A funny thing happened on the way to this forum…about eight sudden deadlines raised their ugly heads, I had two genuine home crises to deal with, and the Ethics Alarms runways are packed with backed -up ethics issues. The week also featured “The Attack of the Banned Commenters,” WordPress glitches, and more. Meanwhile, last week’s forum is still bumping along, and I haven’t had time to read any of it.
Today is devoted trying to organize the rationalization list into a book outline (finally!), catching up here, there, and everywhere, and sending good thoughts to the Red Sox, who are in San Francisco where all sorts of bad things could happen to them before they even take the field tonight.
What do you want to talk about—respectfully, civilly, perceptively?
Ethics Alarms 
I know EC mentioned a third-party he supports that is trying to delivery actual solutions and gain trust, so I guess I just have a general question sparked from this.
What chance does a third party have? It seems we’ve calcified into a two-party system for the past 160 years. However, I’m not as well-versed in American history as I’d like to be, and I don’t know all the details behind how various older, defunct parties came and went. I’d love to hear what others think about a third party coming along and actually supplanting either the Democratic or Republican party. What would need to happen to actually give such a third party something higher than snowball’s chance in Hell? I for one think the general populace is entrenched enough in either supporting one of the two current parties, or seeing the other party as the only viable way to stop the party viewed as too dangerous to keep in power, for a third party to have any viability.
The only reason a 3rd party can’t take over is because of the idea that they can’t take over. I think 1/3 of the population is registered as unaffiliated, at least that is true in my state. I think both parties should go into the history books for their sub par selection of candidates, along with their questionable business practices, but since the majority truly thinks a 3rd party is not a viable option, it makes it true. The other parties on the ballot don’t even take themselves seriously as contenders.
The numbers of unaffiliated voters would probably be higher if states didn’t have closed primaries. I am only registered to a party because I cannot vote in the primaries without registering. I’m thoroughly sick of both parties crap. Competition might do both parties some good, whether a third party can win or not.
“I’m thoroughly sick of both parties crap.”
Same $#!t, different piles…
We think a 3rd party would have a chance because we think that the 1/3 or more of unaffiliated and uninterested and disgusted voters would all rally to a single challenging new party. But that doesn’t make sense. There will always be the uninterested. And my guess is the large majority of the disgusted or unaffiliated have their Democrat / Republican leans that would preclude them joining each other for some other party.
What chance does a third party have?
None. Next question.
Hmm… Next question: what’s the best resource to study how we became entrenched with the Democrats and Republicans?
Countries with parliaments and perfectly proportional seating often laugh at our two party system and discuss the merits of their systems with dozens of parties that form coalitions as being better.
I disagree. Every political entity everywhere has a naturally bi-polar tendency of coalitions.
In parliamentary systems – they form their coalitions *after* elections. In America, we form coalitions *before* elections. Why is ours then, an better system? Voters know the content of the coalition before they votes. In other systems, you vote for your party, and then who knows what elements you may abhor that they will ally with to form a ruling coalition.
I think the rise of third parties and the eagerness for a third party in the United States is always a bellwether for major political realignments and will always settle back down into a bipolar arrangement.
I think most of our problems with our politics right now is we’re ending an era and opening a new one. Politics in America has almost always been cantankerous – we, however, have mostly been raised in a time of unique conviviality. That sounds odd – but, we came out of the WW2 environment – where all follow on politicians were dominated primarily by men who fought in the war together. Different sides politically, sure, but they, in hardship, were also driven by that unity.
The post-WW2 environment was also a time, post-Roosevelt *revolution* that Democrats, for most of the time, dominated national politics. They could afford to be mostly friendly as the Republicans. Since the end of WW2 (by the end of the 80th Anniversary):
Democrats have held the House 54 years, Republicans only 26
Democrats have held the Senate also 54 years, Republicans only 26
In the Presidency, we get a remarkable split of 40 years each.
In those times:
Democrats have held all of Congress 46 years to the Republicans 18, with 16 years of a split
Democrats have held the Presidency and House for 24 years to the Republican 10 with 46 years of split
Democrats have held the Presidency and Senate for 30 years to the Republican 16 with 34 years of split
Democrats have held ALL three for 24 years to the Republican 8, with 48 years of split.
