Because America has a first past the post election system, which will always result in two dominant parties. See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo for an explanation.
This is an important part of it. The other part is the fact that success in politics is very hard without money, and most rich people aren’t progressives.
In no country in the world is the progressive party the main attractor of wealth. Progress means change that will lessen the comparative advantage of the wealthy.
California
I think it’s extremely arguable whether Gavin Newsom is a progressive or not. Actually I don’t, he isn’t.
No, but Progressives are in power. We’re not a dictatorship. The one person in the chief executive office is not the entire government.
Halarious to read as a non-american cause sure California is the best of y’all, but it is NOT progressive compared of some of the world
Tired of this whole “America is conservative to the rest of the world” thing. No, it is conservative compared to Europe, specifically. I don’t mind making the comparison. But the arrogance of equating Europe with “the world” frustrates me.
California is extremely progressive compared to Russia, Saudi Arabia, India…just not, specifically, compared to western Europe.
Stop with the Eurocentrism.
But is that a cause or an effect? Because there are only two viable parties, all the money gets pumped into those. To get on equal footing with one of these parties, one would need a lot of money. With say a dozen parties, the money would be distributed more and thus the total money one party has would be much less.
But then again, it’s the US, the first past the post thing is only part of the problem. The corruption on all levels of politics and government is a much bigger problem. Even with a dozen parties, all the money would be poured into the party that favors the rich. And saying that’s legal and not corruption is only a sign the lobbiests have been so successful, they’ve made the corruption legal.
With capitalism money will always rule the world. Whilst this may have sounded great right after WW2, in reality it has caused the rich to get richer at the cost of the general public. It has caused mass consumerism to explode and destroy the planet, buying stuff we don’t need. Shipping stuff across the world, because it makes the most money that way. To move issues of slavery, safety and pollution to parts of the world the buyers can’t see. So people can pretend to live in paradise for one or two generations, whilst ruining the chances of future generations. Investments in sustainability have been slow due to the impact on the bottom line. Can’t have people using the same durable repairable stuff for decades, they must buy new shit every year and be programmed to think this is a good thing. Why invest in clean forms of energy, that’s expensive, just do the cheapest thing possible and then try to make it cheaper so we can make more money.
Long-short, it’s known as Duverger’s Law. Winner-takes-all (single member district majority) incentivizes competing interests to consolidate power into a unified party label to increase chances of winning. Any third party necessarily steals votes from one of the two main parties, which is why each party manages its label for maximal policy coverage and every issue becomes red vs blue.
No corporation wants to support a progressive party. No one profiting from corporations want to support a progressive party. There goes 99% of the wealth in America.
You have similar results in less capitalized countries.
In Germany half the seats in the Bundestag are filled with district representatives that are voted for in a FTPTP manner. These seats go almost exclusively to the largest two parties. These two are the big center right and center left parties.
But is that a cause or an effect?
It becomes very understandable as soon as you assume corruption. Corruption makes presidents rich, and many other “important” people as well.
As soon as they start to get some extra money regularly, they fear change, because any change could dry up these new sources of money.
The US is one of the most Capitalistic and Imperialistic countries on the planet, and as such the parties available are the ones that uphold these positions. It’s a positive feedback loop with power.
Because we have a first past the post system, which results in only two major parties. One party is straight up fascist, and the other is taking advantage of this to be as fascist-adjacent as they think they can get away with while still being able to call themselves second worst.
And neither party has any incentive to actually do better or follow up on their promises because who else are you going to vote for? They’re both guaranteed to win while we all lose.
They know they don’t have to do better. They keep getting rewarded with power in the face of things like genocide.
The same reason there’s no true conservative party. Corporate interests have captured our political institutions.
The are progressive groups, but the best they get is a compromised Democratic Party beholden to corporations if they want to continue being elected. IMO.
What would a true conservative party look like?
Conservative policy theory aims to limit the over reach of the federal government by offloading the governing to smaller legislative bodies with a stronger feel for what needs to be done in a given location.
A good example would be your county managing taxes, laws, and infrastructure within its borders. Your state codifying laws that are embodied in the majority of the counties for the ease of travel between them, and the country doing the same based on states.
