Thankfully, some journalists recognize the problem. This week, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman stood out among his peers for his level-headedness on this issue. In a response to Fournier, he writes that while “the rise of a third-party presidential candidate in 2016 is entirely plausible,” he is “much more dubious” about the idea that the two-party system is in disarray
I am fully aware of the paradigm-busting power of modern technology… However, I still believe that the institutional biases in the system—some of them embedded in the Constitution, others in federal and state laws, such as Georgia’s difficult ballot-access laws—dictate the existence of a two-party system.
History tells us that third parties come and they usually go; on rare occasions, they stick around and eventually replace one of its predecessors. The time may indeed be ripe for one of those periodic upheavals.
However, once the smoke clears and the system stabilizes, it will revert to its traditional bipolar, two-party nature.
Fortunately, the playing field for competition to traditional punditry is now far more open and competitive. The third-party fever dream may never die, but reality-based commentary like Bookman’s may at least strengthen the incentives for other pundits to be more measured in their predictions about the future.
Three quick answers:
1) Both parties stink and even the journalists want a third option.
2) Both parties stink more than they used to and the gap between them is wide enough to fit three third parties, so the third party option seems viable in theory if a third party candidate could get as many mentions in the press and TV as the main party candidates.
3) In living memory, Ross Perot *did* mount a major third-party challenge to the two-party system and Joe Lieberman won a third-party Senate campaign after the Democrats expelled him.
What we've seen instead of successful third parties is minor parties coming up through the grassroots and taking over the major parties through arguing the benefits of their positions in open forum -- hahaha, no -- they get there by toeing the present partly line long enough for a like-minded group to secure the positions of power and then excluding their challengers from the debate by denouncing anyone who disagrees with them as left/right-wing wingnut/moonbat traitors/warmongers, ostracizing them from the community, and denying them party support for their campaigns.
In this way, the capitalists, fundies, and KKK took over the Republican party in the Reagan Revolution while the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Muslim Brotherhood are in the process of taking over a Democratic Party that had barely survived the Cold War infiltration by the Soviets but does not seem able to resist this. Voters who support the values of Eisenhower, Truman, JFK, Goldwater, Rockefeller, Dukakis, GHW Bush, Clinton, and the like are having a hard time finding a candidate to vote for.
The biggest barrier to third-party success is the media filter. For example, of all the official third parties in the US, the Libertarians are the best organized and the least out-there and they consistently run candidates nationwide. If the press were to collectively give the Libertarians as much coverage as the Ds and Rs, with an equal number of words in print, equal time on TV, equal presence in the debates, they might not win but they would do much better than the 1%-2% they are getting now.
The same media filter applies to outside ideas in addition to outside people. The experts cited in news articles are always the same individuals who can be trusted to give official credibility to what the bad journalist wants to say. We don't see news stories cite a sample of randomly selected university professors. We see the exact same talking-point-generators cited again and again.
#1 Posted by Tang, CJR on Fri 15 Feb 2013 at 11:44 PM
"the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Muslim Brotherhood are in the process of taking over [the] Democratic Party" -- evidence?
#2 Posted by Read Scott Martin, CJR on Sat 16 Feb 2013 at 09:05 AM
The simple answer is because there is no two party "system"...
We're a representative democracy, where some groups of people have coalesced around what were some common viewpoints. Those parties then helped average voters to more easily chose candidates that should represent some known values or positions. The problem is, both parties today do not govern even to their own stated platforms. At minimum, it's time for them to be replaced with parties that say what they believe and then do it - even if it means fewer votes. But back on this "system" - There is nothing about parties nor any party system in our Constitution.
There has never been, nor should ever be a system of political parties - let alone this ridiculous viewpoint that there should only ever be two of them. This is usually something said by people who are afraid their own party might lose to some "spoiler" candidate. To that, I simply say, GOOD. We could end up with representatives of 100 political parties, and the more the better - because it would then force people to build coalitions and compromise and promote the general welfare rather than the power of their own party. At this point, however, we have two parties that both act and govern as if only they have all the correct answers - which itself is pretty amazing, considering no one group in the history of human civilization has ever been right about everything all the time. To hell with both parties. Show me some politicians willing to promote the general welfare and build up our nation - rather than all this crap to which we've been subjected for the past decade or more.
#3 Posted by Thomas, CJR on Sat 16 Feb 2013 at 05:16 PM
"e the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Muslim Brotherhood are in the process of taking over a Democratic Party that had barely survived the Cold War infiltration by the Soviets but does not seem able to resist this."
Seriously, bro?
The real reason journalists focus on third parties is because they're idiots who think the solution to every problem is 'more choice', without having defined what the problem is.
We know the political process is broken. We know that one party won't do ideas and actions supported by science and popular will. We know they want to cut the essential programs economically crippled Americans depend upon.
And those are the democrats.
The republicans are even worse. Their constituency is a bunch of radicals who want take economically regressive 'yes's for answers. They don't want to negociate a 90% win if it means a 10% loss. They want only 100% and they are prepared to watch the nation burn if it prevents an 'Obama Administration victory' over fire.
The political process is broken, and more 'political choice' isn't a solution. What is the solution? Define the problem.
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/02/sen_elizabeth_warren_comes_out.html
""There are district attorneys and U.S. attorneys who are out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it," Warren said. "I've very concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial' and that just seems wrong to me.""
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/19/929084/-Welcome-to-Griftopia-Part-1-Why-America-Is-Broke-and-Broken
“There are really two Americas, one for the grifter class, and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land, the world of small businesses and wage-earning employees, the government is something to be avoided, an overwhelming, all-powerful entity whose attentions usually presage some kind of financial setback, if not complete ruin. In the grifter world, however, government is a slavish lapdog that the financial companies that will be major players in this book use as a tool for making money.”
This is the problem. The current system of electoral politics makes both parties economically dependent on the same 'grifter classes' which use the tools of government to protect and expand their wealth.
That the process is broken is a symptom of the fact that some of the grifter class has erected a mass media message machine which has radicalized the conservative end of the political spectrum beyond reason.
Even if that problem gets fixed, you still have an electoral system which is economically dependent on large donors due to the costs of mass communication.
That's the problem needing a fix.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 17 Feb 2013 at 12:46 PM
"National Journal editorial director Ron Fournier is a respected journalist with years of distinguished service as an Associated Press correspondent and editor. So why is he issuing hyperbolic warnings about how “social change and a disillusioned electorate threaten the entire two-party system”?"
Because he's a freakin' idiot, who is respected mainly by other idiots. There are a plethora of idiots in the Village, and they just about all respect each other.
A third party simply can't make headway in a system where a plurality, rather than a majority, is what it takes to win elections. Anyone who follows politics for a living should understand that this is, and why this is.
#5 Posted by low-tech cyclist, CJR on Tue 19 Feb 2013 at 10:24 PM
ONLY a third party has the way to change the political two party monopoly of BIG MONEY, corporate domination, meager tax increases and allegiance to the spin in both liberal and conservative knee jerks.
We need a genuine progressive movement. THE ONLY TIME American politics has changed is when a third party has managed to push the two parties.
#6 Posted by Alfred, CJR on Fri 22 Feb 2013 at 06:35 AM