A Billionaires Ballot, An Electoral Nightmare (w/ Update)

Given how the Beltway media loves covering elections - the horse race nature of campaigning always involves personality clashes and plot twists galore - we're already into the nightmare of 2020 coverage not only with the usual suspects putting in their expected nominations but also a surprising opening appearance.

It seems the former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz is thinking about putting his hat in the 2020 ring to run as an independent.

Naturally, this requires a reasoned and well-thought response from Twitter (just read this article from Balloon Juice for a nice refresher). Which, if I can summarize for you, was this:

OH FUCK NO.

There's already been calls to boycott Starbucks (I originally argued that it might not work since he retired the CEO gig, but it turns out he still owns a hefty share so yeah go ahead nuke the company).

Schultz's reasoning for running is he posits the "Both Sides are wrong" argument popular with the "No Labels Third Party Will Save Us" wing of mainstream media.

But he's made his real reason pretty clear after his first couple of interviews: He's already attacked the likes of Kamala Harris (who announced this week) and Elizabeth Warren (who's announced earlier) and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez (who is too young to announce but can dance circles around him) for their open calls for higher tax rates and expanded healthcare / social aid programs that will likely involve taxing the rich.

He's terrified by Democratic Party calls for a high marginal tax rate on billionaires, and he wants to do everything in his power - such as Spoiling the Democrats as a "Centrist" - to ensure trump wins a second term to keep that from happening.

Let's refer to Eugene Robinson at RealClearPolitics on this:

At present, the specter of a second Trump term looks comfortably remote. The blue wave in the midterm election and Trump's cellar-dwelling approval numbers show what the country thinks of him and his corrupt, chaotic, kooky administration. A recent poll shows him trailing any of his likely Democratic opponents. If the election were held next week, I'm pretty confident that Trump would lose to a ham sandwich.

He does have a chance in 2020, however, if the anti-Trump vote is split between two or more candidates. Imagine Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, siphoning off even 5 percent of the Democratic candidate's vote in, say, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. The horror of 2016 threatens to become a recurring nightmare.

Here is the sad truth of American Presidential Elections that I have noted before: The Electoral College system as currently rigged favors a Winner-Take-All by state meaning the top two major party candidates - Democratic and Republican - are the ONLY possible candidates to win the Electors.

No third party or independent candidate stands a chance. Anderson in 1980 barely won 6 percent of the overall popular vote and NOTHING in the Electoral College. Perot ran his vanity campaigns in 1992 and 1996 and achieved the same Electoral College results (Nada). Libertarians and Green candidates have yet to garner even ONE Elector over multiple campaigns. The last time we had a successful third party candidate was Wallace in 1968 with 46 EV, and that was because of the cultural and political shift over the Civil Rights Acts that sent the racist Southern voters to the polls in revolt.

But that's the thing, as Robinson notes, the third party candidate can perform the role of Spoiler to knock the possible winner down a peg and force the Electoral College - by having key battleground states flip the wrong way by just a handful of votes - to elect the losing Second-Place finisher.

We've seen it within our own lifetimes. The Perot races in 1992 and 1996 arguably pulled away enough votes from the Republican candidates, and there's still bitterness among Democrats towards the role Ralph Nader played in the 2000 elections. You could argue about Jill Stein affecting Hillary's chances in key states, but Libertarian Gary Johnson had a bigger popular vote impact and it did little damage to trump's chances (there's still the specter of Putin sabotaging the whole 2016 scene so that's kind of a wash). Outside of our times, the biggest Spoiler election was 1912's when Teddy Roosevelt - angry at his Republican protege Taft's soft business policies - decided to run his Bull Moose campaign... letting the Democratic candidate Wilson win due to the split Republican voter base.

Robinson notes in his article how even trump understood that in 2015-16:

Remember how coy Trump was early in the Republican primary campaign, reserving the option of an independent candidacy if the GOP did not treat him fairly? Trump used the threat as leverage to get his way on debate logistics and ballot access. But then he suddenly reversed course, signing a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.

