United States Political Parties

United States political parties: Are two parties enough? Here in the United States, political parties include the major parties, Democrats and Republicans. Although we do have others, such as the Independents, Libertarians and the Greens, in practice the minor parties never seem to make much difference.

For example, we've never had a President elected from one of these minor parties. Some of our citizenry consider these minor candidates to be spoilers, taking votes from major candidates that end up costing a major party candidate an election. Others believe that the cache of United States political parties should reflect as much diversity of choice as possible. So who's right?

The Democrat and Republican political parties do garner the vast majority of citizen registrations and votes. Is it because we all believe so fiercely in the principles of one or the other, to the exclusion of all others? How many of us can recite the platform goals of either of the major United States political parties? Such a person is likely non-existent, unless they're intimately involved in personally working on one of these campaigns.

As for the minor political parties, adherents are usually more familiar with the basic tenets. This is because the minor parties are typically going against the grain of the major political parties, with the focus trained on specific issues, such as environmental concerns. In the case of the Independents, they tend to attract former fans of either the Democrats or Republicans. It's more like a defection from the mainstream, but more like a statement of dissatisfaction than an entirely different mind-set.

Unlike many other countries, United States political parties limit the diversity of ideas presented to the general public via the amount of media attention and the monetary resources of the candidates. America was founded on principles which make this type of electability inherently unfair. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, money and TV ads do seem to supersede the relative validity of ideas entertained by the voters. Is this process a deliberate and clever ruse by politicians or is it a fact that the majority of voters concur with the two major parties?

Perhaps our Congress should enact legislature whereby all of the political parties are allowed a certain amount of equal funding to voice their views. If all of the parties were mandated equal exposure, it's anyone's guess as to how they would all fare. If all of the candidates of every United States political party were to be included in every debate, would a larger segment of the citizens be divided more equally amongst the parties? This is probably a moot question, but it should give us pause when considered in the light of freedom of choice.