It depends on the type of third party he creates. If he creates a sane centrist party that gives Democrats some competition in deep Blue districts, it would be a very good thing. Liberals morph into dangerous whackos when they lack credible competition.
On the other hand, if his new party focuses on playing the spoiler to make lavender RINOs lose, that would be a terrible thing.
For structural reasons--which can be summarized as "winner-take-all" and "first-past-the-post"--third parties have had a serious uphill struggle, especially in the contemporary era. And--as you recognize--their electoral impact is mostly to split the majority coalition and allow parties that otherwise would never have had a chance to slip between the cracks.
Abraham Lincoln won in 1860--with 39.6 percent of the popular vote, the lowest ever--because the majority Democrats de facto split into two parties: Stephen Douglas's Northern Democrats and John Breckenridge's Southern Democrats. John Bell Hood's Constitutional Union Party was almost entirely irrelevant, only gaining traction in a handful of states where Lincoln was not even on the ballot: in effect, there were two separate presidential contests, Lincoln/Douglas in the North and Breckenridge/Hood in the South and border states.
The late-19th century agrarian parties won a few states but did not actually affect any election outcomes. Eventually they merged with the Democrats.
George Wallace's American Party won several states that might--might!--have voted Democrat but at the time were widely viewed as in transition to the Republican Party.
The closest any third party came to affecting the outcome of an election was probably Ross Perot--the Elon Musk of his time--in 1992, and--to the extent he did so--it splintered the GOP coalition that had elected Reagan twice and George H.W. Bush once, allowing Bill Clinton into the presidency.
You'll note that none of these third-party movements actually WON. All they did was to tip the election against the presumed favorite.
I prophecy that if Musk actually starts up a third party, he will destroy any chance of fixing what's wrong with our country...and will make himself look like a buffoon in the process. Feel free to look up how that worked out for Ross the Cross Boss if you don't believe me.
A third party campaign at the presidential level is generally a pathetic failure or outright conterproductive. For lower level races third party and independent candidates can be useful. At the state house level a sizeable number of races go uncontested by one of the major parties. A new party could be the second party.
And thanks to aggressive Gerrymandering, there are many federal congressional races which are effectively one-party today.
Quite so. Of course the gerrymandering would likely shut out third parties in a gerrymandered or uncontested--the two are often connected, of course--district as well as whichever "major" party the incumbents are trying to disadvantage.
Back in the days when the Democrats were all in for "majority-minority districts," whoever won the Democratic primary was going to win the district no matter what. Nor is that a recent phenomenon: it was equally true if not more so back in the days of the so-called "white primary" of the pre-Voting Rights Act era.
As far as the lower-level offices go, I lived for almost forty years in the Commonwealth of Virginia. On more than one occasion, statewide and other races were lost to the GOP by margins smaller than the vote totals accrued by the LPV (Libertarian Party of Virginia). In one notorious instance, it turned out that the Democrats had bankrolled the Libertarian candidate with exactly that in mind. So my experience of that isn't a positive one...and I speak as someone who is very much a "small-l" libertarian myself! :-)
A Musk-led third party contesting races at any level would have the same defect that I see in Musk's objections to the BBB: when you make the perfect the enemy of the good enough, you discover that the alternative is much, much worse.
The MAGA GOP may not be my ideal political party, but it sure looks a lot better than either the current Democratic Party or the McCain/Romney version of the Republicans.
At least back in the 90s, the LPVA had many an activist who thought that spoiling elections was a good thing -- nearly unanimous at a party where I did the poll. I tried to make the case for either running to win or focusing on uncontested races. I even took the argument to the national level -- to little avail.
So yes, simply launching a new party in this country is generally counterproductive -- unless the founders establish a culture of sane strategy. And that culture has to be established at the get-go, else those who are content to be spoilers will be the ones who stick around.
And I would add--which I've already stated earlier--that it's also a very steep hill to climb. I still remember the "Free State Project," to which I contributed, in part because I'd spent two years (1973-1975) in NH in the Meldrim Thomson era <vbg>.
My conclusion: even in a pretty freethinking ("Live Free or Die") libertarian environment--dunno if it's still true but back in the day NH was the ONLY state to have neither a sales tax nor an income tax!--a LP takeover is just too heavy of a lift.
Never try to take over the libertarian party. That's like going full on retard.