A person familiar with Trump's thinking told me why. Trump understood that the most likely outcome, if he ran on his own, would be to guarantee Hillary Clinton's election by taking votes away from the GOP candidate. In his wildest dreams, he might hope to win enough electoral votes to keep either major-party candidate from reaching a majority. But in that case, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives -- which would surely choose the Republican or the Democrat, not Trump.

That's the real purpose - and threat - of a strong third party candidate in our current Presidential system: shake up enough votes to make the likely winning party actually lose.

Schultz is not actually strong - at least not yet, because he's a relatively unknown figure just re-entering the spotlight - but he is RICH. As a confirmed billionaire, he can throw about 500 million dollars at a vanity campaign and still use it as a tax write-off somehow because he can STILL spend enough money on accountants to cheat the IRS.

Referring back to my earlier argument against Schultz: the sonofabitch is running scared because the ascendant Democratic Party - with its new lineup of Progressive and left-leaning Congresspersons - shows little sign of slipping back for the upcoming 2020 cycle. The Dems are likely to retain control of the House, can arguably retain enough state governments (and maybe win a few Purple ones if the turnout's high enough) to keep progressive efforts going, may threaten Republican control of the Senate (more GOP Senators are up for re-election than Democrats this next cycle), and are poised to win against an unpopular and inept incumbent in trump (barring further Russian intervention).

Running for Governor or Senator as an "Independent" (or even as a business-friendly Democrat - he is apparently a registered D) won't stop that momentum. Running for President - even with the unlikelihood of winning without a popular base of support - to ensure trump retains veto power over everything is the best achievable goal.

Schultz making this a suicide mission is the only thing that makes sense. He has to know he's already getting hit on social media by outraged Democrats, and he's making a terrible impression with the media talking heads he's interviewed with. He's just another amateur at politics. It'd be like... me, making an announcement from my blog that "HEY, I'm throwing my hat in the ring for 2020 as an Independent!"

The only difference between Schultz and myself is I cannot afford to even download the paperwork I'd have to file to start a campaign, and he can afford to hire 10,000 people to do all that for him.

But we're running into the OTHER big problem with modern American politics (actually it's several): terrible, horrifying myths about business and politics.

• The myth that Government ought to be run like a Business;
• The myth that Business Leaders - CEOs for example - are capable of managing Public Sector powers;
• The myth that our partisan landscape can be healed/fixed by a calming Centrist figure that can create bipartisan support just by standing there oh so pretty.

As we've seen from bad performances from other Presidents with business backgrounds - Hoover and Dubya and the current Loser of the Popular Vote trump (the con artist's not even a successful businessman in the first place!!!) - we should know by now that being a CEO is different from being a President. Decision making in a business is top-down, has to be, and there's nothing wrong with that. But a President has to lead by consensus and awareness of the public will, and CEOs can never think like that (everything has to be HIS WAY or the highway, or in Dubya's case he deferred authority out to handlers like Cheney - also having corporate experience - who DID think like that).

The myth of Government being run like a Business should be taking hits as well. Where a business operates in order to earn profits, a government has to operate to provide services as a public good. Those are opposing objectives. Every time the Republicans pull their "run it like a business" stunt - tax cuts and deregulations - everything falls apart with deficits and collapsing infrastructure.

The final myth is the belief - the hope - of the mainstream media and high-ranking punditry that all we need is a Uniter figure outside of "Party" corruption to rise up and save us from our weak political overlords. They look to figures like Washington who seemed to rise above party (only because he existed before they formed, and when they did he leaned conservative/Federalist). They look to calming, fatherly patriarchs like Eisenhower or amiable, cheerful types like Reagan (his spell on the current punditry remains horrifyingly intact).

THAT is the biggest pipe dream of all. There is no outisde Uniter figure waiting to save us, no one with a level of public popularity - outside of entertainers with universal appeal - that can sweep in and guide us to sane policy. And if there is, it sure as hell isn't yet another billionaire - especially one whom nobody could pick out of a police lineup two weeks ago - thinking he can buy his way onto the national ballot.

But we're stuck with Schultz, just like we were stuck with other vanity candidates like Perot, or the likes of Steve Forbes or Herman Cain trying their luck in Republican primaries.

