Clinton, Trump, and the Two Party System

Let me begin by stating that Hillary Clinton will be our next president. Now big surprise, we’ve known she’d be elected in 2016 since 2008. The only real surprise is how much she is having to work at it considering who she’s had to run against.

Bernie Sanders: A 75 year old career politician who wasn’t even a Democrat, but was still able to make her step out of her comfort zone and actually work for the Democratic nomination. On the surface this gun-toting, old guard, completely unfunded politician should have been beaten easily considering the current breakdown of the Democratic core, but he easily grabbed the under-50 demographic. Although he conceded, he was able to alter the Democratic Platform to better suit his views.

Donald Trump: What can I say, he’s Donald Trump. It’s as if the Republican Party went out of their way to find someone Hillary could actually beat. On paper he isn’t even a Republican. Most of his ideology is more in line with the Democratic Party than the Republican. Then the real Republicans gave us a half-assed campaign and dropped out one-by-one leaving Donald Trump against Ted Cruz, a person who isn’t even Constitutionally qualified to serve as president.

Now if either the Democrats or Republicans had chosen virtually any other candidate against these two, nobody would even be talking about this election. If Joe Biden had been the Democratic Party nomination, he would have simply pulled a Reagan-esque, “There you go again, Donny.” With his patented Biden grin and immediately shot to 90% in the polls. Similarly, if Matt Mead, Mary Fallen, or a dozen other Republican Governors and Senators had been the Republican nomination, Hillary would have been buried.

So, our next President is going to be Hillary Clinton. Let’s talk about what we’ll be in for.

Most of her platform is mutually contradictory. For example, she states she’s going to lower the cost of child care, and she also states she’s going to raise the minimum wage by about 50%. Now you tell me how you can lower the cost of a service while simultaneously increasing what people are required to pay those who provide said service? Along those same lines, she states she’s going to attract more foreign investment, while increasing the taxes and fees of foreign companies seeking to invest in the US. See what I mean about contradictory?

How did we end up in this mess? Two “major candidates” that the US population at large hates? There are a lot of reasons we have an election where Hillary Clinton (a Democratic candidate 30% of Democrats hate) and Donald Trump (a Republican candidate 30% of Republicans hate), but I’ll focus on the one.

The two-party system that, after nearly 140 years of manipulative laws and regulations, has reached the point that there can be no viable Third Party, even though the US Constitution clearly prefers three or more parties. Don’t believe me? Read the part about what happens if no candidate receives the majority of Electoral College votes. See it? It mentions three candidates, not two.

All but two states utilize the winner-take-all system for their Electoral College votes. Maine and Nebraska stull stubbornly use the original system in which the Electors are chosen by the original system the US Constitution apparently intended. Now I’ve had discussions with people who will claim the winner-take-all actually makes it easier for a Third Party because if that party could take California and New York, they’d guarantee a three-party runoff in the House. The problem is that the election laws in California and New York seem to be written to ensure something like that never happens.

I’ve been told that a Third Party would destabilize the US government. That it would force Congress to form a coalition government in which compromise would be the driving factor. That such a government wouldn’t have the ability to act quickly or decisively. Even if true, would that be a bad thing? Would doing things like actually reading the bills they’re voting on really cripple the government?