The Two-Party System: Evils and Hard Truths

Everyone knows that the two-party system, more often than not, forces voters to choose the lesser of two evils. This is a horrible system that suppresses any true innovation or independent thought, or at least makes them take decades to gain any steam. Instead, voters are forced to choose the party with which they agree on more of several predetermined "wedge issues", or perhaps more accurately with which they disagree on more of those issues. Even the Libertarians, who are the third largest U.S. political party and, according to an august 2000 poll, match the political beliefs of more citizens than either the Left or the Right, can rarely make any headway.

Some argue that the Republicans and the Democrats are just two sides of the same coin, and even that the conflict between them, resembling the perpetual state of war designed to keep citizens in line depicted in George Orwell's 1984, is a collusion between the leaders of the parties to perpetuate the two party system. It's also been suggested that the Republican party's current faults can be attributed to a conspiracy involving it wearing the villain mask so that the Democrats, wearing the hero mask in November and in 2008, can ride in and make people feel better about the two party system.

The system sucks, and we should do all we can to change it, but we still have to work within it until its fixed. With the exception of the few areas where a third party has a chance, voting in the US is not done by voting for the candidate you want in office, it's done by voting against the candidate that you don't want in office. I don't lean toward the Democratic party, I lean away from the Republican party. Voting for Democratic candidates is a vote against the Republicans, which is severely needed at this point. We need to shake up the two-party system, which will take time, but we also need to undo the damage of the current administration, which we can make huge strides toward in the short-term by removing Republican politicians.