A moment’s thought should reveal that a level playing field is impossible and absurd. There are 300 million people in this country, and each of them has slightly different political views. Most of them, if you were to ask them who they’d ideally most like to see as President, they’ll answer “me”. If we had a truly level playing field, then any of those folks could end up as President. And most of them are folks who you really wouldn’t want to hold any power.
But then your next sentence:
Well, there you go un-leveling the playing field again. But you’re not even doing so consistently. If you want people who are doing things differently than they’ve ever been done before, then you can’t get experienced people. Experienced people, by definition, are the ones who are doing the things the way they’ve been done before, because they were the ones doing them. It’s the entirely reasonable desire for experience that causes the system we have now: You get experience as a Republican or as a Democrat, and then you get elected yourself as a Republican or a Democrat.
In answer to your question, Nica, a real, lasting third-party presence in America (not a third party that simply becomes the second party, like the Republicans did originally) would require systemic electoral reforms:
It is possible to have a kind of multiparty system without these things, but, as the UK’s Liberal Democrats and Canada’s New Democrats have learned, it ain’t nothin’ near to easy.
I live in Massachusetts. Here is our congressional delegation. By national standards every single one is at least left, and some are certainly hard left.
Niki Tsongas
John Tierney
Ed Markey
Michael Capuano
Stephen Lynch
Bill Keating
John Olver
Richard Neal
Jim McGovern
Barney Frank
I am to the left of almost all of them, politically. Doesn’t mean I can’t recognize an abuse of the language. If most of the voters in the country are anti-union (by whatever definition of anti-union), and a politician is pro-union (by the same definition), that makes him left wing in the national context. It doesn’t make him a right-winger because you or I are even more pro-union than he is. Or because by Australian standards he is positively a Nazi.
No, something else. Ross Perot already tried that, and found the “genuine desire of the people” is easy to get to some degree, but much harder to get to a plurality or majority degree. Dissatisfaction is widespread, but there no American consensus or majority for major change in any particular direction – the moment you announce the actual content of your revolution you start losing votes.
I deliberately didn’t go to Sanders and Kucinich, because that is the silly trap Czarcasm is setting that completely evades the point. Yeah, these guys are guys who are closest to me politically, at least in domestic economic policy. Higher and much more progressive tax rates, single provider, a much larger social safety net, a real carbon tax, etc. But in the US context that makes me just as much hard left as Bachmann is hard right. It doesn’t matter that I think Bachmann is loony and Sanders is not. Across the US more people probably think that Sanders is nuts than Bachman.
Defining right and left with you as the center is silly enough. But not as silly as expecting everyone to agree with you. Otherwise you are just changing the generally accepted meaning of the terms “left” and “right”. It is as if you move from St. Louis to Nevada and thinking the Eastern US got a lot larger.
In addition to problems suggested earlier, a big question about a Third Party is: What will its platform be?
If you say Everyone who is dissatisfied with the present two Parties is welcome, you will have a cacophony of opinions that resembles a lunatic asylum more than anything else. Talk to several average Americans who all think America is going in the wrong direction, you’ll get several very different opinions about what the best direction is.
Maybe the Tea Party is the closest fit to what you’re looking for. I think (and hope) it will be something of a flash-in-the-pan, but at least its supporters have a more-or-less consistent agenda, albeit from one of the nuttier wards in the asylum.
Based on this year’s update to the Pew Political Typology, I think you may be mistaken on that point. At any rate, “Solid Liberals” significantly outnumber "Staunch Conservatives.
With respect to whether American politics is to the left or right of the general public, the report on this page suggests that the 18 through 34 age brackets are the most disenfranchised, while this shows youth leaning pretty solidly towards the Democrats. I suppose it’s not assured, but if youth turned out to vote in higher numbers, you’d likely have politics shift to the left.
LOL I actually suggested this on a different message board I hang out upon.
I pointed out that town in the Carolinas [?] that had nobody run for mayor. I pointed out that the way to get weed legalized would take a change in the political population of our upper government and the way to infiltrate it is to start running for office at the local level and working your way up. If you actually look at old style politicians, they started running at the town level, then going for either governor or state level representative offices, then making the jump to federal level offices.
I think the right very charismatic set of people with heavy financial pockets could manage to get a very solid bunch of people on the legalize medical weed platform jacked into offices and in about 10 years be very viable on the national level. It would be a struggle, but would prove very interesting. I do think it is time to try and make some changes in how our government does certain things, perhaps even get rid of the electoral college and try to get some sort of mandatory voting in [like australia]
[what can i say, i feel that if you have a representative form of government, people should actually participate, and it should actually represent the wants and needs of the people, not businesses.]
Suppose you were an independent sort of guy, who wanted to get into politics to change things for the better. You don’t belong to either major party, you don’t give a shit about either major party, parties are meaningless to you, you just want to change things. Let’s say that you’re intelligent, charismatic, attractive, good at public speaking, and so on, all the minumum requirements to be elected to office.
So what’s your next step. You don’t care about the Democratic party, you don’t care about the Republican party, so you run as an Independent, right? Wrong. You pick whichever party comes closest to your political platform, or whatever party is strongest in your locality, and join that party. And then you run as a Republican or Democrat. Because if you win a major party primary, you’ll have a solid bloc of voters who’ll vote for you just because you’re a member of one party or the other.
But the major parties don’t represent your thoughts! They’re too this, too that, and not enough whatever! But that doesn’t matter. Because in the American system, the parties don’t control the candidates, the candidates control the parties. Look at Joe Lieberman. Here’s a guy who’s a conservative, who came within an eyelash of being John McCain’s running mate. And he was a Democrat. Why? Because Conneticut is a Democratic state, and if you wanted to get elected to office you ran as a Democrat.
