That's a wasted vote.
As I was watching the evening news, one of BBC News' leading stories was about the Republicans blocking a vote of no confidence in the Senate over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. I lost my patience. Since when did Congress become a parliament? A vote of no confidence does jack shit around here. If the Senate has got something on this man, then start the impeachment proceedings. Otherwise, stop wasting Congressional Record space on this political shit and get to the real work.
[mutters] You trade in one group of dumbasses for another...
[mutters] You trade in one group of dumbasses for another...
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Third party politics are always in play here in the United States. Actually in some political academic circles we are rated higher when it comes to the number of political parties than the United Kingdom. 2.4 effective parties compared to 2.1 if I remember correctly. I don’t have a list in front of me right now but in elections, one can usually find a Libertarian Party, Socialist Party, and Green Party candidates.
As you and many others believe, a voter can either go with the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate. Well, that is because the U.S. is essentially a two party system despite the presence of multiple parties. So why then, is the U.S. a two party system? Same reason why a lot of majoritarian systems, like the UK are.
As you know, when there is an election it’s winner takes all. A winning candidate for the legislature represents a district by him/herself. A winning candidate for the presidency gets to form a cabinet filled by his party. Also, our elections do not require the confidence of the majority of voters. Aside from President Bush’s 2004 re-election, an American president hadn’t captured over 50% of the vote since Regan, I believe. It’s entirely possible to win the United States presidency with only, say, 30% of the electorate supporting you. All your other opponents just have to have less.
So what, you may ask. Well, because of the majoritarian system, we naturally gravitate to a two-party system. Believe it or not, the Republican is actually a center-right party and the Democratic Party is center-left. The reason why each gets painted as being far-right or far-left is due to 1.) the extremist parts of each of their bases and, 2.) individuals who are the faces of that extremist element. Think about it, when someone demonizes the Republican Party, are they attacking it more because of the party platform or because of actions of prominent members of the party? The reason why both parties gravitate towards the center is because the key to any election is what we call, “50%+1.” That is, you get 50% of the voters plus that one individual and you win everything. To do that, you have to first lock in your bases and then capture the swing voters that are in the center. Well, how do you do that? You move the party platform towards the center and make it appealing. Take the Democrats, they know that they have racial minorities, gays, labor unions and locked in for support. But that doesn’t bring them to 50%+1. They’ve got to capture the center which are, right now, people who are fed-up with the current administration. That’s why all candidates are focusing on that. If the center were people who were unhappy about, let’s say universal health care, then they’d be advocating its reform. The center really controls the destiny of the country and its fickleness figures largely into each party’s campaign strategies.
Whoo… hope your still with me.
So do third parties figure into the U.S.? Yes and no. Third parties typically only arise from a collapse of another one. The Republican Party for instance, was a third party that arose from anti-slavery sentiment. It destroyed the Whig party and took in defectors of the existing Democratic Party. Nowadays, the possibility of the a new party emerging is tantalizing but probably not realistic. It would require the defection of large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats to make it work. The result would change the ideology of the remnants of whatever party survived. An example of this would be the rise of the Libertarian Party which would attract the economic liberals of the Republicans and the social liberals of the Democrats. What would be left would be the social conservatives for the Republicans and the economic conservatives Democrats.
What’s preventing that? Well, the same reason why I don’t vote for a Libertarian. They are a bunch of losers. Most voters think that if they vote for a third party, they are wasting a vote and actually helping their opposition. Back in 2000, Democrats where wailing over the fact that people voted for Ralph Nader who won, like 3 or 4 percent of the vote. If swing voters hadn’t supported a third party, the Al Gore would have won the election. (Yes, even in Florida.) Did voters waste their vote? Republicans would say they didn’t because the Republicans won. Democrats would say yes because those votes cost them the election.