If the system breaks, I don’t see one new third party- I see a situation like Israel, where there are numerous small third, fourth, fifth and sixth parties with increasingly narrow, specialized bases.
Trump made his infamous “Mexicans are rapists” when competing for the support of Republican primary voters who generally seemed to find his overt racism refreshing. Would that kind of person believe anything the “dirty liberals” say that doesn’t reinforce their prejudices? I don’t think so. So no, I don’t agree that there was anything the Democrats could have said to slow the Trumpmentum at that point.
A few years ago I would have said that immigration would be a good example of an issue where neither party was representing the popular view because loose immigration benefits elites economically but there has been a lot of focus on the issue recently and the polling doesn’t support such a black and white view. Most Americans believe that immigrants are “taking jobs no Americans want” and much of the public debate has been about the fate of “DREAMers”. Most of us seem to believe that if you grew up here then you should be considered an American.
Also the economic situation is changing. Skilled immigrants are competing for American jobs. I have a Republican friend who likes low taxes but has told me flat out that he will be out of work if more foreign programmers are allowed to work in the US. That, along with the belligerent xenophobia of the GOP base, seems to have pivotted the Republican Party to opposition to immigration (much to the chagrin of some of the donor class I imagine) so that now it is a partisan issue.
The Democrats don’t have the luxury of having a large cohesive base so they have to appeal to different groups. There are plenty of Democratic politicians who display guns and proclaim their devotion to them and there are plenty who speak in favor of restrictions. The party has to balance these opposing interests. I don’t see how “Middle Party” would be any different if it were to have any success. How many pro-gun voters are there that aren’t also the white social conservatives that make up the GOP base?
Third parties should be mocked and jeered in the United States. They exist only as spoilers. The USA Green Party gets most of their funding from Republicans and I’d still like to know how the shitbag Jill Stein gets to meet the president of Russia. This useless woman has only won election to the city council.
Everyone wants a 3rd party, but everyone has their own vision of a perfect party. But, we don’t get the perfect job, perfect house, perfect spouse, or perfect anything.
Any third party would face the same problem the Democrats and Republicans face: to win, you have to build coalitions that include people who have little in common and who don’t like each other.
What platform can anyone put together that could keep 51% of Americans happy?
What we’re seeing now in both parties is… True Believers who don’t want compromise and who increasingly hate their tepid allies even more than they hate their fervent enemies.
To me, that portends MANY small splinter parties, not one big new party.
No I do not believe that could occur. A quick review both platforms reveals significant difference between them and it would take a lot to convince me that enough “democrats” would switch. It’s not possible to reconcile raising workers wages protecting and expanding social security (ostensibly the democratic end-game) with promoting policies that expand business (lowered taxes and changes to collective bargaining). These may be two items on the platform that are different but I’m sure you can imagine more.
This should be no surprise to you, since you phrased your OP with the assumption that only an element of the democratic party might join up with the republican third party. Furthermore, being well aware of the divisions in both parties, (although Dem mostly - I can only guess about what “side” of the republican splinter you have in mind), there are a few inferences to draw from your assumption the idea isn’t something crazy on it’s face.
Follow the money folks, follow the money, or if you perfer Who benifits? There is no real benifit to the business wing of the Republican Party in casting off the “base” however much they may disdain those folk. In a similar note, The Democratic Party is as has been noted on this Board many times, really a center party with a comparatively vocal left wing, there is no benifit in the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party separating from their left wing. It all goes down to the winner takes all.
Since both parties benifit greatly from winner takes all, there is no likelihood of change,
Zuer-coli
Whenever the hunt for Magic 3rd Party comes up, Gary Johnson is mentioned — and I want to start screaming! I think sanity should be a top concern of the new party (a refreshing change from at least one of today’s majors), but Johnson and his policies are the opposite of sane.
