We need more than two viable political parties

[BlackSand]

because in truth, all of the people in Washington are various shades of purple. To get to Washington however they have to wear an Overcoat that is either blue or red. I would predict a little hesitation in joining a third or even fourth party if it meant they got to keep their job.

That's pretty much why neither term limits nor a third party would make a significant change anyway.

You can change the person behind the desk,
but all the people outside the door doing just about everything,
aren't going anywhere, unless it's across the hall to work for someone else.

.

 

[candycorn]

because in truth, all of the people in Washington are various shades of purple. To get to Washington however they have to wear an Overcoat that is either blue or red. I would predict a little hesitation in joining a third or even fourth party if it meant they got to keep their job.

That's pretty much why neither term limits nor a third party would make a significant change anyway.

You can change the person behind the desk,
but all the people outside the door doing just about everything,
aren't going anywhere, unless it's across the hall to work for someone else.

.

that is another reason I do not support term limits… Because the actors are going to act the same way regardless of their names.

If we changed the structure of the Congress to where each house had to have a floor vote on what the other house passed, you would see some law makers break with the party leader ship instead of allowing the Senate majority leader or the speaker of the house to pocket veto bills.

 

[cnm]

The problem isn’t a lack of parties, the problem is the ignorance and apathy of the American people; real change will come only when the voters become involved and active at the very local level.

No, real change happens when the legislature reflects the nation, which will not happen until you have proportional representation.

 

[Pogo]

The problem isn’t a lack of parties, the problem is the ignorance and apathy of the American people; real change will come only when the voters become involved and active at the very local level.

And again, right back to the Duopoly and its pimp the Electoral College.
There's little reason for voters to get involved where a single party dresses up in alternate red and blue colours and pretends it's two different things.

 

[BlackSand]

that is another reason I do not support term limits… Because the actors are going to act the same way regardless of their names.

If we changed the structure of the Congress to where each house had to have a floor vote on what the other house passed, you would see some law makers break with the party leader ship instead of allowing the Senate majority leader or the speaker of the house to pocket veto bills.

I understand what you are saying, and I see where that could serve a purpose.
That's just something we disagree on.

It's my opinion that the Founding Fathers actually created a system in the Federal Government that made it extremely hard to pass anything.
To pass legislation at all, members had to cooperate, and that was to ensure there was more overwhelming support for anything.
Things that lawmakers couldn't muster enough support for, were then reserved for the States, or the People.

In fact, I would be happier if they went back fixed a pile of the garbage they have passed over the last century ... But that isn't happening either.

.

 

[Polishprince]

The problem isn’t a lack of parties, the problem is the ignorance and apathy of the American people; real change will come only when the voters become involved and active at the very local level.

And again, right back to the Duopoly and its pimp the Electoral College.
There's little reason for voters to get involved where a single party dresses up in alternate red and blue colours and pretends it's two different things.

So you really don't think there is any difference between Donald J. Trump and Sleepy ******* Joe ? Or between Mike Pence and the Hoe?

 

[Sunsettommy]

THIS Republic runs on Electoral Votes, not political parties, the one with the most EC votes is the winner

No, the presidential election does.

That is what I meant, but surely that was obvious since ONLY Presidential candidates get EC votes.

I was reacting to post one statement, this in particular:

The Republican party has been hijacked by Trumpism. The far left is attempting to take over the Democratic party.
I suggest the Trump cult start their own political party and the far left start their own party.

To me he is talking about new parties formed, to avoid more future trumps and Biden's choices.

Political Parties don't win EC votes, Presidential candidates do.

 

[zaangalewa]

We need more than two viable political parties.

Hitler formed a 3rd party (national socialist party) (NAZI) and they won with 36% of the vote...an honest vote.

The rest is history.

That's bullshit. Germany always had a pluralistic system, which is far from the English doctrine "The winner takes it all". The reasons why and the facts how the Austrian Hitler was able to overtake the power in Germany is much more complex, than this result of protest voters against the establishment. It were by the way in November 1932 33.1% (last fully free elections) and in March 1933 43.9%. Afterwards it had been 95%-99%.

