Earlier this week, The Collegian’s Editorial Faculty Adviser Reaz Mahmood and I were having a discussion about third parties. No, not an after-after party ”” political third parties: Libertarians, Greens, Commies, et al. He brought to my attention a segment from The Colbert Report which featured AmericansElect.org CEO Elliot Ackerman.
AmericansElect.org is an organization that allows Internet users to nominate a third-party presidential candidate for 2012.
It sounds enticing at first. Everyone rails against “Washington,” “the establishment,” “Wall Street” and “politics as usual.” (Quick, name the last politician to win an election while touting his fealty to the Washington establishment.) Sarah Palin has made a career decrying “politics as usual.” It is now in vogue to call oneself an independent ”” there are now as many self-proclaimed Independents as there are Republicans and Democrats.
However attractive a third party may be, it is, dare I say, impossible for a minor party candidate to win a presidential election.
The American system is not set up to encourage third parties; in fact, we’ve been a two-party system throughout our existence: first it was Federalists vs. Republicans, then the Democratic-Republicans all on their own, then the Whigs vs. the Democrats, and finally Republicans vs. Democrats.
Even America’s independents are rather partisan ”” the vast majority already have conservative or liberal sympathies, and those that don’t likely don’t follow politics.
Supporting third parties, while a good idea in principle, does not work in reality.
The closest a third-party candidate came to winning was in 1912, when former president Teddy Roosevelt nearly overtook Woodrow Wilson with the short-lived Bull Moose Party, and 1992, when billionaire Ross Perot challenged siphoned votes away from G.H.W. Bush, leading to the election of Slick Willy Clinton.
Those who think a third-party candidate ever has a chance of winning a presidential election, without America switching to a European-style democracy, are dreaming.
This is a new section, and it’s a shameless copy of something William F. Buckley Jr. did in the fortnightly National Review. It will be a place for me to expound upon newsroom discussions, classroom discussions, global, national or local events, letters to the editor or reader comments.
Philosotroll • Aug 26, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Ross Perot got 0 electoral votes. I don’t see how you can mention him and not mention segregationist independent George Wallace in 1968.
I don’t mind editorializing, but I do mind bad research in order to justify a throw-away joke about a two term President who, for all of his failings, oversaw the greatest economic growth in many of our lifetimes.
Michael • Aug 25, 2011 at 9:25 pm
You have succeeded in pointing out a fundamental problem with electoral politics, citing the inane hypocrisy among politicians, U.S. citizens and its two major parties.
You also seem to be quite okay with all this. Instead of railing against the current majorities’ un-democratic monopoly in the electoral process and advocating ways to bring an end to the closing off of third parties in debates and ballot access and revenue, you seem to advocate the continued self-imprisonment citizens subject themselves to by following your rationale — which is that while it may be noble to support (which I think you mean as “voting”) third party candidates in the sense that it pronounces an abject disapproval of the current corporatist class of politicians and parties, one is simply wasting their time because of the reality that a 3rd party is unlikely to win.
It also seemed all but impossible to envision a world completely free of using humans as property, or creating separate classes of citizens based on factors including race or religious beliefs.
You’re right; I don’t expect to see a 3rd party candidate win a presidential election in my lifetime. The system/process has to change before that is likely to happen — and it doesn’t require reforming to a Euro style parliament (although that would help). But if you use your rationale for any and all other injustices/hypocrisies, you might find such a rationale, in principle, completely repulsive.
Two party monopoly does prevent non-majorities from winning elections, though I find that far less bothersome than two parties who are, apart from their heated and polarized rhetoric on issues the presidency usually doesn’t concern themselves with (or cannot concern themselves with), more or less the same and have complete control over much of the elecotral process. And all it takes for a third party candidate to win is the American citizenry checking the box two inches away from “Democrat” and “Republican”. But deep down America doesn’t want this. They don’t want change. They make their bed, and they sleep in it. I Don’t know what they have to complain about.