US Two Party System Under Scrutiny: Why America’s 2-party system is on a collision course with our constitutional democracy

There was a time, several decades ago, when America’s two-party system was praised for its moderation. Unlike European parliamentary democracies where “dogmatic ideological parties” of Europe thrived, America’s winner-take-all electoral system seemed to reward and therefore encourage parties and candidates with broad national appeal. No party, it was argued, could simply give up on half of the electorate. Similarly, no party could convincingly win a majority by putting forward extremist anti-system candidates far outside the mainstream.

Obviously something has gone wrong with this theory. Instead of being rejected as outside the mainstream, Donald Trump, an extremist anti-system candidate, simply redefined what “mainstream” is for almost half of the electorate.

 And today, both American parties regularly forsake about half the electorate. Or even more than half, really.

Consider some basic numbers: Trump was the choice of 14 million people who voted in the Republican primaries. But in a nation where 230.6 million Americans are eligible to vote, that’s 6 percent of eligible voters. In the 2017 German election, the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 5.9 million votes. In a nation of 61.5 eligible voters, that’s almost 10 percent. 

In short, when voters in both countries were given the full range of options, Donald Trump was less popular in the United States than the AfD was in Germany. 

But in the German system, AfD can be kept out of power by other parties forming a coalition. In the United States, Trump’s 6 percent support gave him a major party’s nomination, which gave him instant legitimacy. And because he was a Republican candidate and because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton, 63 million Americans cast a vote for him — enough to catapult him to the presidency.

Sixty-three million is a lot. But that’s also just 27 percent of eligible voters nationwide. Likewise, 63 million of Americans voted for to send Republicans to the US House, also just 27 percent of the eligible voters. In many cases, these were not even affirmative votes for Republicans, but votes against Democrats. 

I raise these numbers to point out that, contrary to claims that American political parties have to appeal broadly to win, they only need to win a quarter of the voting-age population to gain unified control of government in Washington, and their presidential nominee needs to win far less than that. Lest you think I’m picking on Republicans, the same was true (roughly) of Democrats in 2008.

Part of this is because unlike in Germany, where voter turnout hovers closer to 80 percent, American voter turnout is usually in the mid-50s in presidential elections, and closer to 40 percent in midterms (an international laggard). Many US voters don’t bother to vote because neither of the two parties appeals to them, or because they live in a safe state where their vote doesn’t matter, or because by comparative standards, there are significant hurdles to voting in the United States (such as more complicated registration, or voting being on a workday instead of on a weekend).

In short, there is nothing structural about a two-party system that guarantees moderate parties that have to appeal broadly. We just got lucky. Well, sort of — the past wasn’t so great either.

The obvious challenge then becomes how to shift the axis of political conflict back away from a battle over the nature of America and its political institutions, and to more of a non-existential “normal politics” argument over public policy and its implementation. The answer has to involve somehow scrambling the current party system, so that being a Democrat or being a Republican is not wrapped up in these fundamental zero-sum questions about the basis of American democracy.

This is why I’m an enthusiastic supporter of efforts to expand ranked-choice voting, which are gaining steam, and of more incipient efforts to move our elections away from zero-sum winner-take-all, single-plurality winner affairs toward proportional, multi-winner elections. This would give us a more fluid party system, more in line with our constitutional design.

This means changing our electoral institutions. I recognize this is a major undertaking, and broad electoral system change is never easy. But at this point, anything less seems like taking buckets to a flood when we know the levees have broken.

There are big, important conversations to have here on the best way forward. But first, we have to admit that we have a problem. And the problem right now is that the two-party system is trapped in a doom loop that it can’t get out of on its own without significant collateral damage.

Read more: Why America’s 2-party system is on a collision course with our constitutional democracy - Vox

US Presidential elections High time US joins majority of world’s democracies and gives multi-party system a chance

USA: The Two Party System Has failed And Is Corrupt

Former Republican governor of New Mexico, who has just been nominated for president on the Libertarian Party ticket. He also  ran four years ago and got 1 percent of the popular vote.

