How would a new political party logistically form in the United States?
What would this take? I imagine neither party wants a third official party with equal power. They probably actively fight any efforts to create one.
How would a group of politicians form one logistically, then?
Answers ( 2 )
In the history of the United States, viable political parties have always been born out of the ashes of old ones. The Federalists disintegrated after the War of 1812 (mainly because they opposed it, but it ended well for the US) and the Whigs soon filled that space. They only lasted about 40 years and were replaced by the Republicans -- and here we are 170 years later, with the same two parties controlling everything.
You're totally correct in saying that neither party wants a third party to compete on the national stage. Oh, sure, the Greens and Libertarians can have their candidates and their conventions, but they NEVER win elections at the national level (including Congress). I think the main reason is that most Americans view politics based on who is currently the President (they are, for instance, far more likely to be able to name the candidates running for President than their candidates for the US House or US Senate) and then form allegiance to one of the two major parties -- and because of the nature of the Electoral College, it's IMPOSSIBLE to mount a viable third-party challenge for President (I won't go into why; there are very detailed constitutional reasons).
So what remains? It's equivalent to asking "How can the Libertarians, or Greens, or Constitution Party, win seats in Congress?" -- that's far easier than winning the Presidency. To win a House seat or Senate seat, I think you would need (a) a collapse of the incumbent's viability and (b) the lack of a reasonable alternative from the other party. That's a really tough ask -- because of gerrymandering, most districts in the US are either lopsidedly in favor of one party or the other. The ruling party packs all of the oppositions voters into a district where they will be heavily favored, then keeps healthy (10 points or so) leads in all the other districts. Visit theList_of_United_States_congressional_districts and look at the "CVPI" for each state's districts to see what I mean.
What that means is that even if the incumbent screws up, it's easy to put another candidate on the ballot that will still win, or -- if the situation is so egregious that voters are completely turned off by their side or by politics in general -- that the advantage just goes to the only other viable candidate. Votes for third party are seen as "protest votes", which mean those candidates have no hope of winning the election, but are collecting votes mainly as a protest against the Democratic and Republican options.
So the new parties are waiting in the wings for one of the two major parties to self-distruct. If the Democrats were to implode, the Greens would pick up the scraps. If the GOP self-immolates, then the Libertarian and/or Constitution party candidates would rise out of their ashes (depending upon whether it goes in a limited-government or whack-a-doodle-nationalist direction). But there's no way forward for third parties in America until that happens.
Step 1: revise our "First Past The Post" method of voting, which dramatically encourages the Two-Party System. (How often have you put a clothespin on your nose and voted "strategically" for "the lesser of two evils"?) Lots of people are now trying to establish the option of a Negative Vote (a.k.a. "Balanced Ballot") in Taiwan, Berkeley and across the USA.
See http://free-ideas.org/pol/NegVote.html and https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=balanced%20ballot%20for%20america and https://www.negative.vote/
Step 2: avoid the Second Civil War that's looking more and more likely by the day. A viable third party would probably be the best way to defang the polarization that now renders democracy impossible in the USA.