Is the American Two Party System Democratic?

[Stravo]

In light of certain revelations in this election cycle it really illuminated just how undemocratic the American Two party system is or appears to be. Let me illustrate the following:

Super delegates - I never heard of them until this election cycle even though they have apparently been around for some time. Apparently this system of independent delegates, many of whom are unelected, was designed to override decisions that were not good for the party, say candidates that were just unappetizing to the party elite. Seemingly like our also somewhat undemocratic electoral college this system is designed to over ride the will of the people for the good of the party.

I don't think anyone has ever really been exposed to this idea in the Democratic party (I do not know if Republicans have a similar set up) but this is about as elitist and undemocratic as you can get in these days and it is extremely troubling now when someone may try to go through this route to power and oppose popular will - much like a certain sitting president who won by judicial fiat.


Fixing the system - Someone mentioned on a news channel that the Democratic party leadership would most likely "tinker" with the primary system in order to avoid confusion leading up to the convention and ensure an obvious front runner as early as possible in the primary cycle. Gee, I'm sorry the fucking will of the people is inconvenient for you and the party. Let's silence as many states as possible coming late into the game, give more weight to bumblefuck states like Iowa and New Hampshire and punish those that try to move up their primaries to be relevant all at the same time.


These two revelations suggest just how damaging a party system can be to the democratic process. Essentially here's what the party system does.

It monopolizes resources so that only their candidates can be seen and heard and even legally run.

It fixes the rules for election to maximize party goals over what is truly free and democratic. In some instances such as the Superdelegate issue, it can even directly over ride popular will.

They tell the people who is running. Only a small field of Democrats and Republicans ever vie for the title at any time and only from those parties. The last time we had a viable third party candidate was Ross Perot and he was a billionaire. The way the system is set up there is no real way we can ever have a true selection to choose from. We get what the Democrats and Republicans want us to choose from and nothing else.

Rules that we impose on emerging Democracies in Africa like ensuring everyone has equal time on the radio/tv/media circuit would be laughed out of hand by either party

When someone sets the rules on how to win, provides you with your choices, and adjusts the rules to account for undesirable consequences and aggressively stamps out independent voices by creating an atmosphere that requires either enormous resources (independent wealth ) or the support of a national organization (i.e. political party) then can we ever truly say that what we have in the US are democratic elections?

[SirNitram]

Superdelegates are only the Democratic party. They're fallout from I think Dukakis; the wise old cabal didn't want any ultra-liberals being elected and setting the party back.

[HemlockGrey]

Representative democracy is vibrant and alive on the state and local level. American democracy on the federal level is a crock of shit. This is true for a number of reasons.

The first we are witnessing right now. The primary system is incredibly unwieldy and unfair; its the grotesque result of an attempt to take an archaic system of backdoor party wheeler-dealing and graft a representative model ontop. As a result we have our ludicrously complex primary system which resembles more a gameshow than a serious electoral process. We've got caucuses, which are themselves disenfranchising, whole states being disqualified from convention representation, superdelegates, and of course the year-long media circus that draws the whole thing out over an interminable period of time.

When we finally get to the general election we've still got, for some fucking reason, the Electoral College, the utility of which can be judged by the 2000 election. Any system whereby a candidate for national office can win the popular vote and lose the election is not terribly democratic.

On the legislative side, there is the fabled 95%+ incumbency rate, rampant gerrymandering, political control of redistricting, and the winner-take-all system which stifles the mounting of any viable candidacies outside of the two-party system. The winner-take-all geographic district model for electing representatives is a farce.

This is without even getting into the RAMPANT problems regarding fundraising, equal time, flat-out lying, PACs, etc.

Finally, we have the undeniable fact that many decisions on the federal level are made by institutions wholly unaccountable to the American people. We have policies being drafted by lobbying organizations, think-tanks and political consultants hired to advance the agenda of special interest groups. Most of these people are hired mercenaries who only care about scoring political wins for their clients, the good of the nation be damned.

[Teebs]

I don't think an absolute two party system like America has is good for democracy, but equally I think that democracy on the level of any realistic country is unworkable without a party system. They simply make the running of a country massively more efficient.

As for the US political system, yes it's broken at a federal level in terms of democracy.

[Drooling Iguana]

The problem is that the American electoral system was designed under the assumption that there wouldn't be any political parties, which has been wrong pretty much since its inception. Other than a few band-aid measures such as Presidential candidates choosing their VPs before the elections and term limits there've been no real fixes to bring the system into line with reality.

Just another reason why American worship of the Constitution has fucked things up royally.

[Illuminatus Primus]

On the legislative side, there is the fabled 95%+ incumbency rate, rampant gerrymandering, political control of redistricting, and the winner-take-all system which stifles the mounting of any viable candidacies outside of the two-party system.

I don't know if its true, but a history teacher of mine claimed that in the mid-1980's the Soviet presidium had a lower incumbency rate in an official one-party state, then did the U.S. Congress.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Superdelegates are only the Democratic party. They're fallout from I think Dukakis; the wise old cabal didn't want any ultra-liberals being elected and setting the party back.

The fallout is actually from McGovern in '72, which was by far the worst drubbing the party ever got (Nixon won by 23% or 18 million votes, and carried every single elector except Massachusetts and Washington D.C.). I believe the Superdelegate system was first used in 1980.

As to the main topic of the thread, yes, America's two-party system is quite undemocratic, especially when compared to a proportional system like Germany's. There are of course problems with proportional representation as well (kingmaker parties in coalitions can have disproportionate influence on policy, allocation of representatives by overall popular vote leaves a lot of people in the Bundestag without clear ties to a specific area, giving parties control over the lists of candidates grants them even greater influence). But generally they are much better at reflecting the desires of the voting public.