The vast majority of regulation would be left in the hands of the people and the community they participate in with the state and federal governments only stepping in for judicial reasons when a lower body can’t come to agreement, if an outside threat moves upon the country as a whole, or if a crime crosses state borders.
While I quite like this model, it doesn’t jive with our current view of politics.
Need to start saying “conservative party theory aims…” in these types of statements.
Actually that’s exactly the wording I needed, I really didn’t feel right about leaving it as just policy
The GOP used to stand for all that before Obama
While most of their rhetoric was better aligned with this, the rot has been there since at least Regan. Their stance on abortion, big military, and economic policy all lean very far away from these concepts.
quite a ways before Obama
They started going off the rails long before, but they didn’t totally abandon those principles until the mid 2000s
Cut spending without cutting taxes; a balanced budget over the long term.
Protect the courts from tampering.
Protect public lands and other public resources.
Mostly avoid making new laws.
Claw back power that should rest with Congress from the Executive Branch, possibly.
Do away with binding Electors.
Revert control to State and local governments when possible.
Protect the First Amendment by keeping religion out of lawmaking.
Less interventionalist foreign policy.
…and so on.
I’m sure there would still be factions within such a party, groups that were more socially liberal vs. socially conservative; those who were more economically right-wing vs. those who favored more regulation on business; those who want to institutionalize some aspects of American culture vs. those who don’t think the government has a role in defining culture.
Basically, a party of doing-as-little-as-necessary and stabiloty, rather than the reactionary, illiberal, often downright regressive, and fiscally-irresponsible mess that has the gall to call themselves the “Grand Ol’ Party”.
Not trying to be a debate bro just genuinely don’t understand everything;
what is with avoiding making new laws? Don’t you need laws for wildlife conservation?
isn’t Congress already more powerful than the president?
What does prevent the courts from tampering mean? How are laws supposed to be enforced/clarified otherwise?
historically Congress was meant to be stronger than the president, but overtime, election of the president became much more impactful, as well as the number of executive actions have increased, so proportionally speaking, the president has gained a lot of power, especially in a time where parties fall in line based on the letter of their party.
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The structure of the Constitution favors conservative movements because it’s undemocratic and designed to resist change.
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Because too many voters only pay attention every four years and wonder why there is no bespoke candidate for them.
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Lack of ranked choice voting and reference of the electoral college/gerrymandering force rational progressives to vote with the main liberal-ish party to avoid the alternative - which, even on its best days, is a fate exponentially worse and more destructive by every measure.
Would you mind explaining how introducing ranked choice voting would substantially help smaller/additional political parties? I always find it confusing how much Americans focus on the presidency and ranked choice voting when it comes to breaking the party duopoly. At the end of the day, there is only a single president and he/she will probably always come from one of the largest parties. The presidency somewhat inherently limits the influence of smaller parties.
What I would focus on, if I wanted to increase the number of political parties in the US, is the House of Representatives. If proportional representation (e.g. biproportional appointment, party lists, MMP, …) was introduced there, it would allow smaller parties to hold real power. (With biproportional appointment, the seats are distributed according to party voter share while also ensuring regional representation). Do you know why this hardly ever comes up in the context of the US?
The crux is that a first-past-the-post voting system incentivizes voting for one of the two big parties. Voting third party is equivalent to voting against your preference of the top two. There’s a bunch of really neat voting systems that avoid this problem handily.
I would argue that any majoritarian electoral system (winner-takes-all), including ranked choice, incentivizes large parties. There is some nuance between them, but I don’t think that ranked choice can fundamentally solve that issue. Sure, you can enter a protest vote, but will it really change anything? I think that parties need realistic changes at gaining (some) power in order to be viable in the long term.
Seeing larger third party percentages regularly would be important - bit by bit and without threatening election of the lesser of two evils in the interim, could lead to exponential growth until that 3rd ventually competes as a valid 3rd party
Ranked choice or proportional representation of any sort. The election system us finely tuned to be the most divisive possible.
Because it’s being BUILT. Follow Bernie Sanders to find out more.
