Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege

[JimC]

I guess we should note that, despite and regardless of the rhetoric to the contrary, the Democrats are not a left-leaning political entity - far from it in fact. They're just less overtly right-wing that the other lot, but they're still broadly neo-liberal conservatives.

I don't think that's entirely fair. We only have two parties, so they have to cover a broader portion of the political spectrum than they would in a multi-party system. Surely the Bernie wing of the Democratic party would be considered left even in Europe? Not to mention all those who would like to vote Green or Socialist but don't because those options simply aren't viable in this country. I voted Nader/Green in 2000 and as soon as Bush won, I knew I'd made a mistake. You have to take vote splitting into account in a two party system. The Greens had a good turnout that year and Gore lost by the tiniest of margins.

Does that "broadness" then lead to a greater degree of tension within your major parties, compared to political parties in other parts of the world?

[NineBerry]

I'd suggest it probably leads to much fewer tensions (at least visibly), because losing a small number of voters is much worse than in a system where you can form coalitions.

[JimC]

I'd suggest it probably leads to much fewer tensions (at least visibly), because losing a small number of voters is much worse than in a system where you can form coalitions.

And yet the in-fighting between Clinton and Sanders before the election, and Trump and other republicans both before and after the election was pretty damn savage...

Mind you, both our major parties in recent years have been plagued with internal conflict and leadership challenges, although a lot of that involves personality clashes and rampant egos...

[Seabass]

I guess we should note that, despite and regardless of the rhetoric to the contrary, the Democrats are not a left-leaning political entity - far from it in fact. They're just less overtly right-wing that the other lot, but they're still broadly neo-liberal conservatives.

I don't think that's entirely fair. We only have two parties, so they have to cover a broader portion of the political spectrum than they would in a multi-party system. Surely the Bernie wing of the Democratic party would be considered left even in Europe? Not to mention all those who would like to vote Green or Socialist but don't because those options simply aren't viable in this country. I voted Nader/Green in 2000 and as soon as Bush won, I knew I'd made a mistake. You have to take vote splitting into account in a two party system. The Greens had a good turnout that year and Gore lost by the tiniest of margins.

Does that "broadness" then lead to a greater degree of tension within your major parties, compared to political parties in other parts of the world?

I don't know. Maybe. We've got "Bernie Bros" vs. "Hillbots". We've got "establishment" Republicans vs. the likes of Tea Baggers and Trump cultists. But surely these sorts of internecine squabbles exist to some degree in your political parties as well? My impression is that those tensions exist everywhere, but generally not quite to the degree that you find over here. I don't know how accurate that impression is though.

One thing that I think I can say with a fairly high degree of certainty is that having only two parties results in much, much more hostility between parties. If you have 7, 8, 9, 10 parties, the hostility is sort of diffused out among a larger number of political tribes. But in the US the division runs so deep because there is only one place for all that hate to go. Democrats and Republicans fucking HATE each other right now. And while we do have minor parties, they are really, really, really minor. They are almost inconsequential apart from the spoiler role they play on occasion.

[Rum]

I should know the answer to this - and I'm surprised I don't when I came to think of it. Why are there only two political parties in the USA? And is there anything preventing the formation of others? In most European countries there are multiple parties.

[NineBerry]

There were other parties in the past, but there were only two relevant parties at the same time. That's because of the election system. It was similar in the UK most of the time, wasn't it?

[Brian Peacock]

We may have a number of parties in the UK but to all intents and purposes we operate a two-party system. A third party can make headway when there's little to choose between the other two.

[Rum]

There were other parties in the past, but there were only two relevant parties at the same time. That's because of the election system. It was similar in the UK most of the time, wasn't it?

Of course we don't vote for a head of state (the Queen is ours) but there are similarities. Here you vote for a local MP. The party with the most MPs, which can therefore always win a vote in Parliament form the government. The leader of that party becomes the equivalent of the USA President in some respects. Sometimes, as at this point, a government will make a deal with a small party to ensure they can get votes through Parliament. The wrangling goes on after a general election here.

Perhaps the system in the USA with primaries and so forth makes sure the wrangling goes on before the national elections. Dunno though.

[NineBerry]

I mean the first past the post system favors big parties.

[Rum]

We may have a number of parties in the UK but to all intents and purposes we operate a two-party system. A third party can make headway when there's little to choose between the other two.

True of course, but minority parties can have a big influence as in the Coalition with the Lib Dems and currently with the Northern Irish basket cases.

[Seabass]

I mean the first past the post system favors big parties.

