[tab:a563e6967a]From the age of 13 (and a half, if you must know), I have undertaken an intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and educational journey through the jungle that is politics in the quest for understanding the truth and gaining the wisdom necessary to determine the correct application of logic and enthusiasm in potentially political situations and in debate, formal orotherwise.

[tab:a563e6967a]On this journey, I have encountered many fellow travellers who have claimed that there is a set electoral process called the "Two-Party System," as though the Republicans and Democrats are the two dominant political parties by design and not appointment or voter identification. I challenge that notion.

[tab:a563e6967a]I believe that instead of a system in place, the reason the Democrats and Republicans are so dominant not due to the implimentation of a system, but rather the consequences of the voting process. More people vote for these two parties than the other parties, which are commonly referred to as "third parties." I think it is as simple as that. If the citizenry changed its voting habits, other parties would be in power. I also understand all the money involved and the media, along with the other factors, but there is no "system." There is only the behaviors of the voters themselves.

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Kind of... but I would not say there is no system.
It's kind of like an oligopoly in business. The entry barriers are extremely high... thus the costs are high and the chance of marketing a new brand nearly impossible. But unlike many business-world examples, the party systems barriers are mostly artificial.
Plus the main way to transfer information is the mass media... which, if you haven't noticed... does not ever show third party candidates. They have policies about equal time to the parties... interestingly two parties.
While the ultimate reason for lack of third party support is the voters, it is not simply an accident and certainly not a result of all parties being equally out there.
It is as much a function of voter laziness as voter choice. The big parties know voters are lazy. The businesses they are in bed with know it. Voters know it (that's why they think a vote for third party is a wasted vote)...
But that's not to say the deck is not artificially stacked in favor of the big parties... The question I have is "Why does it have to be a function of money?" It doesn't. But it is. We are a civilization raised with consumerism as a primary mode of identity. Our politics is consumerism.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Sorry, folks, but attributing the dominance of two parties in American politics to the media or to voters misses the powerful structural factors built into the system itself. If "mass media" were the controlling factor, one would expect to find that historically multi-party voting was more common. Not true.

The existence of single member Congressional districts and the Electoral College are powerful structural barriers to the development of third (and fourth, and fifth, etc) political parties in the United States. Winner-take-all elections, combined with legislative districts based on geography largely assure that a national two party system will emerge.

That may be the case, but voters can change that because in elections the voters determine the results. Maybe there would still be a two-party system, but the two parties might be different from the current two parties. Maybe those two parties would be Libertarian and Green Parties (for example). If more people who vote do it from their true opinions (most would say "from/with their hearts), there would be a different political landscape.

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Granted, but I didn't think that was the issue being discussed. There is no question that the Democratic party does not stand for the same principles it represented in 1928, nor that the Republicans don't represent the same principles it represented in 1860. I'm not sure that's a very profound observation.

Furthermore, to claim that the parties represent fail to accurately represent their constituencies is rather odd, especially in view of the countervailing complaint that politicians fail to stand up for principles and cater to what they believe voters want.

In fact, American political parties are extremely responsive to voters' views within the structural constraints of the electoral system. What you apparently don't care for is that one party isn't sufficiently responsive to YOUR views.
But since you apparently exist at one end of the ideological dimension of your party, efforts to move it in that direction are most likely to make it even less likely to win elections.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm at the left liberal end of my political party and frequently feel the world would be better served if the Democratic party more closely represented my views. However, I'm also realistic enough to recognize that to the extent that they do so, the result is most likely to be to elect Republicans.

If you'd like to try a mental experiment, imagine a city with two pharmacies. Why is it that the two pharmacies are most likely to be located across the street from one another? When you understand that elementary economic principle, named after a fellow named Hotelling, you'll understand why political parties in the United States tend to gravitate toward the middle of the ideological spectrum.

However, I'd urge you not to change your mind. I'm looking forward eagerly to a landslide for the Democrats in 2008.

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"To announce that..we are to stand by the president whether right or wrong..is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

I never made the claim that Democrats and Republicans have shifted positions over time. Direct me to the part of my post that lead you to believe that, and I will try to reword it so that you better understand what I meant.

