We really have 4 "major" parties already.

[SoCalDem]

Unfortunately, the way campaign finance works, they are forced to ally with the ones already firmly entrenched. That's a main reason why our candidates never really succeed in making changes "the people" seem to always say they want.

we have :

Social Liberal Party
Labor Party

....both squished into the democratic party box

and we have:

White Christian Reactionary Party
Corporate Party...

....both squished together into the republican party

The Corporate Party does have metastatic crossovers in the democratic party (to cover all bases, since their main concern is always money)

In a fair fight, all candidates would have equal funding, and could feel free to compete on the merits of their ideas, but we all know that's never going to happen in our lifetimes, so we are stuck in a cycle of perpetual campaigning, no matter if the election was a week ago, or 3 years from now.

Neither "side" accepts the other's legitimacy, and with the shit-stirring media we have, any president is hard-pressed to ever achieve much.. Congress chugs along getting little accomplished except for nibbling at the edges of problems, all the while enriching themselves & their already-rich donors.

If we could somehow get the candidates to really identify themselves, instead of shape-shifting depending on the crowd they are addressing, and if we could get them to address the real issues of the majority, instead of kowtowing to every snippet of society, we might start advancing again.

It's all vaguely reminiscent of the Paris Peace Talks, where most of the 8 month debate was about the shape of the table and who would sit where, instead of actually ending a war.

[tblue]

1. You make a lot of good points!

I don't think they dare "identify" themselves, else they'd never get elected. They do a lot of bait & switch and they will tell you that they're doing X when there's proof positive they're doing Y. And many voters take their politicians at their word despite evidence to the contrary.. I know. It's crazy.

[Fumesucker]

2. My view is that the Corporate party dwarfs all the others in both actual parties..

The Corporates are the ones with the money and the connections and that's what politics is really all about.

I mean Jeffery Immelt is Obama's "Jobs Czar" for bog's sake, Immelt received more in compensation from GE for shipping jobs overseas than GE paid in taxes.

"Money is the mother's milk of politics." -Jesse Unruh

[Enthusiast]

3. Your view is correct......nt

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Yup - that is the reality.

And there is barely any effective opposition to the plutocracy in either party. The "progressive" faction of the Democratic Party has demonstrably zero influence even when the party controls congress and the white house. The far-rightwing goons over in the tea party/dominionist/libertarian faction of the Republican party do have a major influence on that organization, which is one reason why "The Establishment" has been steering right for the last 30 years: no pressure from the left, lots of well funded pressure from the right.

Add to that the fact that civilization is faced with a structural crisis that requires, demands, a socialist solution - the conversion of our global civilization from a fossil fuel based infrastructure to a sustainable energy infrastructure, and we can clearly see that the US is headed for a dysfunctional crisis of staggering proportions. We are ruled by an ideological regimen that is incapable of dealing with the crisis that is upon us.

[Selatius]

4. The Democratic Party, at best, has always been a coalition of disparate interests.

The Democrats who supported FDR's New Deal were called the New Deal Coalition. Its largest bloc in the 1940s and 1950s were working class folks and family farmers. There were also party activists and the intelligencia found on university campuses that pushed the envelope of critical thinking. All of these groups together were able to do tremendous things and press through left wing legislation.

All things change. The movement began splintering along racial and political lines. The Civil Rights Movement was viewed, fairly or unfairly, as a threat by a considerable portion of the white working class. They felt their views and perhaps economic position were being cast aside in favor of advancing blacks. The Republicans were quick to take advantage of their feeling of insecurity by peddling their idiotic brand of faux populism, which masked as a philosophy of the everyman but pays off for the wealthy at the top to the detriment of the working class.

A further split occurred over the Viet Nam war. This conflict was opposed early on by a fair number of liberal activists and free thinkers on college campuses. While the majority of the population eventually came around to opposing the war, if only for the sheer number of Americans maimed or killed, it gave birth to the right wing smear that these early protesters and thinkers were anti-American and unpatriotic. The protest movement seemingly split the activist movement from the working class. By the end of the 1960s, the New Deal Coalition seemingly fell apart.

Many white working class voters became Republicans post Civil Rights Act, and poorer voters seemingly dropped out of the system once their interests appeared to be placed on the back burner during the fights over civil rights and opposition to a war nobody wanted to be the last man to die for. It didn't help that the burning down of many poorer inner-city neighborhoods wasn't met with a powerful reconstruction and public works program. That, and the dismantling of many anti-poverty social programs during the 1970s ensured that many poorer voters stopped voting altogether. This helped isolate liberal voters from basically everyone else.

Then came the 80s and Ronald Reagan, the first president who was finally able to turn the political tide against the New Deal. Any attempt to rebuild such a powerful coalition must be rooted in attempts to appeal to everybody's economic interests regardless of color, while simultaneously combating the never-ending stream of right wing propaganda from the news and the radio. If one can fight this war on those two fronts, one has a chance of at least undoing the damage temporarily.

However, to forever protect the gains of the working class against the ultra wealthy, I'd seriously recommend a constitutional amendment to institute mandatory public financing of all federal campaigns and a limit on campaign length. I don't believe this last part is possible under the current federal constitution. The hurdles to pass an amendment are vast, and the corporations would ensure heavy opposition.

[southmost]

5. pretty much sums up our political mess

in a nut shell

[Owlet]

6. So we basically have

all the disadvantages of a parliamentary system with none of the advantages. Seems to me you've got it right, except I think the 'Social Liberal Party' has several factions, at least one of which might be large enough to qualify as a 'party' in its own right.

[SheilaT]

7. Except that there are not

four parties which behave autonomously.

It would be more correct to say that the two major political parties each have two major subsets.

[ElboRuum]

8. So long as we elect using the plurality voting method...

...we will always have 2 dominant parties and X tiny ones. Plurality voting emphasizes polarization and group membership over positions on issues. Essentially a popularity contest with no substance. Other voting methods, such as Borda count and approval voting generate more discussion on the issues because they predicate on voting preference of candidate for all candidates, not just the one they want. It results in a possibility of electing no ones' first choice if a second choices is more satisfactory to more people. Thus, third party candidates have a real chance of winning if they represent the issues better than their party-dominant counterparts.