Because the final biggest problem we have with our electoral system: It favors the rich.

It's been a thing since our nation's founding: Every political player from the Founders at the Declaration of Independence through the first few decades of forming the Constitution were all wealthy men. Lawyers, merchants, landowners, slaveowners. Not a one of them were what we'd call poor or middle class. They could afford to play the game of politics and then hand it off to the next rich newcomer to come along and keep the game going.

As our nation grew, we'd get the occasional poor person - someone from a struggling background - but we'd still get overwhelmed by the business leaders and the profit makers, all of them keeping control of government to ensure their needs - staying rich - were met first before taking care of the general welfare (reforms when they happened only happen in waves, like the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century in response to the corruption of the late 19th Century).

This is where we're stuck today. Only the rich can run for office. Entry fees alone to get on a ballot can get expensive. You have to take time to campaign, make speeches, get on airwaves, kiss babies, etc. and only the self-employed and indolent wealthy can afford that. You have to raise campaign funds, which means getting other wealthy people to chip in, and who else can do that but someone from those same social circles?

And the current electoral system favoring dark money and deep-pocket SuperPACs - thanks Citizens United! - guarantees that the wealthy can buy their candidates and make sure they stay bought.

We may live in a republic democracy, and we in theory should have open elections where any person could put their name in to run for office. But in practice we're stuck in a system where the billionaires hire the millionaires to run the government across the board as much as possible. And whenever that gets threatened - when a political party gains power like the Democrats that are willing to disrupt the rich people's attempts to get even richer by avoiding their civic duty of paying taxes or answering to the law - they break out fellow billionaires to run themselves and do their hardest to convince enough suckers voters into thinking they are the MODERATE CENTRIST NON-PARTY SAVIOR of their dreams.

This shouldn't be a hard decision to make, America. Billionaires are ironically not worth it as Presidential candidates. They are more disaster than savior.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN uh DON'T VOTE BILLIONAIRES.

Update: So far, Schultz's campaign rollout has been getting negative reviews. If he's trying to appeal to Democrats, accusing the party's more popular figures as "unAmerican" isn't going to cut it... (via Paul Blest at Splinter):

Schultz has just been getting pummeled from all sides over the past few days for everything from his inability to provide a vision for the country that doesn’t sound like it was left on the cutting floor during West Wing writers’ meetings to his repeated insistence that taxes, a robust safety net, and essentially everything that he doesn’t like are “un-American.” But while a lot of the attacks have come from the left, even Schultz’s presumed natural constituency—ideological centrists who think Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump pose a remotely similar level of danger to the country—are already tired of his shit.

Axios’ Mike Allen, who’s never afraid to ask the tough questions, has a blog out in Axios today which serves to allow Democratic Party “insiders”—i.e., the people whose main responsibility for the last couple of decades has been making sure it never does anything too popular—the opportunity to verbally whale on Schultz and his insipid candidacy... One of Washington’s best-wired party operatives told me: “I’ve talked to six dozen Democrats, and the overwhelming sentiment is that he will be pushed out by this incredible wave of disgust and disdain rolling his way...”

Schultz is going to have a problem appealing to the "Centrists" among the Democratic ranks if Schultz keeps talking like he's further to the Right on economic issues than most Republicans.

Like I tweeted:

it's at the point where Schultz is essentially just trump without the MAGA Hat Racism, which shouldn't make Schultz a draw to anyone in this electoral market. Except the damn media will pretend he's a fcking moderate to try and draw centrist voters away from the Dems. >:(

This election cycle requires total focus, America. Don't vote for billionaire assholes, thank you.

The Fantasy of a Third Party Savior... AGAIN

As I write this, Donald Trump is crushing the Cruz-Kasich coalition in five state primaries and pretty much making it impossible for Cruz in Second Place to ever reach the needed delegate count. Trump hasn't won outright, but he's the only one who can.

As such, the Conservative Beltway Media Punditry of Both Siderism and Dubya-Never-Happened have moved their freak-out to Defcon 2.

