Because the thing about democracies is that the people have the power. The people can vote and choose their leaders. Sometimes those leaders try to remove power from the people, and there is people dumb enough to still vote for them.
Those people, even if dumb, still are represented, and that’s what democracy is about. Because if you remove all the parties except one, that one party has no one to hold them accountable.
Even if you really like that one party, they have no reason to stay the same with the same ideals, eventually someone who want power above the will of the people will get a lot of power in that one-party system. And now you have an authoritarian state with no opposition.
There must always be opposition to make sure that the party in power has something to lose if they don’t work for their voters’ interest.
Sometimes those leaders try to remove power from the people, and there is people dumb enough to still vote for them.
How much of it is people being dumb vs corporations financing propaganda and misinformation to get people to vote against their interests? Without campaign finance regulation, the rich are always going to be strongly overrepresented politically, and once they’re in power, guess who gets to decide campaign finance laws?
So I guess just I don’t understand why you think letting these types run amok and decieve people and buy out elections as part of a fascist agenda is conductive to the expression of popular will in government, as opposed to just not letting that happen.
I didn’t say the rich doing whatever they want politically is good. The US is a flawed democracy. The rich has nothing to do with multi-party states.
If your solution to not having rich people influencing elections is to not have elections (why even have elections if there is only one party?). That’s like burning the whole forest so Ikea can’t buy it to chop down the trees. You immediately remove any democracy in fear that someone else might damage it.
If you remove all parties except one, the rich and powerful will manage to get into power in that one party with ease.
You can still have meaningful elections when there’s only one party, people of the same party can run for the same position against each other, so there is still a choice between candidates. In fact, that’s how many places work in the US, in solidly red or solidly blue districts, generally all the serious candidates run in whichever party is essentially guaranteed to win in the general.
It’s true that in those situations the governing party can exercise control over who is allowed to run. But I don’t really see how that’s worse than the US system, where each party has complete control over the primary process and doesn’t even have to hold primaries at all if they don’t want to. Ultimately, I don’t see either system as particularly more democratic than the other.
If some entity can control who can and cannot be a politician, then the power is on the entity that control the politicians, not on the people.
For the people to have the power, they must be able to elect the leaders they want. If that leader has to be approved by an entity, the power is on that entity. That’s not a democracy, that’s a monarchy where the monarch makes opinion polls.
Then the US is a diarchy. The two parties have control of who can and cannot be in their party, and as you said yourself, the way the system is set up makes it virtually impossible to have more or fewer than two parties. The US is not a democracy because the people don’t get to choose their leaders, the leaders have to go through one of two entities and get approval there in order to have a chance to win.
As I said, the US is a flawed democracy (it’s not only my opinion, it’s ranked that why by global institutions).
I’m not a US citizen btw. I’m a Spanish citizen, we have better democracy over here.
Even though the US is flawed, having 2 parties is massively more democratic than having 1. Because with 2, you at least have the “party in power” and “the opposition”.
I’ll tell you a bit about Spanish history while we’re at it.
Since a bit before WWII, we had a dictatorship, with a single party. Then the dictator died at old age of natural causes and his successor was blown up by a terrorist organization. So we got democracy. At first there were only 2 parties, not because the system made it so (like in the US), but because voters voted that way. Then, people got fed up of having 2 options and were unhappy, so they started to vote for smaller parties and now we have many of them.
If people are so unhappy with having 2 options that they change their voting pattern that they’ve held for 40+ years, imagine how bad it is to have 1 single party.
Even though the US is flawed, having 2 parties is massively more democratic than having 1. Because with 2, you at least have the “party in power” and “the opposition”.
I would rather the Republican party never be in power, or in the opposition. Their existence provides no benefit to the country whatsoever. They are corrupt, bigoted, actively anti-democratic, and militaristic. They are responsible (along with many, many democrats, I might add) for pointless wars of aggression that killed roughly a million people, and are currently supporting and supplying an ongoing genocide that’s killing people at an even faster rate. They are, in every way, a detriment to the country and an impediment to democracy.
Anyone with a lick of sense and the means to do so would seek to lock them out from accessing the levers of power the moment they have the means to do so. If, in Spain, a Francoist party emerged and started gaining a bunch of corporate funding and getting closer and closer to taking over and reestablishing a dictatorship, would it be so wrong to ban such a party to prevent them from coming to power? Would the addition of such a party to Spain’s political environment make the country more democratic?
As you say, after the Nationalists won the civil war, they remained in power for over 30 years, and the people lost the ability to change things through the political process, they just had to wait for the dictator to die. Those are the stakes. The enemy is more than happy to use whatever means necessary to seize power for themselves and shut everyone else out of the process in order to enact their reactionary, bigoted agenda. Such a political force should be stamped out by whatever means necessary. If they aren’t, then eventually you will be forced to choose between sitting idly by as more and more innocent people are fed into the meat grinder, or sending a dictator’s car over a building.
The francoist party is not ilegal in Spain. It still exists to this day, just no one votes for them. Banning them would make Spain less democratic.
The way to avoid your scenario is not to ban parties, which is hurtful for democracy (who decides what party to ban? What happens when it is your party the one that is banned?). The way to avoid it is to have laws to regulate the processes you mentioned. For example limiting political donations. Maximum campaign budgets, subsidies to small political parties that reach X% of votes, and so on.
What protects us from an undemocratic party being elected and abolishing democracy is the constitution, which requires a supermajority to change. A brexit-like vote where 51% get to massively decide the course of the country can’t happen.
