I'm confused about the American Republican party

[kandrathe]

Just to say that it is not only the US that has such a system.

I have been in leadership positions for about 20 years. In that time what I've learned most crucially is that whatever you create, you must then tend. It costs money to create things, and then a smaller portion each year to maintain it. Most things have a limited lifespan as well, so you must plan ahead to replace this creation.

Politicians often use populism to promote really impractical things. This is why I believe that there are some things, like parks, which are better tended by governments, and other things, like a website such as Facebook, which are better tended to by private enterprises.

What works best in the US, is when Federal things stay at the Federal level, State things are handled at the State level, and local things are left to the local level. We have our share of boondoggles, but in general, successive administrations don't really undo things unless they are truely wasteful or garishly impractical.

[Jester]

Since we have the two party system, everyone chooses either red or blue. If we had a multiparty system you'd see at least six to eight different strong political parties, and dozens of small fringe ones.

If I may reiterate my plea from many an earlier thread: The US does have a multi-party system. There is absolutely no legal barrier to the establishment of other parties: they already exist, from quasi-mainstream ones like the Greens and Libertarians, all the way out to Communists and Nazis.

The US only appears like a 2-party system because of the voting system. If you didn't have First Past the Post, and probably an elected presidency as well, you'd have multiple viable parties. As it stands, two is the equilibrium number. Even if an incumbent is "killed" by a challenger party, the 2-party structure will remain.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

The US only appears like a 2-party system because of the voting system. If you didn't have First Past the Post, and probably an elected presidency as well, you'd have multiple viable parties. As it stands, two is the equilibrium number. Even if an incumbent is "killed" by a challenger party, the 2-party structure will remain.

::nod::

I would consider myself outside the two parties, but if I "want my vote to matter" I need vote for the most favorable person who has a chance of winning. Or, most likely against the person who I don't want to win.

Unless there is a huge grass roots movement to propel up a third party, they instead tend to drag down one of the two major parties with them.

[eppie]

If I may reiterate my plea from many an earlier thread: The US does have a multi-party system. There is absolutely no legal barrier to the establishment of other parties: they already exist, from quasi-mainstream ones like the Greens and Libertarians, all the way out to Communists and Nazis.

The US only appears like a 2-party system because of the voting system. If you didn't have First Past the Post, and probably an elected presidency as well, you'd have multiple viable parties. As it stands, two is the equilibrium number. Even if an incumbent is "killed" by a challenger party, the 2-party structure will remain.

-Jester

Yes, but this is common knowledge. We just call it a two party system because that is what it practically is.

[Bolty]

Unless there is a huge grass roots movement to propel up a third party, they instead tend to drag down one of the two major parties with them.

The interesting thing to me is that with the advent of the Internet, there was (supposedly) a construct now in place to make a 3rd party possible from a grass roots perspective. Finally, a medium making it possible for mass communication that could not be filtered and controlled by governments and corporations - sorta like this website, it's just filtered and controlled by me without any outside influences (not even ads!) . Now we've seen how hard governments and corporations are working to take this medium down (ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, and many more to come), so maybe that golden opportunity has been wasted.

Then again, any new movement (e.g. "Tea Party") would more than likely just get absorbed into one of the two major parties. Anything gaining enough popularity to get significant media attention will in turn draw the attention of the two parties, and one of them will try desperately to absorb it rather than have both fight it.

Think all the political talk here puts us on some FBI watch list? That Bolty guy, running a subversive website rampant with COMMIES and "socialist Europeans!" Fox News would have a field day.

[eppie]

Unless there is a huge grass roots movement to propel up a third party, they instead tend to drag down one of the two major parties with them.

The interesting thing to me is that with the advent of the Internet, there was (supposedly) a construct now in place to make a 3rd party possible from a grass roots perspective. Finally, a medium making it possible for mass communication that could not be filtered and controlled by governments and corporations - sorta like this website, it's just filtered and controlled by me without any outside influences (not even ads!) . Now we've seen how hard governments and corporations are working to take this medium down (ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, and many more to come), so maybe that golden opportunity has been wasted.

Then again, any new movement (e.g. "Tea Party") would more than likely just get absorbed into one of the two major parties. Anything gaining enough popularity to get significant media attention will in turn draw the attention of the two parties, and one of them will try desperately to absorb it rather than have both fight it.