Politicians don't cater to what people want. They do whatever they want, and then when it comes time to campaign, they re-characterize their actions to make themselves look better than they actually were. An example of this that affects the Republican party as well as the Democrat Party is the issue of illegal immigration. If their actions represented the desires of the voters, there would already be a wall 20 feet high across the full length of the southern boarder, but in the minds of the politicians, there is a dissonance that is leaning away from US citizens and in favor of Mexican self-smugglers. Almost all of Congress, in addition to Bush himself, would have all 12+ million illegals legalized instantly because they all think that the immigrants would see who passed what legislation and then give them a huge voter base. The problem is that there are still more citizens than there would be amnestized illegals, so it would still get the Congressmen ousted from office in the next election. Therefore, Bush does these very, very, very minor enforcement operations that are so superficial that to say that he is doing anything, anything, is a bit of an overstatement. The aggravating problem here is that they are even considering the opinions of illegal immigrants whatsoever, and what's more, they kind of want to favor the illegals over the citizens. Bush is butt-buddies with whoever the Mexican president is and he treats his fellow citizens like children, or worse.

That is why I say that we must break the two-party system, which might only be a complex illusion, and just "vote for someone else." None of the "two-party" candidates that I remember in my lifetime have really been good. Kerry was just worse than Bush. Bush wasn't a good choice. Gore was a worse candidate than Bush was, but only by a little. Bush wasn't a good candidate, and I wouldn't be shocked if he, himself, was surprised taht he was the Republican pick. Dole was ineffectual, but I don't remember much about his policy proposal. Clinton just had his special charm that made people not really care what he did, and he knew how to convince people of anything he wanted, so people elected him. Bush Sr., didn't win due to popular opinion of him at the time, and because Clinton smiled more, or something. I've heard that Clinton was among the first, or the first, candidates to address opposing attack ads head on rather than ignore them, so people thought that he had more authority than Bush Sr. Dukakis lost more due to theatrical ad campaigns and his consistent answers about capital punishment. Bush Sr. might have won due in large part to him having been vice president. Al Gore ran in that election, too. Before that, I wasn't born yet, so I don't know about the 1984 election first-hand. All I can say about Ronald Reagan is that he was the best two-term president of the twentieth century, and he is among the top five twentieth century presidents, period, in my book; maybe even top three.

VOTE FOR SOMEBODY/ELSE '08!

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Stop asking the same questions in the "Forum Help" section. Just read this post:

The thread concerned whether third parties were viable in American politics. You appear to have agreed that they are not but then argued that if people voted "their hearts" the two parties would represent relatively extreme positions (libertarians and greens were your examples.) That's a common argument made by ideologues on the extremes of the respective parties, but has virtually no empirical data to support it.

What tends to happen instead is that the two major parties shift their positions over time, but since the bulk of voters are moderate in their views, the two parties tend to move toward the middle, just as pharmacies (and other vendors) move toward the middle of a distribution of population. This tendency tends to upset the ideologues in each party. What they fail to recognize, however, is that most voters do not hold coherent ideologies and even if they did, the electoral rules tend to undermine the creation of highly ideological parties.

Unfortunately, your example of the immigration issue is so full of basic factual errors that it's difficult to respond in a coherent fashion. Suffice to say that each party faces internal divisions with regard to immigration in its own base.

The Republican coalition of business interests and xenophobic social conservatives makes it very difficult for the party to deal with the issue. By the same token, Democrats reliance on a coalition of social liberals and labor unions in their own base makes it equally difficult to deal with the issue. What prevents the issue from creating a realignment is that it is simply not that important to most voters. (Obviously you are an exception.) Polls consistently indicate that immigration is not a hot button issue for most voters and that, while Americans don't like the idea of illegal immigration, most (about 70%) favor policies that would allow citizenship to undocumented workers over time.

It's to their credit that most voters don't believe "building a wall" between the US and Mexico is a realistic solution to the problem.

Finally, the notion that any politician, even one with as limited an intellect as the current occupant of the White House, would favor undocumented aliens over voters or that politicians see the 12+ million undocumented aliens (who tend to be highly concentrated in a few areas) as a major voting bloc suggests that they can't do the math. And politicians are very good at arithmetic.

