As a foreigner looking in, the amount of entrenchment of the parties is fucking grotesque. You have no chance of displacing it sans a violent revolution.
Here nobody I know is "registered" to a party. Party primaries are internal party things, the media doesn't cover them, the government doesn't fund them. Setting up a third party is as easy as falling of a log. Getting on the ballot is so easy that there are a lot of parody and satirical candidates and parties every year. Voters have almost no party loyalty and switch who they will vote for on a whim. If you get 5% of the national party votes you get 5 seats in parliament, so it easy for small one issue party to get representation. We often have 5 to 7 parties in parliament at any one time and a bunch of independents.
Elected officials enjoy no perks and are not above the law in any way. Even the Prime Ministers Motorcade gets in severe trouble if it travels above the speed limit.
Yet given all of this, The two major parties still tend to get 30-50% of the vote each. They have quite entrenched inertia despite having no legal protections. They have to fuck up quite badly to lose traction.
So in America, overthrowing the 2 party system which actively uses legal power to protect the status quo is a god damned pipe dream. Especially with the magical thinking that the LP has. They can't win a mayoralty but think the can just get the Presidency in a walk over and change the world in two weeks.
I mean people here think they are going to win at a brokered fucking convention via popular acclimation.
It doesn't take 5% remnant or even a 25% tireless minority to win. It takes a fucking 80% tsunami to win.
Look at what its going to take Sanders to beat Clinton, and he is an establishment hack from waaay back. He could win every fucking state from here on out and he will still have a cage match at the convention.
We went from one national representative to 3. You are surprised that nothing has changed? It won't make a difference until there are about 20 in the house and 5 in the senate, from either party. That would create a big enough caucus to win centrist amendments by being a disloyal swinging block vote.
No way in hell do you pass an amendment that forces parties to give up federal and state funding, that blocks all state involvement with internal party affairs.
You definitely don't stop Americans en masse from thinking of politics as a tribal blood sport. Culturally Americans care far more about winning than about being right. They see the two as interchangeable. ITs why voter turn out is so low and elections always come down to the ability to get voters to show up.
In my country GOTV isn't a thing that campaigns do. *Everyone* is going to vote anyway. They are going to vote usually for one or two issues, not for any historical support or for a personality.
American "democracy" is a joke. Its an entrenched system that can be slowly altered by chipping away at it. But eventually we are going to have to find $25 billion interests who align with us. They are out there but have no reason to take us seriously yet.
movement is doomed...even ron paul, a true 'anti-war', anti-drug war, etc., hero, has succumbed to this miserable 'austrian school' economic theory...which says NOTHING about private, secret-squirrel banksters and the privilege they enjoy through 'fractional reserve deposit creation' (outright fraud)..
