Since the 2017 primaries I've hear a lot of chatter from people about 3rd parties. Like they're some way to generate a sense of change. I feel for the people behind this... politics are confusing and it's very easy to feel like your best interests aren't in the hearts of the candidates. And frankly, they're not. Individual interests aren't their focus, nor are they supposed to be... the interests of the nation as a whole are. But that's another topic.
What we're here to discuss is IF a 3rd party option would help you find and elect candidates closer to your goals/ideals.
Lets start with the fact we have two major divisions in how political goals are achieved:
One is through liberal methodology. This involves increasing the size of government reach to collect more taxes from taxpayers and then use that money for various social programs intended to increase the quality of life in our nation. It also involves stricter laws surrounding many social issues such as minimum wage, gun control, corporate regulations, etc. Overall the ask is a more controlling government to prevent those near the top of the socioeconomic food chain from taking advantage of those at the bottom.
Then we have the conservative methodology. Conservatives feel that by stimulating business growth and development through permissiveness that it will increase prosperity for all by creating a better and wealthier nation. That a small and mostly hands off government facilitates this, and that holding businesses accountable is the job of the individual consumers through exercise of their buying power. They believe that social programs are the purview of private charities, and that stimulating donations to those charities through tax incentives and grants is the way to help the poor.
In US politics, currently we have 2 parties that represent these. One is the Democratic party, representing the liberal methodology, and the other is the Republican party, representing the conservative methodology.
Whichever of these ideologies your subscribe to, you will find that within these parties there are an extensive list of "factions" who focus more or less on particular aspects of the ideology of in more or less severe terms. This is where we find people seeking 3rd parties... when the party in question selects leadership that the individual doesn't feel meets their goals "enough". They desire their faction to split off, and form it's own party. An example of this on the liberal side are progressives, while on the conservative side we have the tea party.
I've carefully used my language and wording to make sure that it's VERY clear that creation of any 3rd party is the splitting of people FROM the other party. I did this for a reason. I'm going to make an analogy, and I know a lot of people struggle with trying to understand analogies... but honestly I don't think it can be avoided. I could cite other countries as examples until I'm blue in the face, but we are not other countries... our social structure isn't the same on so many levels that such comparisons end up being a circle jerk of justifications and rationalizations and are useless... so analogy it is:
10 people are deciding on lunch. They HAVE to eat together for a meeting, and the caterer will only bring 1 kind of food. So they decide to put what food to order to a vote. They're divided into two main groups... 6 vegetarians and 4 meat eaters.
So... on it's face, the idea that they will be eating meat for lunch sounds pretty absurd. And in a 2 party system, it is. Only the minority opinion supports eating meat, and the majority not only doesn't like meat but they can't even eat it. No WAY they're going to be ordering meat. However... they didn't have 2 choices on their voting card. they had 3.
One person of the vegetarian side decided to add a different vegetable to the card because it was his favorite. He didn't dislike the previous one, and he certainly preferred it to a steak, but this was HIS favorite and he felt like as vegetables went it should have a fair chance at being chosen!
In the end, it turns out 2 more of the vegetarians liked it as well! He was really on to something! Except... this wasn't a vote for the best vegetable... they had already had that vote and added the first veg option. This was a vote for lunch.
The final tally came in:
3 votes - Carrots
3 votes - Eggplant
4 votes - Steak
Well shit.... Meat it is.
This is the same thing that happens in US politics. We have several historical cases of it actually...
- We can start with Lincoln. He was elected by a minority of voters by being candidate of the sole Republican party, while democrats were split between north and south.
- Or Bill Clinton, who won with the Democratic party as conservatives were split between independent Ross Perot and Republican George H. Bush.
- And then we have our current Cheeto in Chief, who won with the Republican vote by democrats turning against one another over disinformation manipulation and conspiracy theories to the extent that a significant number of the Sanders supporters refused to support Clinton, and some even went so far as to vote for Trump out of spite.
Every time there is a 3rd party, our nation gets a minority choice in the grand scheme of the ideologies of the time. Once it even led to a civil war. Currently it's led to Neo-Nazis/KKK marching in the street and demanding that their white supremacist views be taken seriously... and not old white dudes holding onto a bygone ideology of their youth, but young millennials desperate to cling to anything so long as it's not "mainstream". It didn't bring Sanders supporters any close to their goals... instead it drove them further away from them. As it does nearly every time.