In my opinion American politics have come to a point where the average voter simply votes for a party.
The party system seems to be nothing more than a shepherd for politicians. They need not think more than to recite the party’s script and push the same colored button that the person setting next to them pushed. This stifles moderation, and cements the “everyone is evil but us” mentality.
This brings me back to my subject: Should American’s outlaw political parties?
Here are a few arguments I would like to site.
The politicians would need to express their own views on current topics. There would be no more script to follow to get votes.
It would help to eliminate party clout, bullying, and deadlock. One politician would actually have to use his speaking skills to convince others to vote for his bill. No more simply allowing his party to carry the bill to the oval office.
The people would need to actually think before voting. God forbid.
Any opinions either for, against, or statement that I am a idiot would be appreciated.
On the other: yes. In fact, voting booths should be open all the time, where registered voters can go to vote on the issues that are coming before our electorates. In this way, it doesn’t matter what party they are. We aren’t voting for their ideals, we’re voting for ours.
It should never matter who is in office if they are serving our interests.
I won’t call you an idiot, but the biggest argument against it in my view is that peaceful honest people ought to be free to pursue their own happiness in their own way. And that includes forming political parties.
That said, the process ought to be fair, and presently it isn’t. If you’re not a Republicrat, you have to jump through hoops and tap-dance naked just to participate in the electoral process.
What legal mechanism did you have in mind to outlaw political parties? You’d have to alter the first amendment and its protection of peacable assembly, for starters.
The first is, should we forbid citizens and/or elected representatives from joining together in coalitions of mutual support to reach common political goals?
The answer to that is “no.” Not only do we have the whole “right to peaceable assembly” problem, it’s impracticable. Instead of having 220-odd Republican Congressmen, you would have 220-odd “folks who like to get together and shoot the shit - oh and vote the same way on bills.”
The second issue is whether government should subsidize parties, through government-funded primaries and the like. A secondary issue is whether the government should subsidize particular parties.
Therein lies a legitimate debate, and I’m not sure where I stand on it.
And, Lib, I don’t think what maintains the two-party system is the hoops required to get into the electoral process. A bigger factor is the “winner take all” nature of our elections, so that once you’re in the electoral process, if you only appeal to a minority of the voters, you won’t be elected.
I think the OP is mistaken in that there really is a lot of variance within the parties. Not every Republican is the same, and not every Democrat is the same - Zell Miller is very different from Cynthia McKinney, and John McCain is very different from Tom DeLay. Sure, the Democrats as a whole are largely similar, and the Republicans are as well, but this is an obvious result of having political parties. Most of the Greens are similar, too. And most of the Libertarians. And most of the Reformers. They’re similar because their ideological views are the reason they chose their parties in the first place. Claiming suprise at this is like claiming surprise that all the members of the Chess Club have similar interests.
And personally, I think having a strong Republican and strong Democratic party is a good thing. The basic question in politics is: “How much do you want the government involved in your life?” For most people, the answer to this question pretty much determines their political orientation. A lot? You’re a democrat. A little? You’re a republican. As much as possible? Hello, Mr. Communist. No more than the bare minimum? Nice to meet you, Senor Libertarian.
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the public believes government involvement should be moderate - not the extermes of Libertarianism or Communism. And that’s why most people are Democrats and Republicans. There seems to be a perception among third-party members that the various third parties would rise up and be just as prominent as the Big Two, if only the evil Republicrats played fair and handed them the ball every now and then. Me, I don’t think so. I think if every party got equal air time, and equal money, and blah blah blah, they would still get their asses handed to them in the elections - they’re the fringe parties, and they appeal to the fringes.
And there’s another advantage to having two strong major parties. Look at the elections in France - the winners get a whopping 15-20% of the vote. Do we really want to elect a candidate that only 20% of the people want? What if all the bigots of America managed to run on a platform of segregation, and won with 15% of the vote? The Democratic and Republican candidates may be frequently non-descript and blah, but at least half the people find them agreeable enough. An elected official that 50% of the people think is okay is far better than one that 80% of the people absolutely loathe.
The third parties are certainly useful - they keep the Big Two on their toes. The Greens make sure that the Democrats don’t forget about them. The Libertarians - too rarely, unfortunately - can shift a Republican to more laissez faire policies. Overall, I think the system as it stands is pretty darned good. It could certainly use a few tweaks here and there, but overall, I’m pretty satisfied with it. It could certainly be worse.
Jeff
Fair enough, Lib, but you could argue that the 50% or so of the people who don’t vote really don’t give a damn one way or the other. They’ve essentially opted to let the other 50% of the voting public decide their fate for them - so Reagan was still elected by the majority of the people who care. But okay, using your figures, would we rather have a candidate who got 27% of the vote, or one who got 10%, in which that 10% is composed of extremist views?
Well, also, that 10% would probably also be 10% of the people who voted, not 10% of eligable voters…so, using the 50% votes, assumption, it wouldn’t be 10% to Reagan’s 27%, it would be 5% to Reagan’s 27%.
I assume that you are referring to the Libertarian Party.
Lib, my point is that the US government already does subsidize the Democratic and Republican parties, both by payinig for their primary elections (as well as the primary elections of “qualifying” minor parties), and by giving public funds to subsidize presidential campaigns.
On its face, I’m opposed to both, but there is the issue of (increased) plutocratic influence if the money is cut off.
Not the way I was figuring. I assumed Reagan got his 27% because 54% of the votes were for him, and 50% of the eligible population voted, or something similar. So assuming the same 50% voter turnout, and 20% of the votes were for the candidate, then that would be the 10% I calculated. Unless you’re figuring differently than I am. Of course, this is all an irrelevant quibble, but irrelevant quibbles are what makes life worth living, right?
Not so. In French presidential elections, if no candidate achieves a simple majority in the first round (and with six major parties, this is rarely, if ever, the case), a runoff election is held for the two candidates with the highest number of first-round votes. This system works quite well, BTW.
Re: the OP, I have no idea whether I’m an average voter, but I feel no cuompulsion to vote along party lines in any given election. Personally, I distrust ideology as the sole criterium for candidate selection, and I’d rather see a much broader spectrum of opinions represented in our political system, but it appears most people who vote in this country feel that the benefits of grouping candidates by two nearly identical ideologies outweigh the abuses that have arisen from the two-party system. The fact is, at this moment most of those who vote apparently consider the choices sufficient, and most of those who don’t can’t be arsed to do something about it.
In any event, my opinion is the desired result could be achieved more fairly by loosening the restrictions on how candidates enter the electoral process (eliminating petition requirements, etc.) and reducing the enormous cost of political campaigning (for example, limit campaign advertising to the three weeks before an election, as it is done, very effectively, in France) rather than by forcing the breakup of the existing parties.
