By Max Leonard
The growing sense of political unrest in the US these days is no secret. Whether it’s watching people beat around the bush at the Thanksgiving table so as not to upset their relatives, or having to ask someone new you meet about their political affiliation, things are rarely binary in life and in nature, and perhaps it’s time for the political parties in the US to catch up.
While it may seem strange to imagine the United States without the two distinct political parties, the original situation was quite different: Founding Fathers such as Alexander Hamilton and George Washington despised the idea of political parties even existing in the United States. Washington specifically warned in his farewell address in 1796 that political factions, as they were then called, would lead to a “terrible despotism.” Despite these warnings, political parties formed in the United States: the early Federalist Party, which later became today’s Republican Party, and the Democratic-Republican Party, which became today’s Democratic Party.
Given the growing political unrest and general dissatisfaction with public officials, most people may feel compelled to vote for a candidate with whom they do not fully agree, just to select the one they believe is the “lesser of two evils.”
In addition, constant compromises with House and Senate majorities in favor of one party or the other have led to gridlock. With both sides struggling to achieve their goals, the idea of a third party may seem more attractive. Another current thorn in the side of the two-party system is the increasing presence and public perception of gerrymandering, which essentially allows parties to ensure victory by designating districts in which they are most likely to win.
The idea of more parties in U.S. democracy is nothing new. The most recent large-scale attempt to create a new party was led by Democratic New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang. In 2021, Yang founded a new party, the Forward Party, as a centrist third option for those isolated by their far-right and far-left ideologies. Although that party struggled to gain traction in major elections, the idea of a more prominent or available party alongside the Republicans or Democrats was attractive to voters.
When you watch elections, big and small, you wonder what it would be like in a country where it was easier for smaller parties to gain a foothold in the U.S. political landscape. By offering more choices and giving more weight and attention to their beliefs and issues, you could ease the growing tensions between the two major parties, both of which cover a wide spectrum of beliefs. While not every Democrat is a leftist, not every Republican is a conservative. Politics is a spectrum, and a two-party system has difficulty getting new ideas into the electoral market during the election campaign.
While many have concerns about abolishing the two-party system that has long dominated U.S. elections, it is important to note that not all countries are fighting this battle. One country to look at in this case would be Germany, where, according to The Federal Returning Officer, In the 2017 elections, Germany won with 5.9 million votes out of 61.5 million voters, so it was about 10% of the registered voters who decided the election. In the USA, however, Trump became the Republican candidate with 14 million votes, which corresponds to only about 6% of the US voting population. In an article for Vox, The author of the book “Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop”, Lee Drutman, writes: “In short, when voters in both countries were given the full range of options, Donald Trump fewer “The AfD is more popular in the US than in Germany.”
The US also has its own third parties, the most well-known being the Green Party, the Libertarian Party and the Reform Party. Before Biden dropped out of the race, the Pew Research Center reported that 68% of voters were dissatisfied with current presidential candidates Trump and Biden, while the Libertarian candidate for the 2024 presidential election, Chase Oliver, won the primary with 60.6%. Oliver is running on an anti-war platform, which is a marked difference from Biden’s unwavering support for Israel, which has turned off many younger voters for whom the war in Palestine is a key issue.
The United States is in a difficult political situation and many people, myself included, are frustrated because they go to the polls every year to check a box, knowing that most of our concerns will go unanswered and promises will go unfulfilled, while simultaneously voting for the lesser of two evils to preserve our basic human rights. The election should not come down to a game of which candidate is likely to do the least evil, but there should be enough room for the frustrations of the American people so that there is a candidate who will listen or one who is willing to do more rather than go to the polls to postpone a political issue.
