How much longer until there will be four political Parties instead of two?

[Toots]

I think the time is approaching rapidly when Progressives begin to build their own Party just as Conservatives are attempting at the moment. I see a time in the not too distant future when there will be a Conservative, a Republican, a Democratic, and a Progressive Party all vying for America's favor. I don't see this as a bad thing either. I believe in "Choice" and it seems they are getting fewer and fewer every single day..

[backscatter712]

1. I think the Democrats will find a way to hold things together. The GOP, not so much...

The Democrats have always been heterogeneous, comprising everyone from union members to environmentalists to certain types of evangelists. There's always been a certain amount of strife in the party, and yet Democrats for the most part find a way to work through it.

The GOP's never faced this kind of situation before, and their base is in maximum purge mode. They're used to lock-step. They only know about how to deal with homogeneous crowds that mostly think alike. And there have already been big splits - see NY-23.

My prediction is that the next election will have three parties: the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Conservative/Teabaggers.

Which is fine by me. :evilgrin:

[Cirque du So-What]

2. This country has had the ability to create new political parties any time it wanted

but nothing will come of them unless corporate interests are served. 'We the people' possess only the illusion of power. Any serious challenge to corporate influence would be subverted, co-opted & bought out long before it represented a serious challenge to the status quo.

[Frances]

3. Agree

The Ross Perot people are, for the most part, back in the Repub party.

The Nader people, for the most part, are back in the Dem party.

Ross Perot helped elect Bill Clinton. The Nader people helped elect W.

I think the tea baggers will fold back into the Republican party.

[RKP5637]

10. I think you're quite correct. Corporate interests and money are linked to "real" power and

the "real monied power" knows how to manipulate the masses and to buy out conflicting interests. Too many Americans are mislead by the psychological marketing hype today and vast sums of money used to in effect buy elections.

Look at what Bloomberg did in NYC, for example. He basically bought the election with his own campaign money, something like 102 million of his own personal money. It was a close election, but he won, he had the personal money to throw at it... I'm not saying if he is a good mayor or not, but I am just using it as a recent example. As you say, "We the People" is simply an illusion.

[JackRiddler]

14. Bloomberg spent 200 million (figure announced today).

[RKP5637]

15. Wow, was it that high... unbelievable. I've not checked recently. Thx. n/t

[JackRiddler]

16. If only he'd spent 300 million he would have lost.

He was the only factor in the election, both for and against.

[JackRiddler]

17. My mistake - apologies! I misheard what they said on the radio. Only 102 million.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/nyregion/28spending.html

Apologies to rightfully elected Mayor Bloomberg!

:puke:

[RKP5637]

20. Thanks for the correction. $102M, amazing. USA, Inc., elections sold to the highest bidder IMO. n/t

[GreenStormCloud]

4. Never. We elect people to represent geography, not people.

Since there can be only one representative from a precinct, district, or state, then the competing groups have to form a majority at the lowest levels. That causes the populace to gather around two parties. Anytime a party splits, both factions lose. If a minor party starts to gain strength, the major party that is closest to it will adopt the most popular ideas of the minor party and it will then wither back to fringe status.

[meow2u3]

5. There should be four major political parties--one to match each major ideology

The major ideologies can be summed up as such:

Progressives (Pro): economic and social liberals

Commnitarians (Dem), or old-school Democrats: economic liberals, social moderate-conservatives

Libertarians (Rep), or old-school Republicans: economic conservatives, social liberals

Conservatives (Con): economic and social conservatives.

I consider myself an old-school Dem, or a communitarian.

[C_Lawyer09]

6. As evidenced by Libertarians and Greens

Can't get enough traction in addition to grass roots. The money and ballot access isn't there. For what you suggest to become a viable alternative, ballot access laws would need to be changed. With two books, and a good amount of media exposure, Paul took 5% of the vote state wide in Washington, and I think about 2-3% nationally. Nader did considerably worse. Without campaign finance reform, more than a two party system won't be feasible, sadly.

[Mari333]

7. right now it feels like there is only one party to me

the party of multinational corporations and wall street.

the rest of us are what they wipe their boots on.

