Why is the USA limiting itself to only two parties?

First off, I like the way you compared sports to a future political realignment. I will just try to explain things in reverse.

When a city wins the championship in professional sports, the whole city celebrates. Everyone feels good about themselves, strangers hug each other, a great party, people forget their problems, etc., etc.; things that we don’t usually see. Champions bring a sense of unity to city. People forget their problems w

So let’s just say each city wants a sports championship. Voters are happier when their city wins, so the city councils set things up for victory.

One of the best ways to assure more champions is to limit the competition. Imagine a sports league where only New York and Los Angeles have the only two franchises. In this way, these two cities would have a 50% of winning the championship.

Of course, this is a little silly. And there are other forces at play that allow losing franchises to be fiscally solvent.

But limiting the competition is what the Democrats and Republicans have essentially done. There is an informal agreement between the two parties that allow them to govern 50% of the time.

While third parties are possible, they usually hurt the main party they are closer ideologically speaking. Ross Perot gave Mr. Clinton the edge; Ralph Nadar gave Mr. Bush the edge. So there is a real threat the the worst of the two devils will get elected rather than the second worst. Political alignments occur to prevent effective third parties.

A ranked ballot would fix that. But the neither the D’s or the R’s want to share their side of the political spectrum with a similar party. That similar party could supplant them one day — which means reducing the 50% chance of getting power to 0%. So don’t expect the R’s or D’s to champion a ranked ballot any time soon.