Challenge: Destroy the 2 Party System

Simple: No World War I. The Socialists displace the Democrats as the nation's second largest party, and the Democrats turn into a weird mix of classical liberals and racists until most of the racists fold into the GOP to keep the Socialists out of office.
 
Ah, thanks guys. This has been great so far, keep it up. Someone should post a timeline of sorts next for it perhaps.
 
Hmm, here's an interesting scenario.

Imagine if the Quakers become a MUCH bigger group. Probably not possible, but it would be interesting to see.
 
The business plot happens and succeeds, they institute a single-party oligarchy. Ta-Da!


...Oh. Wait. MORE parties... Nevermind.
 
The problem here is that the formation of a consequential new party is likely to shake-up the other parties, potentially sparking a merger of them, or producing some other configuration of two. Take for example, the rise of the Republicans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The advent of the GOP led to the final demise of the Whig remnants. The only real chance I see of a viable arrangement wherein there are more than two parties of consequence in the country, short of radically remaking its insitutions, would be to have one party with a hands off approach to social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.) and a hands-on approach to economics on the left, a hands on approach (or, at least communitarian) on social issues coupled with a hands on approach to the economy, and a third party either taking a hands off approach to both social issues and economics, or which is socially conservative, and very pro-Market otherwise.
 
Well, of course this would mean radically changing parts of the Constitution. The whole point of this is to change the US government to allow for more than two parties a reasonable chance of getting the President's seat, in this case at least four.
 
This is something I've been thinking about in relation to a game in Shared Worlds, but maybe you could transform the two party system into a two coalition system within which are several parties, representing geographical areas as well as ideological factions that you currently seen ITTL.

This could be brought about by formal splits in the House or Senate (like the SDP breaking off from Labour in the UK) who then are forced back together by electoral arithmetic or "staying together for the kids sake" or an insurgent third party like the Populists allying with the Democrats at its height rather than just getting absorbed in.

You could possibly also try and engineer something similar to the CDU/CSU in Germany. There, the Christian Social Union only contest Bavaria whereas the Christian Democratic Union contest all the rest of Germany. They're very ideologically similar, never contest against each other, always caucus with each other whether in government or opposition but they're still technically separate parties. I know that's probably not what the OP has in mind but that kind of division could lead to greater ideological deviation later, even if they remain joined at the hip.

Obviously, this is in addition to everything all ready said about getting rid of the EC etc. al. Also, if you could get IRV implemented for the Senate, House and Presidential elections during the Progressive Era would help enormously.
 
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