 

[Sunsettommy]

We need more than two viable political parties. The Republican party has been hijacked by Trumpism. The far left is attempting to take over the Democratic party.
I suggest the Trump cult start their own political party and the far left start their own party. Both groups are absolute idiots. What if both idiot groups came together to form one party; The Ultra-Idiot Party.
How has our wonderful country created these disgusting groups of people.

We've always needed more than two party (singular intentional since that's all it is) but as long as we have the bizzaro Electoral College system it can never happen. The EC keeps it there.

The EC is what keeps America a Republic.

The Founding Fathers didn't mandate any political parties. to exist.

The Atlantic

America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared

JANUARY 2, 2020

Lee Drutman
Author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop

Excerpt:

George Washington’s farewell address is often remembered for its warning against hyper-partisanship: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” John Adams, Washington’s successor, similarly worried that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”

America has now become that dreaded divided republic. The existential menace is as foretold, and it is breaking the system of government the Founders put in place with the Constitution.

Though America’s two-party system goes back centuries, the threat today is new and different because the two parties are now truly distinct, a development that I date to the 2010 midterms. Until then, the two parties contained enough overlapping multitudes within them that the sort of bargaining and coalition-building natural to multiparty democracy could work inside the two-party system. No more. America now has just two parties, and that’s it.

LINK

I don't need a link, I know how Washington felt about it and it's got nothing to do with my point. Political parties sprang up immediately after Washington, lots of them for the next half-century, and once the Civil War boiled that down to two, THAT is where the Electoral College starts perpetuating the Duopoly.

NONE of us on this board are old enough to remember a time when a POTUS election was not about voting for the lesser of two evils, or in other words voting not FOR X but to BLOCK Y. And that's because the EC system demands that Duopoly, without which nobody could hit 270 or whatever the then-current number would be. Voters in so-called "red" or so-called "blue" states --- two concepts which would not exist at all without the Duopoly and its pimp the Electoral College --- have no reason to vote at all. Your state is going red, or blue, and there ain't ****-all you can do about it. Go ahead and vote 3rd, 4th, 5th party, it will be ignored, along with everybody else in your state who voted blue or red respectively.

And that means the same thing as the old joke about the campers encountering a bear --- "I don't need to outrun that bear; I only need to outrun YOU". Neither side of the Duopoly coin has any incentive to present a quality candidate, since they're already in cahoots with the other side. And that means all they have to do is trot out a candidate who can point to his opponent and say, "at least I'm not THAT guy". And then we get yet another choice between Bad and Worse where half the country doesn't bother to vote because what's the point.

Then add the complete collusion of the so-called "Commission on Presidential Debates" comprised specifically of that same Duopoly, which sets the rules for those debates and thus ensures that nobody outside the Duopoly will ever get in them.

Matter of fact the whole strategy of any third party --- Johnson/Weld, Stein, Nader, Anderon, Wallace, Thurmond... is NOT to win the required 270, but to siphon off enough Electoral votes that nobody else does either, sending the election into the House, and thus bypassing the electorate altogether.

Good grief!

You are stuck on political parties, it is the people not the organization getting the votes, try here for the only two times in history the House had to end the deadlock.

LINK


===


The EC vote numbers are based on POPULATION, NOT political parties, there was less than 140 total in the first election.

===

House with 438
Senate with 100

Current number of Electors are 538, which means win 270 will do it, nothing to do with number of political parties.

 

[zaangalewa]

The problem isn’t a lack of parties ...

I'm not sure about this. In Germany parties are able to grow and to die. That's transparent. In the USA grow and die only political streams within your parties, which perhaps overtake a complete party (key word "Trumpism"). This looks to be more intransparent. And this is perhaps more frustrating for the members of the parties and for their voters, who may question: "What do I really vote for?"

 

[Pogo]

We need more than two viable political parties. The Republican party has been hijacked by Trumpism. The far left is attempting to take over the Democratic party.
I suggest the Trump cult start their own political party and the far left start their own party. Both groups are absolute idiots. What if both idiot groups came together to form one party; The Ultra-Idiot Party.
How has our wonderful country created these disgusting groups of people.

We've always needed more than two party (singular intentional since that's all it is) but as long as we have the bizzaro Electoral College system it can never happen. The EC keeps it there.

The EC is what keeps America a Republic.

The Founding Fathers didn't mandate any political parties. to exist.

