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>> a conversation on political parties now with lee trautman, senior fellow at new america, the author of the 2020 "breaking the two-party doom loop." his most recent paper entitled "more parties, better parties, the case for pool party democracy reform." why do we have political parties in first place and considering the state of politics right now, might it be better to do away with parties at the moment? >> i understand a lot of people are frustrated with the performance of our two political parties. but, basic reality of modern mass represented of democracy is that you can't do it without political parties. political parties are inevitable and essential as institutions of representative democracy because something needs to organize politics. something and if it is not a political parties, then, it will just be charismatic

autocrats or chaos. political parties structure elections, they build majorities in the legislature, they engage and mobilize voters, they build coalitions. political parties to the essential collective work of modern representative democracy. without parties, we don't really have representative democracy, we just have a scrum or a free-for-all, basically a chaotic mess. >> take us back to the beginning of political parties and how their role and duties of a political party gets changed in american politics over the centuries. >> so, if you know your history, you know the framers didn't like political parties when they were writing the constitution. they said political parties are going to cause division and we need to find a way to organize our legislature without political parties. now, turns out when they got into congress, very quickly

they realized that the political parties were essential to organizing legislatures and organizing campaigns. so, madison, jefferson, hamilton, they all for political parties. when you are out of government, easy to say oh, we should just approach every issue independently. when you get into government, suddenly you want to pass bills or you want to oppose a bill so you need to start organizing a team. those teams quickly become political parties. you want to run for elections and you want to be up to coordinate among multiple candidates to share branding and other resources and mobilize supporters, well, you need a political party to do that. very quickly, the framers formed political parties and you read madison after his in government, he says political parties are kind of good and

important things for a democracy. so, there is this sort of time in the u.s. from what we typically call the first party system, from about, from the first election, from 1788 through, 1790, you know, and onward and up through the 1820s and we know it as hamilton versus jefferson, democratic republicans of jefferson and madison versus federalists of hamilton and john adams. and, it is kind of an even contest for a little while. it mostly an elite affair. but, we are fighting over some real issues, the role of a central bank, whether the u.s. is allied with france or not. so, the election of 1800 is really one of the most contested, nasty elections in u.s. political history. there was a lot of mudslinging,

although adams and jefferson later, of course, become friends and they both die on the same day and they are corresponding with each other and weekend. i got out of the 1820s, about 1820, the u.s. has basically collapsed into a one party system, which is a unique time in the u.s., 1820, 18/24 basically one party election. but, what happens when you have one party politics is that you have a lot of factions. when you get to, sorry, 1816, 1820 are essentially one party elections. by 1824, you have all the sections competing. you have basically it's a four candidate election in 1824, and jackson wins the most votes but he doesn't win the presidency because he doesn't win a majority in the electoral college and then by 1828, jackson and martin van buren are starting to organize the democratic party, which is really the first mass party in the u.s. and there is some opposition organized and that

eventually becomes the whig party. the whig party collapses in the 1850s over slavery, the republican party replaces the whig party by 1860 and for the last 160 years, you have the democrats and republicans, the two major parties. >> a gallup poll from just this past may, they do this on party identification in this country. 30% of respondents saying they identify as republicans, 27% saying they identify as democrats, 41% saying they identify as independent. do you believe those numbers are accurate and what does that say about us? >> so, when you ask people how they identify, yes, a lot of people identify as independent. a lot of people don't like to call themselves democrats don't like to call themselves republicans. those numbers have been in the 40s for about two decades now

and they tend to go up and down a little bit but basically states in the mid to low 40s. what does that mean when somebody says they are independent? well, for most people, it means i don't want to associate with myself with either of those two parties but if i vote, i will consistently vote for one of the two parties because i think one of the two is worse. for a few people, it means they are really outside of the political system and we don't have any legions but most people who claim to be independent on what political scientists would call closet partisans, which is they are actually partisan, they don't identify as partisans. some of that is that they actually would want another party but the two parties on are for, they clearly prefer one or the other. but, what has changed and what is really significant is that there was a pew poll out last year that showed that 27% of

