5 ms·

I have to agree. The US is a two party system, which is extremely limiting. One party badly wants to become an autocracy while the other wants to erode compromi

I have to agree. The US is a two party system, which is extremely limiting. One party badly wants to become an autocracy while the other wants to erode compromise in favor of becoming a single party super majority. I wish anti-trust actions apply to political parties and break them both apart.

syshum 5y ago
First Past the Post voting system will always lead to 2 party rule... One of the ways to change that is to adopt a Ranked Choice voting system. For some reason Americans seem to be very opposed to this idea.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  I'm a fan of ranked choice voting, but I feel the need to add that the de facto 2 party system in the US functions similarly to political bloc majority government formation in European democracies. The difference is the US names the coalitions rather than the individual parties themselves. If you look at either US party you see very different voting trends on platform between different regions, you see sub parties (like justice Democrats or tea party) and a constant shift in platform to keep these groups appeased, very similar in effect to the process of compromise by which majority governments are formed in European democracies. IMO this is a symptom of majority rule and will occur regardless whether you name the parties or name the coalitions. What you wind up with is 2 blocs made up of diverse interests with enough overlapping or converging interest forming through negotiation.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    One important difference is that coalitions are fluent, and party P can choose to join a coalition with party Q or party R, depending on their electoral perspectives and alignment of values, even if Q and R are bitter rivals and never would form a coalition between themselves. Those who voted for P won't mind because P would still mostly stick to its program, for which the voters voted. Can you imagine a reasonably large group of politicians to move from R to D or vice versa, and not lose the voices of their electorate?
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      Well, that process happens in the voter base, not the groups of elected representatives as it does in Europe. Basically an american "party" has to represent interests (at least with lip service as is often the case) of its constituent groups or lose that portion of the voter base, so majority votes for the two parties changes if the interests of the people themselves change, this happens on a state by state as well as a district by district basis. One thing this system prevents that does happen in European style democracies is no confidence and breaking of those coalitions, which cannot happen between elections in the US like it can in many other countries.
- jonplackett 5y ago
  If you're really wedded to one of those parties (which Americans seem to be - (here in the UK too, sigh)), then that makes perfect sense. At least this way you have a 50% chance of getting your guys in power. And if you don't it's just a waiting game til you do again.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> I wish anti-trust actions apply to political parties and break them both apart. There are hundreds of political parties in the US; the stable equilibrium is only two competitive factions because of the electoral system. Breaking up currently dominant parties without addressing the electoral system won’t change anything meaningful. You need to fix the electoral system. Specifically, the solid evidence from across modern democracies is that if you want multiple competitive parties, you need to adopt a system which tends toward proportional representation, like STV with multimember districts, and it helps further to maximize the relative power of the proportionally representative body (Tinkering with voting methods for single-member legislative districts wouldn't actually help much.) Having winner-take-all elections for thr legislature, investing wxtra power in the less represntative body within the legislature, and having a strong Presidency that is indirectly elected all tend against having multiple competitive parties.
- austincheney 5y ago
  I would so love to eliminate winner takes all from states as part of the electoral college. California is slightly purple and Texas extremely so. That should be represented in their massive vote counts.
  - salawat 5y ago
    The electoral college was never meant to be influenced at all by political party membership; and Washington warned against the siren call of the National political party when he left office.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > The electoral college was never meant to be influenced at all by political party membership; Then, frankly, the framers were completely incompetent, because they couldn't have designed a system designed better to guarantee a stable national partisan duopoly if that had been their intent. > and Washington warned against the siren call of the National political party when he left office. That wasn't a forward looking warning; the duopoly guaranteed by the Constitutional structure of government had already been firmly established by the end of Washington's first term, with the leaders of both factions in his Cabinet.
japanuspus 5y ago
> I have to agree. The US is a two party system, ... I agree with the first part of your analysis, but the rest seems a bit off. Firstly, the fact that the US is effectively a two party system comes from the fact that your electoral systems is based on district representatives. This winner-takes-all approach will by nature lead to a two-party system, same as it has in the UK. Secondly, you do not have to assume dark motives ("... badly wants to become an autocracy...") to arrive at extremism within the parties: This is a natural result of gerrymandering and segregation, where safe districts leads to candidates that pander to there single-party base only. Compare this with most of continental Europe, where you have proportional representation. Here multi-party systems prevail, and as you indicate in the start of your analysis, this does indeed appear to lead to a "better" democracy in the sense that it can handle multi-dimensional shifts in voter attitude much better than entrenched two-party systems.
drewcoo 5y ago
They are private corporations that stifle other choices through various means. Further, those two have nearly complete regulatory capture of . . . you name it. Anti-trust (or RICO) might apply but where would the political will be for that?
ausbah 5y ago
compromise has largely absent for 10-20 years now, both parties are in the trend - but it was definitely started by Republicans going back to the 90s under Gingrich, the Tea Party in the 2010s, and most recently Trumpism the incentives of the system reward trying to gain control of the system by demonstrating how the party in power failed - then compromise and give the party in power points

syshum 5y ago

First Past the Post voting system will always lead to 2 party rule... One of the ways to change that is to adopt a Ranked Choice voting system. For some reason Americans seem to be very opposed to this idea.

