In my last post I said I would address how to make third parties more viable. What we need to consider is that the problem has at least two aspects, both stemming from the fact that the Founders of the republic were either against the party politics of the British parliament that preceded them, or did not consider the development of party politics within this country when writing our Constitution. The first President, George Washington, is often quoted in his Farewell Address: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty. Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common & continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to discourage and restrain it.”
In large respect, Washington has been proven right. But again, this is a problem with two aspects. First, the structure of our federal election system is what is called “first past the post” and only accounts for one winning candidate with no such thing as proportional representation based on returns, or a runoff between leading candidates even when the first-place finisher has less than 50 percent of the vote. For these reasons the “rules as written” discourage more than two political factions within American government. At the same time, this fact encourages two factions to exist. This is an issue that had not been considered in the original Constitution and had to be partially rectified early on with the Twelfth Amendment, which changed the original rule that the second choice of the Electoral College became Vice President, which in practice meant that the opposition candidate automatically became part of the President’s cabinet. The standard from the Twelfth Amendment onward effectively acknowledged the practical reality of partisan politics.
The other aspect of the problem is that while the “two party” setup is formally created by our Constitutional structure, a very large reason for the lack of “third” party success is the creation of laws by our current ruling parties (Republicans and Democrats) to put new or smaller parties under restrictions they themselves are not under. Another issue is that an outlier’s access to the system depends on factors that are technically not under control of the government or the duopoly, but nevertheless serve the status quo. For instance, the Commission on Presidential Debates requires that candidates poll at 15 percent in five national surveys leading up to the three scheduled debates, and that they have enough spots on State ballots to potentially win an election. This qualification has been cited as arbitrary, not least because polling at that level requires a certain amount of media exposure which third-party candidates cannot get because they are not covered by mass media- for example, at debates. It is in fact a barrier that the Greens and the Libertarian Party are taking legal action against. Prior to the CPD format, televised presidential debates were sponsored and managed by the League of Women Voters (including the 1980 debate with independent John Anderson) but following the 1984 election, the two ruling parties decided to create a debate system under their purview (leading to the creation of the CPD in 1987) and the League cited the new Commission format as their reason from withdrawing their sponsorship of debates since 1988.
With these factors in mind, in this post I intend to address the general issue of how to make any given third party more likely to achieve political goals, such as getting candidates elected. Assuming that’s what you want.
First off, the step that a lot of people bypass:
Have a Party. A lot of people are only considering supporting a third party because they just feel jilted by one of the two major ones. Ultimately they’d rather be in their “home” party when they consider the alternatives. For instance, a Republican conservative might refuse to vote Republican this year because of Donald Trump. You’d ask, “what about Gary Johnson? He’s pro-gun and pro-capitalism.” The Republican would go “he’s also pro-abortion and pro-marijuana.” You’re going to have to accept that going third party will involve at least as much political compromise as working with one of the major parties who were at least until recently trying to appeal to the largest possible voting base. If you’re a conservative who doesn’t like abortion, your most feasible choices are still going to be either Johnson, Hillary Clinton (who is that much more pro-abortion than Johnson) or Trump, whose opinion on the subject seems to be up in the air, and whose most likely first decision will be to appoint his favorite horse the president pro tem of the Senate. (No, wait. That wasn’t Donald Trump who did that, that was Caligula. Sorry, I keep getting them confused.)
Conversely, you could be on the Left and observe that the Democratic Party is in theory more likely to implement “progressive” goals than the Libertarians (who are generally opposed to them) or the Greens (who lack the numbers to vote in their agenda). You may also have observed that in practice the Democrats are very likely to sacrifice what you consider a valid goal for the sake of getting re-elected. You may also have observed that however many political concessions the Democrats made to progressives at their convention, they were rather keen to control primaries for the Clinton team even when the ultimate outcome of Hillary’s nomination was no longer in doubt. You have to weigh whether making the “sensible” choice will actually get you what you want politically. The reason so many people were voting for Sanders in the first place and why Jill Stein’s Green Party has been getting so much attention in the aftermath is the suspicion that the Democratic Party will not achieve progressive goals, or will achieve too few of them at too high a cost in other areas (like foreign policy).
So if you really believe that neither of the two major parties is sufficient, you need to decide what you want your party to accomplish. That means working backward. Ultimately, rather than engaging in a vanity-project presidential race (which even if successful will mean that your President is an orphan with no support in Congress for his agenda), in the long term you need to elect people in “down ballot” races who will actually pass that agenda. That will also mean electing people on a local level. But in order to start electing people on the lower levels, you need to go to the next step:
Ask What Your Party Can Do For You. Specifically, if one is going to focus on the city or state level of government, what do you think your party could accomplish or emphasize that mainstream parties are not focusing on? (Keeping in mind, your group could get its ‘foot in the door’ working on nonpartisan races.) The Libertarians might focus on protecting marijuana rights at the local or state level of law enforcement. Greens or other “progressive” movements would probably focus on making law enforcement in general more accountable, especially on issues of how laws are enforced in different ethnic neighborhoods. (Which is also something that Libertarians could investigate.) Have a candidate or group platform, sort of like the Contract With America, that people can point to as a statement of what you’re going to do, and through what methods it’s going to be done. The next step at that point is:
Ask What You Can Do For Your Party. This is where you need to do the usual things that political activists do. You raise money, specifically to raise awareness of your party and candidate so people actually vote with you. But at this stage you also need to address the aforementioned challenges that the system deliberately puts in the way of outlier ballot access. Concurrently to actual party politics and running individual candidates, you also need to create and sponsor ballot initiatives to remove state and/or local rules that are set up to handicap your candidates.
And frankly, this also means doing some homework on how the system works. For example, Aaron McGruder, creator of the comic strip The Boondocks, often tells the story of how the Green Party had noticed his politics and asked him to run for President in 2004. He had to point out to them that at that time he was not 35 years old and thus not eligible to run for President.
Don’t be that party. Basically, take the process seriously enough to where a decent number of people think that you deserve to be elected. We can’t all be Trump.
Given that the Libertarian Party is the “third” party which is the closest to getting its act together as a challenger to the ruling factions, in my next post I intend to offer some more focused advice to them from a libertarian perspective.