5 day forecast
The two parties
Share with others:
I truly find it funny how many people believe in the elimination of the two-party system. I'd like it too if another group were involved to shake things up a bit. Being a moderate independent doesn't give me many options with primaries. But having studied other countries that have multiparty systems (Israel, Denmark, Germany, etc.) I have determined the following:
Having multiple, significant parties would not allow the nation to support the candidate that is best for it but would only further divide the nation into groups of political zealots. Currently the Republican and Democratic parties are what's called "catch-all" parties. This means that to work most effectively, they have to appeal to the widest range of voters. By injecting more parties into the mix, each party has to further specialize its political views to target specific groups of voters.
So for those of you who claim that "each candidate is the same, it doesn't matter who wins," well, you're not far off. But that's kind of the point of why the two-party system has worked. The parties' uniqueness comes from what they, as people, bring to the table, their experiences and their knowledge. This explains why the two-party system actually isn't a bad thing, despite George Washington decrying it 215(ish) years ago. After all, we could be Denmark, which hasn't formed a successful coalition government in 30 years, despite having only two or three consistently strong parties.
ANDREW MORUS
Uptown
First Published November 8, 2012 12:00 am
