Comment by parthdesai
6 years ago
If we are on about history of third-party, is there a state that had a majority candidates from the 3rd party? I feel like the entire structure in US setup such that at the end of the day, power belongs to the two main parties and it's impossible to bypass that, even if people might want to. Anyways, my point was when GP said China was a low bar to clear while calling India a democracy, which felt like they didn't consider India to be a true democracy.
Again I must be missing something since I thought the wikipedia page addressed this. Perhaps you looked only at a few people on that list. This party has had a successful candidate in Minnesota:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_the_United_Sta...
As for what the two parties, they are pretty entrenched, but not 100 percent given the examples I noted. But also note that both are broad coalitions, not under any small group or individual's control. Rather than having completely separate parties that operate together as a coalition in parliamentary systems. It amounts to basically the same effect. The Democratic party is a coalition of Liberals, progressives, certain immigrant and minority groups, unions, and centrists. The Republicans are a smaller coalition of conservative christians, neocons, moderates. There's some other factions in both. Neocons for example, are essentially a group that switched parties, considered liberals who side with conservatives on foreign policy. In any given election some faction might gain the advantage and win with their nominee. Meanwhile a large chunk of the country identifies as "independent" of these parties. Also note that primaries are essentially democratic too, with the nominee having to win votes to gain the nomination. Not smoke-filled backroom meetings or something. In some states, anyone can vote in a party's primary.
If it was a one-party system, then clearly not democratic, sure. But a two-party system isn't such a clear problem to me. More of a process difference.
There is a whole episode on how different groups are stifled in the 2 party system -
https://youtu.be/MykMQfmLIro
AOC gave a long interview on how Pelosi actively tries to stifle the more left views.
You are portraying it as some happy harmony. It's far from it.