"Are we headed for a four-party moment like in 1860 and 1948?"
Causing this breakdown are the mounting inefficiency and cost of government, which fuel conservative demands for radical shrinkage of the state – coupled with the decreasing productivity and perceived unfairness of the economic system, which fuel a liberal demand for radical expansion of the state.
The second reason to speculate on a four-party moment is the course of the current presidential campaign, which has been more about the internal struggles of Republicans and Democrats than the differences between the two parties. In each party, the source of division is an ideologically purist voter “base” (left-wing Democrats, right-wing Republicans) fed up with what it perceives to be the past corrupt compromises of the party “establishment,” which allegedly takes its votes for granted.
To be sure, this dynamic is especially pronounced on the Republican side, where the tea party movement against Republicans In Name Only started at the end of the George W. Bush administration. GOP unrest is so advanced even a candidate who isn’t actually that conservative – Donald Trump – has managed to exploit it, probably only temporarily, through sheer force of defiant attitude.
In short, a lot of the energy in politics now comes from those who reject, well, politics, at least politics as we know it. They insist on simple solutions to complex problems – whether it’s Sanders’ call for free state college tuition, paid for by a tax on stock traders, or Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Mexican border, paid for by Mexico.
http://www.nwherald.com/2015/08/13/lane-are-we-headed-for-a-four-party-moment/a6fw8a5/?page=1
The financial transaction tax is not a "simple solution" like Trump's harebrained Great Wall of Mexico. The pre-Civil War party splintering and the 3-pronged Democratic Party of 1948 don't seem like good historical comparisons.
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