this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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There is no viable party that is against the military industrial complex.
If you take a step back and look at the Democrats and Republicans, they agree and overlap on far more many issues than they differ. Indeed, in the context of a lot of foreign governments, both of our parties would be considered dangerously right-wing. Yet, there's no serious opposition in the US, as you say.
The issue has been falsely bifurcated in the USA where looking elsewhere is "throwing your vote away". Yet, without an alternative party, there are many problems in the USA which are just non-starters, like pacifism. Totally unthinkable under either party's operational guidelines.
I have to wonder, why DOESN'T the US have any other significant parties? Like you clearly have them but they're practically irrelevant.
Here in Canada we also have a winner takes all voting system (which is unfortunate. But we hope to change in the future) but smaller parties like the NDPs and greens still manage to hold some relevance even if at least at a regional or provincial level.
Hell, in 2011 the NDP was the opposition against Harper's CPC with the Liberals doing worse than they ever had.
During the Ontario Provincial election while the Liberals lost seats to the Tories the greens held both their seats and NEARLY got a 3rd.
It's no accident. Both parties collude to make sure a 3rd does not arise. The saying "voting 3rd party is throwing your vote away" is very, very common. Your classification of these parties as practically irrelevant is very accurate, because I don't believe any other party has cracked double digit % at the federal level.
I was wondering about that though. I'm not from the US so I don't understand the depths of the system. But wouldn't a third party only have to get a super tiny amount of votes, to become part of the government? Let's say Democrats and Republicans have 48% of the vote. And there is a third party that got 4% (in actual Electors) .
They would either have to include the small party and make some concessions to them, or agree with the other big party on a president.
Like that it should at least be possible to push a single topic through, like free Medicare. And then just work with whichever party is less against it.
No, we don't have proportional representation like that. You might be used to a functional government in your country that works for the people. We have ones that work for themselves.
US voting system is pretty much all-or-nothing at every level.
There are 100 senators, but each one of them has to win a majority of votes in their state to get elected into office. There's no representative pool where you vote for a party and X% of the seats go to that party based on their performance in the overall election.
What about regional representatives? Like here in Canada greens are a really small party but their they have some popular MPs in certain ridings so they just have to focus on a single small city like Guelph riding (Which has voted green for MPP in the previous provincial elections.) They win that one riding and they win 1 seat in Parliament.
Could a 3rd party not do something similar in the US? Or are there no such regional elections?
Every election in the US is all-or-nothing.