Parties of the third part...
Before wading any deeper into this, I want to make it clear that I'm not claiming to be anything more than a casual, armchair political observer. For me, the central thrust of running through these issues is self-education.
Yesterday's announcement of Ralph Nader's entry as an independent candidate for the presidency has reopened old wounds and an older debate. I'm not going to get into the former, as the true and important twofold lessons of the 2000 campaign is every person's vote counts.., unless it's not counted. So, I'll stick with the old debate: Are we locked into a nominal two-party system?
When it comes to a three (or more) party race for the presidency, I've come to believe that trying to force it at the level of the presidency is the wrong way. Besides everything else, it's the sort of move that is most likely to succeed primarily on a "throw the bums out!" initiative and land someone in office who lacks the necessary political apparatus to get the job done. Even a high-minded, highly moral and principled candidate needs to have a seasoned, national political machine working with him. For my part one simply has to look to the Carter presidency to see where the weaknesses will likely manifest if someone truly from "outside the beltway" is swept into office by a wave of popular rebellion. It's too big and fast a show for someone to hit the Oval Office and have to begin networking virtually from scratch.
What has to happen first is that we get a strong third, fourth, etc. party movement happening within states first - the structure of Congress is much better suited to such diversity - and then the Big Two would realize they have to pitch their message to some of those constituencies, too.
A problem is that the two parties have largely sewn up their individual districts, and many of the same dynamics come into play that we see in the national race. A third party entering a race is going to be seen as appealing more to one party's constituency, Democrat or Republican, more the another, and so the message to the voters will continue to be "if you vote for the upstart instead of us, your old pals, we'll both lose and you'll hand the victory to the other side." The trick for the backers of the third party is to get as firm a promise as they can that their interests - interests that are usually portrayed as being important to a "fringe" element - will be given attention if they rejoin the party they were seen as splitting from.
This has to be an easier issue to resolve at the local level, and a bottom-up, grass roots approach suggests that by the time matters rise to the level of national politics the agendas will be more fully-formed.
Some have noted that the majority of these localized upstarts become swallowed up by the Democratic or Republican apparatus, which is something I choose to see as more of a success than not so long as the same ends - whatever agenda launched the third party challenge - ends up being served.
A quick look at two of the third party organizations that continue to push as an independent force gives us some idea that at the local level they are having some success.
The Green Party, with whom Nader ran in 2000, lists 204 current officeholders in 26 states at the moment. As a quick look shows that these offices are mostly at the level of school boards and town and city councils, which is certainly a start.
The Libertarian Party boasts that they hold more than twice as many offices as all other third parties combined. If that's true, then after them and the Greens there mustn't be much in the way of successful third party activity going on. They provide a state-by-state listing of the 602 public offices they're currently filling. A stroll through their ranks also shows many school board level and auditor positions, though they appear to be more strongly represented in law and enforcement (justices of the peace and constables) and in some states are strongly into the oversight positions in elections - that latter element's pronounced here in Pennsylvania, I see.
In both parties one does see a mayor arise here or there.
Ideally, those who succeed at these positions are being recruited by the party, Democrats or Republicans, with whom they're most ideologically aligned when the time comes to seek a higher office, since the higher the office the more money it takes to successfully run. I'm not enough of a political maven to know how true that is, nor to have witnessed such an ascent.
As one steps back and looks at the Greens and the Libertarians, one can make the perhaps overly-simplified assessment that the Greens represent the former environmental and social justice/entitlement "fringes" of the Democratic Party, while the Libertarians were those at the extreme "less goverment is best" edge of the GOP before deciding to go their own way.
The issue of whether or not anyone can long maintain their idealogical focus once they've become dependent upon the influence that large sums of money can buy - and the agendas of the people and corporations who wield that cash - is an open one.
I can't see how we'll ever truly break out of a nominal two-party system, especially at the level of the presidency. After an extreme enough downturn in living standards, especially if scandals of an economic stripe are rampant, I could possibly see one succeeding, but it wouldn't last because it would almost certainly be another "throw the bums out" push that would collapse into dissent once it tried to do anything else. They would have to come to stand for some agenda, and that agenda would be more closely aligned with one party and anathema to the other, and would in the longer term become a vote-splitter that could easily see a just more than one third majority sweeping their candidate into office. This is also the objection that Mark Gibson, among others, has brought up.
As imperfect as it seems, the push by the Greens and Libertarians to work first at the local level, organize and push upwards is the best, practical application of third party organizations in the U.S. Should they ever both emerge with strong Presidential candidates at the same time, that might work, but I don't see any odd-numbered configuration being anything but a vote-splitter at the presidential level. Consequently, I don't see us losing a two party system anytime soon, though I'm sure we wish we had more of a clear choice than Coke or Pepsi.
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