> No major party can have a platform that doesn't allow them to get a majority of the vote.

That’s patently false: one Republican president in 28 years has been elected with a majority of the vote.

On the local level, gerrymandering and vote suppression are both tactics to get around the need to appeal to a majority, and the GOP has embraced both.

The Electoral College system effectively subsidizes the Republican party by giving it presidential wins it doesn't deserve, by giving empty land a vote. It's a national election, and it should be one person one vote, not a case where a Wyoming vote counts 7x that of a California vote.

If it weren't winning the presidency, it would be compelled to be more competitive. No major party exists nationally without winning presidential elections.

Well, I can only tell you what happens in California (which has been for decades the path the US as a whole takes):

Republicans will become a minority party with no power at all. Democrats will get mad that there are Republicans on the ballot, so the rules will be changed to allow two Democrats on the ballot, a progressive one and a "liberal"/moderate one (and no Republican). This allows progressive policies to continue, and the legislature ends up being a supermajority mix of progressive Democrats and liberal Democrats, with some useless Republicans from a few low-population counties.

There's absolutely no reason the US won't follow this same pattern: it works.

(You can also see the Democratic Party's progressive/liberal split today with the DSA. That's just the CA dynamic going national.)

This sounds like a divisive unsubstantiated rant. Do you have anything to backup the claim that Californa D's want to have no republicans on the ticket? If not, please refrain from even mentioning it. Not even as a rant. Thanks.

Also why would that happen? There are tons of republicans in California. Obviously, California republicans running for state offices should have a platform that might resemble a D platform. Because as I said - you adjust to the elctorate. What parties stand for isn't written in stone. Parties that think it is will become irrelevant. Annd no, not because they are banned from running.

If they bothered to break democracy, why hold elections at all? There is no legitimacy coming from a one party election. Multi party and ranked choice I hope will bring some sanity to the system.

The Democrats work very hard to keep other political parties’ candidates off the ballot (see: Green Party in Wisconsin this year for example). They don’t go after republicans (as a party) for the same reasons republicans don’t go after them. The other party has enough resources to defend themselves, and they need each other to play the foil in elections so as to maintain the facade that Americans are making a real choice.

Republicans work about as hard keeping more right-associated candidates off the ballot (e.g. libertarians).

> Who's being divisive here?

I thought you were speculating about what a party would do which you disagree with. If this is indeed something that happened (despite your use of future tense) I apologize.

> If voters want more relevant choices on the final ballot, and vote for the change, that should be fine in a Democracy.

If they decided to simply not have elections, because people want all D so what's the point, would that be OK in a democracy? (Answer: No, because it's not a democracy any more then).

I feel this discussion has sidetracked a bit. I think the conclusion is this: in a 2 party system, if opinions shift (due to time/demographics/fashion/talk radio...) then if both parties don't adapt, you risk ending up with a de-facto one party rule. And that's not the fault of the party that didn't need to change, but the fault of the party that needed to but didn't.

I can give you the background on the change CA made.

Imagine a district with the following breakdown: 35% Progressive D, 35% Liberal/moderate D, 25% Republican, 5% Other. So overall, 70% D.

CA used to mandate that on the final ballot, you got one choice per party, e.g. one D, one R, and N "Other".

Here's what would happen: the D primary would have a Progressive and a Liberal/moderate. But because Progressives were a lot more "activist", they got out and voted in the primary and their candidate would win. So the final ballot would be: Progressive D, moderate R, N "Other".

In the election, enough Liberal/moderate Ds would NOT vote for the Progressive D, so the moderate Republican kept winning, despite only being 25% of the electorate and not voting with Democrats in the legislature, even though 70% of their district were Democrats.

The change was to have the top two candidates of any party on the ballot. This resulted in a Progressive D and a Liberal/moderate D (and no R). R's (of course) vote for the Liberal/moderate D in this scenario on the final ballot, and they win (and vote with the Democrats in the legislature). This, more or less, is why Democrats have a supermajority in CA, but it's really two wings of the same party, and they have to negotiate much the same way that Democrats and Republicans in the US Senate have to get along.

You think there are progressives with any power in California? Or that the “jungle primary” you describe “works”? It does work—to help the political parties maintain control, not to help get people an actual representative government.