For a political third party to have a genuine chance of capturing the Presidency......

Politics & Elections
81

That’s one administration. And Kansas can always solve their problems by raising taxes back to where they were.

California and Illinois, on the other hand, are one recession away from disaster. They can’t raise anymore revenue and their spending obligations cannot be met except in times of good economic growth, and even when with difficulty.

The next recession will cause them to seek a federal bailout, and defenders of the blue state model will blame the recession, which of course is a totally unexpected event that can’t possibly be planned for and totally not the fault of the blue states.

82

Because people calling themselves “conservatives” put into place crippling ballot initiatives which forbid it. Let those states set sane tax rates, and there’d be no problem.

83

Can’t answer for Illinois but in California the problems are more a function of the budget process where money can be shifted around almost at will.

One of our case studies in my master’s was impacts on California’s education. You know what I learned? As money flows in to the education fund from the lottery or Federal spending, it flows right out again to fund other departments. This leads into a vast amount of money funneled into money pits.

84

THeir tax rates are already among the highest in the nation. It wasn’t conservatives that crippled California. It was the people who decided that the public is not an ATM.

85

Well, apparently they were wrong, then. Since California is, you know, crippled as a result.

86

I guess so. The 2008 recession certainly caught nearly all economists by surprise.

How would it be? The last one wasn’t, it was the fault of a finance-deregulatory climate at the federal level.

87

To get back to the OP: What exactly is the purpose of supporting a “third party” candidate?

Like, what is that supposed to accomplish that electing a decent Democrat, or decent Republican couldn’t?

A “party” that just elects one person to one office isn’t a party. It is an independent candidacy, not a third party candidacy. For a real third party presidential candidate there’d have to be an actually existing third party. A charismatic billionaire celebrity that creates their own organization from scratch doesn’t make that organization a third party.

Take, for instance the Reform Party. For a few minutes it looked like the Reform Party might have turned into a real party. But it was always an organization to facilitate Ross Perot’s presidential ambitions, and once those were over the Reform Party disappeared.

But let’s not quibble about that. Third party/independent candidates for president don’t make much sense. Suppose you’re a charismatic billionaire celebrity who wants to become president. What’s the simplest way to accomplish this task? By winning the major party nomination of whichever party is most congenial to you, and then winning the general election as the standard-bearer of the new and improved major party. If you can’t even win the Democratic or Republican nomination, how the heck are you supposed to win in the general election?

Even if there exists a white knight who can ride into Washington and clean up the swamp, why does it help that this white knight is not a member of either major party? Why does it help that this white knight has no fellow party members in the legislature? The presidential elections are already about the particular candidates, the candidates define the agenda for the party. If the white knight cares about issues X, Y and Z that are neglected by both parties then they bring those issues up during the election. You think Karl Rove is sitting there waiting to cut the Republican candidate’s mike the second he starts talking about issue X?

The OP imagines everything backwards. That the problem is the fault of the major parties, and therefore we need someone not affiliated with either party. But the major parties consist of officeholders and operatives and voters. If the problem is that the voters keep electing Republicans, then how is a candidate on the ballot that’s not a Republican supposed to help? If the problem is that there’s this great person who could solve our problems waiting in the wings, except they can’t get elected because they don’t have a D or an R after their name, well, that doesn’t make sense because a person can join a party simply by saying “I’m a Democrat” or “I’m a Republican”. There’s nothing stopping a supposed “centrist but fiscal conservative but social liberal” from just running as a Democrat or a Republican, because guess what, we already have one of those, he’s the President right now and he’s a Democrat.

The problems our country has are too big to be solved by a white knight. In fact, no country’s problems can be solved by a white knight. And if you’re a charismatic billionaire celebrity who thinks you can solve the country’s problems by being a good person, and then you decide you can’t join one of the major parties and wrestle it into submission and turn it into the kind of party you want it to be, then you’re exactly the person who won’t be able to actually govern the country.

