[lbo-talk] partisanship in the USA

[Doug Henwood]

The best defense of the two-party system is the argument that while 
it permits the majority party to govern, as it should, it also 
centralizes the opposition in a single minority group, thus 
preventing the dissipation of minority energy in sectarian disputes 
and checking any tyrannical tendencies on the part of the "ins." This 
argument has seldom fitted the facts of American life, where party 
differences have rarely been profound and party structure so rigid 
that minorities, instead of being focused in either major party when 
it was out, have rather had to sunder their traditional party ties 
and - in most cases - drown alone in the political seas.

The first post-Civil War victory of the Democrats, in 1884 (when they 
had the estimable assistance of the Mugwump Republicans) is one of 
the few exceptions to this American story of party loyalty; but the 
subsequent Democratic administration only confirmed the profound 
uniformity between Republican and Democratic principles.

- Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (1948), p. 231