Well, Obama won.

[seawasp]

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.

Comments

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Neither Canada nor the UK have regional third parties. Both do have regional fourth parties, though.

[saladin-count0.livejournal.com]

true - but not completly

uk: lab and cons are the two big, governing parties (although you could argue that the cons are an english party by now)
the libdems......in an pr-system they would be a real third party that could be even the biggest under the right circumstances
but under fptp they have their regional powerbases and elsewhere their potential support vanishes ´cause it would be a wasted vote

as there are strong regional parties (snp, pc) there was never any big push by the bid 2 to kill the libdems off (the nader argument wouldnt work with more regional parties)


canada---quite similar

there are many factors involved
a big one is quebec
an other is th usa :-) the south (usa) is often nearer as their neighbourprovinces
the west(oil) with completly different interests and more aligned with the usa; the east with a longer british/european political tradition, the teritories

the fact remains: without the existance of the regional parties (mostly with nationalistic reasons) there would be tremendes force to squeeze out the third party (or at least any third party that could realy influence the electionoutcome outside of crazy circumstances )

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

(blink) (blink) That's, er, a remarkably unusual description of both the UK's Lib Dems and Canada's NDP.

http://www.maptube.org/map.aspx?mapid=841
http://www.maproomblog.com/2011/05/mapping_the_2011_canadian_federal_election_results.php

Explain to me again how either is a "regional party"? Somehow I'm not seeing it.

[saladin-count0.livejournal.com]

no libdems nad ndp´s are not only regional parties (although the strengh of the libdems - meaning the areas where can win seats is lemeted to some traditional areas like the sw or london or scottland) but that the survival of a real national third party is only allowed/made possible by the existance of regional parties or an BIG wedge issue that breaks up the bipolarity of an winner takes all system)