We Need a Third Party

[The Frankish Reich]

Latest evidence:

 

https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/governors/2022-primaries/maryland-goes-maga

 

Maryland was lucky to have a generally sensible Republican governor to balance a solidly Democratic (often of the “progressive” ilk) legislature. 
Well, no more. The Republicans just decided to go into the general election backing a fool. 
If I lived in Maryland I’m not sure what I’d do. Other than leave Maryland, that is. At least for a while it looked like former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez was going to win the Dem primary. The word “socialist” is thrown around a lot, but he pretty much fits the bill. Maybe now they’ll escape that fate as some other candidates did ok. 
Bigger picture: the parties are so extreme now that if I want some kind of brake on taxing and spending, I’ve gotta be willing to accept a heavy dose of election denialism too. 
Third parties don’t work in America, in that they don’t win elections. But sometimes they push the existing parties more toward the middle. I’m something of a radical centrist at this stage of my life. There is no party I would feel at home in. Is there any movement at all to recapture the voters in my part of the political spectrum? Because if you start looking at issue polling, that’s where most of us live. 

[T&C]

I think we all need to party more... so the party party works here.

[ChiGoose]

Almost impossible in a First Past the Post system like ours. We haven't had a successful third party in more than 170 years.

 

If we really want to break the stranglehold of the two party system and end both parties, we need to advocate for electoral changes that make a third party viable. Simplest of this would be something like ranked choice voting or approval voting.

[L Ron Burgundy]

I wish it were possible. 

 

Also wish there were a way to have an overall no confidence vote or something of that nature.   I know I'm talking crazy but I think if a way existed to oust everyone currently elected at a high level and start over with new people,  old a holes can't run, a good amount of people would go for it.   I may be wrong but I feel like confidence on both sides isn't high.

[frostbitmic]

The Democrats are a bunch of milquetoasts, the Republicans are a bunch of insane fascists who want to take us back to the 50's ... that would be the 1850's.

 

As a life long Independent  I'm too socially liberal to be a Republican and too fiscally conservative to be a member of either party.

 

This country needs a 3rd party, a moderate party, to reel us back in from the extremists and insanity on both sides.

[TH3]

2 minutes ago, frostbitmic said:

The Democrats are a bunch of milquetoasts, the Republicans are a bunch of insane fascists who want to take us back to the 50's ... that would be the 1850's.

 

As a life long Independent  I'm too socially liberal to be a Republican and too fiscally conservative to be a member of either party.

 

This country needs a 3rd party, a moderate party, to reel us back in from the extremists and insanity on both sides.

I am 58…old enough….The Dems are have been the same my whole life….genuinely interested in solving problems…but generally bad ideas on how to do it. The GOP went off the hook when a black guy got voted to be POTUS….and since then the only thing they have done legislatively is cut taxes….that and stock scotus to drop bad decisions most people don’t want…or really even asked for. They vote lock stock and barrel against anything and everything…just because.

 

We are not going to get a third party….a reasonable GOP would be welcome….we have a lot to improve on to give our kids and grandkids a better place and squabbling over transient social issues is a waste of time….

[L Ron Burgundy]

7 minutes ago, frostbitmic said:

The Democrats are a bunch of milquetoasts, the Republicans are a bunch of insane fascists who want to take us back to the 50's ... that would be the 1850's.

 

As a life long Independent  I'm too socially liberal to be a Republican and too fiscally conservative to be a member of either party.

 

This country needs a 3rd party, a moderate party, to reel us back in from the extremists and insanity on both sides.

I'm with you.  There's things I like about both sides but being socially liberal,  and an avid securalist, I can't stand the current state of the right. 

 

The left is a bit of a mess now and they won't close the gap the way they deal with trans and other newer social phenomena. 

