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Thread: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    The quality, complexity or depth of social interaction is in question.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    For those of us whose social interaction lacks quality, complexity, or depth, there is a profound yearning that can be exploited by charlatans, mountebanks, false prophets, charismatic politicians, snake-oil sellers, Q-Anon geeks, and fraudsters, a prime example being Donald Trump.

    Being "saved" bears an unfortunate resemblance to being Trumped.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    word

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Centrists to launch Forward, new third US political party

    Dozens of former Democrats and Republicans to form new party in bid to appeal to voters unhappy with America’s two-party system

    Reuters
    Wed 27 Jul 2022

    Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials will announce a new national political third party to appeal to millions of voters they say are dismayed with what they see as America’s dysfunctional two-party system. The new party, called Forward, will initially be co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. They hope the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate US politics, founding members told Reuters.

    Party leaders will hold a series of events in two dozen cities this autumn to roll out its platform and attract support. They will host an official launch in Houston on 24 September and the party’s first national convention in a major US city next summer.

    The new party is being formed by a merger of three political groups that have emerged in recent years as a reaction to America’s increasingly polarized and gridlocked political system. The leaders cited a Gallup poll last year showing a record two-thirds of Americans believe a third party is needed.

    The merger involves the Renew America Movement, formed in 2021 by dozens of former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, George W Bush and Donald Trump; the Forward party, founded by Yang, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 but left the party in 2021 and became an independent; and the Serve America Movement, a group of Democrats, Republicans and independents founded by former Republican congressman David Jolly.

    Two pillars of the new party’s platform are to “reinvigorate a fair, flourishing economy” and to “give Americans more choices in elections, more confidence in a government that works, and more say in our future”.

    The party, which is centrist, has no specific policies yet. It will say at its Thursday launch: “How will we solve the big issues facing America? Not Left. Not Right. Forward.”

    Historically, third parties have failed to thrive in America’s two-party system. Occasionally they can impact a presidential election. Analysts say the Green party’s Ralph Nader siphoned off enough votes from Al Gore in 2000 to help George W Bush win the White House.

    It is unclear how the new Forward party might affect either party’s electoral prospects in such a deeply polarized country. Political analysts are skeptical it can succeed.

    Forward aims to gain party registration and ballot access in 30 states by the end of 2023 and in all 50 states by late 2024, in time for the 2024 presidential and congressional elections.

    It aims to field candidates for local races, such as school boards and city councils, in state houses, the US Congress and all the way up to the presidency.

    In an interview, Yang said the party will start with a budget of about $5m. It has donors lined up and a grassroots membership between the three merged groups numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

    “We are starting in a very strong financial position. Financial support will not be a problem,” Yang said.

    Another person involved in the creation of Forward, Miles Taylor – a former Homeland Security official in the Trump administration – said the idea was to give voters “a viable, credible national third party”.

    Taylor acknowledged that third parties had failed in the past, but said: “The fundamentals have changed. When other third party movements have emerged in the past it’s largely been inside a system where the American people aren’t asking for an alternative. The difference here is we are seeing an historic number of Americans saying they want one.”

    Stu Rothenberg, a veteran non-partisan political analyst, said it was easy to talk about establishing a third party but almost impossible to do so.

    “The two major political parties start out with huge advantages, including 50 state parties built over decades,” he said.

    Rothenberg pointed out that third party presidential candidates like John Anderson in 1980 and Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 flamed out, failing to build a true third party that became a factor in national politics.


    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...e_iOSApp_Other

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    They don't seem to be based on either a moral nor economic concept... they seem too ambivalent.

    Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™
    M: I came here for a good argument.
    A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
    M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
    A: It can be.
    M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
    A: No it isn't.
    M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
    A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
    M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
    A: Yes it is!
    M: No it isn't!

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lloyd View Post
    They don't seem to be based on either a moral nor economic concept... they seem too ambivalent.

    Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect
    Do you mean "ambiguous"?

    This is the first I've heard of this. The article quotes only Yang. We don't hear from anyone else inside this new party. Where did all the info come from? A press release? The whole article felt weird to me. Does this mean that Yang and Whitman will be at the top of their ticket?

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    This is Heather Cox Richardson's take on the political news from yesterday:

    https://heathercoxrichardson.substac...p/july-28-2022

    She has a liberal, pro-Biden slant to her blog, but I am posting it here as an example of something else I would like to discuss (criticize) about US politics generally. Her description of the political maneuverings yesterday (and recently) over a few popular bills with the American people (the ideas of them are popular, anyway) paints a sad picture of the state of American politics. What we end up seeing is that power and control in Washington are more important than the content of the bills in front of them. The Democratic and Republican parties in Washington are these two giant, bloated armies with egotistical and petty agents at the top and then sprinkled down throughout. It's gross, distorted, and dysfunctional, and while they wrangle and posture and stall and block and manipulate and coerce and dodge, important legislation that reflects the will and needs of the country languishes simply because someone has the power to stall, table, or kill it...or talk it to death.

