Join either the Democratic Party or Republican Party?

Stressedlines: And how do you propose that you follow through with something before getting into power?

JECE< that is not for me is it? They both can kiss my ass. They lostme LONG ago.

JECE, really, you need to do it from the ground up. These 2 parties are rotten to the core. On their priority list, the citizens are like 5th or 6th. We only count when it is time to pull the fucking lever.

To show you really care, talk about campaign finance reform. Make it an issue and people will flock to you

The voters want to feel like they are important all 4 years, not just a few months of that 4 years. Do that, and you win.

Our campaigns are two years long. I wish they were only four months.

Anyway, 'follow through' has to be tempered by reasonable expectations of what is institutionally possible. People who demand miracles and instant gratification will never be satisfied, and always concoct conspiracies for why they don't get their way 100% of the time.

Nothing in the OP indicates why the party is falling apart. But let's assume it's due to internal divisions. The solution then is to retain a core group of party members who are committed to building a party and want it to succeed. This core group has to want to work hard and reach other to potential partners who might join a new rising party. They can't be ideologically puritanical, but nor can they be opportunists who stand for nothing. There has to be a limited but clear platform which reflects the core values the party stands for. Beyond these core values the party should be willing to compromise with coalition partners about secondary or tertiary matters.

Furthermore, the party has to recognize a rule about politics: to win elections you have to mobilize the people who believe similar to you. You can't worry about convincing people who oppose you, or even worry about independents and the disaffected. They aren't reliable. You win by mobilizing your base. But you have to have a large and motivated base. You can't have a base so narrow that you can't win and actively make people want to vote against you. Democrats won in 2008 because the base turned out to vote. Democrats lost in 2010 because they stayed home. Independents didn't really have much to do with it.

The new party has to be able to retain organizational capabilities in as wide an area as possible. But most importantly has to be very organized in politically competitive areas of the country. The new party cannot become a sectional party, only devoted to one area and reflecting that area's values. That is what the Republican Party is becoming, and it's a recipe for failure.

You guys miss a large part of politics. It's called the young people. The ones that can't vote yet. There'll be three parties by the time my generation is up and running, so yeah, this thread is relevant. Democrats and Republicans both have demonstrated stupidity at unimaginable levels, specifically in this election, and it's only a turnoff to the people that you are going to be putting in charge of keeping your policies in action. That's my job. That's my generation's job. So hopefully the bullshit will stop. Either that or your policies will simply be removed four years after implementation and it'll switch off every four years until someone secedes and war within our own breaks out. Happened once, why not again...

There won't be three parties, bo_sox. The way we vote just doesn't make it feasible to have more than 2.

Young people are overwhelmingly liberal. Today's Millennials are like the Gen-X Reagan revolutionaries, except there's far more of them.

"Democrats and Republicans both have demonstrated stupidity at unimaginable levels"

Except one of these parties has actively courted the youth vote, while the other aims to suppress them by any means possible, even prevent them from caucusing in Republican primaries.

Oh, and make graduate school unaffordable and student loans higher. If you think both parties are bad for the young, you'd be wrong.

You're right. The way "we" vote doesn't include all the people like me who are going to be deciding things in 50 years. "We" don't understand how much of a turnoff the two party system is. Nothing gets done because the next president will be from the other party's extreme and all of Congress will be filled with that party and all they will do is repeal whatever the last president and voters have done. They'll institute new policies and the cycle will continue. That's how the two party system is designed.

Until we have a leader that will refrain from making a conscious effort to rack up votes and will do what's best for the country instead of what's best for his personal situation, we will be stuck. Until the presidency is in a separate category from a job - it's an occupation, sure, but you aren't there to get paid - we will be stuck. Right now, our economy, I don't give a fuck what you might say, is slowly on the rise, and I expect it'll either tank again or revive itself in the next four years. On the other hand, our environmental and social policies are so damn pathetic that it's not even worth joking about with the people in Europe and Asia and Mexico etc. that laugh about our politics on a daily basis. We are bound to have a third party, and hopefully there will always be three parties. That will expand and hopefully break that cycle that Reagan started and hasn't stopped since.

I'm not knocking Obama. I'm not praising Romney. I like things both of them have done, I dislike things both of them have done. I am simply a young person in the USA that understands that someday I'm going to be part of the generation that shapes the world for themselves, but hopefully, unlike the current casual voter, I'll think more for the next generation too instead of only for mine.

Honestly, when I go to college, I'm not sure how I'm going to move on from there because I'm going to be so far in debt before I even receive my degree in the mail. That's the stress I'm going through. I didn't work my ass off to be told "here's your $200,000 bill for tuition, here's $200,000 more on loans" the day I graduate, followed by a quick handshake to symbolize good luck. That's not what I want. That's what I'm going to get and it's my parents and all of the others of that generation's fault. Won't affect them though.

A third party will still have to work with the other parties. Unless you envision a third party becoming some kind of political monolith that crushes everybody else.

