We’re often lucky to have more than one party. States like Texas and Florida are so heavily gerrymandered that supermajorities for the prevailing party are practically assured. The Dems form a rump of opposition in these states, while Greens and Libertarians are barely an afterthought.
i know that other parties can exist but they dont do really anything.
Constituencies in Europe are significantly smaller and more regionally distinct. Hard to have a Scottish New Labor Party or a French Polynesia Party when our states are dominated by constituencies that moved in barely a generation ago. By all rights we should have a “Texas Party” and a “California Party”. But its worth noting that the modern Texas GOP was built up practically brick-by-brick through George HW Bush and the Standard Oil company, originally based out in NY/NJ/CT. Dallas, Houston, and Austin are dominated by families of east coast Republicans who came spilling in during the 80s/90.
We should probably have a “Christian Democrats” party or a “Tea Party” properly, but the major religious and ideological leaders of the past were fully wedded to the existing post-WW2 partisan establishment. The closest we ever really had to a break-away party in the last half-century was the Jim Crow Segregationists under George Wallace. And that fell apart in the face of Nixon’s Southern Strategy simply gobbling up all the Dixiecrats and turning them into modern day Republicans.
We’re often lucky to have more than one party. States like Texas and Florida are so heavily gerrymandered that supermajorities for the prevailing party are practically assured. The Dems form a rump of opposition in these states, while Greens and Libertarians are barely an afterthought.
Constituencies in Europe are significantly smaller and more regionally distinct. Hard to have a Scottish New Labor Party or a French Polynesia Party when our states are dominated by constituencies that moved in barely a generation ago. By all rights we should have a “Texas Party” and a “California Party”. But its worth noting that the modern Texas GOP was built up practically brick-by-brick through George HW Bush and the Standard Oil company, originally based out in NY/NJ/CT. Dallas, Houston, and Austin are dominated by families of east coast Republicans who came spilling in during the 80s/90.
We should probably have a “Christian Democrats” party or a “Tea Party” properly, but the major religious and ideological leaders of the past were fully wedded to the existing post-WW2 partisan establishment. The closest we ever really had to a break-away party in the last half-century was the Jim Crow Segregationists under George Wallace. And that fell apart in the face of Nixon’s Southern Strategy simply gobbling up all the Dixiecrats and turning them into modern day Republicans.