To: RetiredNow who wrote (747073 ) 10/16/2013 3:59:51 PM From: TimF Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1570332 Politically I care more about practicality and ideological concerns than party. But usually in the US political system (and most other democratic systems and some not so democratic systems) party politics is needed to get positive change or prevent negative change. For example, I think Obamacare is a horrible mess, unconstitutional for multiple reasons (some of which the Supreme Court addressed, with a poor decision IMO, others are unaddressed or even created by the decision calling the penalty a tax, but I think the court might ignore them not wanting to revisit the issue), but the only way to get rid of or seriously reform it is for the Republicans to get a lot more power. Of course if they get a lot more power (esp. if they kept it a long time, but that's much less likely) they could cause their own new problems. But I don't see how a third party moves us forward either on that issue or on a number of other problems. If the third party remains very small it does almost nothing. If it increases to have some power but still be decidedly in third place then to the extent its weighs in on policy controversies between the two major parties, to the extent it sides with the policy idea that's better it might just weaken one of the two big parties that have the better idea by splitting the vote for that idea. OTOH A third party of medium power (described above as "some real power but decidedly in third place"), could push some new ideas, or old ideas that the other parties don't talk about much. And a third party could grow in power to take over from one of the two existent parties, of course then you would still have a two party system, or a two major parties with one smaller parties (and a bunch of micro parties) system. It would just be that one of the two parties was new. I don't think three relatively major competitive parties is a stable situation with the US government and election setup. If you ever have such a situation one of those three is likely to decline.