This year his running mate is William Weld, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts. Jill is Jill Stein, a Massachusetts physician who ran for president four years ago and got about half a percent of the vote as the Green Party candidate.

Johnson and Weld want more personal freedom, less government and no foreign entanglements. Stein sounds a lot like Bernie Sanders in her dislike of the two-party system and like Sanders and consumer advocate Ralph Nader in her disdain for corporate power and worry over climate change. 

With Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton seemingly locked in a battle to be the most hated presidential candidate in history, and Bernie Sanders fighting the system for the Democratic nomination, many voters are feeling.

America is stepping in to fill the void that the major parties ‒ and the mainstream media ‒ have created this election season. 

The grass is always greener on the other side, and Americans often denounce our polarized two-party system in favor of three or more parties, with good reason. Our current arrangement deters us from voting for third-party candidates, as we are loath to waste a vote.

Crossing the aisle is a political liability for lawmakers, who are forced to vote in lockstep with their party. Consensus is admittedly difficult with many opposing coalitions in countries with multi-party structures, and the formation of too many parties must be prevented; this could easily by achieved by requiring parties to maintain a percentage of the vote in order to remain active.

The US could have the best of both worlds by establishing a proportional system in order to give minority parties a fighting chance, which would in turn keep the majority parties on their toes.

Perhaps it would motivate them to work harder for their constituents, lest they be voted out in favor of a third party contender.

It’s high time for America to join the majority of the world’s democracies by giving a multi-party system a chance.

EU-Digest

US Political System : "It's time for America to get rid of the two-party system" - by Bart McPherson

The article "Who's Setting the Agenda?" in the Press-Register on April 9 has some comical aspects. It seems both national political parties are in a tizzy over their partial loss of control over the elections. Their whining leaves one cold.

What is there about the way politics in this country has "progressed" over the past four or five decades that makes one believe we should preserve the prerogatives of the two political parties? The fact that Barack Obama and John McCain were judged to be the best two choices out of 300 million Americans tells you something about how effectively they pick and promote top candidates for the top job in the world.

It is time the election of presidents is taken out of the exclusive hands of the two entrenched political parties.

There are two major developments today that have the political parties, as well as much of the national media, nervous. They see a possibility that those entities may be losing the enormous power that they have had in our national elections.

First, the dedication of people on both sides of the fence to get more involved, financially and otherwise, in national elections with all that that implies for the future of politics.

Second, and possibly even more important, is the developing monster called the internet. It seems that people do not yet realize what a powerful weapon has been dropped in their laps. Never before in history has it been possible for literally millions of people to message their politicians instantly.

It staggers the imagination as to the possibilities if the people get organized and use their new power to put their opinions before their politicians instantly and in stunning mass. Politicians must and will react immediately to such inputs from their constituents.

It is entirely possible that we are entering a new age where the people, for the first time, can be heard from directly in a most powerful way.

Politicians heretofore have had it made – if they can satisfy their political party and their media supporters they have little to fear from the people. Voters have felt they have had little influence on their government. Can that be about to change?

Read more: It's time for America to get rid of the two-party system | AL.com

US Presidential Election: Why Most Votes Don’t Count - by Jilly Gagnon

At this point in the election, there are only two reasonable explanations for being “undecided:”
1.) You’re an idiot.
2.) You find both options on offer so profoundly distasteful that you can’t bring yourself to support either one.

Anyone who’s spent much time reading up on the state of the U.S. public education system knows there’s not much we can do about #1.

Hell, anyone who’s seen even a few seconds of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” knows there’s no hope for the #1s.

After all, who’s going to spend the time educating themselves about the minutiae of the political process and/or the candidates when you can rubberneck at train wrecks 24 hours a day without ever leaving your couch?

