I think that I’ve there ever is a chance for a new party it’s now.
Voter turnout is low. People are very dissatisfied with both parties and congress in general.
The Republicans are running things and doing a bad job of it. The Democrats have become scarier and scarier as they move further left and fume about not being in charge.
IMHO, the best hope of a new party forming would be not from the ground up, but from the top down. Let’s say a group of senators and reps simply decide to break from the Republicans. They are unhappy with spending and know they are going to get killed in the next election anyways, so they form a new party. What’s to stop them?
They can try and bring along a few willing Democrats if possible, but they don’t even need to. If you were able to kick start a party in such a way, the popular support could be built up around it.
They could pick some issues:
Immigration. Controlling the border. National guard. Build a wall.
Go light on the social issues. No extreme right stuff like pro-life rhetoric or other religious issues. Not liberal here, either, though.
This would be a party that would get a lot of support. It’s impossible to get any party build from the grassroots up, IMHO, with our system and voting structure. But, you could kick start such a party from the top.
Yourself excepted, how many people do you think are really scared of today’s Democrats? Nevermind the “further left” stuff- I’ll say it’s highly debatable and leave it at that.
Plenty of mainsteam Americans get scared when they hear Nancy Pelosi speak. The American people aren’t nearly as liberal as the leaders of the Democratic party.
Don’t get me wrong. Generally speaking, I think people are more dissapointed with the Republicans right now. But, the party controlled by Dean, Pelosi and Kennedy running the country? Scary!
The only way a third party could be succesful is if one of the major parties collapsed completely. Except even a collapsed major party still has a lot of power. So the proto-third party people will instead take over the failing major party.
So in the 80s you have southern social conservatives taking over the formerly northern liberal Republican party which was decimated by Nixon. And before that, the Republican party was the party of abolition and reconstruction. How many southern plantation owners are turning over in their graves at the sight of their great great grandchildren become fanatical partisan Republicans?
If the Republicans implode, some wing of the Republican party will take it over and turn it into the new Republican party. If the Democrats implode, some wing of the Democratic party will take it over and turn it into the new Democratic party.
If a third party can’t even elect a governor, or a senator, or a member of congress, how in hell can they expect to elect a president or vice president? Wally Hickel, Jesse Ventura, and Bernie Saunders aren’t on anyone’s presidential shortlist. If a third party can’t even form a majority in ONE state, how can they do ANYTHING?
Answer, they can’t, and this third party talk is just hot air.
You make some very excellent points and really get at what I was looking for in this discussion. I don’t think unity08 will be successful at all. What I am curious about though is that if it will have an impact as far as bringing the more important, less passionate social issues to the forefront.
I expect that Debaser actually believes this, just as BrainGlutton [" :rolleyes: You don’t really live in America at all, do you? Not the same one the rest of us do."] believes that such views are outside “America.” They’re both wrong about the whole, because they know their own parts, & extrapolate from those.
We live in a highly mobile society. People regularly move elsewhere. If you don’t like the local attitudes, you can move somewhere more your style. Further, due to the district-based representation of our election system, there is profound incentive for the would-be politically active to move somewhere where their vote will count. So we now have little pseudo-Americas, where the local majority takes their prejudices to be the “American” norm:
“Those hippie kids? Oh, they all moved away. They were a tiny minority opinion, anyway. One day they’ll grow up, learn how the world really works, & become conservatives, if their brains aren’t fried from drug use. People around here, well, we’re the real America–those big city liberals are just an … aberration.”
“Those backward hillbillies? Can you believe people still think like that? I mean, this is America! I guess if you live in the boonies, you can be protected from reality & hang on to your old-fashioned ideas & provincial prejudices. But here in the real world, you have to grow out of that.”
Its not that the parties dont have differences.Its that the system is set up so huge amounts of cash are necessary to run. The politicians spend a huge amout of time trying to raise money. The corporations and individuals do not give the money without expecting something in return.
Public campaign finacing is the only way to get the system back. Make damn sure third parties get a chance for funds and have a chance to express their views. Return to fair and equal tv time. Regan did away with that and made Fox and Limbaugh possible. Thet do not have to air opposing views
Unity is what we have now. The democrats can not afford to go against the corporations.The repubs are the corporations.
Right, that’s another thing that’s fucked up. It’s based on money, and it’s also based on tv ads. What kind of valuable information has a tv ad ever conveyed. It’s just there to “sway”, ie to affect our psychology, to affect the psychology of people who are not affected by rhetoric and reason. Ie it’s just empty brainwashing-type bs. Of course, the politicians will never fix it because each individual who is in power is there because of that money and wouldn’t want to mess with a good thing. That’s what happened to that campaign finance reform thing passed not so long ago.
Look, I don’t live in a hippie commune. I live in a small farming town called Homestead at the south end of Dade County, Florida, and I might well be the furthest-left person in it. I get my current-events info from the media like everyone else. And nobody who gets any of theirs from any source other than Fox and right-wing blogs could possibly believe the Dems have been “moving left.”
Not exactly, but I’ve known plenty of people who move from, say, Oklahoma to Seattle because Seattle is a lot more accepting of different sexual orientations. Seattle and Washington state have anti-discrimination laws that Oklahoma lacks. But of course, the cultural acceptance of homosexuality is probably a lot larger factor than the legal protection of homosexuality.
Right. I don’t think any Democrat is going to move to another state because it has a better record of voting Dem. In fact, such a Dem might help the party more by moving from a red state to a blue state anyway – but who does, for that reason?
All the political actors that are independently wealthy get together and form some sort of party. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that it’d be too left to be a true moderate party. Ignoring that point, that would have an initial publicy spike, money, and the ability to talk to the public.
They’d have to worry about credibility and carving out/maintaining a niche after that.
I STILL say that this fledgling party, after it gains some hypothetical steam, would get absorbed by the two parties, though.