The Atlantic

America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared

JANUARY 2, 2020

Lee Drutman
Author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop

Excerpt:

George Washington’s farewell address is often remembered for its warning against hyper-partisanship: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” John Adams, Washington’s successor, similarly worried that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”

America has now become that dreaded divided republic. The existential menace is as foretold, and it is breaking the system of government the Founders put in place with the Constitution.

Though America’s two-party system goes back centuries, the threat today is new and different because the two parties are now truly distinct, a development that I date to the 2010 midterms. Until then, the two parties contained enough overlapping multitudes within them that the sort of bargaining and coalition-building natural to multiparty democracy could work inside the two-party system. No more. America now has just two parties, and that’s it.

LINK

I don't need a link, I know how Washington felt about it and it's got nothing to do with my point. Political parties sprang up immediately after Washington, lots of them for the next half-century, and once the Civil War boiled that down to two, THAT is where the Electoral College starts perpetuating the Duopoly.

NONE of us on this board are old enough to remember a time when a POTUS election was not about voting for the lesser of two evils, or in other words voting not FOR X but to BLOCK Y. And that's because the EC system demands that Duopoly, without which nobody could hit 270 or whatever the then-current number would be. Voters in so-called "red" or so-called "blue" states --- two concepts which would not exist at all without the Duopoly and its pimp the Electoral College --- have no reason to vote at all. Your state is going red, or blue, and there ain't ****-all you can do about it. Go ahead and vote 3rd, 4th, 5th party, it will be ignored, along with everybody else in your state who voted blue or red respectively.

And that means the same thing as the old joke about the campers encountering a bear --- "I don't need to outrun that bear; I only need to outrun YOU". Neither side of the Duopoly coin has any incentive to present a quality candidate, since they're already in cahoots with the other side. And that means all they have to do is trot out a candidate who can point to his opponent and say, "at least I'm not THAT guy". And then we get yet another choice between Bad and Worse where half the country doesn't bother to vote because what's the point.

Then add the complete collusion of the so-called "Commission on Presidential Debates" comprised specifically of that same Duopoly, which sets the rules for those debates and thus ensures that nobody outside the Duopoly will ever get in them.

Matter of fact the whole strategy of any third party --- Johnson/Weld, Stein, Nader, Anderon, Wallace, Thurmond... is NOT to win the required 270, but to siphon off enough Electoral votes that nobody else does either, sending the election into the House, and thus bypassing the electorate altogether.

Good grief!

You are stuck on political parties, it is the people not the organization getting the votes, try here for the only two times in history the House had to end the deadlock.

LINK


===


The EC vote numbers are based on POPULATION, NOT political parties, there was less than 140 total in the first election.

===

House with 438
Senate with 100

Current number of Electors are 538, which means win 270 will do it, nothing to do with number of political parties.

Yyyyyyeeaaahhhh ummm..... .that's what this thread is ABOUT ---- political parties. Hello?

Apparently you didn't read the topic any more than you read my points because nothing you posted here is relevant.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Multiple parties isn’t a panacea for political discord, disfunction, and gridlock – see, e.g., Germany and Italy.

 

[Andylusion]

We need more than two viable political parties. The Republican party has been hijacked by Trumpism. The far left is attempting to take over the Democratic party.
I suggest the Trump cult start their own political party and the far left start their own party. Both groups are absolute idiots. What if both idiot groups came together to form one party; The Ultra-Idiot Party.
How has our wonderful country created these disgusting groups of people.

So I reject that suggestion, and I suggest the left-wingers with their ideological socialists start their own party separate from the Democrats.

 

[Andylusion]

Multiple parties isn’t a panacea for political discord, disfunction, and gridlock – see, e.g., Germany and Italy.

Yeah, go listen to political pundits in the UK today, that have multiple parties, and tell me how they are fairing any different... better or worse, than the US system. It's identical. They have the same complaints. The same problems. The same everything. Everyone points fingers at everyone, and all the citizens complain about corruption and backroom deals.

I don't see any difference.

There have been times where I wish I had gotten a recording of those videos, and just replaced their parties with "Republican" and "Democrat" and then post it here, and see if anyone anywhere realized the debate wasn't in the US, because it sounds identical to the talking points we see on this forum. No difference at all.

