history, the two parties were sprawling, mixed-up coalitions of state and local groups-and thus flexible enough to compete in most places with different faces and with enough overlap to make deals in Washington. governing institutions.īut for most of U.S. This enabled the almost immediate formation of a two-party system, with Thomas Jefferson and Madison’s power-to-the-people Democratic-Republicans teaming up against the more trust-the-elites Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton, Adams, and (more or less) George Washington.Ī divided two-party system makes effective governing difficult under any political system but almost impossible given U.S. At the time, national electoral precedents were few, and the Framers unthinkingly imported Britain’s simple 1430 innovation of place-based, first-past-the-post elections. But while the Founding Fathers thought and worried a lot about divisive partisanship (as John Adams warned, “a Division of the Republick into two great Parties … is to be dreaded as the greatest political Evil”), they gave little thought to electoral mechanisms to prevent partisanship from becoming too divisive. governing institutions, by sacrificing the flexibility of officials to party discipline. Broad compromise would prevent tyranny.Ī divided two-party system makes effective governing difficult under any political system, but almost impossible given U.S. Making laws would require broad compromise. 10, “and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.” More factions would mean less likelihood of any faction being a majority. “Extend the sphere,” James Madison wrote in Federalist No. But it requires that lawmakers be flexible enough to form coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis. The new Constitution reflected a happy confluence of pragmatic politics and political theory centered on the premise that while a central government was necessary, it should require broad compromise across many competing interests to take decisive action.Įven if some of the pragmatic summer-of-’87 deals wilt under modern scrutiny-most notably the compromises over slavery-the underlying theory is still mostly sound: Forging broad deal-making is a tried-and-true path to sustainable, legitimate government. In 1787, the Framers thought the existing Articles of Confederation were inadequate. political history has shaped today’s disasters. electoral system to allow for more parties and hope the pieces can rearrange themselves into a functional governing system. But no problems can be solved until the divisive, zero-sum, polarized politics breaking U.S. Americans can’t afford a broken system while policy problems worsen. The many individuals and groups that don’t slot neatly into one of these two teams have no other place to go.Ĭlimate change is proceeding faster than expected, as China’s economic and political rise continues. They reflect a binary party system that has divided the country into two irreconcilable teams: one that sees itself as representing the multicultural values of cosmopolitan cities and the other that sees itself as representing the Christian values of the traditionalist countryside. politics are deeper than the results of a single presidential election.
They reflect a binary party system that has divided the country into two irreconcilable teams.
Right-wing militias, meanwhile, have more than doubled in membership after the so-called stolen election of 2016 and are preparing for a civil war if Democrats steal the 2020 election, too. Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Josh Hawley are outdoing each other for recognition as the most belligerent fighter against the so-called globalist Democratic Party and its anti-Christian socialist agenda. Meanwhile, Donald Trump remains a media personality and the front-runner for the 2020 election, though Sens. In the 2018 Earth 2 midterms, Republicans gained seats in both chambers by running against Clinton and promising to finally “lock her up.” The right-wing media echo chamber froths at the prospect of impeaching both Clinton and Vice President Tim Kaine and making newly selected House Speaker Mark Meadows president. The Republican Congress on Earth 2 is fiercely relitigating every old Clinton scandal and boldly innovating new ones. democracy in this alternate reality is no less precarious. This version of Earth-let’s call it Earth 2-is a safer, less polluted planet than our own.īut U.S. Hillary Clinton narrowly won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan and became the 45th president of the United States. Somewhere in the multiverse, the United States took a slightly different turn on Nov.