[Gerben42]

In the UK a third party has finally managed to overcome the majority system and force one of the two ruling parties into forming a two-party coalition. Could this be the future for the US also?

[mike777]

The USA has a different system compared to the UK and most of the world.


In the UK the ruling party basically does what it wants too. No checks and balances and the head of the ruling party becomes PM.

Party members in the USA do not have to vote with their party program. They are free and often do vote against the leaders who put up policy programs. In addition bills must pass the Senate and very often you need 60 yes votes out of 100 not 51 votes.

In the usa....we vote seperately for the President, the House and the Senate.

Even if the same party won all three as is now....it is tough for the ruling party to put their programs in place.

Keep in mind for the last 2 years the Democrats controlled all three and still could not pass alot of stuff.

[kenberg]

In theory I suppose that we could have parties A, B, C and then have A and B in a coalition in Congress while C holds the White House. Or maybe A with a majority in the House, B with a majority in the Senate, and C in the White House. It sounds pretty unstable.

It hardly takes a cynic to observe that there is an immense gulf between the idealistic political system we like to imagine and the actual system we live with. Nonetheless, it has sort of worked. Perhaps it will continue to do so. Perhaps.

[luke warm]

it works, in large part, for that very reason... political conflict and strife serve to reduce the volatility within the process... change per se isn't necessarily bad - but quick changes, without sufficient time between them, can be

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

The question implies that the two parties in the US are monolythic, which is not the case,
and never was.

If you are looking at the development of the Republican party, than you will see, that lots
of moderate Republicans got forced to leave the Republican party, and they ended up in the
Democratic party, which means that the spread of opinions in the Democratic party got wider.

But even now you will find several peoble belong to the "Tea party movement" - which represents
the ultra right Republican party, and you will find, at least occasionnally - moderates, that
got proposed to be elected for Congress.

All in all I doubt, that in the US a 3rd power will arise, there are a few independ persons in
congress, but not many.
I am not 100% sure, but the advantage of the majority is, that they set the agenda in the congress,
and the agenda determines, what gets discussed and gets voted on.
And it may well be, that majority share of seats, not necessarrily 50+% of the seats.

So if you are an indepent, your influence is very limited, and you cant even use the filibuster tactic,
since you need a certain number of ... to support this tactic.
So unless you get 60-70 members of a new 3rd party at once in congress, their influence will be neglegible,
and as a consequence, this makes it highly unlikely that one emerges.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[helene_t]

In Britain, the current situation is unsustainable. Labour/LibDem are frustrated by wasting votes, allowing the Tories to have a majority in parliament despite Labour/Libdem getting a majority of popular vote. So Labour/Libdem have to fuse, or to get an election reform through. The alternative is that one of the two left-winged parties will die.

I think Mike777's point is important. But the problem is the same in the U.S. as the winner-takes-all system makes more than two serious candidates in an election meaningless. A third party would have to operate as a fraction of one of the two bigger parties, trying to win their primary first so that there would still be only two candidates in the end.

If British Labour and LibDem were to fuse (which nobody has talked about but I I think would be a serious option if the attempt to reform the election system fail), they might elect to hold primaries first so that their members in each constituency could decide who they want to run against the Tory candidate.

[cherdano]

Gerben42, on 2010-November-02, 17:25, said:

In the UK a third party has finally managed to overcome the majority system and force one of the two ruling parties into forming a two-party coalition. Could this be the future for the US also?

No.

[Zelandakh]

helene_t, on 2010-November-03, 10:22, said:

In Britain, the current situation is unsustainable. Labour/LibDem are frustrated by wasting votes, allowing the Tories to have a majority in parliament despite Labour/Libdem getting a majority of popular vote. So Labour/Libdem have to fuse, or to get an election reform through. The alternative is that one of the two left-winged parties will die.

I think Mike777's point is important. But the problem is the same in the U.S. as the winner-takes-all system makes more than two serious candidates in an election meaningless. A third party would have to operate as a fraction of one of the two bigger parties, trying to win their primary first so that there would still be only two candidates in the end.

If British Labour and LibDem were to fuse (which nobody has talked about but I I think would be a serious option if the attempt to reform the election system fail), they might elect to hold primaries first so that their members in each constituency could decide who they want to run against the Tory candidate.

Three things against your premise. First of the Liberal party in Britain is traditionally a centre/centre-right party. That changed greatly when they merged with the SDP and since then the party has become very much centre-left in its social ideals while maintaining many of its centre-right policies for business development and regulation. Nick Clegg, the current leader, is also a centre-right politician. I do not think he would acquiesce to any merger with Labour. There is a weak possibility that could change should someone from the left of the party (Simon Hughes perhaps?) become leader at a time when the Liberals have become unpopular from their time in Government.

The second part against your idea is that currently it is just not really in Labour's interest either. The election system is squarely in Labour's favour just now since their vote is heavily concentrated. This is the reason they were able to score such large majorities with a low percentage of the vote. It may be that in the future there is a further severing of the Union and Scottish MPs stop sitting on some (or all) matters in Westminster. That would essentially wipe Labour out and then closer ties between them and the LibDems would become highly desirable.

