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You make a great historical argument, and I can't really disagree on the first paragraph. But my basic point was that since there is no requirement or even structure for parties in the Constitution, there is nothing to stop third and fourth parties now, other than that people don't want them. Surely, funding and state election structures are impediments, but they are not prohibitive. A smaller party can arise, find funding, get on the ballots, and run campaigns, and win small victories if they had a message people liked. If you put twenty Greens in the House, they would form a coalition that the Dems would work with.
Most people just don't want one. The needs that a multi-party proportional representation system fulfills are fulfilled in our primaries. John Murtha and Dennis Kucinich and John Lewis are all in the same party on paper, but they are as worlds apart as if they were in three different parties. Our coalitions are formed, just as in a proportional system, but only within the parties. I agree with you that parties aren't good at policing themselves, but any form of proportional representation will ultimately require parties to police themselves, or each other. And they have the same problem we have no. One party can still gain a majority, and that party will still dominate government, and all the other little parties would have less, not more, power to challenge them.
Maybe we'd have enough parties that someone would have to form a coaltion, and we'd have a party able to withdraw to stop whatever madness arose. But again, we have that power now. A handful of Republicans now could stop it if they wanted to. If you have a multi-party coalition, those in the coalition would want to stay in power, and would be just as beholden to the majority party as in our system. No one stopped Blair. In fact, they couldn't even get rid of him, even though no one likes him, because of the party structure.
I just see no reason to change. Changing our system won't fix what's wrong with this nation.
I also don't like public funded campaign systems, or at least not for anything over local level. A candidate or party who can't convince donors to give them money isn't likely to be able to do much once in office. Either not enough people agree with their message, or they just aren't skilled enough to do all that is required in office. That, and with as little money as public funding would provide, it would be far easier for a demagogue to get into power, since his opponent wouldn't have enough resources to counter. It's hard enough now, and we fail quite often now. I think public funding would make it worse.
The problem is, as I see it, that people want to fix a system that isn't any worse than any other. A multi-party, proportional system would have its own problems, and in no time at all the wealthiest would game it, too, and we'd be no better off, and may even find ourselves worse off, with our opposition forces spread even thinner and bickering even more destructively amongst ourselves. The only real solution is to work our system. Win the votes. Make people see it the way we do. A multi-party system wouldn't make that any easier--we'd still have to win the votes and make people see it the way we do, and the conservative party would still have the money and thus the media on their side, and we'd still have to win elections the old fashioned way. Might as well do it within the system we have. I can't think of a single major issue over my lifetime that would have turned out differently with a multi-party system. The coalitions, the voters, the attitudes, would all be the same. All an MP system would do would be to change the method that was used, not change any of the outcomes.
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