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Comment by izietto | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who thinks that a country which admits only two parties cannot be called a democracy? Not an attack, just a thought starter

EDIT Thank everyone who answered, I have always been convinced that US doesn't have anymore parties other than Republicans and Democrats. Today I learned!

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There are many more parties in the US though - they just don’t get really relevant in the bigger scheme of things.

In my country we also have 2 huge parties and a bunch of smaller ones - but the smaller ones have more impact and actually matter a bit.

Democracy is hard and there are so many details and complexities to consider.

But to answer your question I would say definitely the US is a democracy -

Also, our 2 huge parties aren't dissimilar to the coalitions of parties you see in other democracies. Over time the boundary lines between our 2 parties shifts as those coalitions are formed, disbanded, reformed, etc.

Yeah but in those countries the parties actually get to rep themselves in the legislature. You can’t literally masquerade as a member of another party here unless you want people to think you’re a mole or a turncoat.

> There are many more parties in the US though - they just don’t get really relevant in the bigger scheme of things.

Interesting! Can you please elaborate? I know nothing about this, I always thought they are forbidden somehow to have parties that are different from Conservatives and Democrats, otherwise I can't explain myself why they are never mentioned

There are tons of political parties in the US[0].

However the scale of financing for the primary parties, the infrastructure built around those parties and the deeply ingrained cultural norm of the US being a "two party" government means that for all intents and purposes none of those other parties matter.

The two most recent near-exceptions to this that I can think of are the Tea Party, which became a Republican proxy party and Ross Perot's reform party.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_t...

In a US election, you will find candidates from the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. You will also find candidates from the Constitution Party, the Communist Party (really!), the Green Party, and others.

It's just that nobody but the Democrats and Republicans win major races. Others could - it's allowed - but they don't. The "first past the post" system is at least partly responsible for the US settling into two overwhelmingly dominant parties.

They aren't forbidden. The voting system is set up so that any new party that enters will torpedo its allies. It's a winner-takes-all and first-past-the-post system, so if a new left party enters and takes 5% of the votes, the democrats will now lose everything. House. Senate. President. All of it.

That's what coalitions are for.

Again, that sounds great, but that's not how the US electoral system works. You can't transfer votes for your own party to another party in the coalition to gain the presidency. Or to win a district. Or a senate seat.

The Republican and Democrat parties are fundamentally coalitions though.

We pretend they represent some sort of Left vs Right split, but really that's a post facto justification or narrative around an arbitrary coalition of sub-factions.

There are a bunch of largely unrelated issues that people care about- immigration, cost of living, abortion, gun rights, crime/policing, foreign policy and various "culture war" issues around race, sexuality, religion.

There is really no reason we group them together as we do. There could be a parallel universe where a liberal "unborn rights movement" grew out of the prior women's rights, black rights, LGBT rights etc and saw abortion as an exploitation of the most vulnerable human rights and said they deserved protection.

There could be a parallel universe where pro-business, pro-market based solution conservatives want completely open borders to allow workers to freely move to work or start businesses where they want.

The parties themselves change over time too. The populist Trump/MAGA faction that has taken over the Republican party has little in common with the "Religious Right" Christian faction or the neo-conservative factions that were influential to the Republicans in the 90s and 2000s.

I can't explain myself why they are never mentioned

They're never mentioned in the headline news because they don't stand a chance of winning. But they're actually discussed quite a bit every presidential election, not in terms of if they'll win or not, but if they'll 'take' enough votes from one party to have an effect on a close election.

The Democrats sometimes accuse the Green Party of spoiling their chances by competing for the same voters. This presidential election there was a fair bit of talk about RFK Jr and his presidential run, with lots of speculation that he might take enough votes from Trump to cause the Democrats to win. Republicans are still convinced that the only reason Bill Clinton won was that Ross Perot, a third party candidate who got 19% of the votes, split the Republican vote.

We have two major parties, and several smaller ones- the Libertarian Party and the Green Party are the two largest third parties generally. However, there are also sub factions within the major political parties, so that they in fact makeup a sort of coalition of sub factions, similar to the coalitions of parties you see in other countries. This means that primaries are a super important part of the election cycle in the USA. The Primaries are like the first round of a two round system.

You need to factor in member’s ability to “cross the aisle” and the power of the party whip. In the U.S. members can vote against their party’s legislation without instantly being thrown out of the party.

Lessig in books and talks explained it very well, why reliance on money - people and corps funding parties and candidates - in elections keep the elections elitist and undemocratic. It needed reform and it still needs reform, more than ever.

I naively hoped that his well laid out arguments would make a difference, but here we are much later and it didn't help a single bit.

See other comment for a link to his talk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42645492

There are many parties, generally referred to as "third parties", but there are also many systems working to ensure that only the two parties everyone knows about have any power. First-past-the-post is a big part of the problem, and both parties campaign against alternatives like instant-runoff and ranked-choice voting. The "Big Two" also control televised debates, and have consistently raised requirements for participation in order to exclude other parties. The big parties, big corporations and the big media are all aligned in this, refusing the discuss third parties except in terms of spoilers. People who might vote for a third party are routinely reprimanded for helping the other big party win.

The other option is to try to change a party through the primary process, but the Democratic party in particular has a process very well insulated against public influence. "Super Delegates" (party insiders) until very recently had open and official votes that could easily override a choice by primary voters. In a lawsuit filed after the Democratic Party fought to ensure Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders, a leading member the Democratic Party argued, in court and under oath, the that party was a private organization and had NO OBLIGATION to use any kind of democratic process to chose its nominee. In this last election they didn't even have a primary.

I live in the U.S., I vote, at best I consider it a very flawed, or perhaps well controlled, democracy. In many cases a majority of voters prefer policy changes that are simply off the table for both major parties. Examples are things like winding down the war on drugs, ensuring abortion access, and raising the minimum wage. Neither party will do anything about these issues at the national level, and any progress being made is at the state level - largely in states that have a ballot initiative process where voters can (in some ways) bypass the usual party-controlled political process.

If the parties were static sure, but they ebb and flow with the voters. Trumpism came out of seemingly nowhere now the entire GOP is all aboard, it’s effectively a completely different party compared to 10 Years ago.

>admits only two parties cannot be called a democracy

'Democracy' itself is a charade to pacify the masses.

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