Politics: Why American Political Change is Illusion

Libertarian, supports liberty.
Convservative, supports tradition
Christian-political, supports scriptural philosophy
Progressive, supports progressive, and change
Green, supports enviromental protection, and renewability.

I wish we could throw in an atheist point, but then that'd be quite unreaslitic.

Now, the above defintions lead us to a problem quite clearly in the America political sphere. The top 3 are supposedly represented by Republicans, while the bottom 2 are supposedly represented by the Democrats.
Yet the things they represent, the various wings were such drastically different superlatives rule, creates an inherent discorde in both party's central thesis. That is, the thrust of what they are trying to sell the public must inherently be vague, general platitudes or the specifics will alienate a wing of the party the candidate is not in (-I.e., Ron paul, Kucinich).
In any other election-system these would be at least 5 seperate parties, but the winner-take-all nature of American congressional-senatorial elections leads to a consolidation.

The most striking consequence is the relative simplicity of the American debate, which allows the prevelance of more simplistic arguementation, indeed, even requires it, if any politican hopes to achieve serious power. This hurts the ability of candidates to differentiate from the pack while retaining qualities that all can enjoy ( they must be memorable, but not different).
Arguably, this is why George W. Bush will likely never go below 20 percent popular support. There will always be a segment of the population to whom he directly appeals, and cannot be dissuaded because he is so distinctively "them".

This identification issue seems to be a direct consequence of the aforementioned impulse the political system has toward blandness (to ensure the fracticious bases unify sufficently to give the candidate a victory). Ron Paul's campaign is a particularly interesting example, in that he so enraptures the Libertarian segment of the Republican vote, while alieniating the rest.

Building from this, the general election seems to simply boil down to who can best capitalize on dog-whistle politics the most effectivily, or who can display generic peculiarity. Consider Hillary and Obama are thought of, quite fondly, as harbanginers of change, with general sentiment being abuzz with the paplpable "unprecedentedness" of this election cylce, yet the complete irrelevancy to that of the candidate's actual positions or attitudes. That they have a previously unelectable gender, and color, respectively, yet are in all ways but charisma the spitting image of John Kerry, indicates that the issue is not political shift, or a new world, but rather identification. A black man and a women being viable candidates is precisely the ticket to political victory. By focusing on this, the Democratic party can unite there multiple bases around a single, non-exclusive issue. Thus, any Democrat can idenfity completely with the party's candidate as they are only described as "of the same party" with careful censur of any extreme information or distinct opinion that may harm the universiality of the X party base. In short, capturing both party universiality, distinctness, and also the party-based xenophobic antagonism in one move.
Exactly the strategy the republicans employed earlier in their quite amazing re-organization and subsequent marathon of victories in the cultural and political spheres.

John McCain, on the other side, is suffering from the exact problem the Democrats have quite marvellously side-stepped, and his inability to insert a "rallying" issue has lead to a call he is insufficently conservative. That is, the conservative does not recognize enough of "them" in McCain to easily become excited at his candidacy. Although given the time and money most of these major candidates have I don't doubt an issue will be created for him soon enough. I have too much respect for the awesome capacities of the Republican machine to doubt they would ever leave such a thing missing.

This all leads to my final point. The political machine in America is structured, not through some machiavelli cabal but simple chance, to ensure the facade of candidates gets them elected. Because a true issues candidate would never survive the party nomination process, in that his positions would require the alienation of part of the base.
Thus, so long as the America discourse revolves around the discussion, assemblance, structure, and "beauty" of a politican's facade, the very serious problems facing America will never recieve compotent responses.
As it is a system that seems suprisingly adept at preventing true change from taking place, and rather purports change in the same way as switching from McDonalds to Wendy's, it will never excel.
It does however, seem remarkably stable so-far, so it is perhaps dangerous to rock the boat so to speak. But it leaves no doubt the concept of a radically new candidate, is in fact a mirage.

Solution *tentative: modify the underlying election structure to ensure candidates need only a pluarity rather then a majority, that is, the election of a party confers the election of that party's leadership to the role of the Presidency. Thus the need to consolidate is eliminated, and candidates do not need to appeal to 51 percent of the vote every time they wish to obtain any real power. Only ensure they get more votes then the next-largest party, whatever that may be.