The president isn’t the national mascot. They have to appoint officeholders, sign or veto legislation, conduct foreign policy, command the military, and on and on. If a Democrat can’t appoint appropriate people to run the Defense department, or the FBI, or the State dept, and so on, what makes an independent president suddenly able to make the right decisions? That they aren’t hamstrung by their own party? Except being held back by your own party only matters if you care about not annoying them. And in actual fact the president is the leader of their party, not the other way around. A president’s appointments have to pass the Senate, if they can’t even get their own party onside to support their appointee, how would that be easier if they didn’t even have a party to get onside?

And on and on. When a major party president wants something done, they get their team in order, then sell it to the country, and either override the opposition or get the opposition to support the program. An independent president doesn’t have the advantage of a home-team who can be counted on to support them just because they’re a member of the home team. And if the Republicans automatically oppose the president just because he’s a Democrat, you think they’ll roll over on their bellies if he’s not? Or if the problem is that Republicans will vote against anything the Democrats propose, no matter how reasonable, just to be obstructionist, then how about we stop electing so many Republicans?

If the new president’s proposals are so popular with the country that the two major parties won’t dare to oppose them, how does this change just because the president himself is a member of one of the parties?

Or to put it a shorter way, if a white knight charismatic billionaire celebrity with a hankering to become president appears, and they decide not to win over one of the major parties to their side, then they’re an idiot have no chance of actually becoming president. Why couldn’t Ross Perot have run as a Democrat, or as a Republican? Because he had no chance of winning either primary? Why was that, if the country is clamoring for what he had to offer? Even if you’re just treating the presidential run as an extended media campaign in favor of your pet issues, why can’t you do that in the party primaries?

88

Speaking as a progressive/social democrat, I’d say it is because a lot of things need doing that no Republicrat however decent would do.

89

So they won’t do it BECAUSE they’re a Democrat–being a Democrat somehow corrupts them, like a ring of power? Or is it that they won’t do it, and therefore being a Democrat in no way compromises their beliefs?

Your contention that no Democrat could advocate your pet progressive issues is simply nonsense. These issues don’t get advocated because very few people hold these beliefs, and those that do are usually the type of crank that couldn’t get elected janitor.

There is no ideological litmus test that one must assent to in order to join the ranks of the Democratic party. You can hold any positions, advocate any policies, and you’re still allowed to put a D after your name. You don’t have to read the Democratic party platform, and sign your name at the end in order to call yourself a Democrat.

It’s not like there are dozens of qualified “progressives” out there just wishing they could somehow be elected to office, but the mean Democrats won’t let them in the club. You know how you join the club? By being elected to office. That’s what puts you in the club. Calling yourself a Democrat doesn’t mean you can’t believe in whatever crazy hobbyhorse you can think of. However, believing in crazy hobbyhorse policies might make you unelectable, whether you’ve got a D after your name or an I.

Again, it’s the belief that you can’t in good conscience join one of the major parties, because it would twist and corrupt you, that makes the independent candidate such a useless ninny. It’s the fact that you believe this that makes you unfit for office, not the actual silly policy beliefs you have. There are Democrat and Republican officeholders with every whackjob belief you can think of. Again, what makes you part of the club is getting elected. Convince the voters, and you can advocate anything you like. Sure, if you’re a socialist or whatever then the state or national party isn’t going to help you over the “centrist” nominees. But if you win the primary, and you’re not an obvious basketcase in the general election, what are they going to do? Stay home?

Bullshit. Winning office is the point of the parties, they’ll back you if you win and dump you if you lose. Yes, it’s circular logic, but that’s how it works. You have to look like you can win before you can win, and if you look like you’re going to lose then good luck because you need people to think you can win.

90

Apparently. Or else the party at present is so structured – and so dependent on big-money donations – that no sincere progressive, no one who might really be an existential threat to the plutocracy, would ever have a serious shot at the nomination. Kucinich sometimes runs, but even he knows that’s only a gesture. I see only two ways around that: A third-party/independent bid, which never works; or the progressives taking over the Dems like the Teabaggers have taken over the Pubs, which might work. The people really do want a chance to vote against the plutocracy, for real.