Terrified of the likelihood of an amateurish, bullying, Id-driven, failed businessman becoming the Serious Candidate of the Republican Party that these pundits cannot honestly shill to the general electorate, more and more of them are pushing more and more their incredible fantasy of having a "respectable" True Conservative rise up from the shadows of history and declare for a Third Party independent run. This True Conservative can then rally all the Honest Common Man voters crying all for a REAL LEADER to drive away the horrors of a Trump or Hillary or Bernie Presidency, and bring the nation back to a united harmonious new era of Reagan-esque patriotism and nostalgic delight.

Insert headdesking here.

Never mind the obvious evidence that if there were such a candidate - a True Conservative to save the Republicans from their Trumpian fate - don't you think he'd (and it's usually a guy) have run by now and was stopping Trump already in the primaries?!

The Republican Establishment had their chances: Hell, they have five of them in Jeb!, Rubio, Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Kasich. If that was the cream of the crop, the BEST that the Republicans could rally to run for 2016, and they STILL couldn't outpander and outwit and outrun Trump... there is something seriously wrong with the quality of Republican leadership today.

And yet here we are with the likes of Jim VandeHei - a founder of media outlet Politico and writing in the Wall Street Journal op-ed - dreaming up a scenario of a military general (and it's always a man in a uniform that attracts the fantasy) coming in as a Third Party savior to mock the legacy of 98-lb weakling Obama and bitch-slap Trump into a whimpering heap. But lemme have Daniel Drezner at the Washington Post point out all the follies:

Over the past few months and years, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has tried to make a few useful suggestions for improving the quality of punditry during this campaign season. For example:

Don’t use Donald Trump as a vehicle for your particular hobbyhorse — you’ll just get tarnished.
Don’t call for a military leader on horseback to rescue the country — the ones interested in the job are probably the last ones who should be president.
Don’t use Silicon Valley buzzwords to describe anything with respect to politics or policy — it means those words have been played out.
Don’t assume Americans care too much about foreign policy or national security. They don’t.
Don’t call for a third-party candidate to enter the race because: (a) that candidate won’t win, and (b) even if the candidate wins, the new president still needs to cope with a Congress that will remain a product of the two-party system.

To be fair, I never actually wrote that last point up, mostly because I thought it was so obvious that it did not need to be said out loud.

I bring this up because Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei’s Wall Street Journal op-ed manages to ignore all of these warnings. Praising the plain language of Donald Trump? Check. References to disruption? Check. Calls for an “Innovation Party?” Check. VandeHei also leans hard on the “Normal America vs. D.C. bubble” trope, which will be a topic for another column...

So the poster boy for VandeHei’s new leadership is … a recently retired admiral who challenges civilian control of the military. I would be uncomfortable with this person in charge of determining the proper allocation of war powers between the different branches of government. By exploiting the fear factor...

I get the suspicion VadneHei didn't do any research or any due diligence, or have any concern to the actual inability of his Dream Candidate to bring the nation under the united banner of a kinder gentler machine gun hand.

What's really happening here is projection. These insulated Beltway media types, thinking themselves the only sane ones in a kingdom of madness, are fantasizing about their ideal leader playing out a game-plan that makes perfect sense only to themselves. Each one of these pundits aren't really selling a military hero, or a political savant, or a philosophical genius: they're selling themselves as the God-Chosen Savior. It's only the realization no one will take THEM seriously as a candidate that they're forced to call up General McAwesomesauce as the Insert Savior Here guy.

But I've noticed this before: this fantasy is just that, and it's a fool's fantasy to think that this unheralded Insert Savior Here can just show up and have 60 million Americans swoon for him. It's a fool's fantasy to think there IS such a Conservative candidate after more than a year finding out the Republicans don't have anyone like that anymore. It's a dreamer's denial to think that this Third Party Insert Savior Here can break the Electoral College enough to bring this Pundit's Paradise to the Real World.

And how disappointing is it going to be if said Insert Savior Here guy does show up on the stage and turns out to be yet another dud?

Not disappointing at all. All these pundits will do is wail the lost opportunity and move on to the next sucker willing to pose for their fantasies.