Think all the political talk here puts us on some FBI watch list? That Bolty guy, running a subversive website rampant with COMMIES and "socialist Europeans!" Fox News would have a field day.

Interesting point. How big would this 3rd party have to be to actually change the two party status quo? Even if it out of nothing would get 30% support still the two others would fight over the win.....and strategic voting would bring that 30% down to maybe 10%.

Political entropy is opposite from the thermodynamic one....it will drift towards a two party system if your system of voting and representation is like it is in the US.

[shoju]

I think the last major non republican/democrat candidate that had a serious impact on the election (in a way that showed he had a chance at some point to be elected) was Ross Perot, and even that turned into a fiasco in the end.

[DeeBye]

So now it looks like contraception is now a political issue? I'm not talking about the funding for contraception, but the serious views that contraception is somehow a bad thing. I understand that it is a Catholic thing (I spent a good amount of years in various Catholic schools), but really?

[eppie]

I think the last major non republican/democrat candidate that had a serious impact on the election (in a way that showed he had a chance at some point to be elected) was Ross Perot, and even that turned into a fiasco in the end.

And Nader running also turned out bad. Especially in 2000.
Those events clearly show you have a system that doesn't work. You have a significant part of the american population who supports a guy like Nader (5 %, 10 %, 20%) but one hand can't vote for him, and on the other hand, vote for him and make the guy they detest the most president by doing so.

A political system is good when it can be changed slowly. When it can only change through revolution, something is seriously wrong.

[shoju]

The Nader effect might seem bigger than it was, or maybe smaller to me than it was. When it came down to it, Nader never really had much of a chance to be president. Around here, he was a punchline, instead of a candidate.

Contraception is a religious point for a large % of religions (christianity, catholicism, islam, and I think the jewish faith) , meaning that it is going to be a factor for both parties. This is fueled in part by the Conservative's War on Planned Parenthood, Obama's recent attempt to force the issue, and a few other things.

but since it crosses both religious and political lines, contraception will become a more prominent political issue.

[Jester]

The Nader effect might seem bigger than it was, or maybe smaller to me than it was. When it came down to it, Nader never really had much of a chance to be president. Around here, he was a punchline, instead of a candidate.

He's a punchline to a pretty dark joke, in most Democratic circles. He absorbed enough of the Democratic-leaning idealistic youth vote to wreck Al Gore's chances at the presidency, and instead delivered up the utter disaster that was George W. Bush. If even 1 in 10 Nader voters had voted Gore, and the rest had stayed home, the election would have gone the other way.

That's the Nader effect. Not that he had any chance of winning, but that, in running, he changed the outcome. Ross Perot has much the same reputation on the right, although he was at least slightly more credible as a bipartisan spoiler.

-Jester

[shoju]

Well sure, now. But I mean when the election was going on in 2000. Asking if someone was voting for Nader was a great joke in Ohio, which (personal opinion here) seems to be the land of extremes.

[Kevin]

The Nader effect might seem bigger than it was, or maybe smaller to me than it was. When it came down to it, Nader never really had much of a chance to be president. Around here, he was a punchline, instead of a candidate.

That's the Nader effect. Not that he had any chance of winning, but that, in running, he changed the outcome. Ross Perot has much the same reputation on the right, although he was at least slightly more credible as a bipartisan spoiler.

-Jester

Right, which I think is what Shoju was getting at. Though as you mention the margins on the 2000 election were so close, that as you say if only 10% of the Nader voters voted Gore (so 280,000 votes) that the results likely would have been different, though it depends some on where there votes were cast.

2000 Election Results

Perot on the other hand was really the last serious 3rd party, while he didn't manage an electoral vote he did come close (I think Maine is where he did best actually getting more of the vote than Bush there). He pulled down nearly 19.7 million votes vs the 2.8 million Nader got. He was getting them from both sides though more from traditional Republicans, yes, he was also getting traditional non voters as that election had a higher turnout (55.2%) than the 2000 election (50.4%)

1992 Election Results

It's a bit of apples vs oranges; they are both roundish, and both fruit, and both had an affect but they delivered it different ways. I think Shoju was just looking at a different scope than you.