[CJvR]

This is hardly something unique to the US. In fact letting people vote for the Presidential candidate of a party at all is far more rare. Most democratic nations have a very differnt, much stronger, party system where the leadership is elected internally in the party and the commoners have little or no say in the matter, kind of like if the only votes that counted were the superdelegates.

[Keevan_Colton]

I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'

[Darth Wong]

Do you know what your problem is? Too much politics. The American Founding Fathers thought they had a genius idea by creating numerous branches of distinct government. And the two main political parties probably thought they were responding to the people when they decided to make their leader selection process democratic, instead of waiting for the real election to let the people decide.

But all of this means more politics, and a surplus of politics is what's killing your system right now. Politicians spend all of their time on influence peddling, backroom deals, forging of alliances, raising funds, and taking legislative actions designed solely to grant them political advantage in the next election. All of this is due to the fact that your system is over-democratized. There, I said it. You have too much democracy in your system. With democracy comes pandering and influence-peddling and all of that other unsavoury bullshit; there needs to be a balance between governance and politics, and in your system, it seems to be 90% politics, 10% governance.

Of course, you can't say this in America because people will accuse you of being pro-totalitarianism, since the black/white fallacy seems to be the bedrock of American political debate.

[Adrian Laguna]

The American Founding Fathers thought they had a genius idea by creating numerous branches of distinct government.

The genius idea was to create an excess of politics on purpose. They called their separation of powers "checks and balances", and the point was to make it so the Federal government would be too busy fighting itself to opress the populace and abuse its powers. This is actually works... in the absence of a mass media environment.

There, I said it. You have too much democracy in your system. With democracy comes pandering and influence-peddling and all of that other unsavoury bullshit; there needs to be a balance between governance and politics, and in your system, it seems to be 90% politics, 10% governance.

I've understood that idea for quite a while now, but had been unable to articulate it. That helped a lot, thanks.

[Stark]

This is hardly something unique to the US. In fact letting people vote for the Presidential candidate of a party at all is far more rare. Most democratic nations have a very differnt, much stronger, party system where the leadership is elected internally in the party and the commoners have little or no say in the matter, kind of like if the only votes that counted were the superdelegates.

Regardless of the pros and cons of this, it doesn't require a year of primary trekking around the nation and media circus to do it. The direct election vs party election thing isn't the issue - it's how fucking long it takes America to do it and how insane it is.

[Lusankya]

Regardless of the pros and cons of this, it doesn't require a year of primary trekking around the nation and media circus to do it. The direct election vs party election thing isn't the issue - it's how fucking long it takes America to do it and how insane it is.

I'm quite convinced that it's all a huge conspiracy with two main goals in mind:

The first: to drag it on for so long that the average voter is sick of the whole thing by the time of the actual election and has completely lost the actual platforms of all of the candidates are amidst the haze of politics that surrounds the whole thing.

The second: to piss me off, because merely existing forces me to put up with hearing all about someone else's election for pretty much an entire year.

[xerex]

Superdelegates are only the Democratic party. They're fallout from I think Dukakis; the wise old cabal didn't want any ultra-liberals being elected and setting the party back.

actually Republicans have them too. they're just called Unpledged delagates.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Why can't political parties just be made illegal? I've always thought about this.

I mean I don't know what the alternative would be. But I'd thought about possibly small, privately funded, special interest action groups. Say you've got the pea farmers of ND who would focus on the needs and desires of pea farmers and pea farmers only. Basically they'd be worried about funding a candidate who would help them without, necessarily, the strings attached to a party (If you want gay rights you have to have big government and abortion. Or if you want no abortion you have to trample on gay rights and get stupid tax cuts). That's a bit of a simplification but you get the picture. They could be regulated to have only a certain number of member and funding could only come from membership.

The problem I thought with that model is that it'd eventually turn into exactly what we have now. People getting multiple memberships to different groups and having lots of money to boot, forcing candidates to yet again assume a whole bunch of issues at the same time, rather than focusing on the specific issues of the little guys.

How would a no party system work?

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Do you know what your problem is? Too much politics. The American Founding Fathers thought they had a genius idea by creating numerous branches of distinct government. And the two main political parties probably thought they were responding to the people when they decided to make their leader selection process democratic, instead of waiting for the real election to let the people decide.

But all of this means more politics, and a surplus of politics is what's killing your system right now. Politicians spend all of their time on influence peddling, backroom deals, forging of alliances, raising funds, and taking legislative actions designed solely to grant them political advantage in the next election. All of this is due to the fact that your system is over-democratized. There, I said it. You have too much democracy in your system. With democracy comes pandering and influence-peddling and all of that other unsavoury bullshit; there needs to be a balance between governance and politics, and in your system, it seems to be 90% politics, 10% governance.

Of course, you can't say this in America because people will accuse you of being pro-totalitarianism, since the black/white fallacy seems to be the bedrock of American political debate.

No I agree. I wish we had a faster legislation. I've always wondered why legislators had being a legislator a full time job. I mean your only real duties are, to vote, only upper folks sit on comitees and such. I never understood why it wasn't a part-time job which I feel it should be. That way your still a representative of the people since you still work with them and you don't automatically become this distant demagogue who's no longer connected to the people who voted for you because you get wrapped up in this massive political game.

One of the things I learned about the CIS was that they had a rather lean democracy (albeit an unstable one since anyone could cede if they felt so compelled) was that bills passed through congress couldn't be made up of more than one issue so monsters like the patriot act would never exist. Phone tapping would be one bill. Detaining another, and so on and so on. You could pick apart the specifics of the actions of the single bill but not having 100 issues packed into one. They also kept the line in veto which I never quite understood why we got rid of in the first place.

[HemlockGrey]

How would a no party system work?

It wouldn't, which is why every democratic system in the world comprising more than three people and a farmhouse has parties.