Do we need 3 or more parties?

[OhioJB]

Originally Posted by Mircea

Feel free to start your own political party anytime you want.

The Libertarians are a good example of how not to run a 3rd Party. There's no organization and a complete lack of leadership.

Establish your party, start attacking school boards and city councils, then set your sights on State legislatures, then the House & Senate and within 20-30 years or so, you can field a viable 3rd Party candidate for president.

Excellent point about how many third parties are run, including your example of the Libertarian Party. When I started looking for a third party that might be a good fit for me about a decade ago, I noticed during my research that many parties had been taken over at some point by extremists who joined the party and took control.

A new party has to have a very strict and almost dictatorial leadership structure to survive such an attack from outsiders. No voting for party positions. They would be controlled by those who started the party to ensure it remained true to its beliefs and party platform. And any members who joined in an effort to destroy the party would be quickly dis-enrolled as a member.

On your point about starting with the local positions, that is one way to do it, but I also think an argument can be made for having a goal of only going after positions of state reps, governors, and the the national offices like president, senator, and U.S. rep, and then the local positions could come into play. Would depend how quickly a party could gain support and contributions. That's where good planning and smart strategy would come into play.

[burdell]

Originally Posted by capitalcityguy

The Republicans are pretty much a split party now. It is just a matter of who will eventually win.

It's pretty certain the American people will be the losers if the current situation continues much longer.

[dexter75]

Not 3 more parties, just 2 more, Libertarian and Independent.

[Hesky]

Originally Posted by Mircea

The Constitution does no such thing. The Constitution is perfectly compatible with 3rd Parties.

Correct. In fact the Constitution clearly establishes there is a possibility that three or more parties are competing and indicates what to do if none can reach a majority:

"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

Looking at this, the Constitution clearly states there's a possibility that the House of Representatives will need to elect the President from among the top three candidates in the general election if none can reach a majority during said election (a majority which in our current system constitutes 270 electoral college votes).

[Burger Fan]

I'm always fond of saying that we don't have two parties at all. What we have are a number of smaller parties or interest groups on each side that form coalitions under "democrat" or "republican" to win elections, because our elections are "first past the post to 51% wins" and passing legislation through the house and senate requires a majority.


On the democratic side, you have the "occupy wall street" progressive crowd currently flocking to prop up the likes of Bernie sanders, more moderate establishment democrats that traditionally back candidates like H.R. Clinton or Kerry, nearly every black voter in the country and 3 out of 4 Hispanics, women's groups concerned with abortion and reproductive rights, the Lesbian/Gay/Transgender groups angling for marriage equality and gay rights, and the nearly extinct but quite conservative "blue dog" democrats that were elected in the south (w.virginia) and west (nebraska) on the back of lifelong conservative "democrats" in their 80s that would never vote for a republican.


The core interests that motivate these groups are WILDLY different. Black voters for instance are highly religious and not sensitive to LGBT issues at ALL and were instrumental in passing the anti-gay rights "proposition 8" bill in California, despite black voters voting democratic 95% of the time! "Blue Dog" democrats were typically anti-abortion and pro gun rights, despite the rest of the party trending heavily the other way.


The GOP isn't really much better. Tea Party Patriots, Libertarians, Evangelicals, and Establishment republicans only "occasionally" get along well enough to pass anything, and Boehner in particular found it nearly impossible to pass his own legislation when the tea party refused to cooperate. From a geographic point of view, there is not a lot in common between a northeastern republican like Mitt Romney or Olympia Snowe, and a deep southern Republican like Rick Perry or Todd Akin. The only thing they tend to have in common is the (R).

None of these individual groups would have a chance in hell of winning as a smaller third party, because there simply aren't enough of them to get to 270 electoral votes in a presidential, 218 votes in the house, or 60 votes in the senate. The way our system is set up requires these smaller interest groups to band together under a common platform to pass anything or win elections.


If hypothetically the GOP split in two (because lets be honest that's the most likely scenario right now) to create a third party while the democrats didn't, the democrats would slaughter them in national (presidential) and statewide (senatorial, gubernatorial) elections for the next couple of decades, and the house of representatives would only pass anything when a coalition was formed between the three.

You would have to overhaul how elections, the house, and the senate work entirely (likely to something more like the parliamentary system) for third parties to be anything but a waste of time here.