Progressive Politics

What if the yanks had more than 2 parties

We're often lucky to have more than one party. States like Texas and Florida are so heavily gerrymandered that supermajorities for the prevailing party are practically assured. The Dems form a rump of opposition in these states, while Greens and Libertarians are barely an afterthought.

i know that other parties can exist but they dont do really anything.

Constituencies in Europe are significantly smaller and more regionally distinct. Hard to have a Scottish New Labor Party or a French Polynesia Party when our states are dominated by constituencies that moved in barely a generation ago. By all rights we should have a "Texas Party" and a "California Party". But its worth noting that the modern Texas GOP was built up practically brick-by-brick through George HW Bush and the Standard Oil company, originally based out in NY/NJ/CT. Dallas, Houston, and Austin are dominated by families of east coast Republicans who came spilling in during the 80s/90.

We should probably have a "Christian Democrats" party or a "Tea Party" properly, but the major religious and ideological leaders of the past were fully wedded to the existing post-WW2 partisan establishment. The closest we ever really had to a break-away party in the last half-century was the Jim Crow Segregationists under George Wallace. And that fell apart in the face of Nixon's Southern Strategy simply gobbling up all the Dixiecrats and turning them into modern day Republicans.

Technically we do, but only the Republicans and Democrats are ever given attention in the media so they're the only two parties most people know about before seeing the other options on the ballot. Add to that you get guys like Vermin Supreme as alternative choices, which if you don't know anything about them makes them look even crazier than the two big douchebags you do know about.

What if the yanks had more than 2 parties, maybe it would be great. Before anyone says anything, yes i know that other parties can exist but they dont do really anything.

That's because the Electoral College says other parties, who will necessarily not get as many votes as the other two, will not get any electoral votes. Most states are winner-take-all. As far as Presidential elections go, that's why there's never a third party winner.

Locally, you're likely to find "Independent" candidates who run without financial support from one of the two flavors of political soda, and occasionally other political organizations as well. Locally (city government, school board, etc.) it's possible. But nationally no party has had the reach or interest from voters to overcome the hurdles to federal election. Many have tried.

That's because of circumstances beyond the average voters control where the majority of people inevitably votes between 2 parties and a vote for independent gets essentially "counted" but "thrown away" because the pool is less than the other 2 main parties.

In our current voting system "first past the post", It inevitably leads to a 2 party system regardless of if other parties exist.

This video is one of my favorites that explain this problem. https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo?si=ri9DbpvXxjyRonN3

The only way I see that we can maybe break past this is to band together and convince more than half of one of the major parties to vote independent. It's possible perhaps, but highly unlikely. ( the video kinda covers this as well. )

Or maybe convince the voter base to change voting systems. I personally like the sound of "ranked choice" voting. Granted it doesn't fix everything but it would be alot better than what we have now. And it might give independents a higher chance of possibly winning.

What if the yanks had more than 2 parties

Political parties represent the interests of the wealthy - for a third party in the US to be successful, it would have to cater to a moneyed interest that the current "good cop/bad cop" routine doesn't cater to. As far as I can tell, the capitalist class in the US is perfectly happy with this duopoly - so no third party.

I'm afraid that a third party is no "silver bullet" - here in South Africa, we have a whole bunch of parties, and guess what... they still only end up serving the interests of the wealthy. Our largest two factions of political racketeers are neoliberals that will happily bend over backwards to sell South Africans out to foreign corporations, while the third-largest is literally just a front for a bunch of overmoneyed Zulu royalty - no surprises that our voter apathy is even worse than in the US.