Do voting reformers identify the two party system as the proximate cause we ever got a president trump?
First, I know there is a more complicated set of factors that caused voters’ interest in trump. I’m not trying to argue for a simplistic explanation.
But, I do think that we should and would have had both a majority of voters, institutions and elites that would have united against him but for our two party system.
I don’t want to tldr like I usually do about this, especially to this audience, but basically our whole political system is set up as US and them, with fewer and fewer voters actually willing to vote for candidates of either party.
In a system with three or more parties, if a trump comes along who repulses the elites of the party that he is running in That party’s voters, likely including some of the elites themselves, will be far more likely to vote against their party should the trump succeed in winning its nomination than they proved to be in our highly polarized two party system.
Likewise a Congress made up of 3+ parties becomes far more likely to impeach him. Even if a conservative party doesn’t fear their voters switching to the progressive party, they will understand that voters switching to a center party is a more significant threat.
I just see our two party system complete with partisan primary enforcement mechanisms (to maintain control of the elected members) as a house of cards that trump never would’ve been able to scale (or keep upright if he theoretically did) but for the dynamics associated with that system.
I know this is theoretical and that the EC doesn’t actually make multi party competition workable in presidential elections, but the dynamics are what they are and it seems plain that they are what enabled trump to both take over the Republican Party and then win the presidency.
Does it seem as plain to other people who recognize the flaws in our voting system? If not why?