EXHIBITS

The United States Congress Partisan and Ideological Makeup

When Thomas Jefferson became president, he adopted the practices that “he had denounced when Alexander Hamilton was running the government”[1] and the more moderate Federalists became essentially no different from the Democratic Republicans. Before long, the Federalist party became defunct and the government was run by a single party.

But a country doesn’t become any more unified, simply because there’s no electable alternative. The disgruntlement festers. They split again “on the general lines of opposition to increasing the powers and the functions of the central government” (218). Various parties rose and fell, including several third parties, but none had any real force behind them. The two party system returned and stabilized around the time of the Civil War. Eventually the political party lines solidified into the Democrats and the Republicans.

The country has had times when “a third party came on the scene momentarily and then disappeared.” But it wasn’t until more than a hundred years had passed that “a third party had any significance […] when the Populist Party arose largely out of economic depression and the distress of western and southern farmers” (217). The party was quickly absorbed back into the Democratic Party.

Third party candidates are rarely expected to win. Perhaps “the best role for a third party is its function of calling to the attention of the people (a) the need for reforms and (b) the proposals and programmes for reforms” (220). The two-party system can be frustrating when both options seem dreadful. We might wonder why in “one of the great unappreciated ironies of the original constitutional vision […] the Framers were exquisitely sensitive to the need to create formal checks and balances between governmental organizations,” but “they failed to see the need to ensure sufficient competition between political organizations.”[2]

Democracy in America works because even though a large portion of voters are disappointed each election, they still abide by the decision reached by the agreed upon means. There’s always the next election cycle to hope for change. But in a one-party system or areas of the country where one party has gained a strong upper hand, then those who disagree either move away or get progressively more irritated.

The Founding Fathers did not intend to make a two-party system. It was not designed into the Constitution. The country developed a two-party system as a combination of the historical precedent for a two-party system, because of the forceful personalities that shaped our young nation, and because of how the parties balance power. The fewer political parties there are, the stronger more power resides in each party. Americans don't like to only have one option—so a one-party system was out of the question. Our two parties gathered all of the smaller factions together, to maximize the probability that their choice would win elections.

Occasionally, we will have bad years like 2016, years when third-party votes serve an important function to call for alternatives to the major two-party platforms. But overall, we have a two-party system because it works.