[Altoid_Cyclist]

9. Sad to say; I have to agree. This is the one that would seem to fit.

If it's not an election year:

[cali]

8. If it's to happen it has to happen from a local and state level first

and that hasn't happened. That's why it'll be a long time before there's a viable third party.

[leeroysphitz]

11. But but but!!!

Never mind, I got nothin'.

[rucky]

12. Not soon enough. n/t

[TexasProgresive]

13. NEVER

Our system does not make 3rd or 4th parties viable. If one or the other parties has a large number siphoned off to a 3rd party the original will die and soon the once 3rd party will be identical in membership to the original party.

Personally I wish that our system would encourage multi parties but I would hate for us to get into the situation like in Israel where minute parties end up controlling the direction of government because the bigger parties have to form a coalition with the extremists.

[AlinPA]

18. T-baggers and birthers and Beck-Palin-Limbaugh wackos will vote republican.

They fear the Democrats and their "socialist agenda". A republican woman whom I've known for 55 years has turned into a whacked out birther-Beck follower and walked up to me yesterday and dumped on me about "socialism", etc. I smiled and said that that the Obama administration is cleaning up the mess that the republicans made. She lost it and became hysterical. Her husband asked her to calm down and he said "things aren't as bad as she makes them out to be" and apologized to me and three others. I still think she will vote republican.

[tekisui]

19. Policy would still be run by the corporate 'center'.

[knixphan]

21. I can't wait for the rest of my progressive pals

to start claiming more territory within the Dem party...

just sayin'. I'm volunteering for the primary challenger in my district.

[tavalon]

22. Next twenty years or so

[Libertas1776]

23. Even if such a thing occurred

how would that really change the "two party" landscape. Think about it, in order to get things done, the Cons would have to caucus with or form a coalition with the Repubs as would the Progressives with the Dems. And which ever side gets more people, then that side wins. So in reality, we would just be replacing a two party system with a two coalition system. Hopefully, however, there would be enough progressives to sway the coalition more leftward.

[Luminous Animal]

24. Progressives already built their own party. It is called the Green Party.

[hayu_lol]

25. Inorder to accomodate a multi-party system...

I believe that the Constitution would have to change...we would have to adopt to a parlimentary system.

[Jim Lane]

26. Yes -- and the Green Party has demonstrated the futility of third-party efforts

I completely agree with GreenStormCloud in #4 above. Most of the elected offices in this country are filled through plurality elections. That system strongly impels politics toward a system of precisely two major parties. If one side splits into two parties (by the addition of the Conservative Party or the Progressive Party), then the side that didn't split will have a huge electoral advantage. This effect is completely independent of campaign financing and would survive any restructuring of the campaign finance laws.

Thus far, the Green Party's most notable achievement has been to prove this truism. The key to the 2000 presidential election was that the Nader split to the left (on the Green Party ballot line) attracted many more votes than did the Buchanan split to the right (on the Reform Party line). If Buchanan had gotten 2.7% and Nader 0.4%, instead of vice versa, then Gore would have become President.

Let me try to pre-empt some of the old arguments about 2000. First, please note that I didn't say "Gore would've won," so it's no response to say that Gore did win. Gore didn't become President, which is what I care about. Second, I'm not claiming that all of Nader's voters would have voted for Gore otherwise. I'm claiming that, among those who voted for Nader, the result if Nader hadn't been on the ballot would've been a net swing to Gore. We can ignore those who would've stayed home or voted for Hagelin or written in Antonio Gramsci or whatever. The only ones who count are those who would've voted for Gore or those who would've voted for Bush, and there were many more of the former than of the latter. Similarly, of the Buchanan voters, some would've stayed home or voted for Browne or written in Ronald Reagan or whatever, but of those who participated meaningfully in the election, more would have voted for Bush than for Gore.

It's not surprising that the split-to-the-left vote plunged after 2000. (In 2000, Nader on the Green line got 2.9 million votes. In 2004, Nader on a miscellany of lines plus Cobb on the Green line combined for fewer than 0.6 million votes even though the total number of votes cast increased significantly, from 105 million to 122 million.) As an ideological split in either direction becomes more successful, the practical effect of its success is to favor the major party on the opposite side. If the Green Party were somehow to grow to the point of taking 10% of the vote nationwide, the Republicans would win every Presidential election, which would cause horrified voters to abandon the Greens and return to the Democrats.