americans disapprove of both parties. it used to be in the past when people, a lot of people were independent but they would consider both parties. now, a lot of people who say they are independent just like both parties affirmatively. that is what is unique in this political moment. >> your site it creates an opportunity and not just an opportunity for a third party but a fourth, fifth, a six political party. why are you calling for not just more political parties, many more political parties? >> right, well, the problem with, the reason that we first, it is important to understand why we have just two parties in this country. it is not because americans are evenly divided into two political teams. that is an artificial construct, or that americans want to parties. two thirds of americans say they would like more political parties. we have a system of single winner elections. in single winner elections,

votes for third parties are a wasted vote at best and spoilers at worst. either you are causing the election to go to your least favorite candidate or you are just casting a pointless protest vote. so, as a result, most of the energy has focused on the major parties and third parties become places for friends parties. now, that is a function of single winner elections which is a system we have used in the u.s. but is nowhere in the constitution. it is not the default. most democracies in the world today use multi winner elections with proportional allocation of seats and that allows for multiple parties. there's not one third-party that would represent all of those independence. independence are all over the political map. they are not necessarily moderate. they overlap between independence and moderate centrist is very small. a lot of people who are independence have all sorts of different beliefs. but, they are not one party.

if they were, they would form that party. but, really, some of them are extremely progressive on some issues, some of them are more moderate on other issues, some of them are very conservative on some issues. if you think of a two- dimensional political map in which one dimension is views on academic issues and another dimension is used on social issues, you see dots all over that map. there's not one party that would organize of that. now, if we had five or six political parties, most people would feel represented. most people would vote, and a proportional system, most people do get to vote for a party and a candidate who represents them, and, then, coalitions would form after the election instead of before the election. >> and a proportional system, explain how that works for what would have to change to create the system that would allow more than two parties to

flourish. >> right, so, single winner elections, which we have, everybody votes in a single winner district, there is one representative for district. that means that you can only have two viable candidates. 90% of districts, of course, that means really only one viable candidate because roughly 90% of the country is locked up for immigrants or republicans. instead of having a single member district, you have say a five member district. so, you take five existing districts, combined them into one. now that district elects five or preventative spirit you get one vote as a voter in that district but, and the vote for a candidate is aggregated to that candidates party and then votes add up and seats are allocated in proportion. if you have a five member district and democrats get 40% of the vote, and aquatic candidates get 40% of the vote

republican candidates get 60% of the vote, republicans get receipts, democrats get to seats. what that means is that now instead of having to get 50% plus one in order to win the seat, you can get 20% of the vote as a party to win a seat. you can have multiple parties e.g. getting about 20% of the vote. that is at the norm and peered at the u.s. is a very strange country compared to most countries in the world. most countries in the world have some form of multimember districts with proportional allocation of seats and multiple parties. and, as a result, voter turnout is consistently higher in those countries citizens feel better represented. and, government actually works pretty well because parties have to bargain with each other after the election and almost always, what you wind up with is a coalition that involves the political center.

>> lee drutman is our guest from new america, he is a senior fellow in their political reform program and his book is "breaking the two- party doom loop." it came out in 2020, talking about political parties in the u.s. and expenditures in elections. phone number to call in his 202- 748-8001. -- for democrats. (202) 748-8000 four republicans. that for republicans. (202) 748-8002 independents, 202-708, 8000 2. the national co-chair of no label, a group trying to get voters another choice in elections. it is just a minute and a half than what he talked about. >> there is an unprecedented shift with most americans

saying they are either independent, they are not in the democratic party or the republican party, they are independent. and, most americans, according to recent polling, they want better choices, more choices to choose. not just be resigned with the two choices that they had in 2020. i am a democrat. i am working with republicans and independents and, right now, the response that we have gotten in those states -- i think there are five thus far. we have a tremendous response in people in those states who are signing petitions to get access. that is what we are doing right now. we are not ready to declare a candidate, nominate a candidate. we first have to get ballot access. we will see -- we are not running to protest a campaign.

