Someone please convince me that our duopoly is democratic

[Joey1996]

These two lame duck parties have colluded to exclude 3rd party candidates from joining presidential debates, and funnel so much money into local, state and congressional elections that it's near impossible for 3rd party candidates to gain seats. Not to mention their sick gerrymandering tactics and use of their roles in government to represent "people who buy into their agendas" rather than the people who elect them. How  can we call this a democracy?

Inb4 "Be the change you want to see in the world and run for government as a Democrat....or be crushed" and "We're actually a constitutional republic and Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6) was the second coming of Jesus"

[Koharu]

I'm going to use one of the phrases you said not to, but not to change your mind, because I mostly agree with you.

We were supposed to be a representative republic, not a democracy, but we've turned into a weird halfsies thing that does neither well. If we were actually doing the representative republic properly, we'd have tons more representatives rather than having capped it, and some folks have argued that would mean more parties, and I agree with that. In addition, if the electoral college was allowed to work the way it was made to work, they would have blocked Trump. But instead it's "bound" to being democratic rather than representative, which makes it weird and not work right.

So, honestly, in my opinion, what we have is broken, so I agree with you. I don't think a straight up democracy would fix the issue. I think if we're going to try to stick mostly with what we have, we need to switch to type of voting that isn't just first past the post. I'm a big fan of run off, which would allow people to vote for new parties without fear off it being a "wasted" vote.

[Lumine]

Just my outside view, but the US would do well in stop thinking of their current Constitution as some sort of an eternal, sacred document (the Amendments notwithstanding). After almost two hundred and fifty years you'd think the constitutional framework of a nation would require some updating (not just another Amendment), particularly given the excessive, harmful gridlock which appears to be so constant.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

 

Just my outside view, but the US would do well in stop thinking of their current Constitution as some sort of an eternal, sacred document (the Amendments notwithstanding). After almost two hundred and fifty years you'd think the constitutional framework of a nation would require some updating (not just another Amendment), particularly given the excessive, harmful gridlock which appears to be so constant.

The Constitution is an object of cargo cult worship. It's just a set of rules and suggestions for how to get good government. People who have no real understanding of or desire for good government cling to it like some sort of magic spell, or religious text where if they just "follow the Constitution" it will all work out right in the end.

Which is like consulting a driver's end handout when the car is on fire and headed for a cliff. Yes, you still shouldn't shift without using the clutch or yank the wheel, but those directions are insufficient.

[HisGrace]

It's democratic because we have elections. If you want third parties to win, vote for them. The fact that not very many people do and just pick one of the two parties and stick with them for life is an indictment of them, not the system.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Just my outside view, but the US would do well in stop thinking of their current Constitution as some sort of an eternal, sacred document (the Amendments notwithstanding). After almost two hundred and fifty years you'd think the constitutional framework of a nation would require some updating (not just another Amendment), particularly given the excessive, harmful gridlock which appears to be so constant.

The Constitution is an object of cargo cult worship. It's just a set of rules and suggestions for how to get good government. People who have no real understanding of or desire for good government cling to it like some sort of magic spell, or religious text where if they just "follow the Constitution" it will all work out right in the end.

Which is like consulting a driver's end handout when the car is on fire and headed for a cliff. Yes, you still shouldn't shift without using the clutch or yank the wheel, but those directions are insufficient.

No the Constitution is the law which dictates how other laws can be passed

[Beet]

Ideas not represented in the two parties as currently constituted can come in and take over one of the parties in the primary system.

Our current system though is so distorted that it's not democratic, no.

[Crumpets]

Okay, I'll preface this by saying I don't think the US system is anywhere near perfect, or really all that close to "acceptable," but I do think the quality of its democracy is broadly similar to that of other countries with multi-party systems, and that many discrepancies in the quality of governance are unrelated to the two party system.

1) Some countries build their coalitions after the election, we build ours during the primary season. The differences between candidates like Rand Paul, John Kasich, and Donald Trump or between John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and Barack Obama are really not much less dramatic than the gap between Johnson and Paul or Stein and Kucinich. We have just as broad of a spectrum between the 20-30 candidates running for president in the primaries as any parliamentary system has on their general election ballot (with the possible exception of fewer outright communist parties). The difference is that, once the coalitions are formed, we get to vote between them, rather then voting amongst all the candidates and then having them get to pick out whose in charge based on that. The strong trends we see in the general election map tend to reflect these different groups, which might constitute parties in other countries, being pushed from one coalition to another - see the Dixiecrats being pushed from the Democrats to the Republicans or the suburban moderates being pushed from the Republicans to the Democrats. We don't say that a country with many parties, but one governing bloc and one opposition bloc are undemocratic, so how is this any different?

2) Would having more parties really change the makeup of our governing bodies? One of the arguments I hear a lot from third-party voters is that if we had a multi-party system, we would have more outside voices in our system. Looking at multi-party systems around the world, I find it extremely hard to believe that, if the US had a multi-party system that party leaders like Stein and Johnson would be able to stand on their own. It seems much more likely to me that we would have, for example, a Left Party, led by Sanders, Warren, Ellison, Jayapal, etc. with a Stein figure maybe achieving some low-level post. We might have a more robust Libertarian Party, run by Rand Paul and Justin Amash, with Johnson holding about as much sway as he does now on national politics. We might have a populist-right party run by someone like Trump, Arpaio, Steve King, or Michelle Bachmann, while someone like Darrel Castle would still be a total unknown nationally. These are the same names we hear anyways. We'd be having the exact same debates over the same issues, just with different branding.