I wasn't joking four years ago when I said there needs to be a term limit on the MEDIA more than on our elected officials. At least we can kick the officials out by vote. These pundits will not stop until they drive their publishing agencies into bankruptcy, and then move on to the next million-dollar book deal.

It's a good racket like Driftglass notes over and over again, if that exclusive club of always-wrong media elites invite you in. Problem is, you pay out your integrity as you go.

That's Not How the Electoral College Works

That's not how The Force works! - Han Solo to rookie hero Finn in The Force Awakens

And remember kids, Han was the Skeptic in the original trilogy.

I'm just quoting this because one of the less sane proposals floating out there by the Far Right media hacks - currently terrified that a Trump candidacy will kill the GOP in the general election - is the idea that a Third Party campaign by a "more sincere movement conservative" would split enough votes between Trump, likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE that it would send the results into the House of Representatives for Congress to settle who wins.

That's how the election works, by the by. It's not by Popular count, it's by who wins which states, and the states send Electors depending on the number of Congresspersons (varies) and Senators (+2) they have. Wyoming sends 3 Electors, Florida sends 29, California sends 55. Whomever gets the majority of Electors (divide the total by two, then add 1, that's (538 / 2) = 269 +1 = 270, hence 270towin.com ) wins outright. If no one crosses 270 total, it goes to the House and the House chooses between the top three Electoral getters.

That means the third-party person HAS to win a state to get considered. That's something to bring up later.

You see, there's still that key point of "who wins each state." Because the people - like Erick Erickson, hello again - floating this third-party savior idea do not seem to understand how that is going to play out in a three-way race.

The Third Party Republican Rescue Squad (or TPRRS) seem to think that they can split the existing Red States between Trump and their INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE. And that somehow in the process they can take away enough Blue States from Hillary, even though she'll be campaigning most likely on Obama's legacy and HE won those states with majority counts.

(This is probably because Erickson and his ilk are convinced Trump will take away liberal/moderate voters from Hillary. After all, they're still convinced that Trump is No True Conservative.)

So, just to even start this conversation, we have to ignore the fact that Obama won a majority of states (29 of them) in 2012, and that he won them in head-to-head voter turnouts by getting more voters in each state to show for him instead of Romney. We have to ignore the fact that all Hillary (or Bernie) has to do to win in 2016 is win the same states Obama won in 2012 (which is likely) and it doesn't even matter if Trump and INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE splits the remaining Red States. We have to ignore the fact that Obama in 2012 got 332 Electoral votes, easily clearing the 270 hurdle and avoiding the House of Representatives altogether.

This is how insane Erickson and the TPRRS plan already is.

If we go in to examine the evidence a little closer, let's for example look at how Florida in 2012 voted. Obama got 4,235,000-plus votes: Romney got 4,162,000-plus votes. Let's assume that Hillary will get the same voters as Obama (4.2 million roughly), but here comes Trump and INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE fighting over the 4.1 million Romney got. Let's figure Trump gets the 45 percent of the Republican primary voters he got just now, so INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE get the 55 percent
(let's figure in the independent NPA voters who will vote Republican into this mix at 50-50 to keep things simple). Thing is, these two candidates will be fighting over a PERCENTAGE of the Romney vote, which in toto was STILL LESS than Obama's (and likely Hillary's). 55 percent of 4.1 million is 2.25 million voters for INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE and Trump gets the remaining 1.8 million.

Here's the thing: HILLARY STILL WINS FLORIDA with her 4.2 million votes over INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE's 2.25 million. And it's Winner-Take-All for Electoral College: Hillary gets all 29 Electors.

Now that's in the Blue States that Obama won. By this math, it's obvious that Hillary's going to win Obama's states. THAT'S PRETTY MUCH THE ELECTION RIGHT THERE. We don't even have to see what happens in the Red States. But just for sh-ts and giggles, let's take a look.