And don't use the word libertarian. Fights will ensue.
If Musk forms the Martian Party which is in the sane portion of the libertarian quadrant of the Nolan Chart, half the LP members would join. Case in point: Ernie Hancock started the R3VOLution thing around Ron Paul. Hancock was a fire breathing purist when working within the LP. He led a split in the Arizona party back in 2000.
I believe you. And I see I phrased myself a trifle awkwardly. What I meant to say was that even in NH a takeover BY libertarians appears to have been a bridge too far...
I used to be something of a libertarian, but after the Big Split I described myself as a "Randian Minarchist" as contrasted with the "Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalists"! ;-)
Nowadays I generally describe myself as a "small-l libertarian" as opposed to a "big-L Libertarian," meaning I'm not doctrinaire but my instincts are in that general direction.
OTOH, two years after the Perot effort, we got Newt Gingrich, the Contract With America, and the first GOP majority congress since dinosaurs walked the earth.
True enough. But by that reasoning we should be thanking Mitt Romney and John McCain, right? Indeed we should be thanking--as some have argued--the Democrats for keeping Trump out of the White House for his second term, yes?
I'd also observe that the environment has changed a lot since the Clinton and Gingrich era. For all his many flaws, Clinton was an old-fashioned American politician. I did not see him as an existential threat to the Republic, and I still don't.
By contrast I frankly wasn't sure that we'd survive four years of Biden, and I'm pretty sure we'd have had a pretty hard time with eight years of Biden/Harris...however they'd have been divided.
In any event my larger point is that ideological purity in political parties is pretty much a guarantee of taking a beating in the election. As has been observed more recently, the Democrats are always on the lookout for heretics, while the GOP is always looking for converts.
And that's been where third parties take you as well. After Ford nipped Reagan at the wire in 1976, there was a groundswell movement favoring an ideologically-based conservative third-party effort. Reagan--as well-read in history as anyone since Jefferson--knew that would be a catastrophe and managed to avoid getting entangled in the coils of said movement. We both know the rest.
Bottom line: if you think it's worth destroying our chances in 2028 in order to build an ideologically pure party, include me out.
It depends on the type of third party he creates. If he creates a sane centrist party that gives Democrats some competition in deep Blue districts, it would be a very good thing. Liberals morph into dangerous whackos when they lack credible competition.
On the other hand, if his new party focuses on playing the spoiler to make lavender RINOs lose, that would be a terrible thing.
For structural reasons--which can be summarized as "winner-take-all" and "first-past-the-post"--third parties have had a serious uphill struggle, especially in the contemporary era. And--as you recognize--their electoral impact is mostly to split the majority coalition and allow parties that otherwise would never have had a chance to slip between the cracks.
Abraham Lincoln won in 1860--with 39.6 percent of the popular vote, the lowest ever--because the majority Democrats de facto split into two parties: Stephen Douglas's Northern Democrats and John Breckenridge's Southern Democrats. John Bell Hood's Constitutional Union Party was almost entirely irrelevant, only gaining traction in a handful of states where Lincoln was not even on the ballot: in effect, there were two separate presidential contests, Lincoln/Douglas in the North and Breckenridge/Hood in the South and border states.
The late-19th century agrarian parties won a few states but did not actually affect any election outcomes. Eventually they merged with the Democrats.
George Wallace's American Party won several states that might--might!--have voted Democrat but at the time were widely viewed as in transition to the Republican Party.
The closest any third party came to affecting the outcome of an election was probably Ross Perot--the Elon Musk of his time--in 1992, and--to the extent he did so--it splintered the GOP coalition that had elected Reagan twice and George H.W. Bush once, allowing Bill Clinton into the presidency.
You'll note that none of these third-party movements actually WON. All they did was to tip the election against the presumed favorite.
I prophecy that if Musk actually starts up a third party, he will destroy any chance of fixing what's wrong with our country...and will make himself look like a buffoon in the process. Feel free to look up how that worked out for Ross the Cross Boss if you don't believe me.
A third party campaign at the presidential level is generally a pathetic failure or outright conterproductive. For lower level races third party and independent candidates can be useful. At the state house level a sizeable number of races go uncontested by one of the major parties. A new party could be the second party.
And thanks to aggressive Gerrymandering, there are many federal congressional races which are effectively one-party today.
