Quote: Original post by SimonForsman
Isn't the only thing they need more votes really ?

If you want a third party, vote for one instead of one of the two big parties.

In Sweden a party needs 4% of the popular vote to get any seats in parliament, even though there are 349 seats which does make it alot harder than it needs to be for small parties to gain influence, Despite this we still have 7 parties represented there so i don't think it would be impossible in the US either. (Unless you have some even more insane restrictions than we have).

Here we vote for individual candidates, so a new party would have to win on a case-by-case basis.

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Other parlimentary gov'ts seem to do just fine with more than 3 parties: Australia, UK, Japan, heck, even Iraq (with all things relative of course).

The United States isn't a parliamentary government.

Quote: Original post by SimonForsman
Isn't the only thing they need more votes really ?

If you want a third party, vote for one instead of one of the two big parties.

Pretty much. I get the impression that some Americans believe that a vote not cast for the two main parties is a vote wasted. This is not the case.

Quote: Original post by SiCrane
The United States isn't a Parliamentary system.

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Other parlimentary gov'ts seem to do just fine with more than 3 parties: Australia, UK, Japan, heck, even Iraq (with all things relative of course). Our federal republic can't seem to grasp this concept.

Dude, would it kill you to read my posts before you quote and make comments about them? [grin]

Welp ... the Republicans are doing a decent job of driving off moderates.

Quote: Original post by owl

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes

Quote: Original post by owl
Money, people and decades.

And sadly enough, we have all 3..... [sad]

Yeah, but not to make a new competitive political party. Anyway, how many other positions does politics need (or people can handle) beyond left and right? Conservative - Liberal?

much more. come to switzerland.

and besides that, everyone needs direct democracy. so you don't care about the party at all, you care about the decisions. and you do them yourself.

i don't want to chose between conservative or liberal, i want a mix of both. i want to chose that mix, i want to chose it for every law that may be of importance.

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
I mean the Republicans and Democrats aren't cutting it. They seem to be so ideological that nothing gets done without back dealing concessions and smokescreen.

If that were the case, then we would be seeing some real liberal legislation coming out of Congress, given the large Democratic majorities in both houses and a Democratic president. But the Dems are not liberal ideologues. They have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and still make concession after concession to the Republicans. They are not stubbornly ideological, they are craven cowards. I agree with your larger point, that our system is ineffective, but not for the reason you say.

Absent a revolution, the only way to change the system is through the system, meaning Congress, and because the practical purpose of Congress is to function as a job retention program for Congressmen, the last thing they're going to do is change the system. The American people have yet to vote in enough third party candidates to make a difference, and I see no reason to believe that they ever will.

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Dude, would it kill you to read my posts before you quote and make comments about them? [grin]

I did, and drew the conclusion you thought a federal republic was the same thing as a parliamentary government. This seemed like a reasonable conclusion given 1) the fact that you try to use examples of proportional representation governments as somehow being an example of the viability of third parties in completely different electoral system, 2) the lack of basic research that ten minutes on Wikipedia could have remedied - even after you were fed a page specifically about the topic you were asking about, and 3) that whole "other" thing implying that the United States was also one. Hence the nice link explaining what a parliamentary government was.

"Us vs Them" is more fundamental than "Us vs Them and Them". It's all about the dichotomy between Good and Evil. "We" are good, and "They" are bad.

There are more than 2 political parties, but it would require too much thought to 'pit them against' the group. The media circus keeps it that way if for nothing else.

I don't think a third political party will ever become significant unless one of the current parties dissolves. I expect to see this in my lifetime with the Republican party splitting up into I would term "Palinists" on one side and a more centrist-libertarian party on the other. Eventually one of these two will lose favor and we'll be left with a (different) two-party system again in the end.