There should be at least THIS MANY political parties

[mrgorth]

1) Repukes: Socially right and fiscally right.
2) Libertarians: Socially left and fiscally right.
3) Moderates: The Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman party.
4) Progressive party: Combo of non-moderate dems and greens (left/left)
5) Populist (or think of your own name): Moderately right socially, fiscally left (ie. would be for the death penalty but also national health care).

Any others? Thoughts?

[Goldmund]

1. That would be beautiful

but won't happen as long as there is Electoral College, and would probably also require a parliamentary sistem to function.

[SouthStar]

2. Arent there already

over 2 dozen political parties?

Its only the democratic and republican parties that have any power though.

[newyawker99]

5. Hi SouthStar!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. I agree. But to get this to work we have to enact some major election

reforms. Scroll down past the civic alert on my site to find out more about them.

--------------------------------------------------------
Have you secured your town and state voting systems yet?
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm

[liberalpragmatist]

4. Wouldn't work in our political system

I agree that it'd be nice to have some parties other than the Dems and Repubs in Congress, but realistically, given our constitutional system, an effective 2-party system works well. Multiparty presidential democracies are notoriously instable. Again, what could work would be if about 80% of the seats in Congress were controlled by the Democrats and Republicans, and the remaining 20% were divided among some other smaller parties (2, 3, or 4).

The only way we could get a true multiparty or 5-party system would be if we had a parliamentary democracy with proportional representation and coalition governments, like European Countries.