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Well, Obama won.
Which is better than the only practical alternative.
I did not vote for either one; I knew that New York would be going to Obama barring an act of God directly changing the minds of millions, so I took the opportunity to vote for a third party.
However.
In the next four years, we need to *MAKE* a third party, and WIN, and kick BOTH the Democrats AND Republicans out.
Because honestly? There's not really much difference between Obama and Mitt. The news and each groups' boosters like to talk up the differences like they're huge, insuperable gaps, but they're really both much closer to each other than either of them would have been to, say, Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon, let alone Jimmy Carter or JFK. While Mitt and his party do seem more bound up with the obviously 1% interests, Obama's got plenty of support and interests in those areas as well; he just played the stage somewhat differently.
We need to BREAK the two party system. We need to SHATTER it. It needs to be turned into a system of PEOPLE, not organizations that perpetuate themselves as though the purpose of politics was to perpetuate politics.
I did not vote for either one; I knew that New York would be going to Obama barring an act of God directly changing the minds of millions, so I took the opportunity to vote for a third party.
However.
In the next four years, we need to *MAKE* a third party, and WIN, and kick BOTH the Democrats AND Republicans out.
Because honestly? There's not really much difference between Obama and Mitt. The news and each groups' boosters like to talk up the differences like they're huge, insuperable gaps, but they're really both much closer to each other than either of them would have been to, say, Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon, let alone Jimmy Carter or JFK. While Mitt and his party do seem more bound up with the obviously 1% interests, Obama's got plenty of support and interests in those areas as well; he just played the stage somewhat differently.
We need to BREAK the two party system. We need to SHATTER it. It needs to be turned into a system of PEOPLE, not organizations that perpetuate themselves as though the purpose of politics was to perpetuate politics.
no subject
If I remember my AmHist correctly off the top of my head, in 212 years of Presidential politics, we've had exactly two periods with three viable parties, and both times two squeezed out the third and/or the third imploded and vanished within a few cycles-- and both of those times were pre-1900, which is why we no longer have a Federalist Party (replaced by the Whigs) or a Whig Party (replaced by the GOP splitting off from the Democrat-Republican Party). There've been other elections with major third-party candidates for President, but not for more than an election cycle or two, and almost always backed by personal finances (e.g. Perot) and/or personal fame & ego (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt) and thus had no breadth to the ticket nor any staying power for the next cycle.
At this point, without drastically changing election procedures, even a four-party system would probably devolve into a three- then a two-party system again within a few decades, due to the forces of raising enough money to stay major enough to be viable and the pressure of being "in power" and "in opposition" driving them to join in or go defunct as voters gravitate to whichever two are most attractive/most likely to win. Humanity has a built-in tendency for duality, after all.
What's more likely is that the current two realign to be split along different lines/issues over the coming years, absorbing or spinning off different minor parties in the process. (As seems to happen every 40 years or so.) The Tea Party spinning off to join the Libertarians and the Blue Dog Dems then joining up with moderate Repubs to form the base of a revitalized GOP is one such scenario. (That would most likely temporarily be a 4-party system, with the Greens as the most likely fourth, but the two most successful out of those four would probably marginalize the other two to the point of being ignored within a cycle or two.)
I think the only way to have a somewhat stable more-than-two-party system in the current U.S. setup is for a party to build strong regional support and build a base from the bottom up. (Electing Congresscritters & governors first rather than shooting only/mainly for President.) That way, provincialism prevents the "extra" parties from either merging with the big two, fizzling out, or becoming one of the big two after one implodes. Canada's Bloc Quebecois sort of works that way, but I can't think of a U.S. region that would have unique yet major enough issues to drive that sort of dynamic--though upper New England seems to be taking a shot at it anyway, albeit in an unorganized way. If the Electoral College or something substantially like it is kept, then truly proportional allotment (rather than the "winner of the popular vote takes all electoral votes regardless of state-by-state results" that the National Popular Vote movement is pushing) would make it easier for lesser parties to get their toe in the door, at least regionally.