I care, but I care more about whether they can do the job and their honesty. If you prefer an incompetent, corrupt President who is better on workers issues, that’s stupid, because he ends up doing damage to the cause he supposedly champions. Which I think both parties’ supporters should have internalized by now given the last two administrations. Presidents that fail to get the job done damage the cause. Competence and honesty are far more important than ideology.
I certainly would prefer an incompetent, corrupt liberal president to a president who competently executes a right-wing, hawkish, Christianist policy. Easy choice.
Of course, I don’t believe Obama has been either incompetent or corrupt, so I don’t believe your analysis holds water (but this is just a difference in opinion). He’s done more to advance certain liberal causes like improved health care and gay rights than any president in decades, if not ever, and he’s avoided ground-war entanglements. A supposed “competent” McCain presidency would have resulted in thousands more dead Americans, no health care law, and less progress on gay rights, among other things.
Yet arguably the liberal cause has been set way back by his Presidency.
Certainly not the liberal causes of health care, gay rights, and not getting involved in foreign ground war entanglements, among other things. Those have been advanced quite a bit – the first two have probably been advanced more than any time in decades (or ever, for gay rights).
In general a 3rd party simply will not win with the electoral system we have. It’s constructed in a way that makes that impossible. THAT is easily the biggest obstacle. That said, that really applies more to party success in general and not to any one specific race. I could see a non-zero chance of a 3rd party winning 1 major election (and pretty much nothing else) with a perfect storm of celebrity, money, buying into debates somehow, etc.
Dwight Eisenhower was the embodiment of the outsider the OP was thinking of. After WWII, everybody wanted him for President. As a career military man, he had no known political affiliations and had made no general policy statements on the big American problems. Both the Democrats and the Republicans seriously pursued him, and both seriously thought they could get him as standard-bearer. The consensus of historians, from what I’ve read, is that the Democrats never truly had a chance - he was temperamentally Republican, but that wasn’t obvious at the time. He played it very cagily.
He could have become President in 1948. Don’t forget that was the rare election with two powerful “third” parties, Strom Thurmond’s States’ Rights Democratic (or Dixiecrats) and Henry A. Wallace’s Progressive/American Labor. They only got a total of 5% of the vote, but Thurmond won four southern states. An independent Eisenhower candidacy might have turned the entire election upside down. Probably any Republican, even Taft, could have won in 1952 but once Eisenhower got the nomination, his election was assured.
1948 is before my lifetime. For my whole life, therefore, there has never been another American in Eisenhower’s position. Colin Powell was talked about as he were the second coming of Ike but that was always fantasy, and he knew it. Outsiders can’t win. Ross Perot was equally a fantasy, a protest vote in polls but a laugh on election day. (Yes, I know how high a percentage he got. How many electoral votes was that?) Mark Cuban? Bill Gates? Michael Bloomburg? Fantasy.
2016 will be won by a politician. Fantasy should be left to George Railroad Martin. (Does anybody still call him that? They used to, several decades ago.)
I’ve got a better term: Democrat. :dubious:
N.B.: The same messaging could support a platform of (economically) left-progressive content – which, I contend, would have at least as much voter appeal (so long as social/cultural issues were downplayed). The people want a chance to really vote against the power of the plutocrats, and a libertarian POTUS would be no threat at all to the plutocrats.
The third party would have to identify and champion a sizable constituency that was being largely ignored by both of the two existing major parties.
So, what’s the sizable constituency that’s being largely ignored by both of the two existing major parties?
The middle and lower classes – at least, both parties are largely ignoring their economic interests in favor of upper-class economic interests. Which is nothing new.
Sane conservatives.
Hardline liberals or pragmatic centrists.
Fiscal conservatives that are social progressives. I think we should cut government spending (IMO Dole vs SD was one of the worst SCOTUS decisions. If a law violates the Tenth Amendment Congress can still legislate via pursestrings) and return more power to the states but I also believe in SSM and pro-choice. So what party do I really belong in?
Cutting the size of government is fundamentally irreconcilable with “returning more power to the states”. So unless you decide which of those you want, we can’t decide which party you belong in.
Cut FEDERAL government spending. Let sates and local governments do the tax and spend Keynesian economics
This is not true at all. You may disagree with returning more power to the states, and you may argue it is counter productive to having less government, but in no way is it irreconilable with less government.
OK, so how does one shrink government by giving Big Government more power?
Easy; take all that power/money away from the states and give it to the federal government. Economies of scale mean less spending/personnel overall to provide the same functions and services.
Give greater spending decisions, and more importantly taxing decisions, to local governments. Local Governments are notoriously stingy when they have to locally tax what they locally spend. Having a massive centralised Federal pot of money just encourages every US politician to spend from that central pot and every 2nd voter to believe they can take from this central pot.
Forget about States and Federal Governments for a second. Assume that every single street has its own tax and spend powers. Can you imagine one single street of the US voting in favour of costly diversity programmes for their street? solar subsidies? aid for Pakistan? a nuclear bomb? No, me neither. Well, I can think of a few areas but not that many. What about this streets voting to spend money on handsomely paid government advisors? bureaucrats? Or, paying for U2 to appear at the inauguration of the Street Mayor every four years? Such spending decision just wouldn’t happen at local street level. Now, substitute street level for State level. The same stingy side of voters appears, but is admittedly watered down. There is a reason big government proponents want centralised government, it is no coincidence that they are against local tax and spend decisions. I am not suggesting it’s beneficial to have all taxing and spending decisions at such a localised street level, just that the more local level you get to the tendency is for voters to demand less waste, less spending and subsequently less taxation.
Voters are surprisingly stingy when they see their own money wasted. They are less stingy when they mistakenly believe its other peoples money being wasted. The most important part of States rights is the taxation aspect. As far as possible local or State government must spend from its own taxation pot not from a from Federal Government pot of money. Its not only more power you are giving big State government but more responsibility.
That would be an argument against decentralization.