Now, as the Rooseveltian grip on American politics is (for a lack of euphemism) dying out, there’s been a resurgence in interest in weakening the federal government – and of course Democrats, who as of late, stand for the consolidation of more power in the hands of central authorities, are panicking. So their vitriol has been ramped up.
The past era has also been marked by battles and debates that have been largely “figured out” and we’re entering an era where new topics and new interests and new needs have arisen. The old internal coalitions of the parties do no inherently see eye to eye on these things, and so we’ll see over the several election cycles, both parties ironing out their priorities and each party will lose interest groups and pick up interest groups.
It’s just nerve wracking – because as one party loses interest groups – it will likely lose many elections until it starts picking up interest groups lost by the other party or newly formed interest groups. And no party wants to lose elections during a time when it feels like the entire heart and soul of the nation is at stake.
Fortunately, it seems the more patriotic party that fundamentally believes in the goodness of the American Experiment is undergoing the party shuffle earlier than the entrenched party whose power brokers are all rapidly aging Rooseveltians and whose new upcoming leaders are all dimwits.
Another reason the Democrats have hyped up the vitriol. And one reason why, as the party desperate to hold power and maintain the New Deal status Quo, are increasingly catering to flat out bonkers ideologies like real socialists/communists and blue-haired weirdos that want to expose children to pornography and perverts and actually think mental illnesses should be encouraged.
Never mind the stats that for how long the “Democrats” have “held” SCOTUS. There, progressives/leftist activist judges have absolutely DOMINATED over originalists for generations. Now that they’ve ‘lost’ the court for the foreseeable future, you can really see their temper tantrums coming out.
I swear wordpress ADDED the typos and bad grammar after I clicked “post”.
Ha! I swear that happens to me! No matter how many times I proofread something before posting, I always find typos, strange words, and improper use of homophones directly after I hit that post button.
I’d like to say I aggressively proof-read. But I usually don’t…usually just a quick scan. I’ll accept random typos as “oopsies”…but sometimes I see something errant and I can’t even figure out how the particular mistake was made. Those are the infuriating ones.
Nice essay, Michael. I can remember when Republicans and Democrats were basically the same. ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties. They all wore suits and looked alike. And they all played golf at Congressional. And they didn’t spend all their time grubbing for campaign donations so they could pay hired consultants to tell them what to say and what not to say. I don’t think there were talking points memos either. They could think on their own.
>>>What chance does a third party have? It seems we’ve calcified into a two-party system for the past 160 years.
I think it’s useful to look at how this happened in the past. As far as a fundamental new party goes, looking back I am thinking it’s really only happened once when the Republican party was created.
The Democratic party has pretty much been around since about Jefferson’s time, although it didn’t really settle on the name until later.
The Republican party started in 1854, if memory serves, and it brought together several vibrant and fervent strains of thought and belief that were gripping the country. Those included Abolitionists, free soil — western expansionists — and generally, I think, in tune with the expansion dreams of many Americans and many people who came to America to seek opportunity. They replaced the Whigs who had been increasingly marginalized.
I could be wrong, but it’s not my sense that the rise of the Republican party was due to any single politician. Was Fremont perhaps more charismatic than Lincoln? Maybe so. I think either of them were in a different league than Pierce and Buchanan. It is also a fascinating question if the secessionists had not sabotaged the Democratic party in 1860, could Lincoln have won against a head to head contest with Douglas? He did actually get over 50% of the vote in almost all the states he won, but it would have come down to New York, which was extremely close in real life.
The 1850s were an extraordinarily turbulent time for the United States — the Civil War was a conflict that had been brewing up since the Declaration. Perhaps that type of era is what it takes for a new party to rise up and supplant one of the existing two, and perhaps nowadays it will take a charismatic leader to enable it.
I do think that, given the way our political, legislative, and executive systems have evolved that for a new party to rise up, one of the existing parties would have to die (or be marginalized akin to the Libertarians). Multi party systems work in a parliamentary scheme, but it’s hard to envision that with our system.
Short answer — it’s very unlikely, but given our present state of turmoil? How unlikely was the Republican party in 1854?
