One of the things that doomed Weimar Germany

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61. One of the main reasons the Weimarer Republik failed, and hasn't yet been cited here

It was corrected after World War II, as Adenauer and the rest recognized the problem.

In the Weimarer Republik, every tiny party that got a few votes was allowed representation in the Parliament. Debate time was often taken up and wasted by useless boutique parties that nevertheless enjoyed status that enabled them to stifle and cripple the government. A governing coalition was impossible to assemble. Dozens of parties were represented. One reason the National Socialists of Hitler and Göbbels had any appeal was their ability to claim--not entirely without justification--that nothing ever got done, and that they WOULD get things done. Like with Trump, many voters figured, "well, how bad could they possibly BE?" Twelve years later, when all of Germany was in smoking ruins, they had their answer.

The Constitution of the Federal Republic, brought into being in 1949, mandated by law that NO party getting less than 5% of the vote would be allowed representation in any government--federal, state or city. Fringe parties could organize and exist to their hearts' content (and indeed still do), but they would not have seats in government until they got at least SOME (as in 5%) popular backing.

I think that instinctively, if not consciously, that is the reason that members of the House and Senate as diverse as the Squad and Manchin/Sinema all remain Democrats. Were they all members of tiny boutique parties, they would all be members of insignificant fringe parties that could make noise and stymie votes, but as troublemakers permanently keeping the Democrats from a voting majority. The Republicans haven't overlooked this, either. They haven't split into the Republican Realists and the Republican Crazies, although the split is a de facto reality.

In Germany, 25 years ago, the Greens were looking at the same situation. There were the "Realos (the pragmatists) " and the "Fundis (the strict fundamentalists)." The Realos won out, and the Party became a real force in German politics. They were in the governing coalition for a while (and, next month, soon will be again), and a former prominent demonstrator (Joschka Fischer) was the Green Foreign Minister, eloquently telling Donald Rumsfeld to his face, and on TV, that he hadn't presented any compelling reason why Germany should follow Dick Cheney in the Iraq invasion. The Fundis either faded or went with the former East German Socialists, who evolved from the official East German ruling party, the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) which became the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) which became a large part of a slightly larger tent just called "Die Linke," or "the Left." They are currently in the process of re-enacting their own version of the ending scene of Animal Farm, but are expected to weather the storm.