Re: Lindsey Drath on Expanding the Two-Party Political System

On 2025-07-21 4:01 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Here's a segment from C-SPAN Washington Journal from 7/21/2025.
 Lindsey Drath on Expanding the Two-Party Political System
https://www.c-span.org/program/washington-journal/lindsey-drath-on-expanding-the-two-party-political-system/662767
 She speaks well and really appeals to me. Someone else listen and tell
me what she gets wrong.
 She's promoting ballot access for the Forward Party. Andrew Yang put
cash into this but I think they've moved beyond his influence.

That's pretty lengthy - 42 minutes - and it's not my country so I'm inclined not to watch this. We are already well past the two party system here and have been for my entire life.
Mind you, we got closer to a two-party system this past spring with our last election. The NDP collapsed, going down to just 7 seats from their normal 30-40 seats, and the Bloc Quebecois also lost 10 or so seats. Even the tiny Green Party slipped from 2 seats down to 1. The two big parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives took almost all the votes for the first time in a long time. This election was felt to be existential by a significant body of people; unfortunately, more of them chose the Liberals than the Conservatives and we missed the chance to finally be rid of the knuckleheads for a while....
While the (federal) government of this country have always been formed primarily from the Liberals or Conservatives, there have been cases where a government of national unity has been formed, such as during the World Wars. There have also been several times when one of the two major parties didn't have enough seats to form a government by itself and had to work with one of the smaller parties to govern.
In a nutshell, I'd say you shouldn't sweat the advent of an additional party or two. I don't think it's going to be the end of the world if it happens to you. Mind you, I'm not sure how you will adapt your system to extra parties.
--
Rhino