The Eternal Doomed Quest for a Third American Party

One of the rules of American political journalism is that every four years there must be an attempt to guage the likelihood of a “serious” third party challenge that will change everything we’d previously thought we’d known about American politics. Happily, this year is no exception. TIME’s Alex Altman asks “Can a Well-Heeled Group of Insiders Create a Populist Third Party Sensation?”. We all know the answer to that. No, they can’t. And won’t. But here, just for fun, is what Americans Elect* are planning:

What Americans Elect has done is fashion a new twist to the quadrennial quest for a credible third-party contender. Instead of an outside party, it has crafted a parallel nominating process: a nonpartisan online convention. Anyone with a valid ID and an Internet hookup is eligible to become a “delegate,” and candidates can either register by completing a questionnaire or be drafted by popular support. Through a series of online ballots, the slate of contenders will be whittled down to six in April, and then winnowed to a single winner in June. In keeping with the group’s shibboleths, the nominee must tap a member of a different party as a running mate, forming a “unity ticket” that will occupy the chasm in the political center.

Plainly this is both too clever by half and full of dumb. If it sounds like it’s the sort of hare-brained gimmick you’d find in a Tom Friedman column you will not be surprised to discover that Friedman thinks Americans Elect can do to politics “what Amazon.com did to books”. As if this were not a sufficiently chilling endorsement, consider that the group’s supporters include the likes of Doug Schoen (one of Bill Clinton’s pollsters), Mark McKinnon (Dubya’s adman), Dennis Blair (Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence) and Christine Todd Whitman (former GOP governor of New Jersey). Yes, if you wanted a group to plead for greater cocktail party civility these are some of the people you would expect to accept your invitation. But creating a new idea for American politics? Not so much.

Granted, they have had some success. It looks as though their candidate will get on the ballot in most, perhaps all, states, and they have some money:

Americans Elect has amassed more than 75% of the 2.9 million signatures required to grace the ballot in all 50 states, and mined its connections to net $22 million of the estimated $35 million needed to finance the experiment. Though nearly 5,000 people have chipped in so far, the bulk of the group’s war chest comes from about 50 wealthy donors. In a way, Americans Elect represents an unlikely alliance between clashing socioeconomic factions, with the 1% bulldozing the barriers to ballot access so that the 99% can pick a President—perhaps someone who hails from their own ranks, for a change.

But, look, all this is fine for a crappy TV movie or mildly-amusing online gameshow but it’s not going to change the world. There’s a reason why we have political parties (much though they may be detestable organisations, stuffed with loons and backed by goggle-eyed cranks) and there’s no way Americans Elect can pick a candidate who will have a chance of getting the attention needed to persuade anyone to vote for him. Even then there’s the collective action problem: you might well vote for a third party candidate but only if you think other people will. But since you don’t think many of them will you won’t either. You will instead vote for whichever other candidate you dislike least.

The only possible way this could be different is if Americans Elect picked someone everyone had already heard of. Such as, to pick a name completely at random, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City. But what would be the point of the whole process then? And, anyway, Bloomberg, for all his millions, couldn’t win either. Seriously: outside of the Tri-State area, what states do you think Bloomberg could be competitive in? And even in NY, CT and NJ how many Democrats will vote for Mike if they think the price of doing so is a Republican in the White House? They ain’t that disappointed in Obama.

Again: the third-party stuff and reinventing politics is a lovely old quadrennial flower. But it ain’t happening anytime soon and, as you may have noticed, the existing parties are already quite good at using new technology to “reach” voters and, not coincidentally, help retain their unchallenged supremacy.

Besides, as any fule kno, if Americans are going to vote for a Third Party this year they should hope Gary Johnson wins the Libertarian Party nomination and vote for him.

*A confusing name: are they soon-to-be-Americans or actual Americans?