Americans Elect... didn’t

Last week an effort to create a middleground third political party in between the existing two parties came to an end. The group had $50 million to organize the new idea of a middle American party. They spent $35 million building their website and promoting their idea, before giving up.

This is probably the second greatest political success in America so far in a century. The first of course is the historically most important event since the Constitution, the modern Tea Party. The creation of a middle party would have shown a serious dissatisfaction with American politics had it succeeded.

The failure of Americans Elect is a truly astounding success for our two-party system and evidence of public confidence in that system.

America's two parties regardless of all the negative rhetoric, are totally comfortable to Americans.

I have always known, since my early days in survey research, that the majority of Americans do not vote because they are satisfied with the outcome of elections. If they were dissatisfied they would turn out to vote.  Angry jurisdictions (like Berkeley, CA) have high turn-out, happy jurisdictions like Iowa farm country have low turn-out.

In fact, today maybe more than at any time in history, Americans are deeply satisfied with their two-party choices. I would say that the Republican Party with the infusion of clarity and integrity that comes from the Tea Party is very satisfying to the bulk of Republicans. The reinvigorated conservative movement in America is alive and vigorous and satisfied with the Republican Party.

The same is true with the Democrats and the liberal movement in America. President Obama and the Democratic party are accurate representatives of the class warfare, increase in government expansion and debt and anti-war sentiment that is the modern liberal mainstream position. The spectacular support of Obama and the Democratic Party by the mainstream media and modern academia is the best evidence I have that the Democratic Party truly represents its members.

Congratulations are in order to the success of the American two-party political system.