There is no Utopian system, and having multiple parties, isn't going to usher in an era of political bliss.

 

[cnm]

There is no Utopian system, and having multiple parties, isn't going to usher in an era of political bliss.

The exceptional response to the realisation their dysfunctional system has them captured.

 

[jackflash]

We need more than two viable political parties. The Republican party has been hijacked by Trumpism. The far left is attempting to take over the Democratic party.
I suggest the Trump cult start their own political party and the far left start their own party. Both groups are absolute idiots. What if both idiot groups came together to form one party; The Ultra-Idiot Party.
How has our wonderful country created these disgusting groups of people.

@ EM; the problem would still persist even with two totally new political parties. The problem appears to be with human nature & its infatuation with power & control(PC). Until humanity can figure out a way to eliminate narcissism & cure sociopaths & psychopaths not to mention the more common garden variety of issues like greed, envy, jealousy & laziness we are pretty well stuck in the gear we are currently in.

 

[Sunsettommy]

We need more than two viable political parties. The Republican party has been hijacked by Trumpism. The far left is attempting to take over the Democratic party.
I suggest the Trump cult start their own political party and the far left start their own party. Both groups are absolute idiots. What if both idiot groups came together to form one party; The Ultra-Idiot Party.
How has our wonderful country created these disgusting groups of people.

We've always needed more than two party (singular intentional since that's all it is) but as long as we have the bizzaro Electoral College system it can never happen. The EC keeps it there.

The EC is what keeps America a Republic.

The Founding Fathers didn't mandate any political parties. to exist.

The Atlantic

America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared

JANUARY 2, 2020

Lee Drutman
Author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop

Excerpt:

George Washington’s farewell address is often remembered for its warning against hyper-partisanship: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” John Adams, Washington’s successor, similarly worried that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”

America has now become that dreaded divided republic. The existential menace is as foretold, and it is breaking the system of government the Founders put in place with the Constitution.

Though America’s two-party system goes back centuries, the threat today is new and different because the two parties are now truly distinct, a development that I date to the 2010 midterms. Until then, the two parties contained enough overlapping multitudes within them that the sort of bargaining and coalition-building natural to multiparty democracy could work inside the two-party system. No more. America now has just two parties, and that’s it.

LINK

I don't need a link, I know how Washington felt about it and it's got nothing to do with my point. Political parties sprang up immediately after Washington, lots of them for the next half-century, and once the Civil War boiled that down to two, THAT is where the Electoral College starts perpetuating the Duopoly.

NONE of us on this board are old enough to remember a time when a POTUS election was not about voting for the lesser of two evils, or in other words voting not FOR X but to BLOCK Y. And that's because the EC system demands that Duopoly, without which nobody could hit 270 or whatever the then-current number would be. Voters in so-called "red" or so-called "blue" states --- two concepts which would not exist at all without the Duopoly and its pimp the Electoral College --- have no reason to vote at all. Your state is going red, or blue, and there ain't ****-all you can do about it. Go ahead and vote 3rd, 4th, 5th party, it will be ignored, along with everybody else in your state who voted blue or red respectively.

And that means the same thing as the old joke about the campers encountering a bear --- "I don't need to outrun that bear; I only need to outrun YOU". Neither side of the Duopoly coin has any incentive to present a quality candidate, since they're already in cahoots with the other side. And that means all they have to do is trot out a candidate who can point to his opponent and say, "at least I'm not THAT guy". And then we get yet another choice between Bad and Worse where half the country doesn't bother to vote because what's the point.

Then add the complete collusion of the so-called "Commission on Presidential Debates" comprised specifically of that same Duopoly, which sets the rules for those debates and thus ensures that nobody outside the Duopoly will ever get in them.

Matter of fact the whole strategy of any third party --- Johnson/Weld, Stein, Nader, Anderon, Wallace, Thurmond... is NOT to win the required 270, but to siphon off enough Electoral votes that nobody else does either, sending the election into the House, and thus bypassing the electorate altogether.

Good grief!

You are stuck on political parties, it is the people not the organization getting the votes, try here for the only two times in history the House had to end the deadlock.

LINK


===


The EC vote numbers are based on POPULATION, NOT political parties, there was less than 140 total in the first election.