[JaCrispy]

Absolutely! But I will take it one step further…

 

We need a 3rd and 4th party- one to compete with the establishment Republicans, and one to compete with the establishment Democrats…

 

Of course, it would only be a matter of time before corporations caught on and corrupted them too…

[ChiGoose]

6 minutes ago, JaCrispy said:

Absolutely! But I will take it one step further…

 

We need a 3rd and 4th party- one to compete with the establishment Republicans, and one to compete with the establishment Democrats…

 

Of course, it would only be a matter of time before corporations caught on and corrupted them too…

 

We should all be advocating for non-partisan electoral reforms like ranked choice voting. That would get rid of the spoiler effect that prevents third parties from succeeding and give a real chance for better options to emerge.

[The Frankish Reich]

5 hours ago, ChiGoose said:

 

We should all be advocating for non-partisan electoral reforms like ranked choice voting. That would get rid of the spoiler effect that prevents third parties from succeeding and give a real chance for better options to emerge.

I agree.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that we DID see a third party emerge -- the Trump Party. It's Patrick Buchanan's old fusion of nostalgia, nationalism, and Trumanesque economic/trade policy. The problem is it took over an existing party, the Republicans, within a period of just a couple years. What used to be the Republican Party vanished from the face of America, or retreated into places like Utah (Romney).

[Doc Brown]

The American people will determine when democrats sway too far to the left and when Republicans sway too far to the right.  The two party system has worked since the founding of the republic and will continue to do so.

[Tiberius]

7 hours ago, Doc Brown said:

The American people will determine when democrats sway too far to the left and when Republicans sway too far to the right.  The two party system has worked since the founding of the republic and will continue to do so.

BINGO 

[snafu]

 Effectively, there is already is a third large group of voters.  Independents.  They sway elections more so than far left or far right elements of the D or the R parties. They’re just not organized into a party with leadership or candidates, etc.

 

We don’t really need a third party.  We need term limits and lobbying reform. We need Congress to do its job and not leave every piece of legislation to the President to issue by fiat. We need politicians to start acting like public servants, not an elite political class which hovers above the peons who just happen to be their constituents.  We need to back off the excessive news coverage of every presidential fart. Maybe then we’d get candidates who might be qualified to be president, instead of what we’ve seen in the recent past. 

 

[Tiberius]

 

[The Frankish Reich]

10 hours ago, Doc Brown said:

The two party system has worked since the founding of the republic and will continue to do so.

My thinking is not that the 3rd party will win anything. It’s that the third party - if it’s a centrist party, and if it’s not bound by the weird coalitions that we now have in America (the “if I want lower taxes I have to accept restrictions on abortion rights as part of the deal” thing) - might be the nudge toward the center that both parties need. 
Ross Perot was a clown. But without the Perot threat, would Bill Clinton have governed as an old-fashioned Mondale style Democrat instead of the more centrist policies he adopted. 

[716er]

A contingent election every presidential election period would suck.

[SoCal Deek]

We already have alternative parties in America. They rarely, if ever, have gotten enough votes to gain office. 

[ChiGoose]

6 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

We already have alternative parties in America. They rarely, if ever, have gotten enough votes to gain office. 

We have a first past the post electoral system that suffers from the spoiler effect. It is nearly impossible for a third party to emerge in such a system because it tends to compete with the party that is more ideologically aligned to it and therefore benefits the party less ideologically aligned.

 

If we truly want to break the stranglehold of the two current parties, we need to reform how we do elections.

[Tenhigh]

17 hours ago, ChiGoose said:

 

We should all be advocating for non-partisan electoral reforms like ranked choice voting. That would get rid of the spoiler effect that prevents third parties from succeeding and give a real chance for better options to emerge.

The problem is in the primaries.  These people have to pander to the fringe to get the nod, then they are beholden to that pandering in the general election.

[SoCal Deek]

3 minutes ago, ChiGoose said:

We have a first past the post electoral system that suffers from the spoiler effect. It is nearly impossible for a third party to emerge in such a system because it tends to compete with the party that is more ideologically aligned to it and therefore benefits the party less ideologically aligned.

 

If we truly want to break the stranglehold of the two current parties, we need to reform how we do elections.

Thanks. I’m game, but seriously doubt it would result in the improvements we clearly all want. It’s far more likely that over a short time the new party would simply be swallowed up by whichever existing party it most closely aligns with and whole lot of people will be conveniently, what’s the word….. disenfranchised.