Edit: I believe 1968 was the last time 3 people actually won electoral votes. 1968 Election Results

[Jester]

Right, which I think is what Shoju was getting at. Though as you mention the margins on the 2000 election were so close, that as you say if only 10% of the Nader voters voted Gore (so 280,000 votes) that the results likely would have been different, though it depends some on where there votes were cast.

Florida is the only state in play, even if we use a very large share of Nader's votes where they were actually cast, which is the only reasonable assumption. Most states where Nader had large shares were safely Gore states, and most states where he did very badly are safely Bush states.

However, even 10% of Nader's Florida votes would have been enough to swing the state decisively, and with it, the election. Not quite a butterfly flapping its wings, but definitely a case where a relatively small thing has had an enormous potential effect.

-Jester

[eppie]

I realized I actually didn't know anything about Ross Perot. I just checked him on wikipedia and it sounds that this guy had some good plans. It actually makes me even more negative about the system with the electoral college.

I mean this guy got 20 % of the votes......so if you add to that all the strategic Bush en Clinton votes (so the people that were scared to vote for Perot because it would increase the chance of the candidate they were against got elected) it wouldn't be strange to think that he could have reached 35 % of the popular vote and so maybe even more than Clinton and Bush.

I read a quote from him which I think also here on the lounge people often forget. '''''''Keep in mind our Constitution predates the Industrial Revolution. Our founders did not know about electricity, the train, telephones, radio, television, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, nuclear weapons, satellites, or space exploration. There's a lot they didn't know about. It would be interesting to see what kind of document they'd draft today. Just keeping it frozen in time won't hack it'''''

[LavCat]

I realized I actually didn't know anything about Ross Perot. I just checked him on wikipedia and it sounds that this guy had some good plans. It actually makes me even more negative about the system with the electoral college.

I mean this guy got 20 % of the votes......so if you add to that all the strategic Bush en Clinton votes (so the people that were scared to vote for Perot because it would increase the chance of the candidate they were against got elected) it wouldn't be strange to think that he could have reached 35 % of the popular vote and so maybe even more than Clinton and Bush.

I read a quote from him which I think also here on the lounge people often forget. '''''''Keep in mind our Constitution predates the Industrial Revolution. Our founders did not know about electricity...'''''

[eppie]

I think he meant electricity from the wall.

[Jester]

I mean this guy got 20 % of the votes......so if you add to that all the strategic Bush en Clinton votes (so the people that were scared to vote for Perot because it would increase the chance of the candidate they were against got elected) it wouldn't be strange to think that he could have reached 35 % of the popular vote and so maybe even more than Clinton and Bush.

That doesn't seem plausible to me. 15% of voters preferred Perot, but strategically voted for one of the other two? I'd believe 1.5%, maybe. 15% is 15 million people...

-Jester

[eppie]

I mean this guy got 20 % of the votes......so if you add to that all the strategic Bush en Clinton votes (so the people that were scared to vote for Perot because it would increase the chance of the candidate they were against got elected) it wouldn't be strange to think that he could have reached 35 % of the popular vote and so maybe even more than Clinton and Bush.

That doesn't seem plausible to me. 15% of voters preferred Perot, but strategically voted for one of the other two? I'd believe 1.5%, maybe. 15% is 15 million people...

-Jester

Well I don't think it is a particular strange number. What about the support he had in the polls earlier? It is clear that longer before elections people answer differently to the question who they are votin to then just before the elections. Don't underestimate the strategic vote.

[Jester]

Well I don't think it is a particular strange number. What about the support he had in the polls earlier? It is clear that longer before elections people answer differently to the question who they are votin to then just before the elections. Don't underestimate the strategic vote.

Don't overestimate the strategic vote, either.

Perot draws from both parties, which takes a bit dent out of the whole reason for strategic voting in the first place. Perot also did not lead in the polls from Democratic convention onwards. Once it became clear that the Dems had a solid candidate, and once Perot made a fool of himself by pointlessly dropping out of the race, he never came out of third place. Indeed, once Clinton was more or less certain to win, I suspect Perot's vote went up, not down, since strategic voting became less important, not more. Perot voters in solid blue or red states no longer had to hold back their votes.

There was no massive strategic shift away from Perot. He was a flash-in-the-pan novelty candidate, no more likely to win the Presidency than Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain was to win the GOP nomination. He looked good, until people got a clear look at him, then he tanked.

-Jester