Says Who - All of them. (Likelihood of Successful Third Party)

Politics & Elections
1

I am socially liberal on many things and prescribe more with the republican platform with regards to economics and foreign policy, generally speaking. More an independent. Have family that are Americans and will be voting.

I believe Johnson will only take votes as Ross Perot did, taking percentages all be they small could decide this. As some have said about Ross Perrot and Ralph Nader .

My question is do you feel Trump by his existence is he wins, that it could actually created a large 3rd party out of this after the elections. Who would have the funds and people to be able to organize their base for the next presidential race and be legitimate condensers.

What are some good names for this third Party?

2

And yes I know about Independent and Green Party. I was referring to a new third party that potentially could compete as a 1st or 2nd position contender.

Sorry I tried to edited this into the above but seem to have missed that pesky edit time frame.

3

No. Note that Gary Johnson’s policies appeal neither to Bernie’s supporters nor to Trump’s supporters.

The result of the election will be that both parties drift slightly toward more populist America-First positions on trade, foreign policy and (at least for GOP) immigration. The GOP will fracture somewhat in the short term, but not on any idealogical grounds, just on the issue of who was sensible enough to jump off a sinking ship.

4

Thread title altered for clarity.

5

Never. Third parties are pathetic jokes and just vehicles for vanity candidacies. The two main parties will continue to change as the issues change, but third parties will remain the laughingstocks they are.

6

Third parties are the pipe dream of those who recognize that the majority of Americans are not completely satisfied with the two parties that currently exist but fail to realize that each such American has an entirely different idea of what sort of third party would satisfy them.

7

I think the idea of Trump going and creating a third party after this election really must be keeping Paul Ryan et al. up at night. Even losing a small part of Trump’s base would really hurt GOP electoral chances, especially in downticket races.

Normally the risk of a losing candidate going off the reservation isn’t that large, since as others have said, third parties don’t have much of a chance to get anywhere. But Trump, and his band of hucksters, don’t really need the party to win. He just needs it to get the attention he craves, and attract enough people to fleece out of their money. So his incentive to form such a party is a lot higher than it would be for most pols.

And Trump does seem to have a pattern of escalating antagonism to the GOP establishment, which I can only imagine will get worse between now and the election and any hope of his pulling out a win disappears. Assuming he isn’t sick of the whole thing after November, I can see him forming a far-right nationalist party to keep the media attention faucet flowing, and to stick it to the Republicans he almost certainly is going to blame his loss on.

8

If/when Trump loses I can’t see him creating a third party. His ego won’t allow him to lose another election. Instead he’ll rant about crooked Hillary and the biased media and claim he would have won a fair election.

9

People keep saying Trump hates to fail, but I don’t really see much evidence of that. He’s had a more or less continuous string of business failures stretching through most of his career, and yet he kept launching new ones. He seems pretty good at convincing himself that his failures are other peoples fault, or were great successes in disguise, and than using those narratives to get increasingly gullible people to fund the next project.

I think his political career may well follow the same pattern.

10

Can you do the same thing for the actual post?

11

And, why the fuck do we want a Third party?

12

This. We could use two different parties, a third won’t help.

13

I doubt Trump has the energy or will to do that. He is 70 and subject to physical and emotional limits like every other human. After a losing 2016 campaign, not only will he probably have no interest or energy for a go-around in 2020, but even his 2016 supporters will be weary of him by then.

14

Historically third parties don’t really become viable. When the parties change, what happens is that one of the two parties crashes, and then a third party becomes a replacement second party. Or a previous coalition splits into two parties.

Ever since the Republican and Democratic Parties became the big two, there seems to be a greater focus on changing the platform to respond to a changing electorate rather than adhering to a core set of beliefs. Since neither “Republican” or “Democrat” actually means anything, it seems they can just change as they go.

The only third party I know of that had an actual appreciable effect on the election is the Bull Moose Party, which was headed by a former president who lost the nomination. Hence the fear that Trump could do that.

At least, that’s what I’ve picked up in my admittedly broad but shallow understanding.

15

I’d like a party with the left’s social liberalism but with more conservative economic policy.

16

Well, fine, but why not mold one of the existing two parties into this?

A third party seems to guarantee gridlock- unless you have strange bedfellows allowing small minorities to control the plurality party in a alliance.

Look at Israel.

17

I thought that’s what we get with the Clinton’s. :confused:

18

What the Cult of Ron Paul and Bernie Bros don’t seem to understand is that we have tried third parties before. They inevitably fold after elections and all but disappear after an election cycle.

And even if they were to somehow succeed, what would be accomplished? A third party would essentially guarantee that nobody would have any majority to accomplish anything on their own at all. You’d effectively have coalition government in which a third (or fourth?) party would have no choice but to work with cross-over voters from other parties in order to achieve their objectives.

The real reason people want third parties now is due in large part to the fact that you have aggressive, well-organized, well-financed minority factions within the larger apparatus of the party and they are extremely effective at obstructionism. And they exist because the voters who vote progressive in major elections take a break and allow the activists to take over in mid-terms, and they also allow activists to take over the state and local elections.

We may whine all night long about the misery that conservatives are inflicting upon the country but the reality is, they understand their political system better than idealistic liberals and centrists do. And that’s because if you are selling the kinds of snake oil bullshit that republicans have over the last 40 years, you kinda have to know everything there is to know about the political system in order to hack democracy - every possible exploit, every security hole, every trick in the book. And that they do, and they do it well.

And the result is that the activists who are selling the snake oil show up to defend their system at the polls. They do a good job of encouraging other right wing voters to vote against their own interests. But more importantly they take advantage of left wing and centrist (independent) ignorance and their unrealistic expectations when they don’t get the magic unicorns they were waiting for when they voted two years prior.

The result is that they leave progressive democrats as a lame-duck party, trying desperately to function as a ruling minority. Progressive and independent voters seem to know that conservatives are wrong on economics and national security, but their apathy leave progressives with no clear mandate and without any ability to achieve anything, the perception of political incompetence begins to fester. “Well shoot man, I voted for Obama and he ain’t done nothin, man! Tired of this crap - we need a third party.”

No, we don’t. We really don’t. We need voters to start being informed and start voting consistently so that we hold a party with terrible ideas accountable and give the other party a chance to actually make good on its promises to voters. California’s already kinda doing that with Jerry Brown and the Democratic super majority. The rest of the country needs to follow suit, like now.

And yes, I am absolutely a partisan on this issue – I am 100 percent anti-republican.

19

I’d be all for a Four-Party System:

Progressives ------- Democrats ------- Republicans ------- Tea-Baggers

20

Isn’t this an accurate description of the Democratic Party? Under Bill Clinton, for example, U.S. economic policy was far to the right of every other developed Western democracy.

Unless by “conservative economic policy” you mean Abolish the IRS, Abolish the EPA, Abolish the FRB, Starve the Beast. Then Gary Johnson is your man, no?