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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (306337)	7/29/2016 9:55:25 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541241

The NYT has a little interview up with Andrew Sullivan, somewhat returned to the fray after signing off from his blog of many years last year. Just a little bit: You were also reunited with your old friends the Clintons. You are, as you like to remind people, a Clinton hater of long standing, though you plan to cast your first vote as an American citizen for Hillary. Has anything in the campaign so far made you see her differently? She hasn’t changed, for good or ill. She’s who she is. She’s the only thing standing between Trump and us. She’ll do. nytimes.com

To: Win Smith who wrote (306337)	7/29/2016 9:59:14 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541241

I have said this before, but what the heck. The two party system is the result of the winner take all electoral system. When one person wins and everyone else loses, third parties lose. Most people gravitate toward someone who has a chance to win and to have power. If a third party does connect with people on an issue or set of issues, one of the major parties will co-opt those issues and make theirs in order to be more powerful and the third party will disappear (or it will take over the party that tried to co-opt it. As long as we have the winner take all system, we will have two major parties. And as long as we have two major parties, they have the right and maybe even the obligation to have some kind of coherence. Whenever there is an incumbent and therefore no primary for that party, if your (and Bernie's) proposed system was adopted, the members of the that party could interfere with the primary process if anyone at all was allowed to vote in a party's primary. They would vote for the person they considered the weakest candidate and perhaps throw the election to that person. That shouldn't happen. If independents want to vote in a primary, they can always declare a party affiliation for that election. I agree with you that the two party system is bad. It doesn't allow a lot of people to express their political preference. Some people believe that that is a good thing and point to places like Israel and Italy as examples of political chaos due to too many political parties leading to no one getting a clear governing majority and chaos or else allowing minority parties that act as swing votes to gain too much power (as some Orthodox Jewish parties in Israel have done over the past 50 years). Other countries find it easier, but they are for the most part homogeneous low population countries. Israel is low population, but not homogeneous and they face some unique problems. Maybe it is a case of the grass is always greener in the other field.