(@ Jormungand)
Ah, so you live in Wisconsin. That makes it more personal. Yeah, the whole nation is looking on with contempt at the Wisconsin government's efforts to demolish public unions. A USA Today / Gallup poll released yesterday shows the American public opposed 61 percent to 33 percent on the question of "Would you favor or oppose a law in your state taking away some collective bargaining rights of most public unions, including the state teachers union?"
Now, see, that's a misleading question because it only gives one example of a public union and teachers happen to be some of the most popular government workers. On the other hand, it's also an inaccurate question because the WI law would take away all collective bargaining rights except the right to bargain on wages, not "some" rights. These two flaws in the poll will run opinion in opposite directions, so, while we can't take the poll as truly reflective of public sentiment, we can still look at the massive gap and conclude that it's likely that more Americans oppose than support the Republicans' effort.
That's how it goes with Republicans. They come up with an idea; the public is roundly against it; they stand their ground and put out the talking points on Fox News and right-wing radio, and the public slowly loses its opposition because of all the deceptive framing. That's what happened with the healthcare legislation debate in 2009 and 2010. "Death panels," "government takeover," "socialized medicine," and what have you.
It's one of the ironies in American politics that more people agree with the Democrats than the Republicans, but more people vote for the Republicans than the Democrats. It speaks to the effectiveness and deceptiveness of the right-wing noise machine, and to the unreliability of the left-wing voter base. You can do your part in the future by always voting. I won't even say you should always vote for the Democrat. Getting yourself informed, and then voting intelligent, is enough. Usually, that will lead you to the Democrat by default. (Not always; I voted for Republican Sam Reed for WA Secretary of State in 2008.)
I've long contemplated the advantages and disadvantages of a two-party system and a multi-party system. It's not as clear-cut as I used to think. (I used to be, like you, against the two-party system and in favor of a multi-party one.) One big thing going for a multi-party system is that it would likely deny a strong voice to fringe lunatics like the Tea Party people who are now vying for control of the entire GOP, which would give the Tea Party massively disproportionate influence over federal politics. The other big thing going for a multi-party system is that it would give more voice to fringe parties in general. That includes the good, like democratic socialists, and the bad, like the constitutionalists. A left-wing coalition majority in Congress rather than a Democratic majority would give a stronger voice to left-wing fringe groups, who, although I rarely fully agree with them, almost always agree with me on relevant policy positions. And, with the Republican Party already so far to the right, a move to a multi-party system would not give any more power to the corresponding right-wing fringe.
The big thing working against a multi-party system, and in favor of a two-party one, is that coalitions will deadlock and gridlock on a regular basis. A single party can enforce unity to a much stronger extent than a coalition with multiple poles of authority. Nobody seems to notice just how much major legislation the Democratic House of Representatives under Nancy Pelosi passed in the 111th Congress. Not much of that legislation became law, because the Democratic Senate was rarely able to overcome Republican filibusters. We got a health bill with a public option, which ended up not being in the final law. We got a climate change bill. We got all sorts of goodies that never made it into law. That would never have happened under a left-wing coalition. Unity hierarchies get results. The federal government already has a built-in institution to put the "deliberative" brakes on rapid legislative progress; we call that institution the Senate. A multi-party Congress would put another brake on legislative progress, and we would get even less shit done than we presently do.
For me, that's a very powerful dissuasion from supporting a multi-party system in America. Add in the facts that our executive is presidential rather than ministerial, that our national organization is federal rather than fully centralized, and that our legislature is congressional rather than parliamentarian, and I foresee major problems with a multi-party system working in this country. Indeed, the two-party system we have is probably more a path of least resistance than a show of force by the political party apparati.
It's also worth noting that, because the right-wing core is the largest single voter bloc in this country, a multi-party system would tend to favor conservatives more often than liberals. Liberals already have more problems agreeing with one another than conservatives do amongst themselves, due to the disparities of ideological space between "liberals" and "conservatives" in America. (A simpler way to put it is that liberals occupy about 80 - 90 percent of all ideological space, and thus 8 or 9 out of every 10 plausible political positions would qualify as "liberal" in our political culture. I picked those numbers out of thin air rather than referencing them, but the qualitative idea that most ideas will be considered liberal in this country is true, and that's a big part of why liberals have such a harder time coming to a consensus.) Thus, the morning after an election you're going to have about 25 percent of the country, and thus a corresponding (but not necessarily identical) ratio of newly elected officials, instantly ready to support the most right-wing government they can put together. (And that 25 percent number is accurate.) Any prospective liberal coalition would not only have to overcome competing liberal factions and pull in 51 percent or more of elected officials to dominate the Congress; it would also have to start from only about 75 percent of available officials. The corresponding core of liberals who would never join a conservative coalition is, in our two-party system, less than 15 percent. Perhaps under a multi-party system it would be higher.
Incidentally, these same multi-pole politics play out within each of the two parties when it comes time to form a party's leadership ahead of a new session of Congress. It's not as if intraparty tensions do not exist. With 310 million people in the country and 535 voting representatives and senators, we couldn't expect it to be any other way.
At any rate, if I may, I think our national problem is not so much that we're mired under a two-party system, as that we're mired under an ill-informed and apathetic electorate. If more people voted, and voted Democratic, we could mold the Democratic Party into something more effective than it is, and have a working majority to boot. I disagree with Democrats all too often, but I also recognize that it's only some Democrats with whom I have those disagreements, and they can be voted out and replaced with other Democrats. Unlike the modern Republican Party, the modern Democratic Party is not monolithic and can be tweaked in the direction of the voters' will.