And what this means is that any potential candidate who has a chance at getting elected is already a member of one of the two major parties. Not because they agree 100% with the Democratic party platform, or the Republican party platform, but because to get elected you need the support of a major party.
Oh, there are exceptions. Jesse Ventura became Governor under the Reform Party. Bernie Sanders, independent. The aforementioned Joe Lieberman, who lost the Democratic primary and turned around and ran as an independent and won. Wally Hickel became governor of Alaska under the Alaska Independence Party, and five minutes after he won rejoined the Republican party.
And what do all these examples show? That there is absolutely no advantage to any politician to belong to any party except one of the major parties, and anyone with any smarts who wants a chance at getting elected will invariably join one of the major parties. And this means that only losers and sideshow freaks try to run under a third party, because only the major party candidates have a chance. Self-fulfilling prophecy. If you weren’t a sideshow freak, why would you run as a Libertarian or whatever? If you were a normal person, you’d run as a Democrat or Republican, because you’d want a shot at actually winning, and therefore nobody worth voting for would run under a third party.
And this is due to our system of winner take all. If you win the election, you’ve won. It doesn’t matter if the other side got 49% of the vote, they don’t get 49% of the vote in congress, they get zero and the winner gets 100%. It doesn’t matter if Libertarians get a solid 10% of the vote all over the country, they’ll win nothing unless they get a few 51%'s. A political party that appeals to 10% of the electorate is worse than useless, because all it can do is siphon off voters who might vote for the major party candidate who is a bit closer to their views, thus guaranteeing the victory of the candidate who is farthest from their views.
So even if the Democrats/Republicans don’t represent your views–you’re a socialist, believe in civil rights for robots, want to return to the gold standard, want to ban automobiles, whatever–you’d still run as a Democrat or Republican, who happens to feel strongly about civil rights for robots. Starting a Roboticist Party would be an exercise in futility unless there’s a majority of your consituency who favor Robot Rights, and both the Republicans and Democrats both oppose Robot Rights. Except, who cares if the national Democrats oppose Robot Rights? You can run as a Democrat who happens to be pro-Robot rights, and win an election and vote for Robot Rights even though everyone else in your party votes against them.
If you tried that in a Parliamentary system, you’d be sacked, if a party member doesn’t vote the party line, they’re kicked out of the party. A backbencher’s only job is to vote the way the party orders. But this is America, and it doesn’t work that way here. So if you care about Robot Rights, you don’t need to start that Roboticist party, you just need to convince major party candidates to support Robot Rights. In fact, it would be counterproductive to form a Roboticist party.
Not necessarily. It depends on the subject and on the size of the revolt, by and large.
Anyway, what it would take is a gamechanger. It’s not enough to have shittons of money, or be a very electable candidate. You’d need to have either a total collapse of the current system, or some amazing, super-genius hero who runs rings around other politicians and governments. It’s not going to happen bar a total upset to the way things are.
But if you were a supergenius politician, you’d never run as a third party candidate. Instead, you’d choose one of the major parties, and turn it into your private political machine. As I said before, the parties don’t control the politicians, the politicians control the parties. So if you’re an ambitious politician (that is, one who wants to actually win an election), you join a major party and put the party to work for you. The major parties have already existing political infrastructure–people who will ring doorbells and stuff envelopes and donate money to you, just because you’ve got a D or an R after your name. If you run as an independent, you’ve got to built that machine from scratch.
Take a look at Bernie Sanders. OK, he’s an independent. But functionally, he’s exactly the same as a left-wing Democrat. The Democrats treat him as a Democrat, they don’t run against him or raise money against him. He caucuses with the Democrats. He’s an independent in name only.
What advantage does Bernie Sanders gain from not being an official member of the Democratic party? None. And so, is anyone else going to look at his career and say to themselves, “There’s a great model for how to win elections”? No, because while Bernie Sanders may be able to win elections with one arm tied behind his back, very few other people want to volunteer to give themselves that handicap. Especially at the start of their political career. Or at the middle of their political career. Or at the height of their political career.
Bernie Sanders proves that it can be done. It is possible to win as an independent. He also proves that winning as an independent doesn’t solve anything.
How does that help anything? OK, you get a guy on the ballot in all 50 states. Well, is he Barack Obama? If you’re really a frustrated centrist, then why would you vote for anyone other than Obama? And if you hate Obama, you’re either a left-wing loon, or you’re a Republican. So where does that leave your centrist party?
And besides, the problem in Government is not because of the goddam President. The problem is Congress. And the problem in Congress is not because we have two irresponsible unaccountable parties. It’s because we have ONE. If you’re really fed up, how about you vote against the goddam Republicans? Wake the fuck up!
There is no constituency for a centrist third party. There is a constituency for far-left parties, and for far-right parties, and for kookoo-bananas crank parties. But for centrists and centrist liberals, there’s the Democrats, and for conservatives there’s the Republicans. There just ain’t a vast swathe of mainstream American political views that don’t get a hearing from the two parties. It doesn’t exist. It’s a fantasy. Whining about the two party system is a distraction, it’s rearranging the deck chairs when the boat is sinking. The problem isn’t that there are only two parties, the problem is that there are a lot of irresponsible idiots who have been voted into office, and the answer is to work to get them voted out of office.
I agree with the others who say the 2 party system is too entrenched. So is the current economic system. I think both would have to collapse before we approached politics in a new way.
The OP encompasses the presidency but it’s not about Obama; that is, I read it as being about the possibility of a third party – one that stays in the game from one election cycle to the next – not a third-party challenge in a single presidential election.