Annoying thing is that our electorate is actually quite diverse, and so are the politicians of the two-party system in certain respects. But we're just too collectively dumb to notice it, and just assume that each party means one thing, and one thing only... with no options in between. If the Democratic and Republican parties suddenly disappeared, but all the currently-serving politicians remained and were asked to form groups with no prior knowledge of the two-party system - - you'd easily see a multi-party system emerge.

Or if every congressional Democrat was taken to the UK, put into their parliament, and then told to join a British party - - you'd see them evenly split between Labour, the LibDems, and the Conservatives, with a handful of others joining UKIP. If Republicans joined British Parliament, you'd likely see most join the Tories and UKIP, with a few joining the BNP and perhaps one or two would go to the LibDems.

It's very frustrating. Personally I lean liberal by American standards, but I'm not a strict ideologue... I'd really just like to see some pragmatism and common-sense goals, with progressive, yet cautious, reform. But with two parties struggling to maintain 51%, this doesn't happen often since they risk giving away everything to the sole opposing party if they screw up. If a third party entered into the equation it would seriously shake things up, for the better in my opinion. We've almost done it a few times... during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Populist Party and its allies held a fair amount of seats in Congress, but they eventually faded with time as the Democrats became less classically liberal and slightly more progressive (think what would've happened in the UK if Labour died out before 1915, with the Liberals and the Conservatives left as the only two parties). And in 1992, if Ross Perot and his running-mate hadn't come off as batshit insane, they might have destroyed the two-party system as well. Oh well.

We'll have to try again.