Is the Two-Party System Doomed?

[Theodarzna]

Thomas Piketty, the French economist whose 2013 bestseller Capital in the 21st Century awoke upscale Americans to the shocking news that their economic system was not working for everyone, has written a new paper exposing more uncomfortable truths.

Piketty's new essay, called Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right, studied electoral trends in three Western countries – France, Britain and the U.S. – dating back to the 1940s.

Even though the three countries have different systems, all three feature electoral showdowns for executive power that broadly come down to "left" versus "right" factions.

A remarkable feature is how mathematically balanced these elections have been over the years. Piketty notes that even in France, whose final votes involve coalitions of multiple minority parties, the widest disparity observed in recent history involved splits of ten points (De Gaulle vs. Mitterand in 1965) and eight (Mitterand vs. Chirac in 1988). More often, he notes, the splits have been 51-49, 52-48, etc.

This mimics the remarkable closeness of American elections. Four times in recent history, we've had presidential elections end either in nearly perfect statistical ties (Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Nixon-Humphrey in 1968) or in contests close enough where there was a disparity between electoral and popular votes (Bush-Gore 2000, and Clinton-Trump 2016).

As Noam Chomsky wrote after the Bush/Gore fiasco, about the only scenario where you'd expect to see a contest of a hundred-plus million voters end in a statistical tie would either be a completely random process, or one where voters were asked to make a choice about something totally unrelated to their lives, like the presidency of Mars.

That we've had the flipped coin land virtually on its side so many times has always suggested something was off about our political system. Piketty now hints at what that was.

He writes that across all three countries, we've seen the evolution of the same trend. Fifty or sixty years ago, voting with the "left-wing" side (which he terms the socialist/labour/democratic parties) tended to be associated with low income and low education. Conversely, high education and high-income voters in all three countries voted right.

Over the years, however, the "left-wing" has become more and more associated with higher-education voters, giving rise to what he calls a "multiple-elite" party system.

According to Piketty, in 2016, for the first time – and of course some of this has to do with the unique repugnance of Donald Trump – the upper 10% of voters, sorted by income, voted Democratic.

Piketty just puts numbers behind an observation that anyone covering recent American presidential elections could have made: That huge plurality of voters on both sides of the aisle feel unrepresented and even insulted, and increasingly see both major parties as tools of the very rich.

His belief is that a major reordering of the political landscape is coming. It will be based less on traditional notions of right and left, and more along the lines of what he describes as "globalists (high-education, high-income) vs. nativists (low- education, low-income)."

We've known for a while that America's current party structure doesn't make demographic sense.

Nearly seven years ago, I was sent to cover two different stories within the space of a few days that illustrated this. The first was a recap of the Occupy Wall Street protests at Zucotti Park. The second was a trip down to Jacksonville, Florida for a tour of "rocket docket" foreclosure courts that had been set up to expedite the process of tossing poor people out of their homes.

(Source)

The two parties should hopefully restructure around some physically real constituancy. The sense that voters are just asked to vote for something totally irrelevent is palpably strong.

[Elegiac]

No, it isn't. The two party system in the US is a function of its electoral structure, and until that changes then any major third party is going to be transitory at best.

But tribalism or whatever.

[Grapemask]

Will there be restructuring? Probably. But it'll be the same way that the Republican party already did once in the last few years: a splinter group will pop up inside of the party (ala the Tea Party), some people will claim to be of that sub-party, but they'll still be running as Democrats/Republicans. People not of that fringe group will call the fringers RINOs/DINOs, then in a few years after the fringe group has caught on, it'll be the fringers calling the leftovers RINOs/DINOs, and all will continue as usual.

[Amalaric]

Couldn't a third party be formed from both the Democratic and the Republican party?

[Elegiac]

Couldn't a third party be formed from both the Democratic and the Republican party?

Yeah, and it would last all of two electoral cycles before becoming one of the two parties.

[Amalaric]

Yeah, and it would last all of two electoral cycles before becoming one of the two parties.

That would be one hell of a flawed political system.

Go back four-thousand years and learn true democracy from the Greek.

