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Third Parties

19:26 / 13.03.07

There doesn't really seem to be a topic dedicated to discussing third parties in and of themselves, and I think there should be one.

Mostly because I just read this story and it raised my hackles (as a member of a jokey little third party myself).

It's about new fundraising limitations, which are probably a good thing in American politics. Except except...

The ambiguously-written bill [[H.R. 4694, "Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Act"] provides funds for candidates of the "two major parties" but essentially scuttles any campaign efforts of third-party or independent candidates.

For third-party candidates to be eligible for the same funds that Republicans and Democrats would receive, they would have to obtain enough signatures to exceed 20% of votes cast in the last election within their district.

The catch under the proposed legislation is that third-party or independent candidates cannot pay petitioners to collect any signatures, making it impossible to fund their campaigns.

Are these just Libertarians (and Greens, who unfortunately have worse spelling) being paranoid, or is there something to this thing?

As of this writing, it's been referred to three committees. It's summarized here.

09:29 / 14.03.07

That is from last year's congress, I think since it never passed it's pretty much dead. It says as much on the govtrack link (By the way, there's a similar new site, opencongress.org).
A thread about 3rd parties is great, though. I'll add when I can, but for now I'll say in the short term any single third party strongly showing will just siphon votes off of the larger parties and tip the elections towards one or the other. Like Nader arguably did in 2000. If Pat Buchanan or some other nutjob had pulled votes away from Bush then I personally would have been happy, but that's not really fair, is it? I think that the country will be stronger when there are more parties, eventually.

15:00 / 14.03.07

That is from last year's congress, I think since it never passed it's pretty much dead.

I was confused over what they were saying -- it seemed like it might either be dead, or else still have a year to kick around.

lord henry strikes back

20:11 / 25.03.07

I'm going to start with a disclaimer: As a Brit I consider myself pretty well educated on US politics, however, I tend not to read further than what appears in UK 'respectable' press so there is a distinct limit to my knowledge.

Anyway, with that in mind, here's my bit. The role of third parties (or as they are over here 'small parties' given our 2 1/2 party system) is not to win elections or even seats. Rather, their aim is to collect a block of votes around an issue (the environment, anti-war, etc) that the main parties then have to attempt to win back by changing their policies. It acts as a way to influence the policies of the power elite.

To an extent this works in the UK. The Greens have managed to push the environmental agenda by holding hostage the 1000 or so votes that could make so much difference in certain swing constituencies. From what I know of the US I can't really see this working. The overwhelming power of the big two seems to mean no-one else has a chance. The real push in US politics seems to be the odd renegade congressman using their 15 minutes in the spotlight to make some noise. These people are to be applauded but it still means that the only way to influence the political scene is to go through the process of becoming part of the power elite. No-one outside of it has sway.

For now, that's my piece. I look forward to where this thread goes and I'll chime back in.

15:34 / 26.03.07

Yeah, we don't really have "blocks of votes" in that same sense -- except maybe around caucuses within either of the big parties (like Blue Dog Democrats, or Log Cabin Republicans).

16:01 / 26.03.07

The 1992 and 2000 elections pretty much ended any credible threat to the two-party system for now. The Greens are so much more like Democrats than Republicans they can only grow at the expense of the former. The Libertarian Party is pretty much the mirror image of the Greens, so they cost the GOP more votes than they cost the Democrats. So, in the US, joining a third party reduces the chances for electing any party that's remotely on your side.

The mandarins of the two major parties know that and ignore the third-party voters, who'll probably hold their noses and return to the fold in a close race. That cynical calculation is mostly correct, but it ignores the cost to the GOTV (Get Out The Vote) effort. Party faithful might indeed vote with their party in November, but they won't give money or spare time or even encourage their friends to vote with the party.

The GOP mandarins ignored this in 1992. When they sucked up to the two Pats (Robertson and Buchanan) and ignored "Reagan Democrats'" worries about NAFTA, they lost a huge chunk of votes to H. Ross Perot. They still came close to winning, so they could be forgiven for guessing wrong. Perot's Reform Party didn't seem to have any existence beyond H. Ross Perot, and it slowly collapsed after he lost interest.