Also text RESIST to 50409 to make your voice heard in Congress.
Sanders is a neoliberal sheepdog. He lured everyone to the polls with bright ideas only for them to be killed when he said we need to vote for the people that created the shithole government we have
Not true. He’s one of the most decent people among us and he did what he could, the right thing in a fucked situation, to try to avoid infighting that would have certainly led to a guaranteed loss and a president they would do things like mismanage a pandemic to directly lead to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Your comment fits a 14 year olds developing mind, there’s definitely a type for “fuck the authority no matter what”, but it has no sense of scale or lived reality that a rational adult applies.
See, no one is ever good enough for leftists. That’s why you people never win elections, you eat each other.
Sanders is not a leftist. That’s like saying Nicki Haley isn’t good enough for democrats.
Case in point
I honestly don’t wanna hear about Sanders anymore. He’s a loser and a failure. He’s all talk. He can’t win the democratic primary, let alone a federal election. He should be writing books about sociology, not being a politician.
Not to mention how sick I am of people bitching about elected officials being too old, yet standing behind a wealthy, old as fuck white man like Sanders
yet standing behind a wealthy, old as fuck white man like Sanders
It helps that he has more sensical views compared to the other 2 big ones.
It helps he’s a fucking meme and his supporters are children. That’s all. You guys don’t know half of his policy stances, or anyone else’s.
He couldn’t win because Dems agreed to tank him on purpose by collectively dropping out while he was building momentum. Shady fucking moves in 2020. I hate them so much for it.
some_
Ok but he didn’t win… If he didn’t avoid the fuckery of a primary, he wouldn’t have made the election win.
I can tell literally feel the weight of this comment, it’s so dense.
Learn to debate like an adult
There are plenty of such parties. They are just not electorally successful on a national scale. They may be moderately influential on a state level through the use of fusion voting. Fusion voting is where multiple parties can stand the same candidate in an election.
Most places in the United States use a “first-past-the-post” system. In this system, voters select one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. This system sounds fair on the surface but in reality, game theory dictates that the only stable configuration of political parties in such a system is a two-party system. In any other configuration, the individual actors will always find it more advantageous to join one of the two parties. The reason for this also explains why it’s hard for smaller parties to win under a first-past-the-post system.
Suppose there are two existing political parties: Party A and Party B. Voters prefer Party A by a margin of 55-45, so Party A wins reliably in elections. Suppose we replay the same elections but with three parties. Party C holds similar views to Party A but is more extreme while Party A is more centrist. If everyone votes for their favourite candidate, then we will probably end up with a vote distribution where Party A wins 40% of the vote, Party B wins 45% of the vote, and Party C wins 15% of the vote. What has essentially happened here is that Party C siphoned votes away from Party A, causing Party B to win despite the fact that voters’ preferences haven’t changed. Voters know this and so even those who like the Party C candidate the most will vote for the Party A candidate (who shares at least some of their views) in order to stop Party B from winning.
This is why progressives forming their own political party is a losing idea in the United States. It will split the left-wing vote and hand elections to the Republican Party. Instead, what they do is compete in the Democratic Party’s primary elections. In the US, who a party chooses to stand in a particular election is determined by means of a primary election. However, progressives often struggle to win intra-party primary elections because most members of the Democratic Party are moderate. The distribution of political leanings is shaped like a bell curve, and thus progressives like Bernie Sanders are simply outnumbered by moderates like Joe Biden. Moderates often have the numbers to sideline progressives in primary elections, and thus it is much more difficult for progressives to get elected since they need to run under the Democratic Party banner to stand any chance of winning.
Most members of the democrat party are moderate.
You had me up until this statement.
It’s simply not true. In fact, most Americans are progressive and support progressive policies.
The issue is money in politics.
Our political system is a system of legalized bribery in corruption.
Most of the money in politics would be considered corruption and fraud in just about every first world country.
But on the policy itself,
Most Americans, including most democrat voters, are very progressive.
Even Fox News viewers are progressive on most of the issues that Bernie Sanders campaigned on. Which is why he is so dangerous.
