@Olivier5,
Olivier5 wrote:That's why the US has a 2 party system.
No it's not. You are profoundly ignorant of the history of the United States. Initially, there were no political parties, and the concept of a political party did not exist then, anywhere. Even in England, Tories and Whigs were just labels attached for convenience of identification, and no coherent political parties then existed, especially with all the implications of control and adherence to an ideological program and a legislative platform which is understood today. Washington spoke out publicly against "faction," as it was then known, and many people agreed with him--but it was a naïve position to take.
The ratification of the constitution lead to the creation of political parties in the United States. Those who advocated the ratification of the constitution were known as Federalists, and their opponents were know, be default, as anti-Federalists. What you oppose is not a good basis for a political party, though--people want to know what you support, not what you oppose. Therefore, Jefferson formed the Democratic-Republican Party, usually known as the Republicans. (It has nothing to do with either the modern Democratic Party nor the modern Republican Party.)
Thereafter, there were two parties. Soon enough, there was just one. After the 1824 election, Andrew Jackson created the modern Democratic party, and he did it from the ground up--organizing the precincts, then the counties, and then organizing by states so that he won the 1828 election, and without the idiocy that cost him the 1824 election. With the death of the Federalist party, John Quincy Adams, who had won the presidency in 1824 on a tie vote in the Congress (he was actually supposed to have been Jackson's Vice President), attempted to create a new, fiscally conservative party. He largely failed, but the Whig Party arose through the efforts of others.
The Democratic-Republicans faded away, and ceased to be a national political power. However, other parties arose to meet the political yearnings of other groups. Throughout the period 1828-1860, there were frequently three and sometimes four national parties in operation. The nativist party usually known as the "Know Nothings" never did win the White House, but as the American Party, they did well in local elections (municipal, county and state) and they did send members to the Congress. There were three candidates in the 1856 election, and four in the 1860 election. Because of Lincoln's campaign against Stephen Douglas in Illinois in 1858, and the famous debates in which he forced Douglas to repudiate slavery, the Democratic Party was split in 1860. The Constitutional Union Party was the last gasp of the Whigs, a failed attempt to offer an alternative to the Democrats and Repbulicans. Douglas had been discredited in the south, being seen as a secret abolitionist (ironic because he had built his political power base by conciliating the slave owners), and he was seen as not abolitionist enough in the north. So the Democratic party split. Douglas actually polled more votes than Breckenridge, the Southern Democratic candidate, but Breckenridge got more electoral votes because he represented a solid voting block.
The winner was, of course, Lincoln. If the Democrats had not split, they would have buried him, but he got the most electoral votes because he had successfully discredited Douglas in 1858. The Republicans are in fact, the last successful third party in American history. After 1865, they took steps in cooperation with the Democrats to exclude third parties, and i've already described those measures in an earlier post. Both the Democrats and the Republicans became successful political parties by organizing from the bottom up. Every attempt to form a third or fourth party since then has failed because they have been organized from teh top down--organized around a presidential candidate. The closest such an attempt has come was in the 1912 election, when there were four candidates. Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party, usually referred to as the "Bullmoose Party" came very close to wining, because of Roosevelt's popularity. He was shot, and even though he survived the assassination attempt, his electoral campaign did not. He came in second, ans as he was the most popular Republican in the country, he trashed Taft's chances, and Woodrow Wilson won by default.
Since then, no third party has come into existence because they're doing it wrong, they organize around a candidate, such as Ross Perot, but are not organized at the grassroots level. Perot's "party" fall apart because the grassroots organization had the temerity to disagree with Perot. Successful political parties are those that organize locally and then move nationally. A fine example of this is to be found in Canada.
In 1932, the CCF--the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation==--was formed in in Alberta. It brought together disaffected labor and agrarian groups, and the Saskatchewan CCF formed the first socialist government in North America in 1944 with Tommy Douglas, a former Baptist minister, forming the government. Douglas brought in Medicare, in a politically bloody fight, and became a national hero in Canada. The Tories and the Liberals finally succeeded in their campaign to tar the CCF as "Bolsheviks" and tools of Moscow, but out of the wreck of the CCF, with the prestige of Tommy Douglas, the New Democratic Party was formed. Neither the CCF nor the NDP ever formed a national government. But they formed official oppositions in may provinces--notably the CCF did this in Ontario, long the conservative stronghold of Canada--and the NDP has formed provincial governments in several provinces, including in Ontario. The NDP is the official opposition in the commons today, second only to the Conservative Party of Canada, which is what the Tories are calling themselves these days.
I strongly suspect that all this hooraw is just directed at the United States. Westminster-style parliamentary democracies are no more democratic that the United States. The Prime Minister is the leader of which ever party wins the election, and was chosen by a convention of party insiders. He or she need only be elected by the voters in a single district, and the Westminster system is notorious for the ability of parties to find "sate seats" for party "stars."
This is about people describing the American government, from the depths of their ignorance. I've never yet met anyone who was not an American who understood how the American system works (and even many Americans don't), with the exception of a handful of Canadians. Your pet thesis here is based on that same profound ignorance.