betwixthewires 5y ago
I'm a fan of ranked choice voting, but I feel the need to add that the de facto 2 party system in the US functions similarly to political bloc majority government formation in European democracies. The difference is the US names the coalitions rather than the individual parties themselves. If you look at either US party you see very different voting trends on platform between different regions, you see sub parties (like justice Democrats or tea party) and a constant shift in platform to keep these groups appeased, very similar in effect to the process of compromise by which majority governments are formed in European democracies. IMO this is a symptom of majority rule and will occur regardless whether you name the parties or name the coalitions. What you wind up with is 2 blocs made up of diverse interests with enough overlapping or converging interest forming through negotiation.
- nine_k 5y ago
  One important difference is that coalitions are fluent, and party P can choose to join a coalition with party Q or party R, depending on their electoral perspectives and alignment of values, even if Q and R are bitter rivals and never would form a coalition between themselves. Those who voted for P won't mind because P would still mostly stick to its program, for which the voters voted. Can you imagine a reasonably large group of politicians to move from R to D or vice versa, and not lose the voices of their electorate?
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Well, that process happens in the voter base, not the groups of elected representatives as it does in Europe. Basically an american "party" has to represent interests (at least with lip service as is often the case) of its constituent groups or lose that portion of the voter base, so majority votes for the two parties changes if the interests of the people themselves change, this happens on a state by state as well as a district by district basis. One thing this system prevents that does happen in European style democracies is no confidence and breaking of those coalitions, which cannot happen between elections in the US like it can in many other countries.
jonplackett 5y ago
If you're really wedded to one of those parties (which Americans seem to be - (here in the UK too, sigh)), then that makes perfect sense. At least this way you have a 50% chance of getting your guys in power. And if you don't it's just a waiting game til you do again.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> I wish anti-trust actions apply to political parties and break them both apart. There are hundreds of political parties in the US; the stable equilibrium is only two competitive factions because of the electoral system. Breaking up currently dominant parties without addressing the electoral system won’t change anything meaningful. You need to fix the electoral system. Specifically, the solid evidence from across modern democracies is that if you want multiple competitive parties, you need to adopt a system which tends toward proportional representation, like STV with multimember districts, and it helps further to maximize the relative power of the proportionally representative body (Tinkering with voting methods for single-member legislative districts wouldn't actually help much.) Having winner-take-all elections for thr legislature, investing wxtra power in the less represntative body within the legislature, and having a strong Presidency that is indirectly elected all tend against having multiple competitive parties.

austincheney 5y ago
I would so love to eliminate winner takes all from states as part of the electoral college. California is slightly purple and Texas extremely so. That should be represented in their massive vote counts.
- salawat 5y ago
  The electoral college was never meant to be influenced at all by political party membership; and Washington warned against the siren call of the National political party when he left office.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > The electoral college was never meant to be influenced at all by political party membership; Then, frankly, the framers were completely incompetent, because they couldn't have designed a system designed better to guarantee a stable national partisan duopoly if that had been their intent. > and Washington warned against the siren call of the National political party when he left office. That wasn't a forward looking warning; the duopoly guaranteed by the Constitutional structure of government had already been firmly established by the end of Washington's first term, with the leaders of both factions in his Cabinet.

japanuspus 5y ago

> I have to agree. The US is a two party system, ... I agree with the first part of your analysis, but the rest seems a bit off. Firstly, the fact that the US is effectively a two party system comes from the fact that your electoral systems is based on district representatives. This winner-takes-all approach will by nature lead to a two-party system, same as it has in the UK. Secondly, you do not have to assume dark motives ("... badly wants to become an autocracy...") to arrive at extremism within the parties: This is a natural result of gerrymandering and segregation, where safe districts leads to candidates that pander to there single-party base only. Compare this with most of continental Europe, where you have proportional representation. Here multi-party systems prevail, and as you indicate in the start of your analysis, this does indeed appear to lead to a "better" democracy in the sense that it can handle multi-dimensional shifts in voter attitude much better than entrenched two-party systems.

drewcoo 5y ago

They are private corporations that stifle other choices through various means. Further, those two have nearly complete regulatory capture of . . . you name it. Anti-trust (or RICO) might apply but where would the political will be for that?

ausbah 5y ago

compromise has largely absent for 10-20 years now, both parties are in the trend - but it was definitely started by Republicans going back to the 90s under Gingrich, the Tea Party in the 2010s, and most recently Trumpism the incentives of the system reward trying to gain control of the system by demonstrating how the party in power failed - then compromise and give the party in power points