    In the modern era of this 21st century, it is no longer the case that a government that governs least, governs best. That is an extreme, obstructionist position out of step with the needs of one of the most complicated nations on the planet (largest GNP, by far). The number of times that the bulk of informed people say, "Yeah, that needs fixing...but..." and then adds the caveat that it's not politically possible or feasible or doable is depressing and adds to our national political cynicism. Meanwhile, important concerns to American citizens get kicked around like political footballs in this disgusting power play.

    I don't know if a third party (pipe dream, if you ask me) could fix this. It's as much a human problem as it is a structural one in our government. I suppose.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    She mentioned the beneficial effects of the January 6 committee on getting cooperation across the aisles.

    I really liked this, “Vox correspondent Ian Millhiser, who is a keen observer of American politics, commented tonight: “This was a good week for the United States of America and I may be coming down with a case of The Hope.”

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Chile is updating its constitution for the 21st century. The US should follow its lead

    David Adler
    Thu 28 Jul 2022 06.22 EDT

    “Every constitution,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in a 1789 letter to James Madison, “naturally expires at the end of 19 years.” Two centuries after its expiration date, citizens of the United States are suffering the consequences of a constitution drafted by 55 men who owned hundreds of human slaves, thousands of acres in landed estates, and millions of dollars in inherited wealth. Fundamental rights denied, foundational institutions paralyzed and existential crises ignored: these are side-effects of a legal framework that has not been meaningfully amended in over a half-century.

    The US is not alone. Scores of constitutions around the world were written by dictators, colonizers and military occupiers to enshrine institutions that are undemocratic by design and unfit to cope with crises like a rapidly heating planet.


    https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...e_iOSApp_Other
    Last edited by Chip; July 29th, 2022 at 01:18 PM.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Quote Originally Posted by Chip View Post
    Chile is updating its constitution for the 21st century. The US should follow its lead

    David Adler
    Thu 28 Jul 2022 06.22 EDT

    “Every constitution,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in a 1789 letter to James Madison, “naturally expires at the end of 19 years.” Two centuries after its expiration date, citizens of the United States are suffering the consequences of a constitution drafted by 55 men who owned hundreds of human slaves, thousands of acres in landed estates, and millions of dollars in inherited wealth. Fundamental rights denied, foundational institutions paralyzed and existential crises ignored: these are side-effects of a legal framework that has not been meaningfully amended in over a half-century.

    The US is not alone. Scores of constitutions around the world were written by dictators, colonizers and military occupiers to enshrine institutions that are undemocratic by design and unfit to cope with crises like a rapidly heating planet.


    https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...e_iOSApp_Other
    That full piece is quite a manifesto.

    That a national referendum could move something like this is impossible in the current structure of our government. There is no mechanism for it. Another thing I like about my state is our enlivened referendum process. We citizens can make law! We apportion our EC delegates and we have ranked choice voting. The rest of you states need to take an example from Maine's book. We actually do change some important things. If a governor or legislature tries to take away abortion (or gay marriage) in this state, we'll just vote it back in via referendum. Fuck the party power bullshit!

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Good analysis. I copied the first half. If you click the link, some history follows.

    Why Andrew Yang’s New Third Party Is Bound to Fail

    By Jamelle Bouie
    July 29, 2022

    Let’s not mince words. The new Forward Party announced by the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, the former governor Christine Todd Whitman and the former congressman David Jolly is doomed to failure. The odds that it will attract any more than a token amount of support from the public, not to mention political elites, are slim to none. It will wither on the vine as the latest in a long history of vanity political parties.

    Why am I so confident that the Forward Party will amount to nothing? Because there is a recipe for third-party success in the United States, but neither Yang nor his allies have the right ingredients.

    First, let’s talk about the program of the Forward Party. Writing for The Washington Post, Yang, Whitman and Jolly say that their party is a response to “divisiveness” and “extremism.”

    “In a system torn apart by two increasingly divided extremes,” they write, “you must reintroduce choice and competition.”

    The Forward Party, they say, will “reflect the moderate, common-sense majority.” If, they argue, most third parties in U.S. history failed to take off because they were “ideologically too narrow,” then theirs is primed to reach deep into the disgruntled masses, especially since, they say, “voters are calling for a new party now more than ever.”