For example, North Carolina. It was a close race there with Romney getting 50 percent of the voters at 2.2 million and Obama getting 48 percent at 2.1 million. So Hillary can come in and get the same 2.1 million. But now here comes Trump and INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE splitting up Mitt's results. Trump got 40 percent of the primary voters, but considering this is a state with his voting base in force (poor White males lacking college education) so let's give him the Cruz vote (37 percent) for a 77 percent total... OF ROMNEY'S NUMBERS. That gives Trump 1.69 million... while Hillary gets that 2.1 million. Guess who wins ALL of North Carolina's Electors in this scenario? Two hints: It won't be Trump, and it won't be INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE. Hillary will actually increase her Electoral College win with this move.

Let's bring in Texas. This is the state that Erickson's pining his hopes on that the INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE can win and thus send the Electoral College into overtime at the House. In 2012 that was a huge win for Romney getting 57 percent turnout at 4.5 million-plus over Obama's 41 percent with 3.3 million. The GOP primary there this 2016 decisively went against Trump (who got 26 percent) while Ted Cruz (whom Erickson does not view as the GOP SAVIOR) got 43 percent. So let's keep Trump at 26 percent while INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE gets 74 percent of Romney's total. That's just over 3.4 million voters... which DOES clear the count that Hillary would get from Obama's voters at 3.3 million. The GOP SAVIOR wins Texas... but there's no guarantee he'll win the other Red States that had decisive Romney wins (anything over 55 percent of the total turnout), because Trump can garner half of those (like Tennessee and West Virginia and South Carolina).

And don't forget, Hillary's still winning all the Obama Blue States from 2012 in any three-way race like this. Which means this is STILL a moot point because she'll be pretty much winning the whole kit and caboodle. It won't matter if a Third Party candidate wins a state away from Trump, because as long as Hillary wins what Obama won this will never get to the House.

A three-way race is not going to guarantee the Electors get thrown to the House to resolve anything: the only way that happens is if Trump AND the INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE both take away the voting numbers from Hillary. But how likely is that?

If you can picture Trump taking away voters from the Democrats using his anti-Immigrant, anti-government stances, you're crazier than I am. If you can picture Trump taking away moderate voters from Democrats on the simple fact he's a Total Newb at politics, you're crazier than that. If you can picture Erick Erickson's GOP SAVIOR (the "movement conservative" whoever that will be) working that same twisted magic to win away the necessary votes, you're the Mayor of Crazytown.

As Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog points out - via Josh Marshall - there is no real difference between Trump and the projected INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE when it comes to the issues. As Marshall noted:

It would be one thing if there were a moderate or establishment independent bid (though it is a dubious proposition that the 'establishment' is really 'moderate', even in the context of the GOP politics). That would provide a very clear contrast with Trump. But if you run a 'movement conservative' against Trump, it gets pretty hard to see where you can find any real points of contrast on any significant issues.

So, hardline on illegal immigration? No real difference.
Hardline on terrorism, needing to say "Islamic terrorism", creeping Sharia or any of the rest. No real difference.
Huge, huge tax cut? Same.
Obamacare terrible? Same.
Generalized opposition to 'political correctness'? Check.
Abortion? Check.
Hating on Obama as feckless, exotic loser? Check...

Marshall notes only one major difference between Trump and the Republican Establishment, and that's on trade. Granted, there may be a significant number of Far Left Democrats who might - might! - switch to Trump on that issue alone. But Trump is so offensive on so many other issues that most self-respecting Progressive Dems will not take that risk (they certainly won't switch to a "movement conservative" whose trade positions are equal or worse than Hillary's).

Essentially, there's no sane reason ANYONE who voted for Obama will switch to either Trump or Erickson's unicorn "movement conservative". You'll get just Hillary standing there holding Obama's legacy while Trump and INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE fight over chicken bones. Those two will just be hammering each other into tiny little pieces.

This is essentially a rehash of the 1992 Election, when Bush the Elder running as the Establishment Republican candidate contended more with the upstart proto-Populist Right-leaning Ross Perot, and split votes with him while Bill Clinton (nowhere near 50 percent Popular vote) kept enough Democratic/Left votes to win enough states and the Electoral College.

Now, granted, we're basing this all on 2012 numbers and turnouts. For all we know, the numbers will be different this November. But the polling so far does not suggest any significant switches from Obama's 2012 states over to the Republicans' side. Given the way a three-way race works out - 1992, 1968, 1912 - the winner is going to be the one who stands on the sidelines and lets the two big bulls pummel each other into cow meat.