91

It would take a real superstar. . . like, if somehow Bill Clinton had lost to Bob Dole after his first term, and then came back as a third-party candidate the next election, he would have had a chance. . . something like that. . . and no, there is no one like Bill Clinton or Teddy Roosevelt around to do it.

92

There would have to be near Civil War in the streets, with the Big Two obviously to blame.

93

“Tax and Spend” is not inherently fiscally irresponsible as long as you’re committed to doing both in equal measure. In an ideal world the Democrats would say “Here’s how much government you say you want, here’s what it’s gonna cost you.” The Republicans would respond, “Here’s how much you say you’re willing to pay, here’s the government you’re gonna get for it.” Neither side really does that now.

94

Right, but why can’t alt-Bill Clinton get the Democratic nomination this time around? He’s been frozen out somehow? Back in the old days candidates were picked at the convention, and it was possible for a candidate with a decent shot from the voters to get screwed by the guys in the smoke-filled rooms, and then go on to run an independent candidacy despite losing the party nomination.

But that’s not the case today, alt-Bill would have to lose the Democratic primaries. How does he come back from losing the Democratic primaries to running against the person who beat him? The only way for this to work would be if alt-Bill could expect substantial crossover voters from the Republican side, who’d vote for him instead of the Republican.

This sort of thing can happen when a party somehow ends up nominating a super-extreme wingnut/crook, and a centrist white knight jumps in because the party nominee is so unappealing to everyone except the extreme party base. The only way the white knight can win is by overshadowing the other party’s nominee. That’s not very likely to happen in a modern presidential campaign.

95

This is why it would be much more likely for the independent to be a Republican. We have a history of nominating the person least likely to win a general election. The only other situation I could think of is if Al Gore ran in 2004 and didn’t get the party nomination.

Of course someone could take a George Wallace approach and throw it into the HOR and hopefully win on a vote of the states but that’s highly unlikely. Let’s say they run on a anti-immigration platform and win CA, AZ, NM, TX and FL That’s 147 EV but at best 5 votes in the House.

96

I agree with this – for a PARTY to have a chance, they’ll have to have more legitimacy than one presidential candidate.

However, it conceivable that some self-financed extremely rich person, with the smarts and discipline to hire and listen to sharp political operators, could craft and image that could be electable. Extremely unlikely but possible. Something like a Ross Perot who never makes comments leading lots of people to think he’s off his rocker. Or even a Mitt Romney who didn’t have such an extensive history of being on every side of every issue and lying about it.

The biggest reason why this scenario is unlikely is that a candidate that smart and that rich could buy his way into either party, end up with a nomination in a few years, and have a much better and cheaper shot at the Presidency than they would be going independent.

97

Yeah, so it would require someone who was rich, smart, disciplined, and genuinely interested in pursuing an independent/third-way set of policies–and subverting the two-party system in the process.

Quite a dream!

98

And it’s getting worse.

99

It’s hard for me to sympathize for the majority of Kansans who re-elected Brownbeck after four years of disaster. I’m VERY sorry for the Kansans who voted Democratic, but I think Kansas is about to learn a very hard lesson, a lesson that needs to be learned.

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” - Benjamin Franklin

Perhaps the people of Kansas will serve the rest of the red states through their hard-won knowledge. But I doubt it.

100

Also, while the House chooses the President from the three with the most Electoral Votes, the Senate is limited to the top two for Vice President, presumably to guarantee that if the House got into a deadlock, the Senate’s choice would be “acting President” in the meantime.

And what, exactly, was Dwight Eisenhower’s “high office” before he was elected in 1952?

However, I think a third party Presidential candidate needs the support of enough members of Congress to have the semblance of being able to do something; otherwise, the President would be head of government in name only.