Finally the raison d'etre for most Liberals is matters of personal liberty and human rights. The current Labour party has identified crime as an area where they were weak on with the wider electorate and thus swung heavily to the authoritarian side of this axis. It is difficult to believe that many in the party could work as one within Labour without this policy changing drastically. In American terms it is like Christian fundamentalists working happily in a party that promotes free abortions for all without constraints.

[mike777]

For me at least I dont find the usage of left or right very helpful.

I mean the left can be for abortion restrictions, war, tax cuts and against gay marriage.
OTOH the right might be for choice, no war, tax increases and gay marriage.

It is just silly to claim the right/rep. is racist and only for the rich and the left/dem. is only for the very poor and commies.

What can make whole discussion even more confusing when people say liberals are for freedom/liberty and conservaties are not or vis/versa..silly and stupid.

[Zelandakh]

mike777, on 2010-November-03, 18:43, said:

For me at least I dont find the usage of left or right very helpful.

I mean the left can be for abortion restrictions, war, tax cuts and against gay marriage.
OTOH the right might be for choice, no war, tax increases and gay marriage.

It is just silly to claim the right/rep. is racist and only for the rich and the left/dem. is only for the very poor and commies.

What can make whole discussion even more confusing when people say liberals are for freedom/liberty and conservaties are not or vis/versa..silly and stupid.

Left and right is the radical/conservative axis of politics. What most people do not realise is that there is a second axis , often called tough/tender, within political theory. Essentially extreme tender means liberal and extreme tough means authoritarian. The majority of parties in most western democracies fall approximately in a circle on this graph but a person or party can be anywhere. Thus you are right that left and right is meaningless when it comes to an issue like racism, and to some extent that conservative does not imply a lack of personal freedoms. However you are quite wrong to think that liberals might not be for personal freedom - that is the very definition of that political viewpoint. I do understand that this word has been perverted in American politics to mean something else.

[awm]

You really need some form of proportional representation for a three (or more) party system to work. The US doesn't work like that, and 3rd party candidates usually end up swinging the election against whichever big party they are closer too. For this reason they have some leverage to get a major party to co-opt their positions, but no real chance to win seats themselves.

[mike777]

I agree that in the usa the usage of liberal often seems to be at odds with the term personal freedom.

At the very least perhaps discussing what these words mean is a good start.

I mean if people think liberals are against personal freedom that is an issue.

Of course there is the whole issue of competing rights.
You have the personal right to block me from going to work, I have the right to work and feed my family.

Competing rights...who wins...see France today!
------------------------

Many times it seems the word conservative means personal freedom and liberal means the opposite.
--------------


At the very least if the perception is liberal means something opposed to personal freedom.....then that causes issues....in the usa

-------------


Of course another issue is should there be any limits on personal freedom and if so what and who should decide?

----

And of course if the word conservative means a hatred of personal freedom that causes issues in the usa.

[phil_20686]

It has been my experience that conservatives are almost always "liberals" in the original sense of the word. After all, freedom also means a freedom to fail - which is diametrically opposed to most left wing philosophy. For example, when it comes to crime, conservatives mostly beleive that if you commit a crime its your fault, and if you have reached the position where you are forced to commit a crime its because you personally have not worked hard enough, educated yourself etc. A "Liberal" in the modern sense normally thinks that if you are a criminal it is because soceital pressures made it inevitable, and that anyone with your experience would have turned out the same way. This is why they often get the reputation for being soft on crime - they prefer to tackle (what they see as) the "causes of crime" - poverty, poor education etc, and because they think that the individual is not responsible they tend to vote for softer sentencing and more rehab. I once saw this humerously summed up in a newspaper as:

You see a man beating another man to death:

Conservative response: "you deserve DEATH"
Liberal response: "Oh my - what a traumatic childhood you must have had."

I reckon that if you polled people on their political preference and also polled them on whether they believed in free will, you would get a very strong correlation.

[blackshoe]

Zelandakh, on 2010-November-03, 23:59, said:

…What most people do not realise is that there is a second axis…

There are a lot of different ways to define a two--axis political spectrum, but the fact is that even two dimensions aren't enough. Nonetheless, adding more dimensions complicates the discussion, so we don't see too many multi-dimensional spectra.

I note that on Jerry Pournelle's two axis chart, at least (and probably on many others) there isn't a whole lot of distance between the Republicans and the Democrats. They might as well be a single party.

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2010-November-04, 05:47, said:

There are a lot of different ways to define a two--axis political spectrum, but the fact is that even two dimensions aren't enough. Nonetheless, adding more dimensions complicates the discussion, so we don't see too many multi-dimensional spectra.

I note that on Jerry Pournelle's two axis chart, at least (and probably on many others) there isn't a whole lot of distance between the Republicans and the Democrats. They might as well be a single party.

