[ches]

Hey there and welcome to the board. I would like to comment on two aspects of what you wrote.

Originally posted by elkhnd
Americans want a third party? Sure....until it costs their favored politician an election as Nader did to Gore in 2000, and to a lesser extent Perot cost Bush senior. On one hand a 2 party system (almost) guarantees the winner will carry the majority, a multiparty system may result in a winner carrying 30%, on the other hand you often end up with 2 candidates no one wants as has been the case in the US since Clinton ran in 1996.

I don't see a problem with the winner only carrying 30% majority in a mulitparty system. This is where coalition government comes in, which can (in a 3-party system) represent the vast majority of the country if the coalition is formed between the leading two parties (which it usually isn't - Israel is a good example of a winning party forming a coalition with as many marginal parties until the 50% majority is achieved.)

It is likely that a winner carrying a 30% majority would be unpalatable in US politics, where the president is elected independently of congress, on an electoral college basis. In other systems (where there is a Prime Minister who leads, usually), the leader of the country is the leader of the parlimentary majority - so the leader would be chosen from the ruling coalition.

In South Africa, coalition negotiations tend to include wrangling over vice president positions. South Africa has a president -- elected from within the winning party -- and two vice presidents. During the second democratic parliment, the second vice president was from the IFP, through an agreement over the coalition in KwaZulu-Natal province, which the ANC won with approximately 45% of the vote; insufficient to form provincial government without coalition.

Interesting note: the Democrats are scared at the current time that many young people are favoring running a candidate who has no chance of winning a nationwide election, but agrees with their principles (e.g. Howard Dean, who the Dems de-railed in favor of Kerry....a decent man but a horrific candidate for a nationwide election...they should've let Dean get the nomination). Should this group peel off and run a third candidate a la Nader it will result in another decade of losses for the Democratic Party.

I'm sure that all the people who turned out for the democrat primaries would be horrified by your ideas of why Kerry was chosen as the democrat representative! I also disagree on your assessment of Dean. Dean had a clear lead going into the primaries, based on internet hype. He had a vast lead on the internet, but the internet does not represent America well. Internet users tend to be male, young, and very liberal. They like Michael Moore, as a stereotype. Dean would've fared far worse than Kerry, who amassed around 50-million votes to Bush's 52-million-odd. Kerry amassed enough votes to have won in 2000, when voter turn-out was not as good.