And the thing is, both bulls this 2016 cycle are not that big to begin with. Both Trump and INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE are both fighting over Second Place behind Hillary at this point. All that will be at stake in the end is who avoids being in Third.

And just what does Erickson think is going to happen if the miracle occurs, if he and his TPRRS people throw enough states to their Third Party INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE to force it to the House?

It's not going to be pretty.

The math currently points to the Democratic candidate getting the Popular vote, which may still happen in a contested Electoral College count. Trump's Popular vote will likely put him in Second Place in that scenario, with the INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE sitting at Third. If the GOP-lead House opts to put the Third Place guy over both Popular vote winners, it will be a huge insult to a vast majority of voters both Left and Right. Think Democrats are still sore about Dubya winning in 2000 with fewer Popular votes all because of a contested Electoral count for Florida? This will be a thousand times more sickening to them.

And that's not the biggest fallout from that possible move. The Republican Party will split forever (I normally won't argue that point as I believe our system favors two parties, but this is Serious Business).

The Trump faction will NEVER forgive the Republican Establishment for their betrayal. The Democrats will be pissed as well, but the end result is going to be brutal for the Republicans in 2018 when the midterms roll around. Trump's voters will clearly refuse to vote for ANY Republican candidate at any level - and may well run successful Third Party candidates of their own (did anyone hold onto Perot's Reform Party trademarks?).

It probably won't even be 2018 when the damage strikes. If Erickson and the Establishment prop up any third party challenger to Trump this summer, those voters will know right now that the Republican Party bigwigs are setting them up to fall. Betrayed right here and now, Trump's voters will have NO REASON to vote for ANY Republican candidate. Out of sheer spite, they could sit out the key Senate races and even refuse to vote for the Republican House candidates. If Erickson's TPRRS do pull off the House maneuver, it's going to be with a Lame-Duck Republican House in December 2016 that can likely go to the Democrats (even against the massive gerrymandering that favors the GOP right now) the following January 2017... meaning that Erickson's INSERT GOP SAVIOR HERE is going to be sitting in the White House all alone against a Democratic-controlled Senate and House. And even though they are Democrats who believe in a working government, they are NOT going to be in a forgiving mood.

It's still a a Lose-Lose scenario for Erickson. Then again, that happens to him a lot for what I've seen how he works...

Will The Republican Party Really Split?

There's been some talk about the modern Republican Party.

About how it's on the verge of utter collapse.

Oh, I wrote earlier that for all intents the Republican Party as we knew it was dead. It was no longer a party of serious conservative thought having replaced all that with reckless fearmongering and race-baiting, that it had kicked out its moderate and progressive elements ages ago, and was now essentially the Southern Slaveholder Party of 1865 Reborn in all but name.

I am not the only one claiming that, by the by.

It's now so common-place a thought within the mainstream/conventional wisdom that there are actual questions as to HOW the potential break-up of the Republicans is going to be like. The Washington Post is taking it serious and even asking serious historians like Eric Foner about it:

FONER: Well, it depends what you mean by a "fracture." If you mean events that totally destroyed a major party and created a new one, the last time that happened would have been in the 1850s. Before that, the country had two major political parties: the Democrats and the Whigs. Since then, we have had basically two major parties -- the Democratic and Republican Parties -- with some short-lived breakaway and one-election-cycle movements that sometimes deeply influenced election outcomes. But we have not seen an actual party die or a new one born and continue since 1854...

...Well there are actually quite a few of these moments in American history. We have generally had a two-party system, even though there's nothing requiring that in the Constitution. But we've certainly seen splinters. Then, those third parties have merged or fallen apart again and again...

On the one hand, like Foner I'm not a firm believer in certainties when it comes to predicting the future. Anything can happen, something could conceivably force the factions within the GOP to re-unite. Who knows, maybe sheer spite of the tree-hugging dirty hippie libruls might do it. If only both sides can agree on who's not coddling said libruls when the other side's not looking.

