The time now is perfect for a Third Party to really become a force in American politics. Dissatisfaction with the lack of bipartisanship and the choices the two parties are giving us seems to be at an all-time high.
Yet, despite relatively recent inroads that some third parties have made (the Libertarian Party has sustained consistant growth and continues to win in smaller local elections; the Green Party seems to get more ink than any other third parties thanks to high-profile national candidates; was H Ross Perot really that long ago?), the prospects of having someone other than a Democrat or Republican win a high-ranking national office seems impossible any time soon.
Why?
Is a system that was supposed to have originally been set up to allow all to be players in political races been tweaked throughout history to the point where it is the system itself that prevents third parties from being able to gain equal footing with the two big parties?
Is it the third parties themselves? Despite the fact that there is disatisfaction, do too many third parties preach to a niche market and not not have a message palatable for mainstream Americans or an answer at all for issues that lay outside their niche cause(s)?
Or is it simply the fear of a supposed “wasted vote” or - even worse - that a vote for a third party who does a better job at representing one’s views will cause the major candidate that they least identify with to win (a la the Nader factor)?
I think he means “Dissatisfaction with the lack of adaquate leadership from either major party”. I am also confused as to why thied parties aren’t making much progress in such an atmosphere.
I have been into the idea of “Green-Libertarians” for a while. Merging the Green and Libertarian parties into one party. Tooling the focus of the government toward protecting the environment and protecting people’s personal freedom.
The way I’d see it working as a party is that it supports candidates that suit it’s philosophy regardless of whether or not they aer part of the party. So it could endorse a particular candidate for president for instance, and help with political campaigns, throwing it’s weight to both sides of the issues, and it would be a combination of both the left and the right, bringing together two sides that are culturally lumped together a lot as it is.
It could poach moderates from both of the two major parties.
The two party system ran a lot more smoothly when, say, Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan, were able to compromise on issues. Whereas ever since Clinton, the two sides have been at war. This has led to my dissatisfaction, I can assure you, and I don’t think I’m alone.
(It can be argued that a third voice wouldn’t help that issue, but that’s another thread…)
I think a third party could succeed, but only as a waystation to eliminating one of the two major parties. The U.S. electoral system strongly awards a two-party system. The Reform Party came close.
In 1996, when Dick Lamm was toying with running for the Reform Party nomination, I had high hopes that that would spur a long overdue realignment of the Democratic and Republican parties. Unfortunately, it was proved that the Reform Party was merely a vehicle for Ross Perot’s ego, and my hopes failed.
I certainly think that there’s space at the moment for a third party. But it wouldn’t be the Libertarians or the Greens. Both have shown that ideology is superior than victory to their leadership. And that’s death.
I think the space that could be occupied would be a ‘Middle America Party’ (you can tell I’ve thought about this). One that presents itself as moderate to libertine on social issues yet conservative on fiscal issues. That is entitlement programs can exist but honest accounting and sufficient taxation must be brought to bear to pay for them.
A sufficiently centrist party in this space could end up marginalizing the extremes on both the right and the left and carve out a sufficient position in the middle third to begin winning elections at the state and national level within ten years or so.
Heck, remember, the Republican Party started out as an ‘alternate’ party in the nineteenth century. It CAN be done. But it takes a breakdown in good governance at the national level to open up the opportunity.
Quite frankly, most of the “third parties” that had an effect in American politics- especially in the 20th century- were not the forefront of new paths to the future; they were actually reactionary revolutions trying to prove they still had power.
Which of the following major third-party candidates would you describe as having platforms that were later co-opted by the major parties?
1992 & 1996: The Reform Party, with protectionism and anti-NAFTA being its major plank
1980: John Anderson attempting to turn the Republican Party away from Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority
1968: George Wallace attempting to uphold segregation and keep a non-Republican conservative party alive in the South
1948: Strom Thurmond attempting to uphold segregation and keep a non-Republican conservative party alive in the South. Likewise, Henry Wallace attempting to appease the Soviet Union, deny the threat of Communism, and radically expand the New Deal.
I don’t kid myself for a second that these issues can be disconnected.