Agree with Putin above on some points and disagree on others (mainly your ideas about "core values" because I believe people vote on belief rather than self-interest) and respectfully disagree with bo_sox48 (on the 3 party/your generation), tho I agree that the your generation will be one of the most adamantly politically involved.

Bo, look up Hannah Arendt and what she says about the "public space" and then the greek idea of "Polis". It'll give you an idea of what young people can do in the realm of politics. If you're interested I can email you alot more on her

On Putin (great name choice btw) I think the young are overwhelmingly liberal because of the freedom of childhood. Dreams, ideals, beliefs...all hold as an intense motivator to political beliefs. However upon entering the real world, many formerly liberal middle/working class feel they can't "afford" to support the left anymore due to taxes etc.

The sad thing is that either side is the wrong option. Centrist, centrist, centrist. Keep your ideals and your pocketbook in the same arena. Don't trust your politicians whether they're "flaming liberals" or "die hard conservatives". Trust statistics and minimalist politics.

And to bo_sox48, it would be great to have a third party contender. But the sad sad thing is that politics is run by money. Advertising costs ALOT of money and the 2 mainline parties we have now posses a strong tie on this idea. The Libertarians have great ideas (and some bad to keep a non-biased view) but they can't compete.

I'm pretty sure the 20-somethings are already in the real world and are in debt, overeducated and unemployed. They can't afford to vote Republican because they don't make their money via capital gains.

Centrism has ruled America since forever. If you think the current duopolistic system is bad, then why are you a centrist? Our aristocratic Senate ensures a 'minimalist' politics. Gridlock ensures that the centrist status quo will always have an advantage over radical reforms of the left or right.

Agreed Putin. But when I say "centrist" I mean fiscal middle ground, not supporting a one minded goal. Our duoplustic system is bad because it creates competition against ourselves. When one party is in power, they lobby against the other half. Same ole same ole. When your politicians value their donors more than the voters...what does that tell you?

I'm only 21, college student with above a 3.5 gpa, have scholarships, a job, graduate in a year, plan on law school, but...still financially insecure.

My parents have government jobs, great benefits, but are still financially insecure.

My grandparents had government jobs, great benefits, but worked themselves to death because they were always FINANCIALLY insecure.

The system we live in now is that you can work your whole life but still just have to hope that someones respects your work enough to pay you a livable secure wage

Nickel and Dimed? Yeah, I feel you on that one.

Tell me about it man. It doesn't seem right that the workers of the economy always are "nickel and dimed". If the country was a car...money is the gas, politicians the driver, and the workers are the tires. Always getting rolled over and changed when they're worn out from too much abuse

A stat for you, courtesy of the ABA newsletter from a couple of weeks ago, GL: as of June 1st, 2012, 55% of the law school graduates of the class of 2011 had full time employment in the legal field. Don't go to law school unless you have to go to law school; electricians and plumbers usually make more, work better hours, and get to leave their work behind them when they're done for the day.

Honestly the worst thing for democracy as we know it (on the presidential level) would be if the two major parties disintegrated to a multitude of lesser parties. It would be absolute chaos. Basically you have several scenarios if you keep the constitution in mind.

1. Every election that does not win a majority of the vote will be thrown to Congress, and not the recently elected congress, but the lame duck congress elected 2 year before. So even, say, a landslide changed the face of congress you would see a president elected by the old lame duck congress,

2. Every election is followed by a beak-neck coalition-making process to cobble together enough votes in the electoral college to win it, catering to the most extreme whims of every coalition and putting the election into the hands of political leaders

3. Provide the possibility of an extremely small votegetter or candidate (possibly someone who wasn't even a candidate) be picked as a compromise, nullifying the electoral process in the first place.

very interesting thinking about it and realizing this was how the framerss WANTED it to work!

Correct me if any of my constitutional calculus is wrong, I consulted it only in memory (and possibly an outdated 1800 version)

and yes this is off topic, and no i don't care

just fascinating to think that given a change of political culture and behavior we could have a totally different government using the same constitution.

@Bo - work hard, do lots of extracurriculars, and apply for scholarships. I've knocked over 115K off my tuition and will graduate with two bachelors degrees thanks to the work I did in high school.

Honestly, I have to agree with the General that the two-party system has to go. It breeds an "us vs them" mentality that I don't think would be present in a three or four party state. But the way to create more parties is to pass major campaign finance reform and take away the monetary advantages the larger parties have. Orathaic mentioned in another thread an interesting way to do run-offs in a multi-party election which i think would be an amazing way to elect candidates.

I don't see why things must be set in stone. The Federalists and the Whigs are no more. The Black Republicans and the Southern Democrats have all but disappeared, so yes the system can and will change.

All four dissolved into other part yaffiliations. The names changed, the system did not with the possible exception of the Feds.

doing away with the two party system woul take some serous amending of the constitution if you want to avoid the situation described in my first post above

I don't see why things must be set in stone. The Federalists and the Whigs are no more. The Black Republicans and the Southern Democrats have all but disappeared, so yes the system can and will change.