Former Republicans and Democrats to form new third U.S. political party
reuters.com
reuters.com
In practice what this means is putting the Democrats on notice that they have to support RCV in every state, otherwise supporters of electoral reform will deliberately sabotage the party's chances and throw each election to the Republicans.
This is from the "don't mess with me! I'm crazy enough to do it!" school of thought, which worked so well against the "split or steal" choice given in a famous quiz show clip.[0] That game was deliberately designed to be equivalent to the Prisoner's Dilemma, just as the US voting system ends up being.
[0] https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2012/09/21/split-or-steal...
It's not enough to have policies and politicians that appeal to people who currently vote for the major parties, you also have to convince them that voting for a third party won't lead to a worse party getting elected.
Universal basic income was a major part of Yang's campaign in 2020. Given enough time, I suppose it could become centrist. In the meantime, this raises the question of what positions this new party will support exactly.
> .. The leaders cited a Gallup poll last year showing a record two-thirds of Americans believe a third party is needed.
One of the reasons they do so badly is that American third parties have almost nothing to do with respect to local governance. They tend to be focused on trying to win national elections. It's hard to build a bench of electable national candidates when so few of them have run a city or state under the banner of the party they're running with.
Unless this third party is willing to make a serious investment in local governance, I doubt it will do much better than the others.
I think to be successful the first order of business will be to establish the process of reaching compromise itself a base principle.
We have to recognize that we can't all get everything we want, but we can try for the "highest common denominator", if you will, of our shared values.
We can respect each other even if we don't all agree on every issue.
This just isn't true, third parties like Democratic Socialists of America (Bernie Sanders' party)[0] are heavily involved in state and local politics in various parts of the country through grassroots efforts and have been for years. For example, they now represent 10% of the Chicago City Council (5 seats). Groups like DSA are also heavily involved in projects like unionizing Amazon. They do a lot for their local communities beyond supporting policy.
People think that third parties are just in for Federal races primarily because we're exposed to so much more Federal politics in the press than we are state and local.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Socialists_of_Ameri...
It's a start. But the US has over 89,000 local governments. A few dozen office holders is not even a drop in the bucket.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/government...
But the one reality of UBI that I've never heard addressed is what happens with the crackhead parent who smokes up the $1,500 in the first week (or gambles away, or blows on a 80" TV or whatever)....do we just let their kids starve for the rest of the month? Of course not, so now we're back to needing other programs to supplement the cash handout. That reality is never factored into the cost estimates. Why not, and what is the actual solution?
Also, obligatory essay on “not left or right but forward” from Second Thought:
The party, which is centrist, has no specific policies yet. It will say at its Thursday launch: "How will we solve the big issues facing America? Not Left. Not Right. Forward."
Unfortunately for them, "centrism" is an often morally bankrupt and intellectually lazy philosophy based on the premise that a correct solution always lies between two opposing, equally invalid ideologies. But the center-point between ideologies (assuming such a thing always exists) more often than not simply serves the interests of the status quo and its injustice.
The centrist view of racial equality gets us Jim Crow laws. The centrist view of LGBTQ rights stops at "civil unions" but not actual marriage. The centrist view of science "teaches the controversy" of creationism. The centrist view of Hitler seeks peace in our time. Sometimes there is no valid middle ground and compromise is giving in to evil. You're not going to get anywhere with the black community, or womens' rights, or climate change or immigration or any issue Americans actually care about with centrism. Sometimes, you have to pick a side and make a choice.
The US doesn't need another party committed to never actually taking a strong stance on any issue, it already has the Democratic Party. But I guess it'll be fun watching these folks siphon votes away from the left and win Trump a second term.
Damn I hate US politics sometimes.
For example the Libertarian party is often described as fiscally "conservative" and socially "liberal." This approach takes the "best" ideas from either party, as opposed to splitting the difference on every issue.
That's the ultimate goal of Marxism, not the left. The left is not synonymous with Marxism. In the context of this conversation, which is American party politics, leftism is considered to encompass, by default, every political and social movement not in the camp of laissez-faire capitalism or conservative Christian ideology, and what gets called the "far left" in the US would be considered at best center right anywhere else in the world.
And that "leftism" would include things like UBI, socialized healthcare and education, established rights for gay marriage and abortion, free and open source software, CRT, wage equality, labor laws and unionization, and any number of other things which have no interest whatsoever in abolishing the state, but which rather depend upon the preexistence of a state with strong regulatory power.
Most of the self-described "radical centrists" I've met aren't attempting to perform any sort of ideological balancing act between left and right, it's just that they simultaneously hold a particular mix of ideas from both the liberal & conservative parties in such a way as to never be able to fully side with Republicans or Democrats. They find themselves split by a zig-zagging line across so many different issues that they must reject both major parties.
For example, someone who deeply supports abortion rights and LGBTQ marriage, but also feels strongly about the 2nd Amendment might describe themselves as a centrist. Those are all strongly held beliefs and none of them occupy any middle ground. It's not intellectually lazy or morally bankrupt to hold a mix of ideas that don't fit neatly into either major party.
It's funny the issues you mention are commonly held by quite a few people I know, myself included. "Why can't the gay couple up the street get married, while smoking weed and shooting off some rifles?" is how I describe my views.
I've definitely noticed that the amount of people I meet with views like that have been a little rarer lately.
I always think of centrists as just not towing the party line. Some ideas on some side, some on the other. At least, that's what I mean when I describe myself as a centrist.
Unfortunately, being a centrist gets you no friends. Both sides think you're an idiot for even entertaining the other side.
I’m other words, the social liberal/economic conservative crowd. Truly a marriage of convenience: raising the minimum wage is going to make your nanny more expensive, but gay rights costs you nothing. And my property taxes are too high. When they see people marching in the streets many of these folks get scared and run to the republicans.
Brutal. I laughed out loud!
I wish them well, but I highly doubt this will be any different than the other 3rd parties.
Maybe McAfee can run again. Betya the Dead Presidents would license their music free to the campaign.
So technically, we still have a chance of electing him. "Alive" isn't specified anywhere in the requirements, is it? As long as we can puppet him sufficiently it should be good.
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/john-mcafees-corpse-still-spanish-090...
Sounds like a third skin on the existing uniparty. Perot caused as much impact as he did because he was someone from outside of the existing party structures. These sound like people who wanted more power in the structure but were never able to get it so now they want an alternative path to those levers of control.
Good I think they will catch lot of votes from democrats.
There is one I can think for starters: members that are not under heavy medications, less than retirement age and don’t drop dead if they walked a mile.