4 ms·

Your comments that this isn't how the government was intended to work are spot on -- the founders did not want a two party system.

• warlox 10y ago
  Of course, the math says that with the current voting system, any third party that emerges as a major force will always consume one of the existing major parties, leading the nation back to a two party system. I wonder why people always ignore this inconvenient theorem.
  • ericd 10y ago
    Most people don't understand that intuitively, I think.
  • chestervonwinch 10y ago
    To which theorem do you refer ...?
    • warlox 10y ago
      It's called Duverger's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > the founders did not want a two party system. Well, they said they didn't want a factional system, then they built rules which guaranteed two factions, modelled directly after rules which had done the same elsewhere, and all while organizing themselves into two factions which were visible in nascent form in the first national elections under the Constitution and well solidified by the time Washington was to be replaced as President. So, do you listen to their words, or their actions? The founders were, to all evidence, a lot like politicians of today, publicly cursing the ills of partisanship while deeply engaged in it, mostly as a rhetorical device against the other party.