Every so often there’s an effort in the press to divide things into pieces. Eleven countries in the United States. Nine states of Illinois. I don’t know what motivates the impulse but it emerges pretty regularly.
A recent example of that is in Lee Drutman’s piece in the New York Times dividing the U. S. into six political parties: the Progressive Party, the American Labor Party, the New Liberal Party, the Growth and Opportunity Party, the Patriot Party, and the Christian Conservative Party. Judging by his descriptions I would probably fit into either the New Liberal Party or the Growth and Opportunity Party. I think his reading of the Democratic Party is wrong, almost comically so. For one thing I think he overestimates the numbers of progressives and underestimates the number of Christian conservatives in the Democratic Party.
His entire scheme is a fantasy for several reasons not the least of which is that first-past-the-post-winner-take-all systems (like the U. S.) tend to coalesce into two political parties. It isn’t true just here. It’s true everywhere.
Another reason is that the two political parties have a solid grip on the reins of power and they won’t relinquish it voluntarily. Not only do they make rules which make things hard on upstart parties, they also tend to cooperate in dividing power between themselves and against anybody else. The erstwhile Trib columnist John Kass called this phenomenon in Illinois “the Combine”.
Way back when (60’s?) someone said that the national parties are really coalitions of 50 state parties. That was more obvious when the South was Democratic. ( I’d rather vote for a yellow dog than a Republican… etc.)
Some countries like Israel form their coalitions after national elections. Evidently we do ours before elections.