Well, it was a mission party, primarily drive by the abolition movement. The Whigs were a third party, and the Democratic Party of Jackson wasn’t the same party as one we attribute to Jefferson, which is often called the Democrat-Republicans. The scene was split into four parties in 1860, and didn’t ossify into a pure two party system until after the Civil War. Since then, all of the genuine third party efforts have been identified with a single personality: Teddy with his Bull Moose Party, Eugene Debs and his Socialists, Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats, George Wallace’s breakaway Democrats, and most recently Poss Perot’s Reform, who came closer to having a chance to win than any of them. But its most successful candidates other than Perot were nuts (like Jesse Ventura). All Third Parties do is split the vote so one of the major parties wins when it probably shouldn’t have. They brought us Nixon, Clinton and Wilson. Not a good omen.
I have to admit that my knowledge of the 1820s, 30s, and 40s is not all it should be. The 1860 election, though, is fascinating in numerous ways.
Several years ago I read a book that basically detailed the (successful) efforts of a group of Southern firebrands to split the Democratic party, I imagine because they realized that Southern influence was permanently on the wane. They definitely cost Stephen Douglas the chance of becoming president.
Another thing I often read is that Lincoln was not even on the ballot in the South. Well, yes, sort of. Back then there was no actual ‘the ballot’ provided by the various states. Each candidate had to provide its own ballot where people could vote for electors pledged to that candidate — these ballots were generally printed by sympathetic newspapers. Wikipedia (citing Harper’s Weekly) states:
In ten southern slave states, no citizen would publicly pledge to vote for Abraham Lincoln, so citizens there had no legal means to vote for the Republican nominee. In most of Virginia, no publisher would print ballots for Lincoln’s pledged electors.
As well, I believe this was prior to the time when secret ballots were generally used.
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In today’s environment, I agree that 3rd parties have generally resulted in simply torpedoing one candidate. That is the context for my arguing that any 3rd party would really need to supplant one of the two major parties. Anything else in our system would be less than optimal.
And yes, it’s quite improbable. But I’m sayin’ there’s a chance….
“The Republican party started in 1854, if memory serves”
Memory serves…and in RiponWESconsin, to be exact.
In 2002 Lisa Murkowski was appointed to the Senate in Alaska by her father (nice, huh) who had resigned his senate seat and won election to be Alaska’s Governor. She won the seat in her own right in 2004. It’s fair to say Murkowski is a liberal Republican, and come 2010 she lost the Republican primary to a tea party guy, Joe Miller. This didn’t sit well with Lisa, so she ran, not really as a third party, but as a write-in candidate. The rest is history: she won that and three reelections. Write-in has got to be harder than third party. Granted, this is just Alaska (whatever that means), but it is within the last fifteen years, not ancient history.
I think we take it for granted that a third party can’t win, and that’s where the smart money goes. The prospects for a third party depend on the particulars. In today’s world where you get really bad candidates, it could end up as anything can happen day.
Question- What version of “Funny thing… ‘ was that from. It don’t remember it as the version I saw on Broadway
Here is an article worth commenting about.
https://reason.com/2023/07/27/a-swat-team-destroyed-an-innocent-mans-shop-then-the-city-left-him-with-the-bill/
As a retired LEO, I hate stuff like this. The good will and community support lost from such callousness is immeasurable. The agency from which I retired would have repaired the damage. Even if the police had been in the right, the actual property owner (e.g. a landlord or relative of the accused) might not have been insured for the damages. We marshaled the resources of several cooperating community agencies to help repair the damage in such instances. The program was managed and staffed by a few volunteers. The repair materials were donated or purchased (with donated funds) by one of the community agencies we partnered with. The cost to the county was minimal. It was a win-win for the agency and the community.
As I stated in other comment sections, the cost must be borne by the general public, not by some random citizen.
In my college years I was a member of the Libertarian Party – definitely, a 3rd party. The Constitution doesn’t posit any rules about political parties, yet US government has a two-party system in which candidates from the two major political parties win nearly all elected offices.
Third parties continue to emerge with two major barriers preventing third parties from electing many candidates. First, most US elections operate by the winner-take-all system, which awards seats only to the candidate or party who wins the most votes in an election; independent or third-party candidates, who have neither the name recognition nor the organizational support provided by the major parties, rarely win the majority of votes. Second, the two major parties have often incorporated the popular platform issues of third parties into their own platforms. Voters who identified with a third-party issue will then vote for a major party candidate who has adopted that issue because major parties are more likely to succeed.
What does that mean for 2024? The number of self-identified independent voters hit a record high of 49% in a March 2023 Gallup poll — meaning that there are essentially as many self-identified independent voters in the United States as Democrats and Republicans combined.
