A party has to start with an idea, a set of values, and a set of proposals of how government should work.
Gallup finds interest in a third-party increasing, particularly among Republicans.
Independents are usually much more likely than Republicans or Democrats to favor a third political party, but in the current poll, Republicans are nearly as likely as independents to hold this view, 63 percent to 70 percent. That represents a dramatic shift for Republicans since last September when 40 percent favored a third party.
Republicans’ current level of support for a third party is also the highest Gallup has measured for Republicans or Democrats in Gallup’s trend. The previous high was 54 percent for Democrats in 2018. Currently, 46 percent of Democrats endorse a third party, down from 52 percent in September.
America has a lot of third parties — everything from Libertarian and Green Party to the Boiling Frog Party, which received 141 votes last year. What we don’t have is a particularly competitive or important third party. Every now and then the Libertarians or Greens can play spoiler, but the Tea Party, Trump-ists, and Sanders-esque socialists demonstrated, if you want to influence American politics, it’s easiest to take over a party from the inside.
Political movements in the U.S. face almost insurmountable obstacles when they attempt to rise outside of the two major parties — but it’s not usually a lack of money. Qualifying for the ballot can be a pain in the neck, but the larger minor parties usually manage it.
The extraordinarily short-lived buzz around a potential independent bid of former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz last cycle illustrates visions of a centrist party usually put the cart before the horse. Schultz had plenty of money. He had a decent amount of name recognition, could get his books published, and get himself booked on national television programs. He had something of a coherent agenda, a non-socialist corporate-friendly version of the Democratic platform, focused on job creation.
And Schultz absolutely flopped, in part because Joe Biden winning the nomination made Schultz’s effort largely redundant, but also in large part because Schultz was an army of one. The coffee CEO showed up and expected Americans to entrust their futures in him. There was no grassroots movement yearning to enact Schultz-ism. There were no Schultz-ite down-ticket candidates. Schultz had taken political stances occasionally while running the coffee giant, but few Americans saw him as someone who had enacted public-policy changes.
A party has to start with an idea, a set of values, and a set of proposals of how government should work; if it’s built around a single figure, it’s destined to crumble once that figure departs the stage. Ask H. Ross Perot. No, if a lasting third party is going to be created, it would need to be created by leaders who are focused on goals well beyond the next presidential election.
An effort to create a serious and lasting third party would have to be willing to humbly start at at the bottom — getting people elected to school boards and town councils and city councils across the country. Those positions matter — if you didn’t believe it before, think about the ongoing fights to reopen schools going on right now, and the fights over local quarantine restrictions. Think about how consequential state legislative seats are, in light of the certification of the electors late last year. Think about how consequential secretaries of state, state attorneys general, and state elections boards are. If you feel that Donald Trump was hindered from being the president you wanted him to be, it was in large part because he didn’t have enough like-minded allies anywhere — not in Congress, not in state legislatures, not in state executive branches, nor, arguably, in Trump’s own cabinet.
You can’t build a lasting movement around one person. It has to stand for something bigger. A serious third party would start off best with a lot of like-minded individuals willing to run for these less glamorized, less noticed offices. The good news is that these down-ticket offices are easier to win — heck, lots of state legislative races are uncontested! A new third party could start winning a few races here and there, and start building a record of what its members could achieve in office.