Yep.
Duverger's law

A two-party system often develops in a plurality voting system. In this system, voters have a single vote, which they can cast for a single candidate in their district, in which only one legislative seat is available. In plurality voting (i.e. first past the post), in which the winner of the seat is determined purely by the candidate with the most votes, several characteristics can serve to discourage the development of third parties and reward the two major parties.

Duverger suggests two reasons this voting system favors a two-party system. One is the result of the "fusion" (or an alliance very much like fusion) of the weak parties, and the other is the "elimination" of weak parties by the voters, by which he means that voters gradually desert the weak parties on the grounds that they have no chance of winning.

[JimC]

In Oz we have 2 main parties (Labour and Liberal) with a third party, the Nationals mainly getting rural votes. They are in a semi-permanent coalition with the liberals, so governments for many years have been either Labour or the Coalition. There is a small but vocal Greens Party, much to the left of Labour, a crazy right wing party called One Nation, and a number of independents. When margins are close, the small parties and independents can wield a lot of power in parliament.

[Seabass]

In Oz we have 2 main parties (Labour and Liberal) with a third party, the Nationals mainly getting rural votes. They are in a semi-permanent coalition with the liberals, so governments for many years have been either Labour or the Coalition. There is a small but vocal Greens Party, much to the left of Labour, a crazy right wing party called One Nation, and a number of independents. When margins are close, the small parties and independents can wield a lot of power in parliament.

No coalitions here, unfortunately. Our minor parties serve only to hurt their ideologically closest major party.

What's really fucked now is that historically, the Greens have siphoned from the Democratic party, and the Libertarians have siphoned from the Republican party, but the Libertarian party recently has kind of shifted toward more of a pothead type of libertarianism than a gun nut & Milton Friedman type of libertarianism, so we now have a situation in which the Greens still pull only from the Democratic party, but the Libertarians now pull from both majors.

Granted, we're talking about relatively small numbers of people, but combine that with electoral college absurdity, Russian meddling, Wikileaks, Comey's fat mouth, a contentious primary with Bernie staying in the race all the way to the convention, Republican voter suppression, et cetera, and we end up with spray-tan Mussolini.

[Forty Two]

I should know the answer to this - and I'm surprised I don't when I came to think of it. Why are there only two political parties in the USA? And is there anything preventing the formation of others? In most European countries there are multiple parties.

There are other parties in the US, but they are small. The biggest third party nowadays is the Libertarian Party, but they typically get 1 to 3% of the vote, and I don't think there is a Libertarian in the federal Congress. There are some Libertarians in state and local government offices, where they have better results.

There are other smaller parties out there that make the ballot.

The only thing that prevents the formation of others, legally, are the election and campaign finance laws, which have the side-effect, even if not intended, of further entrenching the major political parties, and limiting competition. The big parties control the legislatures, too, so when a party starts to show some strength, they will raise the number of signatures needed to get on an election ballot in a given locale.

The practical limitation exists, of course, in that national campaigns, and federal Congress campaigns, are so expensive that it's difficult to get the manpower and resources to compete against the big boys. And the big parties will pressure the media to exclude the smaller party candidates from debates on television and such. I found it funny that for the last 30+ years, the debate was whether to allow a third or fourth person on the stage for political debates - the libertarian candidate was always the guy trying to get on the stage, and the major party folks and media establishment would protest saying that such an irrelevant candidate would just confuse issues on the stage and make the debate unworkable (talking about 3 or 4 vs 2 debate participants), but during the GOP primaries a year ago, we had two separate debates, both with 5/6 and more debate participants.

Also, there is a tendency in the US for the major parties to swallow up movements before they burgeon into new parties. For example, the Republican Party tends to bubble out to encompass libertarians, and the Democratic Party is embracing the socialist left, long before either of those groups can seriously materialize.

[Forty Two]

Fox is so far right it's considered only good for confirming your biases. And Breitbart and InfoWars are barely considered news.

Fox is far right, and Breitbart is clickbait and InfoWars is conspiracy theory nuttery. who's suggesting that these are great sources of unbiased news?

However, to suggest that CNN has "minimal partisan bias" is absurd in the extreme. CNN is pro-Democrat at least as much as FoxNews is pro Republican. They are both owned or swear allegiance to a political party, which is the definition of partisanship.

And, anyone listening to NPR (as I do all the time - at least 3-4 times per week) can tell they are obviously left leaning (moderately) and partisan toward the Democrat party. Similarly, the New York Times is partisan Democrat. The New York Times still does great reporting, and is generally, I think, reliable, but they are moderately partisan.