3) Having more parties does not make a country any more Democratic. Granted, the US is one of the few countries which has managed to sustain a two-party system for as long as it had, but for all of the countries with sham democracies, there's really not much of a distinction between those which are two-party systems and those which are multi-party systems. Is Russia any more democratic than Venezuela simply because there are more parties competing? Is Italy more democratic than Malta because Malta has been generally more two-party?

[pbrower2a]

In a well-functioning democracy, choices are anything but stark. They are quality versus quality, and neither is extreme. A choice between a moderate conservative and a raging Leftist isn't a choice -- and neither is a choice between a moderate liberal and a near-fascist. If your choices are between raging Leftists and Rightists as in Germany around 1930, then democracy is moribund.

Between moderates one gets compromises, and politicians get to win often on who promises to deliver the goodies or who has failed to deliver the goodies and who promises to deliver the goods. With extremists one often gets demagogues who can only disappoint.

A duopoly in which extremists on the same side of the spectrum is undemocratic even if the elections are honest and competitive -- as is almost approached in Iran. If one had to choose between the KKK and neo-Nazis, or between Stalinists and Trotskyites, then democracy would be a sick farce.

[CookieDamage]

I think we should implement some form of proportional representation and multi-member districts, and maybe transition to a parliamentary system. All these things are foreign to a presidential, single-member, first past the post system, but I do agree that it is broken the way things are going.

[pbrower2a]

At one point the Dutch political system had 30-some Parties. There might be a Catholic farmers' party and a Protestant farmers' party. Of course that implies a parliamentary system not 'first past the post', as divisions based upon religious identity but otherwise agreeing on certain key points of their ideology and economic interests. This is after World War II, so there were no neo-Nazi parties (banned, for obvious reasons) or Jewish parties (irrelevant because of the complicity of Dutch Nazis in the demise of that constituency). Islamic immigration was insignificant at the time.

We could have splits on ethnicity and religion as well as class interest. In a parliamentary system the formation of a government depends upo0n building a coalition after the election. Everybody would be leery of forming a coalition with neo-Nazis, Communists, or people connected to Islamic extremism.

To be sure our party politics depend upon forming informal coalitions. Federalism and individual districts would be less relevant.

So how would it work in a state that I know well? Suppose that Michigan became independent and went to a parliamentary system without becoming part of Canada (and thus not being absorbed into the party system in Canada). Divisions based on religion and ethnicity involving 10% or more of the population:

Protestant (white)
Catholic (largely white)
Black (largely Protestant)

These might split among farmers (well, few blacks), industrial workers, farm owners, small business, and government employees.

Other imaginable groupings

Hispanic Federation
First People's Federation
Jewish Federation
Islamic Federation
Hindu Federation
Federation of Persons of East and Southeast Asian Ancestry
University and college students
Accounting Association
LGBT Michigan

Splitting the three large ethnic/religious groups, and giving the other groups that I have identified, there would be at least twenty parties (few Michigan farmers are black).

 Split the white Protestants into mainline and fundamentalist Protestants one might have a few more groups.

This is before I mention some groups that few could ever want anything to do with -- racists and religious bigots, Commies, and people associated with foreign terror... ex-offenders?

[Orser67]

Meh, I think that the current two-party system does a decent job of representing the views of 90% of the population. Complaints about it tend to come from either people whose views are well outside the mainstream, or from centrist intellectuals who don't represent a large proportion of the population.

Complaints about the two-party system distract from more important issues, like gerrymandering, the domination of moneyed interests in campaign finance, and the low political literacy of most adults, none of which are inherent to a two-party system.

[The Mikado]

The American system does a good job of consolidating political opinions into broad, effective coalitions of groups. A multi-party system has to do that after the election, but hits at the same outcome. Germany had its election in September and may or may not finally have a new government come March 4th because the negotiations over the outcome have been going on for half a year. Spain held an election in December 2015 and had to hold another election in June of 2016 because the results were inconclusive. Belgium went a year and a half through government formation negotiations with an unelected caretaker government between 2010 and 2011 because the parties couldn't form a government. There is no need for any of that in the US because the "coalition negotiations" happen before the election as people end up in one of the two parties.

[fluffypanther19]

Meh, I think that the current two-party system does a decent job of representing the views of 90% of the population. Complaints about it tend to come from either people whose views are well outside the mainstream, or from centrist intellectuals who don't represent a large proportion of the population.

Complaints about the two-party system distract from more important issues, like gerrymandering, the domination of moneyed interests in campaign finance, and the low political literacy of most adults, none of which are inherent to a two-party system.

its not perfect, but yeah

[The Mikado]

The American system does a good job of consolidating political opinions into broad, effective coalitions of groups. A multi-party system has to do that after the election, but hits at the same outcome. Germany had its election in September and may or may not finally have a new government come March 4th because the negotiations over the outcome have been going on for half a year. Spain held an election in December 2015 and had to hold another election in June of 2016 because the results were inconclusive. Belgium went a year and a half through government formation negotiations with an unelected caretaker government between 2010 and 2011 because the parties couldn't form a government. There is no need for any of that in the US because the "coalition negotiations" happen before the election as people end up in one of the two parties.

Just saying that I really want OP's take on this.

[Figueira]

Primaries exist, and anyone can run in them, including Jill Stein if she so chooses. Their "democratic-ness" could certainly be improved though.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Meh, I think that the current two-party system does a decent job of representing the views of 90% of the population.