Two Party System In America

One of the greatest things America is known for is its democracy. We were founded on the principles of democracy, we continue to try and uphold the ideals of democracy, and we consistently intervene in on other countries in an attempt to have them become a democratic nation. Despite the effort, however, even in a nation as powerful as America, our democracy is both flawed and fragile. If we take into account the Electoral College as our foundation of democracy, bipartisanism, and the notion of politicians and elections being bought by corporations, PACs, and SuperPACs, it is clear to see that our democracy is a far cry from perfect. In American history, there have only been 5 presidents elected into office that lost the popular vote but were

Despite having a vast amount of parties in the United States, it’s clear that we have a bipartisan government. It has become that you either have to vote Democrat or Republican, or else your vote becomes basically useless. Bipartisanism conceals differences between the parties and attempts to discourage any agreements between anyone other than the two major parties. The issue with this is now voters have to vote based on one of two parties, rather than on the issues. You could not like a large part of what a candidates says, but still end up voting for them because the one other relevant candidate you abhorrently disagree with. So then issues important to you could effectively go unnoticed and unchanged. An example of where bipartisanism became a huge issue was in this most recent election. Many people were not a fan of Donald Trump, but because of many people’s abhorrent dislike for Hillary Clinton, voted for Donald Trump, and vice versa, because they felt those were the only two choices they had. In reality, there were other candidates such as Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, but since it’s rare for mainstream media to pay attention to third-party candidates, many people didn’t know about them. Even more importantly, people didn’t bother voting for these candidates because they knew the unlikelihood of a third-party candidate to win. Admittedly, there would be flaws if we allowed for a whole plethora of candidates to arise. It could make it so someone would only have to win by a slim majority, even if they weren’t overwhelmingly voted for, like Adolf Hitler. What having a bipartisan system does do, however, is limit our sense of democracy to a small scope, thereby potentially eliminating the chance of very important issues ever getting