A Thread: Duopoly Politics in America

(This was a thread on Twitter posted by @LumpyLouise on November 12, 2017

https://twitter.com/lumpylouise/status/929848984511897600)

First let's go back to Good Old George on the subject of political parties.

Well, even during George's time, parties started forming in the US.

It began with the Federalists forming in opposition to the Democratic-Republican party.

This began the First Party System in America. There would be 4 or 5 more depending on who you ask and, for the most part, it was just 2 parties in power from Washington's retirement to this very day.

The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, felt the elite should have the power & believed in a strong federal government.

Thomas Jefferson, who led the Democratic Republicans, felt political power should be in more hands. Of course, as we all know, those hands were still white males.

It wasn't until 1824 during the Second Party System that the Democratic-Republican Party split. This was the first step in creating the modern Democratic and Republican parties.

The new Democratic party supported Andrew Jackson.

The National Republicans formed to support John Quincy Adams and soon dissolved. In it's wake the Free Soil and the Whig Parties formed. (And, yes, Jacksonians accused Adams of being a pimp)

Honestly the circus of the 2016 election had nothing on the nasty fight of 1828. However, just like the 2016 election, the winner of the popular vote, Jackson, lost out to the electoral vote winner, Adams.

It wasn't until 1854 when what we know as the current Republican party came to be out of the ashes of the Whigs and Free Soilers plus other groups of anti-slavery activists. Six years later, Lincoln became the first president from this new party.

For the next 170+ years these two parties have held the majority of the power.

That's enough of the history lesson, let's get into what we really came to discuss, how is this duopoly hurting our country.

Instead of giving voices to everybody, we are stuck in a team sport mentality limiting the people's options.

We have witness a lot of standstill in our government because of our duopoly. Having little to no progress works out nicely for the two parties in control.

A duopoly system promotes corruption. We saw this with the "Lesser Evil" push to vote for Obama over Romney and again with Hillary over Obama. I guess we know how that turned out.

Another example of 'lesser evil' is how the American people are told the Republicans take corporate money so the Dems just have to keep up.

In fact, it is more like one party with two factions.

So, how can we break up this broken, corrupt two party system?

Well, according to recent Gallup polling we are ripe to do so.

More and more people are leaving the parties and becoming independents.

They are working to support candidates who do not take corporate monies and are running through third parties or have vowed to reform the parties from within.

There has been a lot of pushback but still little by little independents are making headway from local politics on up. Just this past week more than a dozen DSA members won their races.