The Two-Party System & You

This is in response to Rundle’s request and his comment that the two-party system is a problem.

As you all know, the United States runs on a two-party system (mostly anyways).  Every once in a while there’s a slight deviation (Ross Perot, Theodore Roosevelt, etc…), but it doesn’t happen often and third parties are rarely successful.

In my Poli-Sci class first semester, we studied Duverger’s law, which provides what many believe to be the best explanation for the two-party system.  Duverger’s law states that a plurality rule political system generally favors a two-party system.  Plurality Rule is a system in which the person with the highest number of votes wins.  The most common alternative to this is a two candidate run-off after the initial vote.  Why does this result in a two-party system?  Two reasons: 1) It’s easier for radical left-winger to win if it’s radical L v. R than if it’s radical L v. L v. R 2) radicals tend to merge into the main parties due to low chances of winning.

Let’s use the Presidential race as an example for simplicity.  If Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were running in a district of 5,000 people for representative, Barack Obama would win almost automatically.  This is because Ron Paul & Mitt Romney would undoubtedly split the vote of Republicans and Libertarians and there’s no top-two run-off.  If there were a run-off, the right-wingers would have a better shot because they would be able to run either Paul or Romney with the backing of both candidates’ supporters.  However, in America we don’t do that.  Our system makes it much harder for 3rd parties to pick up steam.  If we had run-offs, 3rd parties could theoretically focus on certain districts and try to push their way into run-offs.

Now, some people, including Rundle, believe that the two-party system is broken.  I’m not sure what the biggest problem they see with it is.  Some examples may be gridlock, polarization, and the word “establishment” come to mind for some reason.  I don’t see things that way though.  With the laws that we have, we can’t really leave the two-party system unless we leave the country.  In addition, I find that it works quite well for a number of reasons.

This past semester, which I refer to as my liberal semester(Environmental Geol, Sociology, MacroEcon, Journalism1100), I read That Used to Be Us.  Throughout the book the authors discuss why America is broken, and they bring up the two-party system as one of the problems.  The authors discuss how the two parties are growing worse because, as the party strongholds shifted the most recent time, the parties’ ideologies became more polarized than ever.  Anymore, you’ll rarely find urban areas voting Republican or rural areas voting Democrat.  It’s also hard to find strong fiscal conservatives pushing for environmental regulations, etc.

This happened for a number of reasons, but the most important was the move of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party.  This would include former presidential candidate, Rick Perry.  The solution the authors present at the end of the book to reinvigorate America is to run a third party candidate.  However, they by no means think or even want this candidate to win, but the fact that the candidate doesn’t win doesn’t mean he or she won’t alter America in a profound way.

This is has happened and changed America’s political landscape for the better a number of times.  For example, Ross Perot ran in 1992.  The guy had a few wacky ideas, but his big thing was balancing the federal budget.  He made a lot of noise and at one point fell almost even with the other two candidates, George Bush Sr. & Bill Clinton, in the polls.  Perot didn’t win, but he did cause political change.  After Clinton won, he balanced the federal budget a number of years.  (Of course, this was counting Social Security, which theoretically should be saved, but we’ll ignore misleading government math for the moment, but that’s not the point.)  The point is, Perot’s candidacy changed the budget issue from a talking point into a huge issue.

Another example of a third party movement being successful is the Tea Party.  The Tea Party figured out their best opportunity to make change was to run their candidates as Republicans, which most of them were anyway.  The Republican party after the 2004 Presidential election got sloppy.  Spending flew out of control and scandal after scandal broke from airport bathrooms to strange money deals.  The Tea Party tried to take everyone back to basics with the simple idea of fiscal sanity.  Their power was evident in the 2012 Republican Presidential Debates because Michelle Bachmann wouldn’t shut up about how much of a Tea Partier she was and everyone had to make promises about cutting spending, some of which were a bit outlandish.  They also continue to win Republican Primaries from time to time.  The most famous example is Christine O’Donnel who ran for Senate in Deleware, but lost after everyone heard she was a witch.  (more here)

So even when you’re frustrated with the two candidates you have to chose from because neither wants to require every American to buy a longboard, remember, all you need is a charismatic third party candidate to affect change in the political system.

Topic Challenges

In high school, I feel that it was (to an extent) a similarity of our viewpoints that brought us together, made us friends, and led us to participation in this blog.

I really think that this blog is a great way for us all to keep in touch, and more importantly to document our thinking as we grow into adulthood.  If we continue this, I think that it could be a piece of history that we can all look back on and remember where we came from and the thoughts that we had during this formative time in our life.

As we all grow apart and go in our separate directions, it seems inevitable that we will develop many different opinions as well as unique perspectives and background knowledge on many different subjects.