    It is not clear that we can make a conclusion about the public’s appetite for a specific third party on the basis of people’s general appetite for a third party. But that’s a minor issue. The bigger problem for Yang, Whitman and Jolly is their assessment of the history of American third parties. It’s wrong.

    The most successful third parties in American history have been precisely those that galvanized a narrow slice of the public over a specific set of issues. They further polarized the electorate, changed the political landscape and forced the established parties to reckon with their influence.

    This also gets to the meaning of success in the American system. The two-party system in the United States is a natural result of the rules of the game. The combination of single-member districts and single-ballot, “first past the post” elections means that in any election with more than two candidates, there’s a chance the winner won’t have a majority. There might be four or five or six (or even nine) distinct factions in an electorate, but the drive to prevent a plurality winner will very likely lead to the creation of two parties that take the shape of loose coalitions, each capable of winning that majority outright.

    To this dynamic add the fact of the presidency, which cannot be won without a majority of electoral votes. It’s this requirement of the Electoral College that puts additional pressure on political actors to form coalitions with each other in pursuit of the highest prize of American politics. In fact, for most of American history after the Civil War, the two parties were less coherent national organizations than clearinghouses for information and influence trading among state parties and urban machines.

    This is all to say that in the United States, a successful third party isn’t necessarily one that wins national office. Instead, a successful third party is one that integrates itself or its program into one of the two major parties, either by forcing key issues onto the agenda or revealing the existence of a potent new electorate.


    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/o...e=articleShare

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Makes sense.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Spooky possibility!

    Business Insider: Inside conservatives' next big dream: a constitutional convention.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/cons...e-court-2022-7

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    More fresh thinking on a difficult issue.


    You Want to Clean Up the House? Same Here

    By Jamelle Bouie
    July 30, 2022

    A lot of you responded quite strongly to last week’s newsletter on defanging the Senate of most of its power. Not a negative response, necessarily — you just had a lot of ideas! And as it happens, I agree with many of those ideas. Perhaps the most common one is related less to the Senate than to the House of Representatives. Many of you were adamant that if the goal is to bring the locus of policymaking back to the House, then the House, too, must be more democratic than it is, and that part of making the House more democratic is ending partisan gerrymandering.

    I agree! But I think we should go further. Even if you end partisan gerrymandering for House (and just as crucially state legislative) elections, you’re still left with the real culprit for many of our political dysfunctions: single-member districts and “first past the post” voting. As long as you elect single members by individual district, there is a risk of malapportionment. And as long as you have “first past the post” voting — where candidates can win with a plurality of the vote — there’s little to no chance that a third party could succeed in an election (something I explore in my most recent column).

    One solution is just to get rid of districts altogether. Or if you’d prefer to keep districts, divide each state into a number of multi-member districts, in which voters elect multiple candidates using a form of preference voting. Ranked-choice voting has made some inroads here in the United States, but I am a fan of approval voting, in which voters can cast a vote for as many candidates as they’d like that are on the ballot. Whoever gets the most votes — or in a multi-member district, the top vote getters — wins a seat in Congress.

    Now, approval voting is a little more complicated than this — and there are different forms of approval voting that, for example, allow voters to mark the intensity of their preference — but these are the basics. One advantage of approval voting is that it is more likely to produce winners with broad support across the electorate. Another advantage is that it allows third parties to compete without “spoiling” the election in favor of a candidate who doesn’t have majority support. (Although, in some circumstances, approval voting can produce plurality winners.)

    In any case, an expanded House (again, to at least 600 members) without gerrymandering and with a multitude of parties would be a great counterpart to a Senate that can amend legislation, but not veto it. Thank you, readers, for the feedback, which I found very helpful as I think through these ideas.


    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/30/o...e=articleShare

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    The probem with all these ideas is that it takes a supermajority (3/4) of the states to actually relinquish the entrenched power that they already have.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    That shouldn't stop us from thinking about better ways to govern.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    There is thinking and doing. Not the same.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Quote Originally Posted by Chip View Post
    That shouldn't stop us from thinking about better ways to govern.
    I don't disagree.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Our present setup, no matter how long hallowed by the Federalist Papers or the Constitution, doesn't seem to be working in response to actual (as opposed to imaginary) threats and hazards. When a single corrupt lunkhead like Joe Manchin can shut down the process, we have a serious problem.

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    Default Re: Is it Time to Ditch the Two-Party System?

    Pew Research piece on discontent with two-party system:

    https://www.pewresearch.org/politics...m_medium=email

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