[Vision2020] polarizing and the two-party system

[Paul Rumelhart]

Well, I don't know how you go about getting there from here.  The two 
party system is hard to break.  You have the problem of people thinking 
they are "throwing their vote away".  You have others that think that 
they are weakening their own party in the process.  It's a feedback 
cycle that is hard to break.  I certainly wouldn't try changing things 
by law.  The only way I know of is to support what other parties exist 
currently.  That's not to say that I wouldn't vote for the strongest 
opponent to a candidate I severely didn't like if the race was close.  
If I'm in the minority by a good margin anyway, though, why not vote for 
who I actually want to win?  Maybe that's the only way we are going to 
get there.  If you are pretty sure you're going to lose, vote your 
conscience.  Then maybe the other parties will start to grow.

Since the current minor parties are so small currently, how much actual 
molding do you think they are capable of?  Why shouldn't the major party 
just disregard their votes?  There are whole population subsets they 
ignore that are much larger than the minor party's voting base.  But if 
they had more proponents and the major parties started to see a 
noticable decline in their ranks (even if relatively small), they would 
have to start taking their views seriously.

I liken it to Internet Explorer and Microsoft.  Once Netscape was 
beaten, Microsoft just sat back and coasted on the development of their 
browser.  Broken CSS handling, security holes, broken PNG transparency, 
disregard for standards of all types, no continued innovation, it didn't 
matter - there was no other choice.  Then along comes Firefox.  
Suddenly, there is competition, even if the browser only has maybe 10% 
of the userbase.  Now we have a new and improved IE 7 coming out soon.  
The same analogy I would think would apply to the party system.

Paul

g. crabtree wrote:

> Mr. Rumelhart
>
> How about this for  comment. We already have third, fourth, fifth, and 
> sixth parties and they never garner more then a small percentage of 
> the vote, in aggregate. If your vision is truly appreciably better, 
> why do you think this is? How would you change things? By outlawing 
> the Republican and Democrat parties? Perhaps it really is as simple as 
> Americans shaking out into two basic groups. Most voters don't follow 
> politics closely enough to be well informed about the two major 
> parties much less six, or more. A basketball teams worth of candidates 
> would result in even more of a beauty contest then we have now and, I 
> suspect, still break along two basic lines. The mommy government party 
> and the daddy government party. The rest would be the whining, 
> squalling, biting at your ankles parties. I think that what we have 
> now, a system where the minors try to shape the bigs, is probably the 
> most efficient way. Libertarians and Constitutionalists trying to mold 
> the Reps, Greens and Socialists trying to shape the Dems and the devil 
> take the hindmost. The most appealing thing about your multi 
> party/coalition government scheme is that it would be even more 
> difficult to ever form any kind of consensus and as a result little 
> would get done. Train wreck government is always a hoot to watch and 
> the less government can accomplish, the better, in my lowly opinion.
>
> gc
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Rumelhart" 
> <godshatter at yahoo.com>
> To: "Vision2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Sent: Friday, October 13, 2006 10:09 PM
> Subject: [Vision2020] polarizing and the two-party system
>
>
>> Republicans vs Democrats, conservatives vs liberals, is it really that
>> cut and dried?  Is the country really that simplistically divided?  I
>> have an idea of what a stereotypical Republican thinks, and what a
>> stereotypical Democrat thinks.  I wonder how close it is to the truth.
>> If you took a group of average Americans, for example, and gave them a
>> list of anonymous position statements on a whole range of subjects by
>> our congressmen without any other info could they classify each position
>> statement as belonging to a Republican or a Democrat with a high degree
>> of accuracy?  Also, what percentage of voters vote strictly according to
>> which party they have thrown their hats in with?  What would it be like
>> if there were no such simple and safe option?
>>
>> I have long thought that the two-party system is ruining our country.
>> Every issue has to be framed with respect to it's Rep/Dem voting ratio.
>> Issues that are complex or multi-faceted have to be dumbed down to fit
>> the system.  Isn't it possible that people can be conservative on social
>> issues but liberal on financial ones, for example?  Or vice-versa?
>> Imagine if there were, say, five major parties more or less equally
>> represented and a dozen or so minor ones in our government.   No one
>> party could control the House or the Senate.  Consensus would be a game
>> of determining which parties would be willing to lean your way and which
>> pieces of what you want you'd have to give up to court the outliers.
>>
>> Voters would have to reflect upon how they lean on a number of issues.
>> Would they rather have a Green candidate in office representing them or
>> a Libertarian?  Candidates could actually be members of more than one
>> party.  The country would still probably divide more or less into
>> colored regions on the map, but it wouldn't be so divisive.
>> Corporations would have to buy politicians from a number of parties to
>> get  their legislation passed.  Finally, people could talk about issues
>> as if they had more than one dimension.
>>
>> Anyway, just some meandering thoughts on a Friday night.  Any comments?
>>
>> Paul
>>
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