Again, feel free to encourage people to "break the two-party system." It's an opinion that is common among young voters. Oddly, though, the parties are pretty immune to such challenges, at least for the last 200+ years.

Your post suggests your personal experience with American politics is pretty limited. At least that is what one must conclude from your commentary regarding the last several presidential elections. That's not crippling if you would take the time to do a little reading. Good luck.

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"To announce that..we are to stand by the president whether right or wrong..is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

I have argued no such thing! The two examples that I used were just examples, and I said as much in the post. You seemed to think that those examples meant anything other than place holders as examples. You mischaracterized my opinion based on that misinterpretation, and then argued against your false assumptions. That, I have learned, is called a "straw man" argument. I am not an ideologue either, and anyone who knows my history knows that I am not one to just "follow the leader."

Well, they do. They want to legalize all of them. Everything they say to the contrary is just lip service and their actions only show that they resent the will of the voters. The wish that the voting public would just shut up.

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Stop asking the same questions in the "Forum Help" section. Just read this post:

My apologies if I misstated your argument. But since you (a) said that "it may be the case" that third parties are not viable and (b) provided libertarians and greens as examples of parties that could replace the current two parties, I'm somewhat confused. You seem to be saying that the current two parties should be replaced by two other parties that appeal to the ideological center. Other than changing labels, what would that accomplish?

As far as the rest of your post is concerned, it appears to be a tantrum directed toward politicians that don't support your views, dressed up as a claim that they don't represent "the will of the voters." That's not uncommon among people who believe they and their ideological brethren represent the entire range of voters' opinions. It's also not uncommon for such folks to claim that they"re "not ideological."

You'd be on firmer factual ground if you simply accepted the Karl Rove strategy of trying to put together a minimal winning coalition of business and social conservatives. It really doesn't work in the long run, absent somewhat broader fear-mongering to attract some independents, but at least it's a coherent electoral strategy.

Your alternative of cheer leading for voters to "vote their hearts" may make you feel somehow empowered, but it's not a strategy that would produce results, at least not the results you seem to favor, since every study non-voters suggests that the bulk of alienated citizens have views to the left of the current political parties, not the right.

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"To announce that..we are to stand by the president whether right or wrong..is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

As I told you before, I made no claim about the capability of Libertarianism and Greenism to replace the current two parties in power. They were just examples of two other parties that I know of. They were the first two third parties that came to mind, so I used them as examples. I could have said Reform, Peace & Freedom, Natural Law, Constitution, or said some other two made-up party names. I hope you understand now because I have told you at least twice, and I don't want to have to say it again.

I am not an ideologue because I make my own opinions based on my own interpretations of the facts. I don't follow Libertarian Party lines for the sake for following them. Any agreements I have with one party or another results purely from that party's opinions coinciding with my own. I even hate arguments that are repeated over and over because I want to have more originality and the ability to say, "This is my argument." I try to design and discover new facets of issues and new ways to discuss them. My abortion-gun-control analogy is an example of that. That said, I realize that a lot of the time, there are little or no new ideas to bring to a debate, so I try to say the same arguments in different ways.

Sometimes, I give arguments that I don't necessarily agree with, just to try to see the limits of a particular opinion. For all that I say here about the Iraq War, I do hate it and wish there was something else we can do. I oppose withdrawal because I believe that would be disastrous. That doesn't mean that I am in favor of the war or necessarily support it, but that a plan involving a "cut and run" tactic is not the right answer. I believe that we should have stayed in Afghanistan, finished there (hopefully with the capture of Osama Bin Laden), and come home without involving Iraq, but now that we have been in Iraq for four years, we need to take the responsibility and clean up our mess, rather than just dropping everything and "redeploying." Some have said that responsibility doesn't equal capability, but we have to try. It is also our responsibility to be capable, so if we aren't capable now, we better become capable as soon as possible. If we left now, the world would think that the United States just likes to destroy countries, leave messes, and leave. It's already like that a little because of Afghanistan, but we need to make things right.

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