if we decide to run somebody for president or vice president, there has to be a clear pathway that they will win the majority of the elect to college. then you do become a protest and we don't want to become a protest candidate >> your thoughts on no label? >> the demand is clear. most people want more choices. however, at a presidential level, to parties are always going to be spoilers. if you want to give people more choices, you have to build from the bottom up. you have to build more parties in state legislatures and in congress and then you work your

way up, starting at the presidential level. it is the worst way to build a third party and create more choices. it just causes fracture and chaos. i just really don't understand why they are doing this, why they are raising all this money for something that will not be building anything beyond the 2024 election. the one shot saying it is a lot of money wasted for something that is almost certainly going a to fail. 99.9% going to fail. >> i think there are much more productive ways to channel that impulse, if you want to have third parties play a viable role in single winner elections like presidential elections.

there is a tradition in the u.s., throughout the 19th century of something called fusion voting in which you have multiple parties nominate the same candidate and then people can choose the party line. that is still legal in new york and connecticut. now, imagine if there was a moderate common sense party on the ballot and that ballot party chose whether to endorse biden or trump. now people say, i don't like the democrats or the republicans but, i want my voice to be heard and not undermine and spoil the selection. >> that gives people real power. it also builds something. it is not just this one off based candidate approach to a single election. we are building a party. >> when the votes are counted,

how does the common sense party line -- how do they get to say we brought in this many votes? >> 20% of people vote on the common sense party line. we account for 20% of the voting. we deserve some cabinet posts. we deserve to be listened to. we are a force. we built an identity that is not democrat or republican. we have a single candidacy. it does not build something beyond the election. we talk about political parties at the beginning. it is important to have identities. it is important to have institutions and organization that people can belong to and they can participate in. if we treat every voter as

independent actor, it is incredibly isolating. we have a crisis of loneliness in this country and what we are saying when we say everyone should be independent, is you should not join with other people to engage in the work of doing politics. the belonging to an organization unlike a political party is a way to feel connected. in a moment in which there is a crisis of people feeling disengaged and isolated, we should be building institutions that connect people and give them voice and give them an opportunity to give to other people and to negotiate and share their values with other people. >> let's pause there and bring in several people that we have waiting for you.

this is terry rodgers from minnesota, republican. you are on. >> hello. i think a third party would be great but i don't think it is possible. think the money, bureaucrats, and the fact that when the press is so biased that people don't believe what they are being told, people think that money -- it does. do you even set up a major party to compete? what would it take? billions of dollars to set something up? the press has advocated its role as an advocate for one party or another. it is clear to see. the american public does not know who to trust. when we talk about bringing people together, look at the solar watching falling on the democrats, falling on the independents. we are divided by press. s. we are divided by bureaucracy. fbi leaders, doj, they decided

that they're going to influence elections, no matter what you think about trump or anyone else, they got caught trying to influence an election. >> you are making an important point. we are, in fact, quite divided. there is particularly a real division in the media environment. republicans have very little overlap in the information that they do and read what stories they prioritize, what issues they are concerned about and that is a tremendous problem. they made a dangerous downstream effect of our polarized binary two parties system. it is a really hard problem to

solve. my view is, if you change the rules to allow more parties to perform, suddenly you have more options which might sound like you have more pressure but what it means is people are willing to consider a much broader variety of information. right now, when you are in an us versus them world, which we are in, it leads to very simplistic things. frankly, it makes us dumb because we are only engaging in one set of facts and anything that threatens that set of facts, threatens our entire worldview. now you are in a world where there is five parties. they might both have media associated with them but you might consider a bunch of different perspectives. it forces us to do more thinking.

