american politics?

[el duerino]

Perhaps someone can clear something up. In the US, there is a 2 party system. However, the division between the parties seems mainly to be geographical, and perhaps to a small extent cultural. There actually seems to be very little internal 'politics' involved in whether a person is Republican or Democrat. It seems more like two big 'teams' where you support them rather than a balanced decision made on the various policies and personal characteristics of the candidates. e.g. Dubya aint the greatest, yet simply because he is Republican the vast majority of Republicans will vote for him. Not the greatest way of putting it but do you see what I mean? Seems like Republican and Democrat are for life rather than each candidate being assessed.

[robbieh]

don't forget the influence/importance of religion in US politics too

[archbishop]

And don't forget each party goes through a weird election system before the final candidate for President stands. Although normally the sitting President is usually unoppsed.

[georgit79]

I see it as the supporting of a football team, and think you're spot on, el duerino. There are only a few states who are ever undecided.

[bernardo]

The USA is such a capitalist and private economy that most things look after themselves - even things like healthcare - which European governments would run or intervene in.  There is so little for government actually to do.  American society is very blurred and is a polyarchical patchwork of interlocking and inter-related cultures, lifestyles, and with different emphases on religion, race, morality, geography, etc.

 

The fact that the two main parties have a primary system in which large numbers of people take part in the selection / filtering of candidates is a substitute for having a multi-party system of the type which is common in European democracies.  (It is also a reason why FPTP works reasonably well without the need for STV).  As such, each of the two parties is a broad "umbrella" coalition which includes authoritarians, liberals, libertarians, social democrats, federalists, Christians, secularists, feminists, ethnic interest groups  and so on.

 

As such, it is a form in which democracy has evolved into a two-party system.  The practicalities of the modern world mean that a one-party system or a no-party system doesn't work when there is freedom of association.  As such the two party machines have big overlaps and in practice work as machines for the choice between two individual people.  This is shown also in the different results of elections at different levels, e.g. a state which is strongly Republican in a presidential election but which simultaneously votes for a Democrat to be governor or senator.  In this way, personality is more important than it would be in the UK or Europe.

[AngEL5942]

it goes way back...generally, the democrats have been the working class and republicans have been the business class...the "democrats" in the past supported slavery and the reps didn't and then the civil war started...and stuff like that...reps and dems basically have the same ideas but different ideas about how to solve the problems. for example, reps think if the economy were better, then a poor person could then have a chance to find a job himself/herself but dems believe in helping poor ppl directly which may be why most minority groups like dems better...

much love, kk