Two party system not all its cracked up to be

You'd be hard-pressed to slip a credit card between the two political parties, is the standard line I use when discussing the American political system.  And though there are some differences between Republicans and Democrats on a handful of issues designed to appeal to a party base of voters, the similarities far outweigh the differences.  Passage of the Patriot Act, authorization for use of force against Iraq and even passage last week of a huge corporate tax cut have been strongly supported by Democrats in Congress.

Why are the parties so similar?  Both try to appeal to groups of swing voters who do not identify strongly with either party and so Republicans and Democrats compete for these voters by marketing to them. Positions have to reflect a centrist agenda that stands separate from party affiliation. To appear strong on terror, for instance, a congressperson is literally forced to support the Patriot Act, regardless of what the bill actually means or does.

The objective is winning elections, not doing what is right or necessary. This obsession with winning has led to the erosion of what ideological differences existed between the parties in the past.

For those disenchanted with this system, for those who feel that the current two-party system does not represent their political interests in the process, there has always been the hope that political independents or so-called third party candidates would ride into town and save the day.  Once people come to realize that the current system does not represent the interests of ordinary people but instead represents the interests of corporate America, people might realize that the system is dedicated to winning elections. The third party will then be able to build a base of support and wedge itself into the system dominated by the big two. 

There have been third party candidates who have gained a lot of media attention and some actual electoral success.  George Wallace ran a successfully racist campaign in 1968, Ross Perot ran an economic populist campaign that managed to capture 19 percent of the vote in 1992, and Nader's role as an alleged spoiler in 2000 has been sharply criticized by the Democrats for having given the election to George W. Bush in the closest presidential election ever.  Nader's role as potential spoiler in 2004 has also been scrutinized, with Democrats struggling to keep him off state ballots while Republicans are working to get him on.

The American electoral system, however, works against third parties having any real chance of winning presidential elections.  The electoral college system wherein Americans do not choose the president directly but rather assign electoral college votes to one candidate or the other, mostly on a winner-take-all basis in each state, means that any third party candidate would have to win a state outright in order to gain any electoral votes at all. 

When Perot ran what was seen by many as a remarkably successful campaign, he nevertheless did not win a single state and thus received zero electoral votes.  Getting a substantial percentage of votes across the country in the United States is meaningless.  Remember that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 by at least 500,000 votes.  

There are other structural factors working against third parties.  Federal funding for campaigns is weighted according to previous success in elections, thus a party starting from scratch does not qualify for the funds that Republicans and Democrats automatically receive.  Third party candidates are frequently excluded from debates when they actually pose a threat to the established two parties.  Neither John Kerry nor George W. Bush is anxious to share the stage with Nader, David Cobb, Michael Badnarik, or anyone else.  They know that they have too much to lose.

Is there hope for third party presidential campaigns?  Again, there have been limited successes in the past, but one needs reminding that the system is effectively rigged against their success.  If nothing else, voting for third parties is a way of expressing disgust with a system that looks at American voters as consumers to whom candidates are sold rather than as constituents whose interests must be represented.

Edgar Kaskla is a political science lecturer at CSULB.