3rd party candidates & why they'll never have any chance of winning major offices (presidency, etc) -- Adilbrand Noblesword's Hall of Warriors

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Date Posted: 23:35:55 07/13/04 Tue
Author: Mt. Healthy Mountaineer
Subject: 3rd party candidates & why they'll never have any chance of winning major offices (presidency, etc)
In reply to: mvd 's message, "Third party candidates." on 22:06:46 07/12/04 Mon

Don't get me wrong, I am for all of the parties that want to field candidates to field them - the more the merrier. If the Greens want to field candidates - great! If the Libertarians want to field them - great! If the Klan wants to field them - great! (in their case, let's all see what they espouse so we can ridicule it or be repulsed by it)

However, historically, the third party movement has been destroyed by the stability and the genius of the two-party system. Why genius? Because since the collapse of the Whig Party and the Rise of the Republican Party every new party has been absorbed by the party that was politically closer to it once they started to gain traction.

For example, here's a part of the biography of William Jennings Bryan from www.braincyclopedia.com:

In 1896, Bryan defeated incumbent president Grover Cleveland to win the Democratic party nomination for president. Just thirty-six, Bryan managed to attract the support of mainstream Democrats as well as disaffected third party Populists and Free Silverites. His moving Cross of gold speech, delivered prior to his nomination, lambasted Eastern monied classes for supporting the gold standard at the expense of the average worker.

Bryan merely adopted the stances of the 3rd party movements and absorbed many of their members.

It has already started for the Greens this time around. The candidate mentioned that they had 3 key points in their platform that they had developed weeks before. I don't even remember what 2 of the points were but the 3rd one was an increase in the minimum wage to $10.00/hour. Just 2 days before this interview Kerry announced that he wanted to raise it to $7.50/hour. Kerry stole one of the Green's ideas and moderated it in order to make it more appealing to the center and with it probably stole a few votes.

The Libertarians came up with the national sales tax a few years ago to replace the Income Tax. Republican Senator Richard Lugar (from Indiana) pushed the national sales tax as the centerpiece of his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2000.

To sum up - a third party will never win because they are very issue specific and the 2 major parties are very flexible and willing to adopt their positions in order to stay on top. The true value of a 3rd party is to get new ideas on the national radar so that the other 2 parties will notice them and adopt or adapt them.

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Replies:

hmmm -- mvd, 08:55:57 07/14/04 Wed
- Either way... -- mt. healthy mountaineer, 12:33:11 07/14/04 Wed