Quite so. Of course the gerrymandering would likely shut out third parties in a gerrymandered or uncontested--the two are often connected, of course--district as well as whichever "major" party the incumbents are trying to disadvantage.
Back in the days when the Democrats were all in for "majority-minority districts," whoever won the Democratic primary was going to win the district no matter what. Nor is that a recent phenomenon: it was equally true if not more so back in the days of the so-called "white primary" of the pre-Voting Rights Act era.
As far as the lower-level offices go, I lived for almost forty years in the Commonwealth of Virginia. On more than one occasion, statewide and other races were lost to the GOP by margins smaller than the vote totals accrued by the LPV (Libertarian Party of Virginia). In one notorious instance, it turned out that the Democrats had bankrolled the Libertarian candidate with exactly that in mind. So my experience of that isn't a positive one...and I speak as someone who is very much a "small-l" libertarian myself! :-)
A Musk-led third party contesting races at any level would have the same defect that I see in Musk's objections to the BBB: when you make the perfect the enemy of the good enough, you discover that the alternative is much, much worse.
The MAGA GOP may not be my ideal political party, but it sure looks a lot better than either the current Democratic Party or the McCain/Romney version of the Republicans.
At least back in the 90s, the LPVA had many an activist who thought that spoiling elections was a good thing -- nearly unanimous at a party where I did the poll. I tried to make the case for either running to win or focusing on uncontested races. I even took the argument to the national level -- to little avail.
So yes, simply launching a new party in this country is generally counterproductive -- unless the founders establish a culture of sane strategy. And that culture has to be established at the get-go, else those who are content to be spoilers will be the ones who stick around.
Amen to that, brother. Amen to that.
And I would add--which I've already stated earlier--that it's also a very steep hill to climb. I still remember the "Free State Project," to which I contributed, in part because I'd spent two years (1973-1975) in NH in the Meldrim Thomson era <vbg>.
My conclusion: even in a pretty freethinking ("Live Free or Die") libertarian environment--dunno if it's still true but back in the day NH was the ONLY state to have neither a sales tax nor an income tax!--a LP takeover is just too heavy of a lift.
Never try to take over the libertarian party. That's like going full on retard.
And don't use the word libertarian. Fights will ensue.
If Musk forms the Martian Party which is in the sane portion of the libertarian quadrant of the Nolan Chart, half the LP members would join. Case in point: Ernie Hancock started the R3VOLution thing around Ron Paul. Hancock was a fire breathing purist when working within the LP. He led a split in the Arizona party back in 2000.
I believe you. And I see I phrased myself a trifle awkwardly. What I meant to say was that even in NH a takeover BY libertarians appears to have been a bridge too far...
I used to be something of a libertarian, but after the Big Split I described myself as a "Randian Minarchist" as contrasted with the "Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalists"! ;-)
Nowadays I generally describe myself as a "small-l libertarian" as opposed to a "big-L Libertarian," meaning I'm not doctrinaire but my instincts are in that general direction.
OTOH, two years after the Perot effort, we got Newt Gingrich, the Contract With America, and the first GOP majority congress since dinosaurs walked the earth.
True enough. But by that reasoning we should be thanking Mitt Romney and John McCain, right? Indeed we should be thanking--as some have argued--the Democrats for keeping Trump out of the White House for his second term, yes?
I'd also observe that the environment has changed a lot since the Clinton and Gingrich era. For all his many flaws, Clinton was an old-fashioned American politician. I did not see him as an existential threat to the Republic, and I still don't.
By contrast I frankly wasn't sure that we'd survive four years of Biden, and I'm pretty sure we'd have had a pretty hard time with eight years of Biden/Harris...however they'd have been divided.
In any event my larger point is that ideological purity in political parties is pretty much a guarantee of taking a beating in the election. As has been observed more recently, the Democrats are always on the lookout for heretics, while the GOP is always looking for converts.
And that's been where third parties take you as well. After Ford nipped Reagan at the wire in 1976, there was a groundswell movement favoring an ideologically-based conservative third-party effort. Reagan--as well-read in history as anyone since Jefferson--knew that would be a catastrophe and managed to avoid getting entangled in the coils of said movement. We both know the rest.
Bottom line: if you think it's worth destroying our chances in 2028 in order to build an ideologically pure party, include me out.
Oh, I think we have a *lot* more destroyers than that to look forward to in 2028.