In 2000, the Democratic Party (really the Democratic Leadership Committee) were dumber, since 2000 was a much closer race. Nader couldn't possibly get the 8% that Perot got 8 years earlier, but he was a threat. The DLC ingored this and tried the "triangulation" (positioning just to the left of the rightwingers to capture the supposed centrist majority, and also taking the left for granted) that seemed to work in 1992 and 1996. So they got the appalling Joe Lieberman on as VP and spurned the left, and Gore went along with it.

The left's disgust with the Democrats cost them more, I think, than the votes they lost to the Greens. And when the Right hijacked the Florida count, nobody cared enough to fight for the party.

So US third parties, at the national level, are mostly bellwethers of national mood. They're only credible at the state and local level, and only if their candidates care about fixing roads, sewers and schools instead of about being political messiahs.

16:05 / 26.03.07

A third party will only get anywhere if it has a coherent platform and can build itself nationally from the ground up. It takes time.

Otherwise, the only avenue for change is to fight like hell during party caucuses and primary elections. That worked somewhat for Democrats in 2006.

lord henry strikes back

17:39 / 26.03.07

I think it's interesting to look at what happened in the UK during our 18 years of Tory rule. For the whole of the 1980s we basically had a one party system. Labour were actually no more electable than any of the other opposition parties and yet the small parties somehow failed to gain. The Lib Dems steadily increased but even by 1990 they were only holding about 18% of the vote (you need twice that to win a general election in the UK, and somewhere around 40% for a stable majority). The 'others' (that's how elections are analysed in the UK: Tory/Labour/Lib Dem/Others) scrabbled around totaling about a 5%-6% share between them and taking votes of each other much more than the main two and a half parties.

The reason for this (at least in part) is a phrase that you hear in the UK a lot: "you know, I like what they stand for, but it would be a wasted vote". It's a well worn tale among us in the Liberal Democrat fold but if everyone who said that had actually voted Lib Dem in 1992 the result would have been a Lib Dem government with a majority of around 30 seats. In the actual event they didn't even manage thirty seats in total.

'Third party' is a mindset that is very entrenched and is constantly re-enforced. If you look at the press in the UK we have a Chancellor (Minister of the Treasury for the government), a Shadow Chancellor (his opposite number in the official opposition) and all the other parties have a Treasury Spokesman (same job as the guy in the official opposition but in a party without the clout to get a funky title). This mindset creates a feed-back loop with only two parties looking like they can get elected and so only two parties being voted for (due to wasted ballot syndrome) and so only two parties looking like they can get elected.

I suppose that, just to be honest about my point of view, I should admit that I am a paid-up, card-carrying member of the Lib Dems. I don't think that alters the reality of my argument but it may flavour the way I put it across.

17:40 / 26.03.07

Most of the third party movements have been personality driven. The Reform Party had some chance to get past Ross Perot, but Pat Buchanan's people invaded it and pushed out everyone else. Oddly, they did this in order to secure the federal funding that supposedly was going to help the party.

The remainder are really just a bunch of cranks. I remember hearing the Libertarian candidate on the radio explain why ending slavery was not a valid action of the federal government for example. I'm skeptical about whether they're even attempting to win elections, as opposed to using the race as a platform for publicity.

And on that subject, the latest issue with third parties has been that by forcing their way into the open campaign debates, they've ended up providing an excuse for the two major parties to abandon an open forum and arrange their own private debates, which are generally no debate at all, just a recitation of talking points.

18:14 / 26.03.07

It's just not viable in the U.S., the system is so slanted towards the two parties.

What the elites think about this and what the people think about it are two different things. The only thing that could get the people to believe there might be a change would be something big, like a movement for a constitutional amendment instituting a parliamentary congress.

The elites will see that as losing control of the election process, as the two parties comprise some of the strings by which they determine which ideas the people will be thinking about and which ideas will be crazy talk.

You can't propose a change like this without attacking the root of the problem, party structures being used as methods of thought control instead of as methods for expression and structuring conflict.

