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by bityard
1951 days ago
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Sorry, but there's no way I will ever believe it's just a crazy fluke that given the broad spectrum of political beliefs in the US, two parties each have roughly 49% of public support in terms of issues and voting power for decades on end, and that they regularly swap positions of power every few years. The US is the only developed nation where you have no hope of getting elected to political office at _any_ level of government unless you pledge to align yourself with either Red Team or Blue Team. Campaign platforms and public opinion always boil down to some variant of, "if you think we're bad, you should see the other guys!" as your comment confirms. To the extent that both parties engage in creating and retaining laws that further ensconce the practical existence of only two parties (see gerrymandering), yes, both sides are equally bad. |
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~50/50 party split is one of three natural equilibrium points of a first-past-the-post election heirarchy. If I'm a party manager allocating resources (or platform positions) to win elections in that system I would be a fool (and get fired) if I overspent to get 60% of the vote when 51% would do the trick (and I/my organization could potentially use the rest of those resources to get over the margin in a different race).
At the same time, a party that is losing and can't raise more money to spend in a race will naturally shift their positions to appeal to a larger number of people to gain margin that way. In the long and wide term, things will tend to balance there (absent structural reform or the collapse of one party or the other).
>The US is the only developed nation where you have no hope of getting elected to political office at _any_ level of government unless you pledge to align yourself with either Red Team or Blue Team.
It could be worse: in some developed countries you can't get elected unless you align with the single party.