Parties, priorities, politics, and the mess that is our Congress

[docstrange]

holzman has a post about what I shall henceforth term "The change in tide that saved Hyde."

He says, "There are no acceptable excuses" to not tackling the Hyde amendment in this Congress, with its Democratic majority and a pro-choice President.

Comments

[xthread]

As much as the Founders wanted to prevent the country devolving into Faction, I'm pretty sure that first-past-the-post means that third parties don't work, purely because the math doesn't work. That is to say, first past the post leads to an emergent two party system.

Now if I could remember where I read the game theory analysis of that, I'd be in great shape...

[docstrange]

That is basically correct. But even in first past the post, single seat elections, third parties can win smaller elections. They can also produce coalition even in large elections where two parties agree to throw weight behind a candidate. The big parties today play at bringing the errant sheep party back into the fold, but that's not the only way things can work (though they often do, again, due to the lure of party warchest money). Even if that's all we get, so long as it's a party off the standard left/right line and not at one or the other end, it will be an improvement. Right now, the sorts of third parties we see are still on the linear distribution. They are also mostly at one or the other end of it.