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Re: my last opinionated message after witnessing that debate first hand
I think we can all agree that a two party system is far from perfect, and there are very few people that line up exactly with either party from an ideological standpoint. Unfortunately, regardless of how much we would like to see multiple parties, it won't happen on a long-term basis, because for most politicians, the need to stay employed trumps all else.
Put another way, when a third party starts to gain mainstream acceptance, the two parties either change their platform to encourage members of the third party to join them, or the third party supplants one of the two incumbent parties. In politics, numbers are all that matters, and there is an incentive to bend your ideology to vote for someone who can win or to be the party that garners the most votes. Depending upon which force is stronger, one of those two things will inevitably happen.
For example, ideological libertarians have historically voted with the republican party. If the Libertarians were ever to start to really pull a lot of votes from the GOP, you can bet that either the GOP platform would change (back) to reflect a more libertarian point of view, or the Libertarian party would suck up the republicans and the Grand Ol' Party would fade away. Neither party would let them split their vote and get their asses handed to them over an extended period of time.
The system is effectively rigged in favor of having two dominant parties. There's nothing to prevent other parties from forming in the technical sense, but there's not a lot of incentive to have more than two when it comes time to winning elections -- if your party is in the clear minority, you find a way to compete, and that usually means taking steps to attract the members of the other minority party that is also getting its ass kicked.
I think we can all agree that a two party system is far from perfect, and there are very few people that line up exactly with either party from an ideological standpoint. Unfortunately, regardless of how much we would like to see multiple parties, it won't happen on a long-term basis, because for most politicians, the need to stay employed trumps all else.
Put another way, when a third party starts to gain mainstream acceptance, the two parties either change their platform to encourage members of the third party to join them, or the third party supplants one of the two incumbent parties. In politics, numbers are all that matters, and there is an incentive to bend your ideology to vote for someone who can win or to be the party that garners the most votes. Depending upon which force is stronger, one of those two things will inevitably happen.
For example, ideological libertarians have historically voted with the republican party. If the Libertarians were ever to start to really pull a lot of votes from the GOP, you can bet that either the GOP platform would change (back) to reflect a more libertarian point of view, or the Libertarian party would suck up the republicans and the Grand Ol' Party would fade away. Neither party would let them split their vote and get their asses handed to them over an extended period of time.
The system is effectively rigged in favor of having two dominant parties. There's nothing to prevent other parties from forming in the technical sense, but there's not a lot of incentive to have more than two when it comes time to winning elections -- if your party is in the clear minority, you find a way to compete, and that usually means taking steps to attract the members of the other minority party that is also getting its ass kicked.
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