Do you think it might be possible to knock parties out of politics?

It seems like a great idea, but I doubt it is possible. Here’s why: parties arise spontaneously when several people (especially with lots of money) get together and try to influence the election by supporting the candidate of their choice. There’s no escaping it. Even with donation limits, they still manage to find some way to exert influence.

Parties allow democracy to exist without the public actually having to know anything. So no.

Government without parties has been tried before. They called it communism. It didn’t work out like they thought it would.

@Blondesjon Not with term limits and our checks and balances. I think the checks and balances would actually work better without the parties.

@DREW_R…If you still hold free elections you will have, usually, more than one person running for that position. This means you will have two opposing sides competing for the same prize.

No matter what you call them, Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, you will still have naturally occurring groups of individuals who share the same ideas and agendas. They will still group together to better push their shared agendas and form a power base from which to operate.

I do agree with you that duality sucks.

@Blondesjon True, but if parties were forbidden to those running it might be a bit harder for the agendas to coaggulate into lumps. ;)

No. People of like minds and ideas come together.

Exactly. They would just meet behind closed doors. You can’t regulate how a group of people are going vote on issues. Russell put it very well.

Just because they don’t give their group a name doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be a group.

No I don’t think this is possible. As screwy as politics can be, I’m sure that it would even be a good idea if we could.