The structure of our elections and electtoral system is really hard on small parties--basically, for national politics, only the two biggest really have much of a chance at any one election. (This is why, historically, when one party died, another one quickly arose to take its place and the system carried on similarly to before.) And people tend to belong to the same party for both state and federal purposes, so it's only for strictly local politics that you start seeing political parties other than the two biggies, and even then only rarely. I mean, they exist, but rarely get elected.
The thing is, the range of mainstream American political beliefs isn't any narrower than any other country you can think of. But instead of having that range of politial beliefs split up into, say, five mainstream parties, each of which gets enough seats in the legislature that they sort of have to work together because none of them can get a majority on their own, we're divided into two political parties, each of which often can control a house of legislature by itself.
So a major American political party is actually the functional equivalent of two or three (or more) parties in a parliamentary system. Except that while those factions in a parliamentary system might only work together for an election or two before forming an alliance with a different party, here they are part of the same party with a really strong disincentive to go it alone. So major reorganizations only happen every forty or fifty years or so.
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The structure of our elections and electtoral system is really hard on small parties--basically, for national politics, only the two biggest really have much of a chance at any one election. (This is why, historically, when one party died, another one quickly arose to take its place and the system carried on similarly to before.) And people tend to belong to the same party for both state and federal purposes, so it's only for strictly local politics that you start seeing political parties other than the two biggies, and even then only rarely. I mean, they exist, but rarely get elected.
The thing is, the range of mainstream American political beliefs isn't any narrower than any other country you can think of. But instead of having that range of politial beliefs split up into, say, five mainstream parties, each of which gets enough seats in the legislature that they sort of have to work together because none of them can get a majority on their own, we're divided into two political parties, each of which often can control a house of legislature by itself.
So a major American political party is actually the functional equivalent of two or three (or more) parties in a parliamentary system. Except that while those factions in a parliamentary system might only work together for an election or two before forming an alliance with a different party, here they are part of the same party with a really strong disincentive to go it alone. So major reorganizations only happen every forty or fifty years or so.
Does that help?