it adds more complexity to our political environment. it leads us to think a little bit more. right now, we honestly don't do a lot of thinking when it comes to politics. we do a lot of reacting, not a lot of thinking. >> good morning, gentlemen. i am calling from east brookshire, vermont but i was brought up in burlington, vermont. the first election i voted in in 1980 was in burlington. at one time, there was a gentleman named bernie sanders running for mayor and he won by six votes. now, back then, i voted for

ronald reagan. let's go back 20 years and, i am watching what is going on with ralph nader and jeb bush and katherine harris and all that. i did vote democrat back then. >> timothy, bring me to the question. >> pardon me. forgive me. >> bring me to the question. >> the question is -- okay. to the question. my point is, in 2000, because we had a third-party candidate named ralph nader, because of mr. nader and harris, we are on

the trajectory that we are on today that culminated in the january 6 debacle. >> from 2000 forward, what connections back could we see today? >> the political division in the hyper- partisan polarization that we are experiencing in this moment is a culmination of many trends that have been playing out for about 60 years and have accelerated over the last three decades. that is, most importantly, the sorting of our political party. timothy, you are from vermont. this is a fun little trivia's question. the state of vermont was the

state in which there was a senate seat that was held by republicans for the longest continuous period of any party in the united states, from 1856s through a time when gym jeffers switched from republican to independent in 2001. that was the longest held seat by republicans. >> in 1936, vermont was one of two states that voted republican. vermont had a long tradition of liberal republicans and that does not exist anymore. used to be a vibrant republican party. now, we have a collapse of the party, a four party system.

now, you just have liberal democrats and conservative republicans. you have urban, cosmopolitan places represented by democrats and traditional rural places represented by republicans. you have a flattening and sorting of our political topic. that is the most important trend. alongside that, you have the naturalization of our politics, more and more culture war issues have come to dominate our politics. everything is focused on winning the next election in washington and that really picked up in the last 30 years. also, they closed the balance of power in washington, every en election, to go either way. a perfect example of that is 2000. 2000 votes here, 2000 votes there. when you combine the sorting and flattening of our politics, the naturalization of our politics, you have a recipe for

hyper- partisan zero some, winner take all polarization in which both parties are trying to get that elusive total control of washington in which they can dominate and crush their opponent but it never actually seemed to sustain themselves. what i am suggesting is, rather than this binary winner take all, us versus them fight that is really destroying the country and splitting us in half, we try something different in which we have multiple parties and no one party is trying to dominate and gain political control. instead, what we are working toward is a system in which there is a compromise in the coalition. there are very few permanent enemies and that is frankly how our country used to work when we had a multiparty system.

>> on a mostly winner take all system, this question from tom in pennsylvania, if we had more political parties, how would that play out with the electoral college? >> here is a challenge. when we think about our elections, we tend to think only about the president even though there are others. ob the presidential elections, because of winner take all nature of a single office as well as the electoral college, means that we will still orient toward two major parties. what that would mean with a multiparty congress is that the major presidential parties would try to build these broad coalitions which is how things used to operate. go back to 1960, jfk versus richard nixon, not a whole lot

of difference between them. for a long time, democrats included prominent republicans in their cabinet and republicans included prominent democrats. you had this bipartisan overlap. i think that is what you had if you had multiple parties in congress because the presidents would try to build these broad coalitions. you break two party binary us against them where it is my side or your side, you expand the number of sides. we notice the luster of two evils but nobody ever says lesser of three or less or a four. >> to martin in las cruces, new mexico, independent. >> i am supporting cornell west for president. we have had major parties status in the state of new mexico. what i have found from the two-

party system is, there was no representation. my political vote is not represented. when they say 40% is unrepresented, that means they are not represented by any political party. the third party gets a shift in policy and it gives people a voice. the question is, do we have a representative democracy? when people are not represented, when people are marginalized, when political parties use their power in governmental entities to block other forms of representation, what you have is a top-down system that predicates the rules, the regulations, the requirements to get on the ballot. whether you are running for

governor, dogcatcher, president, the same roadblocks are put up in order to block other political parties. i have seen it here in new mexico, back in 2002. we had the republican party offer $250,000 in order for the green party to run a strong candidate in a special election. >> we will comment on that and whether you have been discounting the discussion of the green party. >> the green party has been a third-party, basically a small third-party that has mostly grown in protest candidates but that is what third parties are relegated to in a system of winner take all action. i get your point. like a lot of americans, do you

