In a country of 330 million, represented by two political parties in a system that skews to the preferences of the very wealthy, literally nobody is going to find a political party that perfectly represents all of their policy preferences. Even Republican donors are hopping mad that after all those hundreds of millions of political contributions and even with their party in control of all three branches of government, they still can’t get all of what they want (though they are getting a whole lot more of it in the last six months than the previous eight years). The odds that you or I find ourselves perfectly happy with either of the parties approaches zero. But that doesn’t mean that both sides are equal, or that it makes no difference who is in charge. If you prefer less war and lower defense budgets, one of the two parties is going to be more likely to make moves in that direction. Maybe not as far and as fast as you would prefer. But the other party literally campaigned on more war. Ignoring these facts will not do anything to move the world in the direction you would like it to go.
Well, you’ll need to change “first past the post” elections so that third (and fourth, and fifth, and sixth) parties matter. But then you have the same problem when it comes to coalition building at the party level; the parties have to agree internally on how much to compromise their ideals in order to participate in a ruling coalition. Unless one party wins an outright majority.
Are we doomed to live in a two party system? Unfortunately that appears to be the case. A two party system is the inevitable result of a “first past the post” voting system; it evolves organically everywhere that voting method is used. You’ll need to change “first past the post” elections so that third (and fourth, and fifth, and sixth) parties matter. But then you have the same problem when it comes to coalition building at the party level; the parties have to agree internally on how much to compromise their ideals in order to participate in a ruling coalition. Unless one party wins an outright majority.
If the US changed the voting rules to something like Germany or Italy (proportional representation) then we wouldn’t only have two parties, we’d have six parties trying to figure out the least bad way to form coalitions. Roughly speaking, the evangelicals would make one party, the libertarians another, the pro-big-business a third, the progressives a fourth, some form of pro-minority a fifth, and a moderate centrist neo-liberal party a sixth. Then they’d all have to figure out who to team up with to form a government. And the idealists would be screaming for purity, as always.
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