Entitlement spending is sky high, and a good chunk of the growth of it is due to those “libertine” values you seem to favor. Divorce and out of wedlock births have cost the country dearly, and it certainly wasn’t conservatives who advocated making either one easier.
I think it less likely we will see a successful third party now, than before the party reallingments after the Civil Rights laws.
The two parties became more clearly liberal and conservative, when the Demo’s lost the South. So there is less possibility of cooperation. Since every major issue position of one will be opposed by the other, how does an issue arise that could lead to a third party. One party or the other would have already taken that position.
One generally needs organization and money to win a major office. Those two factors encourages a clear and dependable choice along existing party lines.
There will never be a successful third party. There doesn’t need to be. The system works because two parties tend to force each other towards the middle (“middle” being the average political views of most Americans). If either party strays to far from the middle, they will lose votes to the other.
Third parties are actually counterproductive since they are usually a reaction to one party straying to far from the middle yet suck votes from the other party.
If you support a third party, chances are your politics are too fringe for the rest of the country. If their platform had any support, it would have been co-opted by one of the major parties.
A first past the post electoral system tends to lead to two parties. However with FPTP elections and a parliamentary system you can sometimes have a few parties (see Canada or the UK.)
But given the structure of the United States government a third party could not survive. Third parties have historically came up when one of the current parties is dying, and eventually that third party absorbs the departing party.
There’s also some more political reasons a third party wouldn’t succeed in America. The Democrat and Republican parties are both “big tent” parties in that they both encompass a wide range of views. In general the Dems basically include EVERYONE who is middle left to somewhat far left to people who are left-leaning moderate or generally moderate, the Republicans include basically everyone who is middle to somewhat far right to people that are right-leaning moderate or generally moderate.
So the only positions that fall outside the big two parties tend to be economically extreme left (socialists/communists) or extreme right economically (unrestricted markets etc.) And then the social extremists like the extreme libertarians/extreme authoritarians. As extreme positions these don’t garner much support at large in the U.S.
In other words, the US is a fine example of a “big tent” system (a system under which coalitions are made within a party rather than between parties). Anglo-Saxon parliamentary systems also exhibit big-tentism, and consequently have feeble third parties.
The common alternative is something like a European PR system, under which there are several distinct parties but they have to form coalitions with each other to have any chance of affecting policy.
That is overly simplistic. The Libertarians get members from both parties as converts - Republicans who deplore the fiscal irresponsibility and erosion of civil liberties of their party, Democrats who want a lot less government and for people to handle social issues instead of taxes. If the dissatisfaction grows enough and someone finds that they don’t fit into any particular party, a third party should be a viable option - except that isn’t happening. Instead people are gritting their teeth at the voting booth.
Yes – but at present, the Democrats in Congress, or at least a substantial number of them, often support and controversial important Republican projects, like the war – and the tax cuts, I believe. That’s too much bipartisanship. There’s not enough dissent within the two-party system.
But eight parties are represented in the British Parliament, four in Canada, four in Australia, and eight in New Zealand. (New Zealand has proportional representation, but had four parties represented even before switching in 1996.) No other country of any size is dominated by two parties to the exclusion of all others.
Why is this? Because we not only have “big tent” parties, but we nominate their candidates through wide-open state-run primaries in which anyone can vote. There were viable third-parties in Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century America–Free Soil, Know Nothings, Greenbackers, Populists, Progressives. Since the advent of the state-run primary, zilch.
And so it will remain forever. If Libertarians or Greens ever develop a widespread following, their candidates will start winning Republican and Democratic primaries, not succeeding as third-party candidates.
There are many other factors unaddressed here. I would argue that the costs of candidacy are much lower in the countries you mention. This decreases the coordination problem faced by candidates and parties and allows parties to be “viable” without having to raise stratospheric amounts of money.
Multiple parties are stable in parliamentary systems because a much smaller vote share is required to attain the prime ministership than in presidential systems. It is far cheaper to horse trade in parliament to bring about a stable coalition government with multiple weaker parties than it is to maximize your party’s vote share in every electoral district so that your party gains a majority in the legislature.
For what it’s worth, the early 20th century experiments in Populism, for example, were abyssmal failures. Our first-past-the-post system does not yield a stable equilibrium with more than two parties.