JSRG
Well-Known Member
- Apr 14, 2019
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It’s considered that because that’s the accurate depiction of what it is. No third party is making a serious attempt to build a real alternative to the two major ones. They waste their resources on moonshot campaigns for president rather then doing the boring work of building a voter base and governing at local levels to demonstrate their ideas.
You build a voter base with a presidential campaign because that's the only way people actually hear of you. "Govern at the local level" is the sort of thing people say that sounds kind of good but actually means best-case scenario you maybe get yourself better known in a rather small area. At least the presidential attempts get attention which could help elect people on the lower levels, which some third parties have managed. But again this was done by starting high and going lower, not starting at the lowest level and climbing up. I've never seen anyone who claims they have to go from the local level first ever able to point to any case of success of this. If this is the proper way to go, why is there no apparent evidence it can work?
Indeed, the last time a third party candidate managed a big win was Jesse Ventura when he won Minnesota as the Reform Party candidate, a party that started on the national level rather than the local one (it collapsed soon afterwards, though, because it turns out that Ross Perot: The Party doesn't work so well when Ross Perot quits). And the last time a party rose up and became a major force in American politics was when the Republican Party became a thing, which again didn't start on the local level, it worked much more nationally.
Maybe,whichever way someone goes (starting nationally or locally) won't work and there's not any real route to becoming a major force in American politics under the current voting system aside from one of the current major parties imploding; the Republican Party became a major force largely because the Whig Party (the major opponent to the Democrats back then) collapsed from internal division on the issue of slavery and the Republican Party, many of whose members were former Whig members, therefore took its place. But I've noticed that whatever little success third parties have managed has all been from those who worked nationally to try to gain attention and then used that to win some more local contests, not any that worked locally and tried to rise up.
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