feel you are unrepresented in our two parties? a lot of americans feel that way. this is why we should be supporting the representation for the u.s. house of representative to create an opportunity for more political parties to form so that we can organize political parties that represent the diversity. this is a big country. everything that can be aggregated up to these two parties, does not make much sense in the contemporary moment. by trying to put everything into these two parties that makes it difficult to maintain the collations, that creates --o the only way that they can hold it together is by saying the other party would be such a threat to this country that you have to vote for us, whether or

not you like it. again, way too much focus on third-party presidential level and we should really be focused on trying to get third parties into congress where they can actually play productive role in an election that is inherently winner take all in which they are playing a role. >> just about five minutes left. this is martin in louisville, kentucky. >> i want to make an observation and then i will hang up. in my opinion, we have always readied a three party system in america. before the civil war, you have the republican party, you have the northern democrats and the southern democrats. the southern democrats control american policy. that is what got us into the civil war. after the civil war, the

democratic party was controlled by the northern democrats and it was not until 1976 when jimmy carter became president, he made it clear. racism is no longer welcomed in the democrat party. that has been -- all of the white people for the 200 previous years went to the republican party. any time the republican party, just like the democratic party -- we will win the election. they have more people. that is my comment. thank you. >> you are correct that we have had a multiparty system within our two parties system. it really was not until i would say in 2010 that we truly had a genuine two-party system with no overlap. for a long time, what we had were two overlapping coalitions and the southern block was also

a third-party, regional party within the two parties system. >> in some ways, the history of our country as a multiparty system -- in order for a large, complicated, and diverse society to function, especially with a system of government that makes it very hard to field narrow majorities, we are to embrace our history of a multiparty system and find ways to allow that diversity to express itself rather than push it aside to try to assemble some tenuous majority based on very little. >> we will try to get one call in here before our program ends.

good morning. >> it is an interesting subject. it can't be all things to all people. you get one president where you have these debates. you get the best candidate. then it goes from there. you get the french bureaucracy. this is the best you can do as it stands right now. you can't be all things to all people all. at some point, someone has to be bad. besides that, there are a lot of parties. nt there is about 20 parties. thank you. >> thank you for the call. >> certainly, we do need, as one president, in the

legislature, we can do a better job of representing the people of the country and make sure everyone has somebody who is advocating on their behalf. the challenge is in this political moment. we are at a moment of increasing crises which feels like each election is a moment in which everybody blood pressure goes up six months before the election. we are barraged with all of this fear mongering and the existential sense that if our guy loses, it will be the end of democracy, the end of america. >> that shouldn't really be true. when you start telling people it is, it starts to feel that way and people might use outrageous antidemocratic

things because they feel the stakes are so high. when you look at polling on issue after issue, it is pretty broad support. most americans don't want to hate other americans but we have a political system that keeps pushing us further and further apart and keeps tamping down anyone who wants to have some common ground. that is what happens when you have the collapse of the political center, when you have a polarization. you treat fellow americans as a political opposition. if they win an election, it is not the end of the world. if they win, it is a fundamental threat to the nation. democracy is a fragile system. depends on a shared sense of fairness and a shared sense of,

these are the rules and we are going to play by these rules and accept these rules. instead, what we have is a political system. the compromise is what it takes to govern. unless we change the underlying dynamics of the political system and allow for realignment , we are going to continue to go downhill as a nation. our economy will become -- living in america will become increasingly uncertain. i don't want to see that. i don't want to see it for myself. i don't want to see it for my children. i don't want to see it for my future grandchildren. i believe in democracy. the way to maintain it and support it going forward is to allow the diversity of the

country to be better represented and to break the binary us against them that is so poisonous. >> this is the 2020 book. new america is where u can go to see some his iting. tonight, former president doldtrump holds a rally outside detroit ju tside of the gop presidential ba which he will not be rticipating in. it will be his first campgn event since the judge in new york found him and his company liable for fraud. he was deceiving banks and insurers with financial information in the years prior to being president. you can watch the former president's rally live starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2, c-span app or online at c-span .org.

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