monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Here we go--the constitution is entirely mute on the subject of political parties. It does not "favor" a party system of any type. In 1787, there were no political parties in the world, such as we would recognize. From 1800 to 1828, there was effectively only one party--the Democratic Republicans, generally referred to as the Republicans. The Democrats are lying through their teeth when they claim to be the party of Jefferson. It was Andrew Jackson who founded the Democratic Party, after he felt that he had been robbed of the 1824 election. It was a modern political party in every sense (except for gross amounts of cash).

Those who wish to comment on the constitution might read it every once in a while. Understanding the historical context of the adoption of the constitution wouldn't hurt, either.

https://www.quora.com/profile/Marc-Bodnick

The two party system is not specified in the Constitution by name. However, it is a natural consequence of plurality voting, which is specified in the Constitution in several places. That is, the winner is the one who gets the most votes (a plurality)*.

This is a consequence of a principle called Duverger's Law: if the group with the most votes wins, then it behooves all losing parties to unify in an attempt to reach plurality. Given enough time (and it usually doesn't take long), you end up with two parties, a winner and a loser (who attempts to expand its coalition to become the winner).

Even when there are formally multiple parties, they are generally assembled into coalitions that nearly always vote together. Minority parties can persist, but they achieve little or nothing until they are wooed by one of the two majority parties in hopes of putting them over the top to achieve a plurality.

As long as the US Constitution works by plurality vote, you're going to tend to exactly two parties**. There are other systems available, such as proportional voting, but a Constitutional amendment (or convention!) would be required to implement them. (Well, I suppose you could do something wacky like the National Popular Vote Compact, though that's really a kind of back-door Constitutional convention.)

Likewise, don't forget that the US were built by slaves, historically.

In any case, the point was that having an industrial policy and protecting one's industries is not always a bad idea, as the cases of China, South Korea and to a lesser degree Europe exemplify.

Of course jobs can return. Not necessarily the exact same ones as before though. But tell me: was Obama right to invest heavily in the US automotive industry to preserve some of its jobs, or should he had let them die in a laissez-faire manner?

And still, it's possible to have a two party system with some other parties than the same old same old. 1) One can thoroughly reform a party. 2) a new party can replace/displace an old one -- their are historical examples.

And the topic, once again, tediously, is President Plump. The olive tree has been completely successful in derailing the thread. But never fear, Plump is going to Asia, and will provide much hilarity, and cause for alarm, I have no doubt.

You and your droogs seem compelled to believe that Dems and left-wingers are all about making the world a better place in which to live, while utterly ignoring all the evidence (current and past) that they are no such thing. Ideology has consumed your ability to observe and reason.

Olivier5 wrote:

Of course jobs can return. Not necessarily the exact same ones as before though. But tell me: was Obama right to invest heavily in the US automotive industry to preserve some of its jobs, or should he had let them die in a laissez-faire manner?

This is difficult to say, as it compares an actual event to a theoretical outcome. It would be wrong of me to boldly answer yes or no. That being the case, I tend to believe that Obama made the correct choice, for two reasons:

First, the downstream effects from a major auto manufacturer going under would put hundreds of thousands of people out of work who are in ancillary industries; this would have been a real blow at a time in which we were losing 500k+ jobs a month already.

Second, the overall price for doing so wasn't very high.

It's not a slam-dunk case though. You could make a strong argument that he should have let them go.

Cycloptichorn