At 10:00 AM -0400 11/8/04, Nathan Newman wrote:
>I have no idea what you mean by that. There are two parties, they
>both have the same policies and there is no apparent way to influence
>those policies. Joining one of the parties would be useless, because
>the parties themselves (or at least the members of the parties) don't
>have any more say over the policy platforms of the candidates than
>anyone else. In fact it appears the parties don't even select the
>candidates.
>In Australia, minority interests and political views are permitted to
>form political parties which can stand candidates in elections.
So does the US. Jesse Jackson ran for President in 1988 representing a range of left groups, just as Pat Robertson ran for President the same year representing the religious right.
It's is actually quite easy for groups to run candidates for office in the United States in the primaries of either party.
-You don't really understand. When you assert that "primaries are -often closed", I take it you mean to disparage the concept of a -political party having the right to select its own candidates for -elected office according to its own rules? But of course if a -political party is not permitted to select its own candidates it -can't even have nominal control over its political platform.
Who is "the party" controlling entry in your version? In the US, it's voters in each party deciding who will represent them. Yes, this is a more open process and I'm not saying the European closed list, when combined with proportional representation, is necessarily worse, but minority interests have plenty of play to run candidates.
If you survey the range of candidates running for Congress in the US, from socialists like Major Owens in Brooklyn to rightwing crazies like Tom Coburn and Alan Keyes running for Senate in Oklahoma and Illinois, the US probably has a broader political spectrum of elected politicians than most of Europe at this point.
>A political party
>can still have a manifesto, but there is no mechanism through which
>to present that manifesto to the people at an election.
"manifesto"-- like the Republican "Contract with America" in 1994? Or the "Fair Deal" run by Truman in 1948? Or the "Great Society" program of Lyndon Johnson in 1964? Or the "Reagan revolution" of 1980? Elections in the US have actually pretty clear differences, and often greater policy differences than in Europe at this point.
The Democrats and Republican positions on a range of policies are far more different than say the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in Germany, for example. I can name ten issues where the GOP and the Dems have clear and stark policy differences. I wonder if you can do the same for the major opposing parties in Europe at this point?
-- Nathan Newman