[ranzino]

That would be one hell of a flawed political system.

Go back four-thousand years and learn true democracy from the Greek.

how about current day and ask the swiss ?

[Deleted]

Restructuring? Changes? Are you mad? Not going to happen.

Politicians don't want it. They are happy with status quo. They are just talking among themselves, making it look like they are doing something, but actually pushing interests of different corporations. Then after serving terms they get high paying jobs at those corporations doing absolutely nothing. System is corrupt to core and politicians love it.

People who aren't brain dead want changes? Who in US cares about people?

[Amalaric]

how about current day and ask the swiss ?

Yeah that would work too.

In case that the americans doesn't want to invent the time machine.

[Elegiac]

That would be one hell of a flawed political system.

Go back four-thousand years and learn true democracy from the Greek.

Greece never had true democracy at any point in its existence. So, no.

[Amalaric]

Greece never had true democracy at any point in its existence. So, no.

This is sig worthy!

[PACOX]

Republicans push the idea of 3rd parties to get young naive Dems to spoil their votes

[Ripster42]

Republicans push the idea of 3rd parties to get young naive Dems to spoil their votes

In case someone accuses you of making stuff up.

[Deleted]

So class politics. Can't say that I'd be particularly surprised by that.

[Elegiac]

Eh, it still exists and it has a reasonably decent democratic system . . .

Reasonably decent, eh? Which explains why the country was in better shape under the junta than it has been since the metapolitefsi.

Nor is it true democracy, as I said. Direct democracy in history has always been contingent on limiting the vote.

[Milchshake]

Republicans push the idea of 3rd parties to get young naive Dems to spoil their votes

And they're too chickenshit to debate why working class whites vote along with wall street elites, or why evangelicals align with both groups. They're so afraid to hash this out publically. They distract from this unholy alignment by breathlessly concern-trolling Democrats saying mean things about deplorables.

Participation was not open to all residents: to vote one had to be an adult, male citizen i.e. neither a foreign resident, slave or a woman.

And let's not forget that they only allowed people with military training to vote!
Democracy in Greece sucked. In reality only 10% of the people were allowed to participate.

Or that they made public intellectuals like Socrates drink poison.

In today's democracy Kevin Williamson gets off with; a public shaming, his fat paycheck from the National Review intact, and whatever Patreon bucks he can con out of his fanbois.

**note to self**
Write a screen spec where; classic liberals like Dave Rubin and Kevin Williamson time travel to Greece circa the Peloponnesian Wars. Get a reaction youtube of them explaining how ancient Greeks are doing democracy all wrong. Then suffer the wrath of the 30 Oligarchs.

Comedy or Tragedy?

[Lynarii]

It's a failure of having two entrenched political parties.

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats actually have to appeal to anyone, represent anyone, or govern well. They just have to beat the other group, which is easier to do by demonizing the others than by actually doing well yourselves. For the political parties in the US to actually improve in any measurable way, they need to legitimately fear for their future.

[PC2]

I think FPTP is a good system. A many party system causes the two most supported platforms to cower to the third or fourth biggest platform. FPTP favors the bold.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The two parties may shift and change some, but is the two party system doomed?

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

What kind of fool would entertain such drivv--

*Looks at OP* Oh, ok.

In case people missed it, our electoral system is winner-take-all sub divided into states and then subdivided into districts.

The short version is, THERE IS NO SILVER MEDAL. There is no prize for second place. The two party system would be doomed if parties got an equal number of representatives in our legislature according to how much of a vote they got nationwide. But instead the US fetishizes this outdated notion of "loosely" associated states, a system that has all but disappeared in the passage of time into a formality where people occassionally dog on "state's rights".

As long as each state is treated as an individual legislative entity and our electoral system remains winner-take-all, the parties may shift as they naturally do over time (and have done so many times) then the two party system is here to stay. If any Republicans want to do away with the two party system, they better start looking at getting rid of those imaginary lines in the dirt that divided states, and start looking at a more unified country.

As long as divisions in our leadership remain as "localized" as possible, there will continue to be no prize for second place.

[GennGreymane]

Doomed, no. Should it change, yes.