If you think I’m a cynic for saying so, let me just remind you that in a recent poll 15% of Ohio Republicans voiced their belief that Mitt Romney was primarily responsible for killing Osama Bin Laden, and another 47% had no clue who killed the guy. It’s almost enough to make you think back wistfully to the days of voter tests.

But fixing #2 is a snarlier beast. It doesn’t take Canadian (or British, or any other Parliamentarian democracy-ish) citizenship to wonder why in God’s name we’re still stuck with a two-party system down here (and therefore only two options on offer every four years).

Just ask Ron Paul fans, or all those annoying folks clogging my twitter feed with demands to “let Gary Johnson debate!”  As my editor so artfully put it this week, “why, in a country that has literally thousands of cola options, is politics an either/or for you guys?”

The worst part of it is that voters of all stripes agree: the Electoral College is outdated, impedes democracy, and is generally unnecessary. But since it’s written into our constitution (which requires 75% of states to agree to any changes therein), it’s never going away. The Electoral College gives undue weight to states with relatively small populations (because no matter what, they have at least 3 electoral votes), meaning candidates can’t totally ignore those states’ specific needs if they want to win the presidency, which means that those states will probably always band together to block any effort to move to a direct-election process for the presidency.

So we’re facing yet another election cycle where not only are there only 2 viable candidates, it’s a realistic possibility that one – Romney – could win the popular vote, but not the presidency. Which leads to more entrenched legislative gridlock, which leads to very little ever getting done.
Now THAT’S democracy in action.

Read more: US Presidential Election: Why Most Votes Don’t Count | canada.com

"Politics at the Neanderthal level "- Will U.S. Election Madness Ever End?- by Ben Cohen

Watching the presidential election take shape in modern times is a painful process. I have been following U.S. elections closely for 12 years and each time have been astonished at the spectacle.

While half the country lives with chronic food insecurity, billions of dollars are poured into strategists, analysts, makeup specialists, advertisers, planners, managers, advisers and hangers on, all in the name of electing a faceless politician who sounds and looks exactly the same as their predecessors (the only exception being Obama's election in '08).

Gore, Kerry, Bush, McCain, Romney, Gingrich, etc. all blend into one grey mass of old white people with almost identical policies and identical rhetoric. While there is still a difference between the Democrats and the Republicans (one party is sane and the other isn't), their platforms vary only slightly in the scheme of things. Right now, those variations are important, particularly when the economy is so vulnerable. Electing a free market, deficit hawk into the White House this year could literally tank the economy completely. Having a vaguely Keynesian president has been the only thing propping the economy up for the past 3 1/2 years, and it would be a very wise choice to keep him in office.

But in the long term, a two-party duopoly funded by exactly the same financial institutions and beholden to the same corporate interests cannot be sustained. The public knows the election is a gigantic clown show, and that's why voter participation has declined year after year for decades. The scripted events, sound byte debating points and relentless image based advertising has an effect on the public -- they know that nothing will change, that no politician is telling the truth, and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

Note EU-Digest: this is politics at the Neanderthal level...
 
For more: Ben Cohen: Will U.S. Election Madness Ever End?

Counter Currents.com: US elections - The Formula For Winning In November - by Timothy Gatto

For the complete report from Counter Currents.com click on this link

"I’m sure that everyone has heard the same argument put forward by the Democrats at least a hundred times or more; “A vote for a third-party candidate does nothing but insure a McCain win” (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). If I hear this ridiculous argument one more time I will probably need stitches in my tongue from biting it.

First of all, the premise behind the argument is irrational. The worst thing about advancing this kind of black/white, either/or argument is that the argument becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. When people advance the idea that only a Democrat or a Republican can win a Presidential election, it helps to reinforce that idea in people’s minds. The more this argument is echoed throughout America, the more people believe it. There are a number of reasons why the next president doesn’t have to belong to the duopoly that has taken this nation to the brink of disaster.