Why the decline in minor US parties post 1950?

If you look at Congressional Elections, it was a pretty normal thing from the 1910s until the 1950s for there to a gaggle of minor party members of congress. Progressive Party, Farmer-Labour Party, Nonpartisan League, Socialist Party, American Labor Party, the occasional Independent, Prohibition Party, etc.

What happened? Was it the Democrats sucking the left-energy out of the room? That didn't seem to be an issue during the New Deal heyday.
 
It was probably part of the same process of nationalization of American politics that turned the two major parties from big-tent coalitions that both included significant left-wing and right-wing elements to more ideologically coherent entities.

As to why it happened when it did... perhaps it was just one of the natural consequences of the standardization of American culture that came with improved communication and transportation infrastructure?
 
A single-turn First Past The Post electoral system mathematically leads to bipartism being the optimal outcome for all competitors*, particularly as, like the above post properly points out, communication improves enough tonpake national campaigns standardized.

* Parliamentary, semi-presidential and presidential regimes with multipartism tend to have either proportional elections or multiple turns to precisely move away from bipartism. Consider the 'primaries' system but more structured and organized with party factions being parties of their very own instead.
 
In part, it was the absorption of minor left-wing parties by the New Deal; for example in Minnesota in 1944 the Farmer-Labor party merged with the Democrats to form the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). By contrast, in Wisconsin, the La Follette Progressives returned to the Republican Party in 1946 (or at least the La Follettes themselves did; many of their followers became Democrats). In New York, the American Labor Party was a victim of the Cold War and the rise of anti-communism. Once the ALP was taken over by the pro-Soviet left in 1944 (anti-Communists seceding to form the Liberal Party) its days were numbered. For a time it had two congressmen--Vito Marcantonio of East Harlem and Leo Isacson of the Bronx. But Isacson's victory in a special election in early 1948 was pretty much a fluke, motivated partly by dissatisfaction with the Bronx Democratic machine and in part by dissatisfaction with Truman's policies, especially in Palestine. (The Communists and the ALP were *very* pro-Israel in 1948. Isacson, though he had Communist support, was no Communist, and broke with the ALP over the Korean War in 1950. But in any event he had already been defeated in November 1948.) Marcantonio remained popular in East Harlem until the day he died, but in 1944 his district had been expanded to include the more conservative Yorkville community, and in 1950 after he came out against the Korean War, a Democratic-Republican combination put an end to his congressional career.
 
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