If people voted for parties instead of faces, and there were ten parties, and instant run-off voting, then the congressional majority would have to be a coalition and the elites would have to bargain with interests that are currently systematically excluded.

The UFO-Truth party would get 3 representatives in congress, and all hell would break loose with the rabble.

After having seen what happens when all hell breaks loose with the aristocracy over the course of my life, I'm ready to give the rabble a chance at it. The rabble isn't nearly as rabbly as the aristocracy thinks anyway.

18:49 / 28.03.07

The meme that a vote for a 3rd party is a wasted vote is one of the most gruesome propaganda victories... Mind you, I'm spoiled by having lived all my life with a Single Transferable Vote system.

I don't have much to contribute, but as a point of information, are there any single-issue / lobbyist 3rd parties in the US that get a credible share (say >1% of the vote)? I ask because, more so than a party with a proper manifesto, such parties might be particularly disagreeable to deal with, should the situation arise.

Would a coalition ever be a viable entity (obviously not going to happen in the presidency, but in the houses)? Has it ever happened? The UK is almost as much a 2-party system, yet there have historically been upheavals, where one party has disintegrated.

03:13 / 29.03.07

Well, the Democrats and Republicans weren't the two parties that America started with. Used to be Federalists and Democrat-Republicans, which split into Democrats and Whigs, who elected two presidents (well, really, there were four Whig POTUSes) then fell apart to be replaced, more or less, by the abolitionist Republicans and the, er, out-and-out anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party.

And Teddy Roosevelt split the Republicans again at the beginning of the 20th century, which wound up being kind of a mess, but probably better than another Taft presidency, depending on who you ask. The fat bastard.

Wikipedia also says there's a new Whig Party, as of Jan 2007. Probably just to get Congress over the presidency.

10:40 / 03.04.07

The outlook for third parties in the US isn't entirely bleak. At the local and state level, a handful of third-party candidates actually do get in. Any party starting from scratch has to take time to grow and be able to scale upward. Forget about running for president anytime soon; that's a waste of time and money and just attracts would-be messiahs and their minions.

Parties like the Greens or the Libertarian party should stick to their principles regarding core issues but also be able to deal intelligently with other issues (and understand they might be another party's core issues). Test party ideals on the school board, the state legislature and railroad commission before trying to take them into the Oval Office. Learn to play well with others. Learn to choose battles and sometimes take "no" for an answer. Treat party workers as people. In short, grow up as a party.

If all that time, work, patience and subordination of ego for teamwork scares off or bores would-be John Galts, Friday Joneses, George Haydukes and Doctress Neutopias, so much the better.

12:04 / 03.04.07

which split into Democrats and Whigs, who elected two presidents (well, really, there were four Whig POTUSes) then fell apart to be replaced, more or less, by the abolitionist Republicans and the, er, out-and-out anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party.

Somewhat off-topic, but... uh, they called themselves "The Know-Nothing Party"..?!?

The Wikipedia entry suggests that the use of the term "know-nothing" as an insult derives from the aforementioned party.

As opposed to, say, a fairly obvious and universal suggestion that the insulted person 'knows nothing'.

Either way, it doesn't seem to explain why they called themselves that in the first place.

In a minor and irrelevant sense, I'm baffled.

lord henry strikes back

17:40 / 03.04.07

bjacques has made me think, and this is an area where my knowledge of the US totally fails so I hope some of you can help me out.

Looking at the US from the outside, it does appear to have elections for everything from President to school boards to sanitation commissioners to court jester (you get my point). Is this a realistic alternative path through which third parties can evolve? Does it/could it work?

20:11 / 03.04.07

The Wikipedia entry suggests that the use of the term "know-nothing" as an insult derives from the aforementioned party.

Chasing around Wikipedia, it appears that the party got the name because they were all instructed to respond to questions about their plans or meetings or, I dunno, platforms, maybe, by saying "I know nothing."

It was a secrecy thing.

20:13 / 03.04.07

Is this a realistic alternative path through which third parties can evolve? Does it/could it work?

