I Got Them Old Third-Party Blues Again, Mama

George Washington (official state portrait)

President George Washington, in his Farewell Address, actually an open letter published in 1796, had many warnings for Americans. He urged Americans to maintain high standards of morality and public conduct. He encouraged Americans to remain unified in culture, heritage, and religion (which honestly was a racist dog-whistle from a notorious Deist and slaveholder). He admonished Americans to not let regional loyalty displace national loyalty. All of these remain potent admonishments to a divided nation.

Most important for our purposes, though, Washington chided the encroaching power of what he called “factions,” meaning political parties. He called factions “potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government”—and tell me that doesn’t describe today perfectly. Washington feared the increasingly heated divide between Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians could unravel everything the Revolution had built.

I recalled Washington’s warnings last week, when a heated debate arose on my Facebook page. A young idealist, disgusted by the Democratic Party’s essentially conservative Presidential slate, insisted it’s time to embrace a third party. She came sideways against two arguments: Democratic Party loyalists angrily denounced any attempt to split the center-left vote, which would hold doors for right-wing candidates potentially worse than the current administration. Others, including me, advocated voting Blue for harm reduction.

Briefly, I support the third party idea, hypothetically. The current partisan duopoly has controlled American politics since 1854. Nobody has seriously challenged their dominion since Ross Perot in 1992, and no outside challenger has netted electoral votes since George Wallace in 1968—that’s too damn long. This dominion has produced more agreement than action. As Eric Blanc writes, the Democrats, representing the nominal left, have offered a lite-beer Republican platform since at least the 1970s.

Thomas Jefferson (official state portrait)

Yet in considering how to implement actual third-party organizations, I have significant doubts. Consider the UK, which is more receptive to smaller parties, despite having a similar winner-take-all electoral system to the USA. The organized left is dispersed around Labour, the SNP, Greens, Social Democrats, and Plaid Cymru, among others. This splits the left-wing vote, and in some constituencies, the Conservatives sometimes win, despite being perennially unpopular and only netting about one-third of the vote.

This tension, between political ideals and practicality, encounters a further impediment when considering America’s third-party history. Insurgent parties frequently survive or fail according to individual personalities. The American Reform Party collapsed into infighting and irrelevance when Ross Perot retired. Similarly, we’ve seen almost-successful parties organized around George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, and Teddy Roosevelt, all fail spectacularly when their figureheads stepped down. As we’re seeing today, personality politics is a dangerous precedent in a free society.

Granted, the present administration demonstrates that established parties are vulnerable to this problem. Washington warned, in his Farewell Address, of a charismatic populist who would hijack party unity “to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.” The President’s base has suborned the Republicans to the point they’ve become the Donald Trump Party. Democrats have responded, not with meaningful policy proposals, but by becoming the Not-Donald Trump Party. This isn’t sustainable.

Both current political parties stand neck-deep in a neoliberal economic structure that disenfranchises most working Americans, encourages short-term thinking, and poisons the environment. I don’t want to suggest both parties are identical. One party embraces civil freedoms for racial, religious, and sexual minorities, while the other has recently authorized shooting unarmed protesters in the face. But regarding the economy, where most Americans actually live, the two parties have meaningful disagreements only on the fine-tuning level.

Alexander Hamilton (private portrait)

Some solutions are possible. David Orentlicher suggests that a two-member Presidency might lower partisan stakes significantly. At the House of Representatives level, states might abolish districts and implement statewide proportional representation. Both these options might empower third parties, since voters might poll their honest values, hoping, not to win, but to receive a robust second-place finish. It might also make procedural votes, like electing the Speaker of the House, actually subject to material debate again.

These procedural revisions might actually change American governance. They could give existing third parties, like the Greens and Libertarians, a fighting electoral chance. Revising the procedure, though, is deeply unsexy. I admit creating another third party feels active, but without procedural revisions, it would diminish left-wing voting potential. Just ask British voters, currently saddled with Boris Johnson: splitting the progressive vote has regressive outcomes. And I doubt America can survive another four years like this.