Political bickering along party lines is reaching new heights (or lows, if you will) and even within the two parties this is the case: Lefty Dems accuse Obama of not pushing things through fast or hard enough while the splintering of the Republican party between the fiscal conservative/Libertarian folks and the Religious Right is obvious.
The time seems perfect for a third party to emerge, right?
I posit that assuming things don’t improve, either a third party makes genuine headway towards winning elections nationwide and competing with the two parties within the next decade or the system is rigged to the point where it is virtually impossible for a third party to ever get a foothold in American politics.
I an a pessimist who leans towards the latter hypothesis, unfortunately, though I wonder if I am wrong what party would be most likely to make the leap?
I think it’s the Libertarians, actually. Not that I think that Libertaria is a nice place to live (or visit for that matter) it just seems that if you remove the fringe elements of the Libertarian party, the centrist position of the party has the potential to appeal to conservatives who want to take their party back from the Jezoids and lefties who are sick of seeing civil liberties trampled or ignored by both parties.
I still think it’s highly improbable for them as well, just that they seem more likely.
The system is rigged so that no third party can gain a credible foothold in American politics.
Were this any other country a third party would be emerging now because anti-incumbency is so high, Democrats other than Obama are doing so badly, and Republicans are actively fighting an insurgency within their own party. But in a system where voting other than red or blue is referred to as “throwing your vote away,” no one will ever win.
There are dozens of parties and some of them even get a reasonable % of the vote and/or elect some local pols.
The problem is, every one of them is set up to appeal to a narrow band of Americans. So, by design, the’ll never be large.
What America actually needs is a “Middle of the Road” party. This could happen if enough popular pols get tossed by their own parties and run as independents.
There is no chance for a third party because political opinion looks more like a bell curve than a series of peaks. With better polling, each party will adjust it’s platform so it gets as much of that bell curve as they can. You end up with the dems getting one half of the curve and the pubs get the other. For fringe groups like the Libertarians, there just isn’t enough “area under the curve”. They piss off the right with gay marriage and the left with less regulation of business. If there were a large enough group that a 3rd party could appeal to, the 2 major parties would just adjust their positions to appeal to them.
In the end, decisions come down to abortion, gun control, and gay rights. The rest is just minor stuff.
By the way, this article in Time Magaxine from 2007 explains why, if any third party does beat the extremely long odds, it will probably be the Libertarians.
The only way a serious third party will emerge is if there is some major political position that neither the Democrats or the Republicans embrace. And “I’m disgusted with politics” is not going to work - people who are really disgusted with politics aren’t looking to join a political party.
I disagree that the cause for few third parties succeeding in the United States is that the system is rigged.
I find the more conventional explanation more persuasive - that political parties in the US tend to form based on individual issues, and that it’s to the major parties’ advantage to subsume those issues into their platforms.
Political parties are shorthand ways of describing groups of positions. If you favor the Green Party, and if the Democratic Party subsumes the Greens’ platform in its entirety, and if you also happen to agree with the Democrats on a bunch of other issues, why is it rational to vote for the Greens?
Wouldn’t it take something as cataclysmic as the civil rights upheavals of 1945-1968 to create a major shift in U.S. politics, and even then, the Dixiecrats were a mere hiccup?
I’m pretty sure American politics is not currently at that level. The loudmouthery of the internet may make it* seem *so, but I don’t see a lot of gay-marriage proponents getting kidnapped and lynched.
(1) If I remember correctly, San Francisco has nonpartisan municipal elections. So, Democrats have nothing to do with SF (if only they did)! I know, I know, that’s being willfully obtuse, so on to my actual points.
(2) San Francisco has amnesty for illegal immigrants. San Francisco has single payer health care. San Francisco has a carbon tax. San Francisco’s mayor performed gay marriages before they were even legal.
(3) I think that’s a fair sampling of the major issues of the day. Do you see national Democrats actually fighting for any of them?
(4) Democrats are middle of the road. Yes, there’s a very Left contingent in it, but it has essentially no power on the national stage.
(5) Cf. Republicans. Their nutters in Bumblefuck, MS, think global warming is a giant conspiracy. They disbelieve in evolution. After a giant oil spill in the Gulf, a majority of them say it makes them “more likely” to support offshore drilling.* Republican localities petition the Supreme Court to make it so certain titles of the Civil Rights Act no longer applies to them.
(6) Compare this to mainstream Republicanism. There is no difference.
*Note that that crazy fringe you mentioned is very anti offshore drilling; the President of their ostensible party mocks them for it.
The only thing I see out there is a movement by people under 30 to force a balanced budget and a reduction of the debt now, rather than have the whole mess handed to them later. It’d need a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts that would alianise the base of both parties. The proponents would need to be single issue on that, and ignore abortion, guns, and gays. I don’t think it will happen.
This experiment was already done. In 2000 the Demos nominated perhaps the greenest major candidate ever while the Green Party nominated someone whose qualifications, if any, weren’t his “greenness.” Greenies voted Green (with disastrous consequences) in order to “send a message” and “not waste their vote again.” :rolleyes:
There are some issues where both major parties take an unpopular stance; both favor free trade compared with Perot’s popular protectionist party. But lately I think right-wing Republicans, with their anti-immigrant noise, are able to mop up that crowd.
As to parties adjusting to voters’ desires, it sometimes seems to me that voters want stupidity, that parties have indeed become stupider to please voters, but voters want them stupider still.
This is pretty much what current theory predicts - hit-and-run, short-lived parties. Neither party is currently viable. If we define Perot’s party broadly enough to include both of Perot’s runs, then the absolute outer limit for a third party lifespan on the national stage is two election cycles.
The Greens were a bad example for this thread, since you’re right that the environment wasn’t what they ran on during the 2000 election. (I chose them because the name is recognizable.) They were running on a populist anger platform like Little Nemo described - “I’m disgusted with politics.”
In either case, the rise and fall of Perot and Nader’s parties seems to support the idea that major parties respond to issue pressure from minor parties, and not the argument that the system is “rigged”.
Have there been other countries that have traditionally been a two-party system and a third party came to prominence that we can look to? I know shit about the UK but I do know that in their last election, there were three parties that all had solid representation. Has that always been the case?
What about other countries?
Additionally, there were other parties in American history. The Whig party used to be kinda important. Was there a time when the Whigs and the Republicans and Democrats were all viable or did they just get sucked into one party or the other?
The only way a third party could have any realistic chance in the US is if the Constitution were amended so that it only took a plurality of electoral votes to win and not an actual majority.
Canada has always alternated between two major parties (Liberals and Conservatives). The region-specific Bloq Quebecois and leftist New Democrats have never been close to taking power, though since 2004 one or the other has been needed to form a coalition.