I’m not sure whether the Magic Centrist Candidate comes from his own Third Party, or takes over one of the two nominating conventions, but a first step might be a union between one prominent Repu and one prominent Demo. Imagine if the Trump threat were appreciated in time and Romney-Biden had teamed up, as a 3rd party in 2016!?!!! They’d win, especially if Hillary had the grace to bow out. (Oh, God! Let’s not try to figure out if it had gone to the House. :smack: )
Either way, a look at Pew’s seven main types may guide our thinking. In decreasing order of Romney’s 2012 vote, the seven (roughly equal-sized) groups are:
Socially conservative populists (“Trumpist”)
Business Conservatives
Young outsiders (skeptic of gov’t)
Hard-pressed skeptics
Next generation Left (social conservative)
Faith and Family Left
Solid Liberals
Relabeling Pew’s “Solid Conservative” as “Trumpist” is slight poetic license, but justified I think. I imply that a supposedly religious group will support an unusually bald-faced sinner but that’s been proven.
The Business Conservatives are for environmental deregulation, tax cuts on the rich, reductions in the welfare state — policies bad for most Americans. They have relied on support from the easily-misled Trumpists: Romney won both groups by huge margins.
If there were some way to separate the Wall St.-led group from the Trumpists, you win! But is there? One place where these two right-wing groups differ sharply is on Immigration — this was very visible in the GOP debates: Trump vs. Establishment. But the Establishment is smart enough to endorse even Muslim bans if it will keep their base enthused to vote.
Solid Liberals went very solidly for Obama, but about 1/4 the voters in the other two leftist groups voted for Romney. Note that many in the “left” are socially conservative.
This leaves elections up to the two Skeptic groups. No good will come of letting these groups pick a candidate: impetus must come from one of the three politically engaged groups: Solid Conserv, Business, Solid Lib.
(Pew doesn’t show the Clinton/Trump split in these groups AFAIK and indeed is planning a new typology breakdown.)
What I would like to see is Business plus a toned-down Solid Lib making an alliance — it would have to be a centrist (Clinton) rather than a leftist (Sanders or Warren) to make this alliance work. In effect the GOP Establishment was put to the test in 2016. They could go Centrist, perhaps even encouraging Hillary to make Romney VP!! Instead they said the deliciousness of massive tax cuts for the rich, having Pruitt to destroy the environment, and another Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court was too good to pass up: well worth the risk of social meltdown and/or nuclear war.
Another way to win would be to unite the Left and Skeptics with inspiring job-creation plans, but they’d have to low-ball their social progressivism to get enough votes. Some were rooting for Sanders to pull this off, but the Demo establishment preferred to go Blah-furggily-blah on gun control, etc. :smack:
If one places enough weight on environmental/sustainability concerns (this implies a few factors that would affect economy/industry), the last option is the best choice to work in the long term IMO. Drastic reduction in coal usage, considerable expansion of nuclear energy in very well planned areas, mandatory usage of 4 cylinder engines in all areas unless necessary, and a little family planning won’t be popular with everybody but nasty tasting medicine might be the only cure to resource overutilization. After looking up the MW dictionary definition of populism I see that Pew labelled one of his slides wrong.
A viable third party will take extensive grass roots work, not temporarily rallying around a charismatic figure for a Presidential race.
I don’t see it happening anytime soon, despite the gross deficiencies of the two major U.S. parties.
Look for the CGP Grey video on First Past the Post Voting. He explains why it provides the selection pressure that results in two parties.
XKCD has a graphic of the changes in political parties over the decades. I’m not in a position to look up either at the moment. But they’re good.
If you want a genuine third party, that’s what has to happen, but the GOP is making that possible right now. The brand is so toxic that conservatives who aren’t insane or evil might want to have a party not associated with that brand. If the Democrats move far enough to the left, maybe you can rope in a few Bayhs and Liebermans.
I doubt a 3rd party is possible because both the reps and dems have a major stake in keeping the status quo.
Which btw, is part of the reason they didn’t like either Trump or Sanders because they came from outside the party ranks.
