The Two-Party System Doesn't Work

2. There is a basis perhaps but as you said not one that has to be direct. I'm fairly sure that I've made an adequate implicated comparison. Refutations: 1. And how does it do that? 2. It's not based on favors, it's based on party loyalty which increases the more parties are pitted against each other which increases further the less competition there is. It's like how as say, football progresses, people get more interested. In the pre-season only the hard core fans are interested. Then as it moves on you get more an more people paying attention up to the Super Bowl where even people who usually don't care about football gets excited. When you eliminate other forms of competition, people naturally get more competitive. That and with fewer contenders you're less likely to watch your P's and Q's. It's a monopoly effect - if there are many reasonable choices then people are more likely to abandon a company that does something distasteful. If there's only two and they're radically different, people are far more likely to keep their pick and simply defend the inadequacies. 3. It's the 2010 election and people had their opinions on health care long before that election or even before health care passed. And you bring up another point. People expected Obama and the Democrats to fix the economy. Is the economy fixed? Some people say yes, some say no. You know where that major separation is? In parties. The Republicans capitalized on things like unemployment and gas prices to try and get people to their side. Which is another issue with parties - the fewer you have, the easier it is to simplify a complex issue down to a black and whit one. With multiple parties, there's more room for gray areas. With parties, everything tends to be black and white. There's no talk of the economy improving. No talk of the economy in this area or that. It's either "the economy is good or it isn't" and both parties use this simplification to try and win voters which is very easy because most voters have minimal knowledge of how the economy works and will mindlessly quote their favorite pundit to pretend they do. Just as a sub point, and yes this would apply to multiple parties as well - parties love to make people feel smart. Even if they're not smart. It's how they get voters. Just more evidence that voters don't make decisions based on facts most of the time. 4. i. You remove the "black and white" premise, you remove the active, mindless competition and what do you have? Compromise. I'm not expecting everyone to be friends. However there has to be methods of removing what increases that strenuous relationship to begin with. ii. No it's the essence of a two-party system. But thank you for bringing up that word - popular. Popular doesn't mean good does it? It doesn't mean that anything will actually get done. It just means someone is liked. It doesn't denote experience or anything. And in this case, it's a contrarian thing, as I said before. People are going to mindlessly switch back and forth. Every election it's the same "No third party is going to win so I have to vote for a major party, but I don't like how things are going right now so I'm going to vote for the opposite". Again, look at our track record. We switch from one party to the other every one or two administrations. This isn't a healthy way to function. Clearly either neither one is any better than the other or the American people are fickle and don't know enough to deserve voting rights. If you give them some more options we might break this chain and start voting based on characteristics because, once again, we remove the black and white. It's easy to choose when you base your logic on "I believe this way and this party is the opposite of me". iii. Filibuster is another thing I don't agree with - as you can see it's well abused and it seems like a whiny tactic so if one person disagrees they can halt all productivity for as long as they desire and is yet another problem with a two-party system. If we're going to have things like that in place, then we can't have two parties pitted against each other like we do. 5. How can you? 6. Yes they would. I would not feel sorry just because the media would have to work, and make more time to give an equitable amount of time to ALL the party runners instead of two, and make time to issue all different points of view instead of the "black and white" (again). I would not feel sorry that they can't waste time on petty issues like they do now that encourage voters to vote based on completely irrelevant things. 7. How so? You made a statement about Meg Whitman. I refuted it. 8. Well then fewer uneducated voters would vote, which I don't think is such a bad thing. Everyone wants number numbers numbers. But the fact is, numbers don't mean anything if 50% of them aren't informed. If 100 people take test, that doesn't mean anything if half of them fail. If we give people more, then those who have no interest in KNOWING about the candidates will scurry off. Most likely, these are the ones that didn't research the candidates we have now. You give more work and suddenly people can't just base their decisions on "one or the other". 9. As an American person, I can testify, that American people are pretty stupid. For the couple of well educated people I know, I know several more who registered American Independent because they thought that was the same as just dependent, who doesn't even realize there are other candidates to vote for, who thinks that the Green Party is the "marijuana party". I'm sorry that it's so hard to accept, but the American people are very irresponsible and very uninformed about their voting. 10. But it's still a commentary. 11. I have too. Stating that I have not does not make it so.