Because America has a first past the post election system, which will always result in two dominant parties. See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo for an explanation.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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This is an important part of it. The other part is the fact that success in politics is very hard without money, and most rich people aren't progressives.
In no country in the world is the progressive party the main attractor of wealth. Progress means change that will lessen the comparative advantage of the wealthy.
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But is that a cause or an effect? Because there are only two viable parties, all the money gets pumped into those. To get on equal footing with one of these parties, one would need a lot of money. With say a dozen parties, the money would be distributed more and thus the total money one party has would be much less.
But then again, it's the US, the first past the post thing is only part of the problem. The corruption on all levels of politics and government is a much bigger problem. Even with a dozen parties, all the money would be poured into the party that favors the rich. And saying that's legal and not corruption is only a sign the lobbiests have been so successful, they've made the corruption legal.
With capitalism money will always rule the world. Whilst this may have sounded great right after WW2, in reality it has caused the rich to get richer at the cost of the general public. It has caused mass consumerism to explode and destroy the planet, buying stuff we don't need. Shipping stuff across the world, because it makes the most money that way. To move issues of slavery, safety and pollution to parts of the world the buyers can't see. So people can pretend to live in paradise for one or two generations, whilst ruining the chances of future generations. Investments in sustainability have been slow due to the impact on the bottom line. Can't have people using the same durable repairable stuff for decades, they must buy new shit every year and be programmed to think this is a good thing. Why invest in clean forms of energy, that's expensive, just do the cheapest thing possible and then try to make it cheaper so we can make more money.
Long-short, it’s known as Duverger’s Law. Winner-takes-all (single member district majority) incentivizes competing interests to consolidate power into a unified party label to increase chances of winning. Any third party necessarily steals votes from one of the two main parties, which is why each party manages its label for maximal policy coverage and every issue becomes red vs blue.
You have similar results in less capitalized countries.
In Germany half the seats in the Bundestag are filled with district representatives that are voted for in a FTPTP manner. These seats go almost exclusively to the largest two parties. These two are the big center right and center left parties.
No corporation wants to support a progressive party. No one profiting from corporations want to support a progressive party. There goes 99% of the wealth in America.
But is that a cause or an effect?
It becomes very understandable as soon as you assume corruption. Corruption makes presidents rich, and many other "important" people as well.
As soon as they start to get some extra money regularly, they fear change, because any change could dry up these new sources of money.
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The US is one of the most Capitalistic and Imperialistic countries on the planet, and as such the parties available are the ones that uphold these positions. It's a positive feedback loop with power.
Because we have a first past the post system, which results in only two major parties. One party is straight up fascist, and the other is taking advantage of this to be as fascist-adjacent as they think they can get away with while still being able to call themselves second worst.
And neither party has any incentive to actually do better or follow up on their promises because who else are you going to vote for? They're both guaranteed to win while we all lose.
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The same reason there's no true conservative party. Corporate interests have captured our political institutions.
The are progressive groups, but the best they get is a compromised Democratic Party beholden to corporations if they want to continue being elected. IMO.
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The structure of the Constitution favors conservative movements because it's undemocratic and designed to resist change.
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Because too many voters only pay attention every four years and wonder why there is no bespoke candidate for them.
Lack of ranked choice voting and reference of the electoral college/gerrymandering force rational progressives to vote with the main liberal-ish party to avoid the alternative - which, even on its best days, is a fate exponentially worse and more destructive by every measure.
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Because it’s being BUILT. Follow Bernie Sanders to find out more.
Also text RESIST to 50409 to make your voice heard in Congress.
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There are plenty of such parties. They are just not electorally successful on a national scale. They may be moderately influential on a state level through the use of fusion voting. Fusion voting is where multiple parties can stand the same candidate in an election.
Most places in the United States use a "first-past-the-post" system. In this system, voters select one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. This system sounds fair on the surface but in reality, game theory dictates that the only stable configuration of political parties in such a system is a two-party system. In any other configuration, the individual actors will always find it more advantageous to join one of the two parties. The reason for this also explains why it's hard for smaller parties to win under a first-past-the-post system.
Suppose there are two existing political parties: Party A and Party B. Voters prefer Party A by a margin of 55-45, so Party A wins reliably in elections. Suppose we replay the same elections but with three parties. Party C holds similar views to Party A but is more extreme while Party A is more centrist. If everyone votes for their favourite candidate, then we will probably end up with a vote distribution where Party A wins 40% of the vote, Party B wins 45% of the vote, and Party C wins 15% of the vote. What has essentially happened here is that Party C siphoned votes away from Party A, causing Party B to win despite the fact that voters' preferences haven't changed. Voters know this and so even those who like the Party C candidate the most will vote for the Party A candidate (who shares at least some of their views) in order to stop Party B from winning.
This is why progressives forming their own political party is a losing idea in the United States. It will split the left-wing vote and hand elections to the Republican Party. Instead, what they do is compete in the Democratic Party's primary elections. In the US, who a party chooses to stand in a particular election is determined by means of a primary election. However, progressives often struggle to win intra-party primary elections because most members of the Democratic Party are moderate. The distribution of political leanings is shaped like a bell curve, and thus progressives like Bernie Sanders are simply outnumbered by moderates like Joe Biden. Moderates often have the numbers to sideline progressives in primary elections, and thus it is much more difficult for progressives to get elected since they need to run under the Democratic Party banner to stand any chance of winning.
Triangulation doesn't actually work though, we've seen this since Clinton.
If ideology existed on a spectrum and people voted for the closest ideological candidate, running one iota to the left of the opposition would win every election.
What happens instead is your "moderate republicans" vote for fascism instead of diet-fascism, and the majority don't vote because Diet-Fascism doesn't offer them enough to make up missing a day of work.
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Same reason there's no fascist party: the two main parties contain a broader range of the political spectrum than in most countries.
From there the question is does the moderate or radical wing of the party gain more influence. The far-right has won the Republican party years ago while progressives still haven't gained that much ground in the Democratic party.
Broader range? From my point of view as an outsider, the USA political parties only cover far-right and far-rightest
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The GOP is fascist, and the DNC is center-right. That's not a broader range of political spectrum, haha.
there's no fascist party
You sure about that? There is one that is openly anti-anti-fascist.
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What would constitute a political party virtually anywhere political parties are relevant is a political faction or caucus within one of the two establishment parties in the American system.
Progressives are generally a caucus within the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is predominately and increasingly a centre-right party and has consistently thrown its political weight behind incumbent conservatives against its progressive caucus.
These are the major components of there not being an electorally relevant American Progressive Party.
the cold war, probably
The last time there was the government made it illegal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954
Communism is something different, that's not what I'm asking about.
What are you referring to? Something less right wing than Liberalism, but not able to be considered left?
Edit: for clarity, how would you legally distinguish any flavor of anticapitalism based on the nature of the law? The Democrats are already called Communists, if a genuine Socialist party took any meaningful amount of power they could be shut down on the basis of that law, because it's just a vibe.
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Because conservatives vote, and progressives stay home in droves. Might as well appeal to middle of the road to try to capture some of the people who actually show up.
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