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Submission + - SPAM: Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America

Submitted by Paul Fernhout
Paul Fernhout writes: From the Goodreads blurb about the book: "American democracy is at an impasse. After years of zero-sum partisan trench warfare, our political institutions are deteriorating. Our norms are collapsing. Democrats and Republicans no longer merely argue; they cut off contact with each other. In short, the two-party system is breaking our democracy, and driving us all crazy.
        Deftly weaving together history, democratic theory, and cutting edge political science research, Drutman tells the story of how American politics became so toxic, why the country is trapped in a doom loop of escalating two-party warfare, and why it is destroying the shared sense of fairness and legitimacy on which democracy depends. He argues that the only way out is to have more partisanship-more parties, to short-circuit the zero-sum nature of binary partisan conflict. American democracy was once stable because the two parties held within them multiple factions, which made it possible to assemble flexible majorities and kept the temperature of political combat from overheating. But as conservative Southern Democrats and liberal Northeastern Republicans disappeared, partisan conflict flattened and pulled apart. Once the parties fully separated, toxic partisanship took over. With the two parties divided over competing visions of national identity, Democrats and Republicans no longer see each other as opponents, but as enemies. And the more the conflict escalates, the shakier our democracy feels.
      Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop makes a compelling case for large scale electoral reform-importantly, reform not requiring a constitutional amendment-that would give America more parties, making American democracy more representative, more responsive, and ultimately more stable."

Key ideas the author (Lee Drutman) proposes are ranked-choice voting, multi-member congressional districts like in Australia, eliminating primary elections for congressional seats, expanding the size of the House of Representatives to around 700 from the current 435, and increasing the number of senators to 5 for each state, all 5 elected at once via ranked choice voting.

See also Lee Drutman's related articles in Foreign Policy magazine (two of the most hopeful and insightful essays I have read in a long time):
U.S. Democracy Needs a Multiparty System to Survive
The Republican and Democratic Parties Are Heading for Collapse

Comment Re:Donald Trump is above the Law (Score 0) 690

by arobadog (#59695762) Attached to: Split Senate Acquits Trump of Impeachment Charges

This has to be the dumbest statement I've read in a ll of these replies..."Impeachment is a political process, not (necessarily) a legal process. The Republican Senators didn't believe (publicly) it rose to the level of removal from office."... a process documented in the Constitution and ran by the Congress, Senate, and the Chief Justice isn't legal? SMH? Seriously?

legal: of, based on, or concerned with the law.

I don't think anything could fit the definition more thoroughly. Impeachment is a legal process, a thousand times over.

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