Quote (Black XistenZ @ Nov 22 2020 07:32pm)
To be honest, I'm not sure if 4 parties are actually needed. Three would probably be sufficient. All this derisive talk about establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans (pre-Trump, potentially also post-Trump) being a "uniparty" has more than just a grain of truth to it. Problem is that the genuine leftists and the social-conservative union on the right would find no common ground, so if you split American politics this way, the winner takes all system would cause the centrist, status-quo preserving uniparty to dominate.
You could easily unite the fringes of the parties on economically populist grounds. The far right and far left both have common economic grievances. Trump increased rural turnout by rallying against trade deals and promising to bring jobs back. That kind of stuff just needs to be changed to have an actual mechanism of improving lives, like universal healthcare and higher education. It's the reason why Bernie polled really well with Trump's coalition.