Column: E Pluribus Duo and pitfalls of the two-party system

I told myself some time ago that I would not infuse my columns with politics, so I will tread lightly here to (marginally) "walk the line," as Johnny Cash once sang.

Since the 2016 election, I have changed my voter registration to non-partisan. I had been registered as a major political party voter for 25 years, when I finally decided that I didn't want to be associated with the antics of partisan politics any longer.

I got tired of hearing from both major parties about how bad the other one was and how good they were.

Frankly, that is a fundamental insult to individual intelligence and our ability to set reasonable preferences for ourselves.

The fact is, though, voters are typically left with two choices in the general election; a run-off between a pachyderm and a, uh, Rocky Mountain Canary. (thesaurus.com)

More often than not, the electorate is left choosing the "lesser of two evils," like deciding between two apples left on a tree; both of which have worm holes.

In a vain effort to guess which apple has the worm still in it and to avoid biting into that one, we end up voting against one candidate instead of voting for who we really identify with.

If you identify squarely with the elephant or the donkey, then so be it. I do not anymore.

Whether it's Oscar Mayer or Bar-S, bologna is bologna. You can argue all you want about which one is better.

When two charlatans are competing against one another for your business, each will try to convince you that their elixir is the best. The truth is, it's still snake oil regardless of what it's made of.

Partisans and hardliners have their reasons for party loyalty. Others simply prefer the traditional two-party system because finding two meatballs on a plate is easier without having to sort through all of the noodles.

I understand that a two-party system, in theory, discourages internal division and encourages more unity. The system appears less fragmented and more simplified, too.

E Pluribus Unum, after all. Or, more accurately, E Pluribus Duo.

I am fascinated with the way party voters suddenly circle the wagons around the candidate they had despised in the primary, but now throw their support behind in order to defeat the opposition.

In this way, the two-party system is designed to prevent splintering and subdividing of a seemingly double-sided electorate, because legislative and executive representatives are elected to office by a "winner-take-all" process; take all popular votes and, for the most part, take all electoral votes.

Some may argue that the two-party system is a natural consequence of Duverger's Law, which holds that "plurality-rule elections structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party system." (wikipedia.org) Maurice Duverger was a French sociologist from the mid-Twentieth Century whose observations of the American political system were recorded in the 1950s and 60s.

The two-party system has long been culturally accepted in the United States, because that's the way things have always been since the founding of the Republic.

Ironically, the two major political parties today once shared the name of a single party back in the days of Thomas Jefferson.

Whether one agrees with the two-party system or not, its pitfalls are obvious to me.

There's actually more division — and more partisanship — rather than less of it in American politics. There's less choice and more pressure to choose one side or the other. As such, voters end up settling for the "lesser of two evils," because their choice is limited to just two brands of toilet paper on the shelf.

To learn more about one Nevada candidate this year, I recently visited their Facebook page and I found this post:

"One party is responsible for this sort of action. It's not mine."

I call this partisan balderdash. (I could call it something else, but I like to keep my columns rated PG.)

I used to play the "not me" game when I was a little kid, but I've long since grown out of that. In American politics, however, those childish games remain part of the playbook.

So do tactics that play on voter emotions, rather than encourage critical thinking.

If you believe that one party wears a halo and the other sprouts horns atop its head, then I may know of a bridge you can buy ... and at a competitive interest rate, too.

It's this sort of partisan propaganda that only succeeds in dividing people more. I don't see how it has positively unified people; other than partisan hardliners who toe the party line.

Admittedly, I don't know if there's a viable alternative to the two-party system, which has unfortunately become an embedded establishment in our culture and national infrastructure.

Third party candidates rarely win statewide elections, and they have never won nationwide presidential elections.

Yeah, I remember former WWF pro wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura winning the gubernatorial race in Minnesota. But it was his celebrity that won the election for him; not his third-party status.

The closest we came to a third party president was when Theodore Roosevelt, himself a former two-term Republican president, ran against Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Democratic challenger Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Roosevelt and his Progressive "Bull Moose" Party came in second to Wilson and the Democrats, 435-88 in the electoral vote count.

Again, though, Roosevelt's name recognition is what earned him second place in the race. He was already a very well-liked and easily recognizable candidate, having served as a relatively successful chief executive just a few years earlier.

In more recent years, H. Ross Perot garnered 19 percent of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election. But he didn't win a single electoral vote.

Altogether through nearly five dozen presidential elections since 1788, there has been only one formally independent President of the United States: George Washington, the first of them all. Even Washington, though, tended to ideologically favor Federalist Party policies of the day.

But that's neither here nor there.

As with just about anything else in the United State of America, change depends on the people of whom, by whom, for whom the Republic was formed. If we are not motivated and invested enough to change the way things are, then we can only expect more of the same old stuff ... or some kind of S.O.S. like that.

This is my opinion, and I am sticking to it.