Neither major party has captured the independent voter or understood what independent voters believe or want. Contrary to the polarized perception of politics, many Americans have political beliefs that do not reflect one party orthodoxy.
Will Trump be the wild card in 2024? He could launch a 3rd party campaign, but would he benefit from it or lose because of it? My bet is that a Trump 3rd party campaign would be a failure as so many previous 3rd party candidates have experienced.
I think to see the value of third parties you have to broaden what you see as success. The two party system allows the government to pit people against each other, then do whatever they want while ignoring what the voters want. Competition could alter this dynamic and that would count as success in my book. Making someone lose can be just as power as winning.
Third parties are great for forcing conversations and forcing the established two to pick a side on some ignored topic.
https://bloodyelbow.com/2023/07/27/child-boxing-in-west-virginia/
We’ll try this again. Hopefully this is a better link than the one I posted late to last week’s open forum.
Discuss.
Sheesh. I thought the poster was a take-off on the two party system under discussion above. My father’s beloved home state. Sigh.
I bet they allow betting on the fight! On line!
I wouldn’t be surprised.
Definitely an ick factor there. The Canadian pediatrics argument appears to be wholly unsupported by evidence, but the boxing organization backs up their claims. There’s a much higher ick for the celebrity style two-fighter match up poster shown below.
My beef with the arguments is all the cited ‘more dangerous’ sports are either contact team sports or inherently high danger like motorcycle racing… Why no comparisons to similar individual contact sports like karate?
The first “third part” was the Anti-Masonic Party, in the era of the Jacksonian Democrats and the National Republicans (which became the Whigs). The third party has very little electoral success but did produce a President (Millard Fillmore), who was elected Vice President after the Anti-Masonic Party merged with the National Republicans. He became President when Zachary Taylor died in office. In 1856, a third party displaced the Whigs. This was called a realignment election and the third party carried on as Republicans. Then, of course, we have Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party in 1912, which actually outgained the Republican Party but finished second to Woodrow Wilson, who ran on the Democrat ticket. The Provressive Party then essentially disappeared. In 1968, segregationist George Wallace headed the American Independent Party and actually won 5 states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia — and came close to Nixon in North Carolina. He came up just short of enough electoral votes to deny Nixon the victory. Wallace is the last third party candidate to win electoral college votes. Ross Perot ran on the Reform Party ticket in 1992 and 1996, costing George HW Bush the election in 1992, and perhaps costing Bob Dole the election in 1996, as Perot’s vote total was about the same as Clinton’s winning margin. Another businessman briefly entered the race on the Reform Party ticket in 2000 but quickly withdrew. Who was that? Donald Trump! Ralph Nader ran for the Green Party in 2000 and probably cost Al Gore the election (I personally could never have voted for Gore on any ticket) as he gained almost 20,000 votes in Florida, where Gore lost to GW Bush by less than 600 votes. Now, we have another third party considering a Presidential run if Biden and Trump are the major party nominees. (Another personal note: time for them to be gone from the political calculus). That Party is called Forward, and is a centrist party that is an outgrowth of No Labels. Democrats are apparently terrified that a moderate party would siphon votes from Democrats (the Third Way, a respected moderate Democrat think-tank, has said as much) and Republicans are almost equally terrified that the party would siphon votes from Trump or any Trump-esque candidate. Going from facts to personal opinion: if Biden and Trump (or a Trump-esque candidate) are the major party candidates, I personally hope that Forward successful gains ballot recognition and siphons enough votes from both of the major parties to either win (unlikely) or become the deciding factor to influence one of the major parties to the center.
Please excuse the various thumbled spellings
“Today is devoted trying to organize the rationalization list into a book outline (finally!)”
I’ve been working through cleaning up the old taxonomy I made if you want any assistance.
Miles Gloriosus : I cannot afford to offend the gods.
Pseudolus : Who can?
Apparently, the two leading Presidential candidates for the major parties believe they can.
I know Jamie Raskin is undergoing chemotherapy, however, can’t he do something, anything, other than wear a do rag in Congress? Does he really want to look like a pirate? Is that a good look while doing the business of taking care of American families? Is the pillaging imagery an intentional admission against interest or a Freudian slip?
I thought that an odd choice as well, O.B.. I was unsure if the look he was going for was “pirate” or “biker.”