On the evening of June 9, President Obama was on the Tonight Show, hosted by Jimmy Fallon. He said, “I am worried about the Republican Party. Democracy works, this country works, when you have two parties that are serious and try to solve problems…at the end of the day, you want a healthy two-party system. You want the Republican nominee to be somebody who could do the job if he wins.”
“Two-party system” is an ambiguous term. When it was first coined, in 1906, to describe the British party system, it means a system in which two parties are much stronger than the others, but one in which there more than two parties in the national legislature. Over the years, in the United States, “two-party system” has come to mean a system in which the government actively discourages voters from participating in any but the two largest parties.
Whichever definition the President was using, he ought to reconsider. If “two-party system” means a system in which only two parties have members in the national legislature, then the United States and Nigeria are the only “two-party systems” in the world, among the 50 most populous countries. It is difficult to argue that the party system in United States is the best system. One can look at Canada, which has five parties in the national legislature; or Great Britain, which has twelve parties in the national legislature, and easily conclude that Canada and Great Britain have better systems. Whenever lists are made of the ten best countries, based on various objective criteria, the United States never appears on that list, and all the countries on that list have multi-party systems, even if in some of them, two parties are much bigger than all the others.
Just more of the juvenile punk comments by the moron in chief — the MIC.
1/2 votes x 1/2 rigged gerrymander districts = 1/4 CONTROL = OLIGARCHY in the USA Congress, ALL State legislatures and many local govts – cities, counties, etc.
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Save Democracy — esp. from juvenile robot party HACKS.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Based on the context of the comments from Obama and similar comments I have read from other Democrats, it sounds like he meant that he wants the U.S. to have two good parties, as opposed to just one, and he doesn’t think the Republicans are living up to his standard of what a good party is.
Part of this may be attributable to the rise of Donald Trump, but Obama didn’t think too highly of the Republicans before Trump became a candidate, either.
If he said that he supported a two-party system in the context of being asked about the Libertarians or something like that, that would be different.
If he said that he supported a two-party system in the context of being asked about the Libertarians or something like that it would mean Jimmy Fallon was doing his job.
President Obama could easily have said, “We need at least two strong parties.”
We actually have a multi-party system. It’s just that we have two old established major parties.
He could have said that, but he probably really meant he only believes in two parties, like other authoritarians in both of said parties. The Democrats are even more Orwellian than the Republicans, right down to their party’s very name.
I think that the intention behind the President’s statement was a standard bi-partisanship/good governance sort of thing. I don’t think that the question or the answer dealt with more substantive questions of what sort of voting method ought to be used or anything like that.
Frankly, I cannot recall the last time a television series like that one, actually had much to say about election law reform. If we are talking about giving voters more meaningful choices, then, yes, we are talking about electoral reform.
Few Presidents — in recent memory — actually strayed from the standard sort of bi-partisanship/good governance sort of reply. It is not something that happens when the President is in office and election law reform is not something that is likely going to be on radar (given the fact that we are talking about a infotainment TV series).