democrats don't realize the extent to which limiting third party access to debates hurts not only the third party candidates, but OUR OWN candidates, as well...because it keeps them from being pressured to respond to voters rather than their big-money donors. If the only other guy running is corporate, too, there is no reason to appeal to voters' interests, because those voters have nowhere else to go.

We have a deep, deliberately corporate-created structural problem that has corrupted the very foundation of the democratic process.

[DevonRex]

86. Most PEOPLE don't comprehend the simple fact that it was designed

that way from the beginning. This was never intended to be a democracy of the people. This was always intended to be a democracy of the RICH. You only have to look at who got to vote in the beginning to finally understand that.

Their ace in the hole was that they did not create a parliamentary system that uses coalitions of parties to form a government. By making parties "evil" and extra-governmental they are totally in private (corporate) and wealthy control. See how that happened? Ironic, isn't it? And without coalitions, it's winner takes all, which means a 2-party system. Again ironic.