Many smaller elections are non-partisan. I'm pretty sure judges in my county are elected on a non-partisan basis, too. No party campaigns, no affiliations listed on the ballot.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

20:56 / 03.04.07

Many city level and lower elections are non partisan. Mayoral elections obviously are, and possibly city council seats (although I THINK the candidates just align themselves with the party of the mayoral candidate they are backing).

The problem with the third parties (at least the ones I have either been involved with or known people involved with them) is that they don't always have a clear message. Libertarian candidates don't follow a 'party line', so it becomes difficult to recruit when depending on who is talking the party stands for different things. The Greens have a similar problem, but that might just be in my neck of the woods, because the people pushing for the green party here don't seem to be able to express what their party stands for.

10:58 / 10.04.07

In Texas, the *dogcatcher* runs on a party ticket. Since judges are elected instead of appointed, as they'd be in other states, we get a lot of hanging judges, since they're the easiest to sell to the voters. On the civil courts, they're usually usually some partner in a big law firm like Vinson & Elkins, Baker & Mackenzie (or some branch office of Wolfram & Hart) groomed for the purpose. Never actually argue a case, but aim for a bench so the firm has a friendly face staring down at them.

16:51 / 09.05.07

Ron Paul just won a Republican debate.

At first, the poll declaring him victor was yanked from MSNBC.com. I'm sure they had a good reason.

Paul, in case you're unfamiliar with him, has campaigned several times for president on the Libertarian ticket. He's a Republican for convenience.

16:32 / 15.05.07

...Aaaaand New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is planning to spend $1 billion on a third-party bid for president, according to the Washington Times.

The mayor has told close associates he will make a third-party run if he thinks he can influence the national debate and has said he will spend up to $1 billion. Earlier, he told friends he would make a run only if he thought he could win a plurality in a three-way race and would spend $500 million -- or less than 10 percent of his personal fortune.
A $1 billion campaign budget would wipe out many of the common obstacles faced by third-party candidates seeking the White House.
"Bloomberg is H. Ross Perot on steroids," said former Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner. "He could turn the political landscape of this election upside down, spend as much money as he wanted and proceed directly to the general election. He would have resources to hire an army of petition-gatherers in those states where thousands of petitions are required to qualify a third-party presidential candidate to be on the ballot."

The WT says he has people meeting with Ross Perot's people.

I'm completely skeptical about anything coming out of this paper because it's owned by Sun Myung Moon, and this piece is riddled with the tabloid dodges of "sources close to..." and "insiders reveal on condition of anonymity."

On the other hand, this seems a little more legit:

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, another independent-minded Republican, dined recently with Mr. Bloomberg and suggested on CBS' "Face the Nation" over the weekend that he and Mr. Bloomberg might make an independent run for the presidency.

Who knows.

14:57 / 16.05.07

Meanwhile, Ron Paul actually said something that made sense during a Republican debate and came under fire for it.

According to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, "They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East."

Restrained, but clearly angry, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani jumped in, calling Paul's statement "extraordinary."

Is this what third parties do in America? I mean, is this how far outside they've gotten? (And how far into the dark mainstream politics have gone?)

20:57 / 14.06.07

Meanwhile, on Talkingpointsmemo.com, former FCC chair Reed Hundt says 2008 is shaping up to be a golden opportunity for a (Ross Perot-style independently wealthy) third party candidate:

For these reasons, among others, an independent Presidential candidate hasn't had this good a chance since Teddy Roosevelt ran as the Bull Moose candidate. Congress and the President are running neck and neck for the public's disfavor, which speaks of a very widespread impulse to "throw the bums out."

17:13 / 15.06.07

In the comments under that entry, someone posted a link to Wikipedia on Duverger's Law, which is pretty darn pertinent here.

Maurice Duverger was a French dude who, in the 1950s, came up with the idea that two-party systems naturally rise from district plurality voting systems and that third parties tend to rise from proportional representation systems OR when there's a fatal split in a pre-existing party along some issue. Even then, the SMDP (single-member district plurality) would tend to minimize splits and maximize a tendecy toward only two parties, while the PR (proportional representation) boosts the influence of third parties and maximizes political schisms.

I think something like that might be going on in Israel (a PR country) right now.