Recently after talking to A.J., he very briefly made reference to a political theory that was interesting to me, but I didn’t quite get the chance to hear a full explanation.  With A.J.’s interest in politics and journalism, I challenged him to write an article on the topic for DragonSex.  Because he is more knowledgeable in this area than I am, I think it would be awesome to gain some insight on the issue.  Now that we are all at different schools and are becoming interested in different things, I think that these ‘topic challenges’ would be a great way to gain insight about a variety of topics, and also provide a bit of incentive to actually type something up that we know someone else will read.  I think this will also be beneficial to whoever is doing the writing; every time I sit down to write about anything, I always come away feeling that by going through the writing process, I have gained a lot intellectually via the synthesis of information required to push ideas from brain to paper.

I think it would be nice if, when we find our interest piqued by some comment or another by one of us, we encouraged that person to put together a little piece on it for DragonSex.

Of course, this would require some sort of interest from everyone, and I know we all have pretty busy lives.  So let me know what you think about this sort of thing.  Looking forward to A.J.’s post.

Lata alligatas

Matt

FINALS

OMG WHY

If you weren’t sure exactly what a false dichotomy looked like…

…then this website will help you out.

Enjoy yourself.

http://www.proofthatgodexists.org

Reply to the Masses/Garden State Official Opinion

Alright, ya unwashed plebes, since I’m a benevolent leader and also on Easter Break, here’s the post you demand.

Inspired by one of Matt Rundle’s recent FB statuses, not the copy-pasted Kelly Clarkson lyrics one, but the one about Garden State, I’ve decided to begin a discussion of that movie and any other movie anyone wants to talk about. Hopefully this doesn’t just turn into me talking about how good The Departed is and why Kevin Spacey is entirely underappreciated.

The first time I saw Garden State, I liked it a lot. The main theme about “waking up” really resonated with me at the time (like beginning of sophomore year or something) because I felt like the whole high school routine numbed me out and forced me into a passive role in my own life, which is bullshit. Anyway, I really liked the movie because of that, so I managed to get past hating 12-year-old looking Natalie Portman’s character enough to enjoy the movie as a whole. Since then, I’ve rewatched it a few times, and I still felt the same way about it.

But the most recent time I watched it, it just wasn’t the same. It didn’t really have the same impact. I don’t know if it’s because I’m way happier in general than I was sophomore year, or because it felt way too self-consciously quirky and “deep”, or because I just hated 12-year-old looking Natalie Portman’s character way more. It probably was a combination of the three, but it lost most of its importance and content for me. Now, my favorite part isn’t watching Zach Braff find himself, it’s watching Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory speak Klingon while dressed in armor.

"By the way, it says 'Balls' on your face."

Since I’m extremely cynical and demanding about movies, I understand I’m probably being a little harsh on it, so I’m open to different interpretations/favorite scenes/favorite lines.

 

My Caturday plans.

Hello all,

As everyone knows, Saturday is Caturday, a day meant for the celebration of the feline.  Also, this weekend marks the celebration of Easter in the Catholic tradition.  The good news about this at Notre Dame is a four day weekend, but the bad news is that most of the dining halls operate at extremely limited hours and there is absolutely nothing happening on campus besides the daily Mass.

So after having a relatively relaxed day, I decided that I would use the opportunity of a little free time to undertake a personal task of my own.  I’m going to try to go tomorrow from sunrise until sunset into the woods (an area with benches…I need a bench) armed with nothing but a little food, water, iPod, and notebook. I’m not really sure what I expect from this besides rampant boredom, but I feel like it might be something worthy of undertaking just because I’ve never done anything like it.  I’m hoping that with the time set aside for nothing else, I’ll have time to think about some cool things. I realize that the times I feel best (in a fulfilled sort of way, this means different things at different times) are the times that I have nothing else to do but  think.  Usually this happens in the shower.  It’s time where I have a chance to reflect on what’s been going on, put things in order, and evaluate my life.

I guess my goals for the day are relaxation, and hopefully learn to be comfortable without having to constantly be plugged in to social media, music, or some form of entertainment – I would consider myself Internet dependent. Simplicity never seemed to harm anyone.  So to me this seems like some sort of weird personal challenge that I hope will seem worth it after all is said and done.

I also think I’ll try and leave my phone behind, although this is going to be very tough.

Anyways, I will drop a comment in this post afterwards at some point to indicate how it went.  Hopefully the report won’t read: “Gave up after an hour and came back to my dorm room and spent the rest of the day playing FIFA 12.”

Best,

Matt

Gerhard is the best actor I know.

It’s been a year since we shot this.  *The nostalgia is setting in.*  Just in case you don’t remember, Mrs. Arthur said that this was the best video that she had ever received for this project.  So, good job kids.