The subject came up on another thread.
The assertion was made (by me) that U.S. elections are de facto binary choices, even though there are more than one candidate on the ballot.
Various posters disagreed, though I confess I didn't agree with them, they were with few exceptions, at leave somewhat civil about it.
Let us, at the invitation of one such poster who was unhappy with my inability to "understand" how an election with more than one candidate on the ballot could not ever be seen as a binary choice. This poster suggested that I lack an ability to grasp English.
So taking her seriously I will attempt to explore that possibility.
First, let's look at the word (borrowed from Latin) "de facto". What some may not know is that even if a word is Latin it can also become part of the English lexicon.
English has a long, rich history absorbing words from other languages and making them our own. The term "de facto" is one of them. A synonym for that term is "effectively". An antonym would be "literally". If I were to have said that U.S. presidential elections are LITERALLY binary choices, I would have been demonstrating a lack of understanding of English.
So in accepting the challenge on that term, I would assert that I used it correctly, since my central point was that even though the choice for president was LITERLLY multiple candidates, the greater point was that since only one of two candidates had any realistic chance of winning, the choice was EFFECTIVELY (de facto) only a choice between the only two candidates who could conceivably win and casting a null vote (effectively equivalent to abstention in the net effect)
So I guess what I would have to ask is whether the poster who questioned my grasp of English really understood the point? Another question might be whether that lack of grasping was due to apathy about reading or understanding the LOGIC of the post, or inability to realize the meaning of "de facto" ?
I feel comforted that I am only echoing what William F. Buckley elucidated many years ago - that there is a profound importance to understanding the difference between a candidate who simply qualifies to be on a ballot, and one that has a reasonable possibility of actually being elected.
So it seems to me that there can be no denying that in a practical (de facto) sense, the statement that U.S. presidential elections are binary choices is 100% true. No third party candidate (outside the TWO principle political parties operating in the USA) has ever been elected nor gotten to within artillery distance of the other two viable candidates.
I realize that for many, even the most basic stipulations of facts are considered controversial. I am prepared to accept that some of those who represent disagreement with basic stipulations may be doing do purposefully to avoid having to admit things that they don't want to admit (for whatever reason). I also realize that when exchanges of opinion are reduced to such minuscule facets of discussion as to whether or not an election is effectively a multiple choice or not, the value of engagement is fairly void. Such people will forever claim disagreement simply out of pure cussedness.