Except First-Past-the-Post doesn’t produced two and only two parties in the other countries which use it, as I mentioned in the post just above the post you’ve quoted:
I don’t think it will in the short term, because Trump is just really bad at being President and a terrible person. Policy-wise, he’s not really doing anything that the GOP leadership objects to. It will be interesting to see how the 2020 Republican primaries go. Will Trump be persuaded not to run again? In any case, at some point Trump will leave office and the GOP regulars will take back over; like Perot, Trump doesn’t have the skills or inclination to build a lasting political organization to carry on his, um, “work”.
It might be that the Democrats split into neoliberal and socialist wings sometime in the next few cycles (no way until Trump is gone, though). The moderate wing might be able to draw some of the country club types away from the GOP, which could be a winning ticket in some of the largely suburban states. So then you’d have a middle class party and left- and right-wing populist parties. I agree that the dynamic of the Presidential system would mean that one of them would break up within a few cycles, though.
I largely agree with that. US politics now, among the relatively activist people who vote in primaries, volunteer, contribute, etc. is mainly driven by opposition to the other side. That’s why you’re right it’s unlikely there will be any complete split between ‘moderate’ and Bernie-ite Democrats as long as the GOP looks anything like it does now (or even did before Trump). Same reason the ‘Republican Civil War’ tends to be overhyped. There’s still overall more unity in opposition to the left as manifested not only within the Democratic Party but also ‘elite’ media, Hollywood etc than there is division between conservatives and rightist populists (which is the real divide IMO, not between ‘moderates’ and conservatives).
It doesn’t mean the parties can’t have internal struggles which they are always having. And though I agree Trump himself is not directly a movement builder, besides a movement for Trump, there is more of a split now in the GOP between traditional (in the Reaganite sense) conservatism and rightist populism, especially over the issues of trade and immigration. Maybe call it Bannonism rather than Trumpism. The populists might gain real ground in terms of GOP nominees in 2018 and beyond, whereas in 2016 Trump was pretty much the only Trump(Bannon)-ite running for major office.
But to the extent they do it doesn’t really leave anyplace for conservative anti-populist GOP’ers to go. For example Flake and Corker are conservative anti-populists vocal about the latter point. And what have they done? Quit. Other elected conservatives have and IMO likely will just adapt to and try to co-opt the populist wave in the GOP. Starting a pure conservative party would just help the Democrats. And that’s what many of GOP ‘establishment’ figures hated by the populist base are. Paul Ryan is not a ‘moderate’. He’s a conservative, just a pretty pure traditional Reagan style one, not a Bannon/Trump style rightist populist.
Again IMO a viable third party has to have a distinct popular position on a key issue that the two big parties aren’t willing to take. Gary Johnson has been and will be a fizzle not just because he’s kind of flaky personally. He is, but that obscures the fundamental weakness. He’s basically running on ‘We’re the mushy moderates, we’ll compromise and work everything out reasonably unlike those not extreme Dems and GOP’ers’. That just doesn’t attract a big activist base. Aside also from distinct Lib positions which really aren’t that popular. And it’s not just picking on the Libs. There isn’t IMO such an issue right now. There usually isn’t.
Sign me up!
Emphasis on third parties, first-past-the-post, et cetera really misses the point about America’s on-going political tragedy.
Voters could have three parties to choose from, or seven parties, and it will do no good if they are uninformed.
In the olden days, America had newspapers and TV news shows. But these days, the only valid news shows from America are dismissed by many as comedy :smack: . For print media, with Atlantic Monthly as one notable exception, it is foreign sources like Al-Jazeera, Reuters, or even London newspapers that Americans must turn to be informed.
I’ve been saying for years that I get my news from sources like The Daily Show. Click the link above if you think I’m misinformed or exaggerating.
I felt obligated to click because … well … you know.
Yes, comedians use satire to get some laughs. The idea that they’re more informational or honest than mainstream media outlets is … well … worth an additional laugh.
John Oliver, to name just one satirist, often provides excellent in-depth coverage of important stories. Can you name a “mainstream” news show of comparable informational value?
Just wanted to add that with the lection a few years ago of Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota I was hoping the Reform party would do better but they seem to have gone away.