Do short term memories doom us to the two party cycle?

[Texashiker]

is either party a good choice anyway?!?!

No, neither of the two major parties is a good choice.

That is why I have been voting third party for the past 20 years.

 

[SagaLore]

No, the structure of the US electoral system dooms us to 2 parties.

Yep. We have it built in.

 

[fskimospy]

This country is plagued by the over-engagement of it's citizenry in the day to day decisions of governing by our leaders. Every single vote is scrutinized, graded by some stupid political score keeping organization, and reduced to a little soundbite that the politician is eventually attacked with. Many people are incapable or unwilling to think for themselves, so they turn to blogs and cable news to do the thinking for them, and those venues scorn compromise and pragmatism. Compromise is now capitulation. Moderation is now unprincipled. Our brand of open democracy mixed with our out of control media culture is broken. China is right to tell us to piss off when we push democracy on them. Our system would destroy them.

Our country is plagued by under-engagement of its citizenry on substantive matters. I think that the fact that so few people are actually engaged in the process in a meaningful way means that they feel free to act incredibly irresponsibly. Look at how political parties act when they bear no responsibility for outcomes, they go nuts.

More specifically look at this board. If our government actually behaved based on the things that people on here claim to want it to, we would probably be embroiled in World War 3 or in the middle of some colossal social and economic collapse. People on here bear no responsibility for actually running things so they feel no responsibility to engage in productive political discourse. I fully believe that the vast majority of people on this board would not behave in the manner they claim to wish their representatives to, were they to be in charge.

Those who are involved enough to be motivated to act responsibly are subject to the whims of voters who are not, which creates quite a big problem for our system.

 

[CallMeJoe]

I still haven't seen you provide a link to a post you claim is in abundance.

Doesn't matter anyways. The opinion of this thread was to judge today's candidates primarily on policies of former party administrations. I say we should instead judge a candidate based on his individual opinions and his past activity in public service. Do you agree with me, or do you agree with the creator of this thread?

The qualification you put on your demand implicitly acknowledged that you know those posts exist. My hope to avoid feeding trolls restrained me from arguing the point further.

edit: I agree we should judge individual candidates as individuals, but when individuals push party affiliation as an important part of their political identity it is foolish to ignore the recent history of that party.