Two-party system

BIG ERN

BIG ERN

New member
I think it is stupid to have a two-party system. One track minded people could have the worst candidate ever and they will still vote for them because they are "Democrat" or "Republican". I wanna hear other people's views on this.

 
BIG ERN said:
I think it is stupid to have a two-party system. One track minded people could have the worst candidate ever and they will still vote for them because they are "Democrat" or "Republican". I wanna hear other people's views on this.
Click to expand...
3rd parties don't have much success because they don't have the money to keep their campaign going to great lengths. They have no real shot to win anything but rather take votes away from another party. Had the Green Party not ran in 2000 Gore would have been elected as President but instead they siphoned off the votes from him. Just imagine Bush would have never been President.

 
husker_99 said:
3rd parties don't have much success because they don't have the money to keep their campaign going to great lengths. They have no real shot to win anything but rather take votes away from another party. Had the Green Party not ran in 2000 Gore would have been elected as President but instead they siphoned off the votes from him. Just imagine Bush would have never been President.
Click to expand...
That's what happens when you run Gore/Lieberman or Kerry Edwards... no amount of money could shine that sh#t for the Democratic base or Independents.

Alot of money made Bush/Cheney shine nicely for the Republican base, and soccer moms fell for the fearmongering.

 
Sub-Husker said:
husker_99 said:
3rd parties don't have much success because they don't have the money to keep their campaign going to great lengths. They have no real shot to win anything but rather take votes away from another party. Had the Green Party not ran in 2000 Gore would have been elected as President but instead they siphoned off the votes from him. Just imagine Bush would have never been President.
Click to expand...
That's what happens when you run Gore/Lieberman or Kerry Edwards... no amount of money could shine that sh#t for the Democratic base or Independents.

Alot of money made Bush/Cheney shine nicely for the Republican base, and soccer moms fell for the fearmongering.
Click to expand...
Gore won the Popular vote by a good margin. I voted for Gore hoping he could keep what Clinton had started or atleast the perceived notion he was doing something good.

 
husker_99 said:
Gore won the Popular vote by a good margin.
Click to expand...
Sub-Husker said:
Unfortunately that was the wrong electoral contest to win.
I'm no fan of the Electoral College as it is, but we're stuck with it.
Click to expand...
husker_99 said:
the Electoral College is fine. With only a popular vote it would get even worse.
Click to expand...
Yeah, a popular vote election would be worse.

But as the EC is now, only a few states matter, the rest are generally ignored.

I'd rather see the EC vote by individual congressional district, with only the two senatoral votes going to the overall state winner.

That way almost every state would be in play for the general election.

 
husker_99 said:
BIG ERN said:
I think it is stupid to have a two-party system. One track minded people could have the worst candidate ever and they will still vote for them because they are "Democrat" or "Republican". I wanna hear other people's views on this.
Click to expand...
3rd parties don't have much success because they don't have the money to keep their campaign going to great lengths. They have no real shot to win anything but rather take votes away from another party. Had the Green Party not ran in 2000 Gore would have been elected as President but instead they siphoned off the votes from him. Just imagine Bush would have never been President.
Click to expand...
This is the same myopic, binary thought process horse puckey that gets trotted out by either party whenever a viable third party candidate shows up on the scene. We heard the same garbage when H. Ross Perot ran from the Republicans. And I'm not faulting you, Husker 99--you're just saying what you've heard.

If this were an actual truth, then why are third parties viable and thriving in other western civilizations. Canada, Japan, Germany, France--they all have viable third (and some fourth or fifth) parties that reside on different parts of the political spectrum. And while the UK claims to have a two-party system, they have organizations within (not unlike the Tea Party) that finance and run their own campaigns under the overarching umbrella of the Whigs and Torries, but don't identify themselves as either or.

The difference is our election laws and funding--the only thing Democrats and Republicans have agreed upon at a national level regarding election reform is making it tougher for a viable third party to get matching funds (and thus succeed). H. Ross Perot succeeded because he had Mitt Romney mad money to back himself with--and with an extremely protracted campaign season, not to mention requisite media expenditures for TV, Radio, Internet, and Print during that protracted period of time, the system makes it artificially difficult for a third party to succeed.

Additionally, at the state level, Democrats and Republicans have colluded to make it difficult for a viable third party to run at any level. For example, in Texas, non-Republican or Democrat candidates have to obtain signatures from (IIRC) 20% of registered voters that voted in the prior election on a county by county basis to be put on that county's ballot. When H. Ross Perot ran, he wasn't on all of the ballots for Texas, and the last gubernatorial election (the one where Rick Perry won with something like 38% of the vote) had two candidates (one truly viable--the other was Kinky Friedman) that couldn't get on the ballot in half the counties.

Also, many of our western allies truncate their campaign and election seasons significantly. For example (IIRC), Japan only allows campaigns to start 45 days before an election, and candidates are provided matching media time to communicate to the masses, which helps keep the amount of money necessary to run a successful campaign down. In the UK they typically only have a couple of months of 'official' campaigning due to how their elections are run.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
matthew_m_g said:
Also, many of our western allies truncate their campaign and election seasons significantly. For example (IIRC), Japan only allows campaigns to start 45 days before an election, and candidates are provided matching media time to communicate to the masses, which helps keep the amount of money necessary to run a successful campaign down. In the UK they typically only have a couple of months of 'official' campaigning due to how their elections are run.
Click to expand...
That is completely missing the goal of our electoral process as laid out by the two major parties and their donors, who get a good ROI from campaign investments.

 
Sub-Husker said:
matthew_m_g said:
Also, many of our western allies truncate their campaign and election seasons significantly. For example (IIRC), Japan only allows campaigns to start 45 days before an election, and candidates are provided matching media time to communicate to the masses, which helps keep the amount of money necessary to run a successful campaign down. In the UK they typically only have a couple of months of 'official' campaigning due to how their elections are run.
Click to expand...
That is completely missing the goal of our electoral process as laid out by the two major parties and their donors, who get a good ROI from campaign investments.
Click to expand...
Yup, that's the point.

 
I would love to see the two party system gone and have a multitude of parties that no one party would ever have a majority and the only way anything gets passed would be if numerous parties had to compromise.

 
I'm all for a multiparty parliamentary system based on proportional counting of votes but those ultimately require coalition building which brings us back to the same problem we've got now so yea...benevolent dictatorship of the proletariat anyone? I'm down...

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah, I would have to agree with this. I am definately a conservative, but I do understand that you have to have someone in office that is open minded to all issues and beliefs this is the only way we will work our way out of the mess that has started (yes) way back when Clinton was President. It just continued to get worse because of both sides trying to out due the other. The swings in leadership in the last 20 years have been extreme not only at the presidential level but also in the senatorial and congressional level as well.

Also, Thers is No Way In Hell Gore would have been a good President for this country. Clinton was way more Conservative than Gore and I do not think he would have kept going where Clinton left off.

 
Back
Top