===

House with 438
Senate with 100

Current number of Electors are 538, which means win 270 will do it, nothing to do with number of political parties.

Yyyyyyeeaaahhhh ummm..... .that's what this thread is ABOUT ---- political parties. Hello?

Apparently you didn't read the topic any more than you read my points because nothing you posted here is relevant.

Another sidestepping reply, you used the name of an existing President for one of the parties, that opens the door....

 

[Pogo]

We need more than two viable political parties. The Republican party has been hijacked by Trumpism. The far left is attempting to take over the Democratic party.
I suggest the Trump cult start their own political party and the far left start their own party. Both groups are absolute idiots. What if both idiot groups came together to form one party; The Ultra-Idiot Party.
How has our wonderful country created these disgusting groups of people.

We've always needed more than two party (singular intentional since that's all it is) but as long as we have the bizzaro Electoral College system it can never happen. The EC keeps it there.

The EC is what keeps America a Republic.

The Founding Fathers didn't mandate any political parties. to exist.

The Atlantic

America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared

JANUARY 2, 2020

Lee Drutman
Author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop

Excerpt:

George Washington’s farewell address is often remembered for its warning against hyper-partisanship: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” John Adams, Washington’s successor, similarly worried that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”

America has now become that dreaded divided republic. The existential menace is as foretold, and it is breaking the system of government the Founders put in place with the Constitution.

Though America’s two-party system goes back centuries, the threat today is new and different because the two parties are now truly distinct, a development that I date to the 2010 midterms. Until then, the two parties contained enough overlapping multitudes within them that the sort of bargaining and coalition-building natural to multiparty democracy could work inside the two-party system. No more. America now has just two parties, and that’s it.

LINK

I don't need a link, I know how Washington felt about it and it's got nothing to do with my point. Political parties sprang up immediately after Washington, lots of them for the next half-century, and once the Civil War boiled that down to two, THAT is where the Electoral College starts perpetuating the Duopoly.

NONE of us on this board are old enough to remember a time when a POTUS election was not about voting for the lesser of two evils, or in other words voting not FOR X but to BLOCK Y. And that's because the EC system demands that Duopoly, without which nobody could hit 270 or whatever the then-current number would be. Voters in so-called "red" or so-called "blue" states --- two concepts which would not exist at all without the Duopoly and its pimp the Electoral College --- have no reason to vote at all. Your state is going red, or blue, and there ain't ****-all you can do about it. Go ahead and vote 3rd, 4th, 5th party, it will be ignored, along with everybody else in your state who voted blue or red respectively.

And that means the same thing as the old joke about the campers encountering a bear --- "I don't need to outrun that bear; I only need to outrun YOU". Neither side of the Duopoly coin has any incentive to present a quality candidate, since they're already in cahoots with the other side. And that means all they have to do is trot out a candidate who can point to his opponent and say, "at least I'm not THAT guy". And then we get yet another choice between Bad and Worse where half the country doesn't bother to vote because what's the point.

Then add the complete collusion of the so-called "Commission on Presidential Debates" comprised specifically of that same Duopoly, which sets the rules for those debates and thus ensures that nobody outside the Duopoly will ever get in them.

Matter of fact the whole strategy of any third party --- Johnson/Weld, Stein, Nader, Anderon, Wallace, Thurmond... is NOT to win the required 270, but to siphon off enough Electoral votes that nobody else does either, sending the election into the House, and thus bypassing the electorate altogether.

Good grief!

You are stuck on political parties, it is the people not the organization getting the votes, try here for the only two times in history the House had to end the deadlock.

LINK


===


The EC vote numbers are based on POPULATION, NOT political parties, there was less than 140 total in the first election.

===

House with 438
Senate with 100

Current number of Electors are 538, which means win 270 will do it, nothing to do with number of political parties.

Yyyyyyeeaaahhhh ummm..... .that's what this thread is ABOUT ---- political parties. Hello?

Apparently you didn't read the topic any more than you read my points because nothing you posted here is relevant.

Another sidestepping reply, you used the name of an existing President for one of the parties, that opens the door....

BULLSHIT.

I posted in general terms about how the process works (read: doesn't work). *YOU* brought up the names of Washington and Adams, neither of which are "existing" presidents.