I nearly added something to my previous post about further axes but decided to keep away from the subject. The 2 quoted are the oldest and most commonly discussed. I would happen to agree that the difference between Reps and Dems is not very large. Despite some Americans assertions that Obama is akin to a Communist the common perception of American politics this side of the Pond is that the parties are 'Right' and 'More Right'. This is the fundamental flaw in the British system of government (which the American system is based on) - it promotes a lack of choice. Basically adding a third choice hurts your own side.

Proportionality is right, even in a 2 party system, because it promotes choice, and choice empowers voters. Where you live within a country should not decide on how much your vote is worth, and no elected official should be in the situation where they know they are going to be voted in regardless of how corrupt they become just because of the colour of their rosette.

[luke warm]

phil_20686, on 2010-November-04, 05:47, said:

It has been my experience that conservatives are almost always "liberals" in the original sense of the word.

kinda/sorta... i think of the definitions in a simpler (more simplistic?) sense... i think of 'liberal' as 'desiring change' and 'conservative' as 'desiring a maintenance of the status quo'... iow, in pre-revolution america, those who were fine with british rule were conservatives, those who opposed it were liberals... once freedom was won, those who wanted to maintain the concepts fought for became conservative...

using those definitions, the republican party of lincoln was liberal (or moreso than its counterpart), the democrats conservative... so what a person or group is can be defined from within the perspective of his (or his country's) present or historical circumstances... those, for example, who desire a return to what they perceive as a system closer to that envisioned by the founders would be, in an historical sense, post-revolution conservatives (even though the very concepts held by the founders were, pre-revolution, liberal)

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on 2010-November-06, 06:38, said:

kinda/sorta... i think of the definitions in a simpler (more simplistic?) sense... i think of 'liberal' as 'desiring change' and 'conservative' as 'desiring a maintenance of the status quo'... iow, in pre-revolution america, those who were fine with british rule were conservatives, those who opposed it were liberals... once freedom was won, those who wanted to maintain the concepts fought for became conservative...

using those definitions, the republican party of lincoln was liberal (or moreso than its counterpart), the democrats conservative... so what a person or group is can be defined from within the perspective of his (or his country's) present or historical circumstances... those, for example, who desire a return to what they perceive as a system closer to that envisioned by the founders would be, in an historical sense, post-revolution conservatives (even though the very concepts held by the founders were, pre-revolution, liberal)

But why wouldn't you then classify those who wish to "return to what they perceive as a system closer to that envisioned by the founders would be" as liberals? Aren't they the ones "desiring change?"

[Zelandakh]

luke warm, on 2010-November-06, 06:38, said:

kinda/sorta... i think of the definitions in a simpler (more simplistic?) sense... i think of 'liberal' as 'desiring change' and 'conservative' as 'desiring a maintenance of the status quo'... iow, in pre-revolution america, those who were fine with british rule were conservatives, those who opposed it were liberals... once freedom was won, those who wanted to maintain the concepts fought for became conservative...

using those definitions, the republican party of lincoln was liberal (or moreso than its counterpart), the democrats conservative... so what a person or group is can be defined from within the perspective of his (or his country's) present or historical circumstances... those, for example, who desire a return to what they perceive as a system closer to that envisioned by the founders would be, in an historical sense, post-revolution conservatives (even though the very concepts held by the founders were, pre-revolution, liberal)

'Radical' is the opposite of 'conservative' and broadly means desiring change. Liberal is different to this. I find it quite interesting and a very Americanised viewpoint that conservatives would be thought to reflect traditional values. Many things that these groups often stand for - removal of abortion choice, illegality of homosexuality, aggressive persual of foreign policy, etc - tend to go against this theory. I think this is in part how many Americans seem to perceive government though - small government means telling people what to do less and therefore more personal rights. For the most part this is actually not what most conservatives want - they want less regulation in some areas (business, medicare) but more regulation in others ('violations against God') and many of the areas of more regulation are distinctly not liberal.

[kenberg]

phil_20686, on 2010-November-04, 05:47, said:

You see a man beating another man to death:

Conservative response: "you deserve DEATH"
Liberal response: "Oh my - what a traumatic childhood you must have had."

How about: We need to get guys like this permanently off the street, and we need to improve the situation for many young people, partly for their own sake, partly to reduce (elimination being an idealistic dream) the number of youth who make violence their choice. Partly this requires making it very clear what is acceptable and what is not, partly it involves providing realistic options.

The above is roughly my view. Am I a liberal or a conservative?

[hrothgar]

One of the central problems that you're encountering is that the words liberal and conservative have been both been stretched to encompass a broad range of (sometimes contradictory) categories. As a result, the utility of these expressions have been severely compromised.

For example: The word "Liberal" can mean anything from

Classical Liberalism ala John Stuart Mill to
1960s style counter culture to
anything that a "conservative" doesn't like (see recent efforts to brand Lisa Murkowski and Lindsey Graham "liberals")

In a similar vein, Andrew Sullivan's book The Conservative Soul tries to frame conservationism using Oakeshott as his primary lens.

Quote

“To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”

However, Sullivan is very estranged from the modern conservative movement here in the United States.

From my perspective, the current efforts to turn the clock back to the McKinley era is far more "radical" than "conservative".