Contemporary American Politics Essay

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1. Intro The question asked “ Based on your understanding of the text and class lectures, do you know enough about American Parties and elections to understand contemporary American politics?” (Take Home Test). To answer this question I would say yes I have learned enough in this class to say that I do understand enough about contemporary American politics in general. I do however believe that American politics is a living thing and that change can happen at any time and no one can learn or know enough about contemporary American politics. I think the most useful things that we learned in class to help with a general understanding is how the system works and the over abundance of problems that the system does have. The basic concepts that …show more content…

The biggest problem in campaign finance is that politicians can be bought some say “Politicians are whores for money” (PSC 300 Notes). This statement, meaning that politicians are now persuaded by money and try to represent those who donate the largest amount. Voting is also a large problem in today politics because of the lack of participation. More and more people are not turning out to the polls to vote. Voting is important because it is the most common way people participate in today’s politics. Bad voting leads to bad government and if not enough people are voting we are going to have bad government. The other problem with today’s politics is that the third party is not given a fair shake in the system. There are multiple ways the third party is not allowed to be a major player in the system. This hurts the voter because they are led to believe that they have no other viable choice when there really is. However through all these major problems opportunity arises. The opportunity that arises is that people have the ability to vote and get involved and people have the ability to have a say in what goes on around them with plenty of choices. Like I stated early we are what we vote for so in the United States we have the opportunity to vote for a good government. This being said there are still many questions in our system

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