And if 75% or whatever (I don’t know the exact %) of the people want to remove democracy, so be it, they might’ve figured out a better system. That’s why constitutions are non immutable.
Because the thing about democracies is that the people have the power. The people can vote and choose their leaders. Sometimes those leaders try to remove power from the people, and there is people dumb enough to still vote for them.
Those people, even if dumb, still are represented, and that’s what democracy is about. Because if you remove all the parties except one, that one party has no one to hold them accountable.
Even if you really like that one party, they have no reason to stay the same with the same ideals, eventually someone who want power above the will of the people will get a lot of power in that one-party system. And now you have an authoritarian state with no opposition.
There must always be opposition to make sure that the party in power has something to lose if they don’t work for their voters’ interest.
How much of it is people being dumb vs corporations financing propaganda and misinformation to get people to vote against their interests? Without campaign finance regulation, the rich are always going to be strongly overrepresented politically, and once they’re in power, guess who gets to decide campaign finance laws?
So I guess just I don’t understand why you think letting these types run amok and decieve people and buy out elections as part of a fascist agenda is conductive to the expression of popular will in government, as opposed to just not letting that happen.
I didn’t say the rich doing whatever they want politically is good. The US is a flawed democracy. The rich has nothing to do with multi-party states.
If your solution to not having rich people influencing elections is to not have elections (why even have elections if there is only one party?). That’s like burning the whole forest so Ikea can’t buy it to chop down the trees. You immediately remove any democracy in fear that someone else might damage it.
If you remove all parties except one, the rich and powerful will manage to get into power in that one party with ease.
You can still have meaningful elections when there’s only one party, people of the same party can run for the same position against each other, so there is still a choice between candidates. In fact, that’s how many places work in the US, in solidly red or solidly blue districts, generally all the serious candidates run in whichever party is essentially guaranteed to win in the general.
It’s true that in those situations the governing party can exercise control over who is allowed to run. But I don’t really see how that’s worse than the US system, where each party has complete control over the primary process and doesn’t even have to hold primaries at all if they don’t want to. Ultimately, I don’t see either system as particularly more democratic than the other.
If some entity can control who can and cannot be a politician, then the power is on the entity that control the politicians, not on the people.
For the people to have the power, they must be able to elect the leaders they want. If that leader has to be approved by an entity, the power is on that entity. That’s not a democracy, that’s a monarchy where the monarch makes opinion polls.
Then the US is a diarchy. The two parties have control of who can and cannot be in their party, and as you said yourself, the way the system is set up makes it virtually impossible to have more or fewer than two parties. The US is not a democracy because the people don’t get to choose their leaders, the leaders have to go through one of two entities and get approval there in order to have a chance to win.
As I said, the US is a flawed democracy (it’s not only my opinion, it’s ranked that why by global institutions). I’m not a US citizen btw. I’m a Spanish citizen, we have better democracy over here.
Even though the US is flawed, having 2 parties is massively more democratic than having 1. Because with 2, you at least have the “party in power” and “the opposition”.
I’ll tell you a bit about Spanish history while we’re at it.
Since a bit before WWII, we had a dictatorship, with a single party. Then the dictator died at old age of natural causes and his successor was blown up by a terrorist organization. So we got democracy. At first there were only 2 parties, not because the system made it so (like in the US), but because voters voted that way. Then, people got fed up of having 2 options and were unhappy, so they started to vote for smaller parties and now we have many of them.
If people are so unhappy with having 2 options that they change their voting pattern that they’ve held for 40+ years, imagine how bad it is to have 1 single party.
I would rather the Republican party never be in power, or in the opposition. Their existence provides no benefit to the country whatsoever. They are corrupt, bigoted, actively anti-democratic, and militaristic. They are responsible (along with many, many democrats, I might add) for pointless wars of aggression that killed roughly a million people, and are currently supporting and supplying an ongoing genocide that’s killing people at an even faster rate. They are, in every way, a detriment to the country and an impediment to democracy.
Anyone with a lick of sense and the means to do so would seek to lock them out from accessing the levers of power the moment they have the means to do so. If, in Spain, a Francoist party emerged and started gaining a bunch of corporate funding and getting closer and closer to taking over and reestablishing a dictatorship, would it be so wrong to ban such a party to prevent them from coming to power? Would the addition of such a party to Spain’s political environment make the country more democratic?
As you say, after the Nationalists won the civil war, they remained in power for over 30 years, and the people lost the ability to change things through the political process, they just had to wait for the dictator to die. Those are the stakes. The enemy is more than happy to use whatever means necessary to seize power for themselves and shut everyone else out of the process in order to enact their reactionary, bigoted agenda. Such a political force should be stamped out by whatever means necessary. If they aren’t, then eventually you will be forced to choose between sitting idly by as more and more innocent people are fed into the meat grinder, or sending a dictator’s car over a building.
The francoist party is not ilegal in Spain. It still exists to this day, just no one votes for them. Banning them would make Spain less democratic.
The way to avoid your scenario is not to ban parties, which is hurtful for democracy (who decides what party to ban? What happens when it is your party the one that is banned?). The way to avoid it is to have laws to regulate the processes you mentioned. For example limiting political donations. Maximum campaign budgets, subsidies to small political parties that reach X% of votes, and so on.
What protects us from an undemocratic party being elected and abolishing democracy is the constitution, which requires a supermajority to change. A brexit-like vote where 51% get to massively decide the course of the country can’t happen.
And if 75% or whatever (I don’t know the exact %) of the people want to remove democracy, so be it, they might’ve figured out a better system. That’s why constitutions are non immutable.