Why just two political parties?
Asked by
GracieT (
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November 3rd, 2010
OK. The United States just had a downright nasty and also costly midterm election. Why do we have just two political parties? It has come down to an us vs them system, with the elected officials spending much of their terms trying to figure out how to beat the one realistic challenger and retain their office. Now that people have been elected, even if they actually come into office with good intentions, the party is thinking about how to remain in power. Would having more than two parties help to get the focus more on the reasons they were elected and the people that they were elected to govern, or would there just be more of a fight with more people fighting?
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5 Answers
Historically, that seems to be all our system can handle, and then it became entrenched, and then they began to make laws which institutionalized it. There have been many smaller parties in the past, but none have had the staying power that the present 2 parties have.
With our elected executive branch, there’s not much for a third party to do – it’s winner take all. In countries with a parliamentary form, they can ally and vote in the head.
But even so, we do have more than two parties. It’s just that the top two are the ones who have the resources – and inertia – to fight it out for the lead.
Republicans (I think this is right) replaced the Whigs as the “other party” so it’s possible that someone seizing on the right issue could do it again.
Canada has any party that wants to be a party, but really we only have Conservatives and Liberals.
I think what we are seeing right now is a re-formation of the political landscape in America, with liberal Republicans moving over to the Democratic Party, and conservative Democrats moving over to join the Republicans. In addition there are several smaller parties which could suddenly blossom: the Constitutional Party in Florida, the Conservative Party in New York, and the Libertarian Party in Texas ( which is in the process of going national ). Even The Tea Party could branch off and become a party in its own right.
As has been said, “the center cannot hold.” Perhaps deeply held political beliefs generate the impetus to create smaller, more specifically oriented political parties.
We already have multiple political parties, in my state alone we had the Libertarians, Greens, Peace and Freedom (Socialist), and American Independent (Christian Ultraconservative). But we’ve been brought up with this bad attitude that unless you are throwing your vote into the two behemoth parties you’re “wasting” your vote by supporting a third party, so nobody does even if they see both major parties as the two evils.
Maybe switching to a runoff voting system might change things, that way if X third party doesn’t have enough votes to win, then it’d go to their second choice and not be “wasted”.
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