The only possible exception here is the Libertarian Party. Their voters prefer Republican policies on economics but Democratic policies on social issues. For many of them, therefore, seeing the "wrong" major party elected may be no big deal. For most of the people who might support Nader or the Green Party or the Constitution Party, however, there is a strong preference for the policies of one of the major parties over the other. They can't support the minor party in the general election without giving up their chance to help influence the struggle between the two major parties, and they care which major party wins, so they vote for a viable major-party candidate even if a non-viable minor-party candidate is closer to their views.

The real solution for people dissatisfied with the major parties is the primary/caucus system. Nominees are no longer picked in smoke-filled rooms. If the votes existed to elect a candidate like Nader on the Green Party line, then the votes would exist for that candidate to win the Democratic nomination and go on to win office on the Democratic line. That's another reason that the Green Party on the left, like the Constitution Party on the right, will never be anything more than a tiny fringe group. Of the people who are closer to Nader than to Gore ideologically, most are staying in the Democratic Party and voting for the progressive candidate in the primaries, where the progressive might actually win and where a vote won't help hand the office to the Republican.

And, by the way, just as a reality check, in the presidential elections in both 2004 and 2008, the Constitution Party outpolled the Green Party, and in both those years the Libertarian Party outpolled the other two combined.

[Greyhound]

27. Not in our lifetimes. There are two things that both parties absolutely agree on today,

corporations and other large campaign contributors (bribes) are more important than the American people, and nobody else gets to play the game.

The more teams in the game, the more expensive it is to buy the teams and that can cut into bonuses and perks.

George Carlin summed up our situation;
"Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice . . . you don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying . . . lobbying, to get what they want . . . Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want . . . they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin' years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers . . . Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it . . . they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin' place. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in The Big Club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you . . . they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all . . . at all . . . at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it..."

[quaker bill]

28. My last ballot had six

but only two actually mattered. The other four had no chance of winning any office, anywhere. So I think of your question as when we will have four parties that matter. I think it is possible for us to have three parties that matter quite soon, perhaps as quick as 2010 or 2012. This could happen if the tea-party fragment of the RW runs their own candidates.

Of course, this will cause the RW to lose elections as they spend a great deal of money and political capital fighting each other, and will split their vote. It will not last more than a cycle or two.

On the left, there are still plenty of options with existing parties, like the greens, which are going nowhere, and will continue to go nowhere. Part of what you see going on here is the reason why.

Political parties, when meaningful, are large groups of people working toward common goals. Forming a large enough group of people on the right is fairly easy as they do not find groupthink all that much of a threat and are good with some modest level of compromise to make things happen. They feel that all folks should think just like they do, and that they all SHOULD think very much the same. On the left, compromise to form a large enough group to be effective, like the Democratic Party was in 2008, is generally viewed as a sell out in the very near term. You can see it being labled that way here everyday and even now, with the very question at hand.

In my personal experience working with a group to pull together a functional green party, I found that the PETA folks did not get along with the GLBT folks, who did not like the Deep Ecologists, who did not like the Vegans, who did not like the Social Ecologists, who did not care for the pacifists, and then there were the anti-racists who seemed not to get along with anyone, and thank goodness there were no second ammendment liberals there as things might have gotten really ugly. None were at depth truly interested in compromise of any sort toward working on larger goals. This is why thrid party politics on the left is permanently doomed to a 2 to 3 percent effort that will remain nationally irrelevant.

To be relevant, one has to form and join with a party that for all intents and purposes will need to be as large as the Democratic party. The nature of compromise needed to form an organization this large is not different in kind or magnitude to that needed to simply join and work for the Democrats, a party which alread exists and wins elections. It would be far, far less work to reform the Democratic Party than it would be to create a viable and meaningful competitor.

[Le Taz Hot]

29. It's something that will take years to build

but, as more and more people understand and live the reality that NEITHER party is representing them, 3rd+ parties will start to emerge. Since both major political parties solely represent corporate America they leave the American populace with no other choice.