Be that as it may, Duverger's Law holds that countries using first-past-the-post voting systems will always have two party politics. While he declared that in 1997, it's obvious and hardly a shocking revelation, although recent some have declared that it's become a uniquely American thing.
Well, observations of the Canadian system show it's operating north of the border too.
The thing about it is that recently not only has that advanced the absolutely moronic concept that "there are two kinds of people", but it's really caused politics to evolve to the extreme. The GOP has gone completely populist and believes that large sections of the citizenry are class enemies. The Democrats have done the same. There's more of a hope that the Democrats will come back to a wider centrist party than there is that the GOP will do the same, but right now the choices are two really extreme ones, at least on a national level, and frankly increasingly on a local level.
We don't have to do this.
Part of the reason we do is that when third parties emerge, folks like Robert Reich run around yelling you can't vote for them, as that's a vote for the other big party. Bullshit. A vote for a third party is a vote for a third party. And as we've recently discussed, occasionally a party dies, as the GOP has done, and it's always replaced when that happens with a new, third, party.
"You have to vote for the Whigs! If you don't, that's a vote for the Democrats".
There are third parties, and I suspect there's a good chance of a new, conservative, party appearing within the next couple of months.
I hope one does.
Because, right now, it's hard to see how a person of good conscience could vote for either of the likely "main party" Presidential candidates.
Prior Related Threads:
No comments:
Post a Comment