We need to overturn citizens united and congress needs to legislate campaign finance reform.
Most Americans, including most [Democratic] voters, are very progressive.
I couldn’t find anything that isn’t 7 years old to substantiate this claim, but if you can, I’ll be happy to change my mind and edit my comment. There are certainly many popular progressive policies, but I don’t think that necessarily means they are progressive in general and will vote for progressive candidates.
Policy wise, Americans are extremely progressive.
Which football team political party they align themselves with is something completely different.
This was true 7 years ago, and even more so today.
With due respect, this is not evidence.
Sorry I don’t feel like spending an hour researching something I already have read about numerous times over the past few decades. It’s a general trend and it is actually increasing, although slowly.
Feel free to look it up if you like though.
I have, but I wasn’t able to find anything, which is why I asked. I totally understand if you don’t want to, and that’s totally fine. Maybe someone else will.
I’m on a cell phone it’s very difficult to find old articles in this thing
Same reason there’s no fascist party: the two main parties contain a broader range of the political spectrum than in most countries.
From there the question is does the moderate or radical wing of the party gain more influence. The far-right has won the Republican party years ago while progressives still haven’t gained that much ground in the Democratic party.
Broader range? From my point of view as an outsider, the USA political parties only cover far-right and far-rightest
As representatives, this is absolutely the case. However I’m going to give OP the benefit of the doubt and take it that they’re taking about the voter base. I myself hold very extreme political views, I feel we should move to a democratic technocracy with a heavy socialist lean and a community service focused punitive system, but as a US citizen my ideals aren’t supported let alone championed by my representatives. So I can use my vote 3 ways. I can choose red who actively seek to attack my family and friends. Blue, who will never choose to improve the country, or no one and my vote is meaningless and actively helping whichever side is pressing the most harmful policy.
So alas I am a Democrat. Do they represent me? No. Do they support me? No. Do they want to kill me? No. Out of my very few options, the group that doesn’t wish my death is the absolute best I’ll see in my lifetime.
From the point of view of Saudi Arabia, it’s all godless leftism.
This is why we mainly discuss things happening in a country in the context of that country, not a different country.
The GOP is fascist, and the DNC is center-right. That’s not a broader range of political spectrum, haha.
there’s no fascist party
You sure about that? There is one that is openly anti-anti-fascist.
Man i wrote two lines, how is that too much to read
I understand what you’re saying but it’s not clearly written and a lot of people are misinterpreting you.
My understanding is you’re saying that political differences in the United States exist within parties (left Democrats vs center-right Democrats), but in other countries those differences would have their own parties. So the political policies of a party reflect which political philosophy is more dominant within the party, rather than a situation where parties with more uniform beliefs are vying for power.
progressives still haven’t gained that much ground
Anyone that poses a threat to the duopoly is never granted any power to disrupt the system. Can’t reform a system built on power and corruption.
What would constitute a political party virtually anywhere political parties are relevant is a political faction or caucus within one of the two establishment parties in the American system.
Progressives are generally a caucus within the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is predominately and increasingly a centre-right party and has consistently thrown its political weight behind incumbent conservatives against its progressive caucus.
These are the major components of there not being an electorally relevant American Progressive Party.
the cold war, probably
The last time there was the government made it illegal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954
Communism is something different, that’s not what I’m asking about.
What are you referring to? Something less right wing than Liberalism, but not able to be considered left?
Edit: for clarity, how would you legally distinguish any flavor of anticapitalism based on the nature of the law? The Democrats are already called Communists, if a genuine Socialist party took any meaningful amount of power they could be shut down on the basis of that law, because it’s just a vibe.
Progressivism, I wrote “Progressive” right in the title. I did not write “Communist” which is completely different.
What is progressivism then, and how is it legally distinct from what that law outlaws?
Because our government has the best propagandists in the world and they are aimed at us and it’s working. Also, intelligence agencies sabotage efforts in their infancy.
Because conservatives vote, and progressives stay home in droves. Might as well appeal to middle of the road to try to capture some of the people who actually show up.
Which comes first, the progressive candidate or the progressive voter?