On the other hand, this dynamic clearly can no longer exist. The people in control of the Republican Party - the financial donors, the seasoned consultants, the elected veterans of too many Congressional terms - are no longer in sync with their actual voting base of low-education poor White Males. It turns out all the fearmongering and Establishment-bashing the party elites kept telling their followers via the Far Right news channels and websites made those followers fear and hate their own self-entitled party bosses. It's all leading up to the near certainty of a thin-skinned, narcissistic con artist pitching the basest form of race-baiting and immigrant-bashing by the name of Trump winning enough delegates this week to clinch a commanding lead for the Republican nomination for President.

This is the kind of personal betrayal in a relationship that ends up with both sides in tears.

This isn't like a relationship breakup though. We're not talking about the uber-rich power brokers of the Establishment getting to keep the beach house in the Bahamas while the Populists hold onto the condo in Manhattan. We're talking about who gets to retain the controls of a national political party at all levels of government.

There's been other talk about how the Establishment now has two choices: deny Trump the nomination at the July convention and risk him fleeing to a Third Party run that kills their chances at the White House, or flee themselves from the GOP - taking all their billionaire backers with them - and try their own Third Party bid... which still kills their chances at the White House. Either move can risk their down-ticket races for the Senate and some state-level elections as well (it's unlikely the House is at risk due to massive gerrymandering).

There is, of course, a third option: openly embrace the Dark Side, accept Trump's campaign of immigrant-bashing that appeals to their loudest and angriest voting base, and hope that they've got enough voter suppression efforts in enough states to diminish the anti-Trump vote and eke out a corrupt win in November. But that move would essentially kill the lie the party has been telling itself that it's never really this racist and hateful. It would certainly kill off any hope the Republicans have of surviving the coming demographic change in the next decade, which is real and inevitable.

There are not a lot of smart options for the Republicans right now, at least for the ones who care about being smart. The ones who are willfully ignorant, they're likely thrilled they're finally playing this game the way they want to.

All said and done though, I doubt the GOP really blows apart. Neither side of this potential break-up will last long outside of the existing organizational charts. Starting up your own Third Party is too much trouble... and the rules - especially when it comes to winning elections - are stacked against you. There's a reason - as Foner himself notes - why most Third Parties throughout history - most of them just vanity projects to begin with - don't last past two election cycles before getting consumed by the duolithic tag-team of Jeffersonian/Jacksonian Democrats and Federalists/Whigs/Know-Nothings/Republicans. There's a reason why the deep-pocket extremists like the Koch Brothers decided to get rich and buy the GOP instead of building their own political machine.

This won't be the Van Halen/David Lee Roth split. It's not like they'll be two parties in 2018 running as "The Real Republicans" and "The Really Real Republicans, We Mean It" against the Democrats.

What will likely happen is what usually happens to a political party that got too reflexive and stubborn for its own good: a massive realignment of who runs Bartertown uh the party itself.

There's a real likelihood with Trump as the candidate that the Republicans lose - and lose big - to Hillary and the Democrats this November. When/IF that happens, the denialists within their ranks are going to have to face reality that Trump's message and the hard drum beats of racial demagoguery just aren't working anymore. There would be a real push to fix the message delivery, which means Roger Ailes - the guy at Fox Not News who allowed all this to happen - to face a very brutal retirement push out the door. It could well signal a loss of prestige and power among the leaders of the Far Right Noise Machine - hi, Rush! - to where they get the boot as well (Limbaugh in particular has become a very expensive albatross to his media company). There could be additional - and genuine - reforms by the deep-pocket backers sick of throwing money into a pit that gives them little return on investment.

The risk is that Trump wins - more out of terrible turnout by the Democrats (either intentional voter suppression or self-inflicted spite to not vote) than by Trump's salesmanship - in which case the opposite happens: the denialists get full control up and down the party command... and implode on their own due to their failure to handle the real world, in which case the Republicans have to clean out the rot anyway. But this way will be messier and more likely to take a lot of innocent lives with the effort.

As I said earlier, the Republican Party as we knew it is dead. It's more the Party of John C. Calhoun than of Lincoln or Teddy or Ike or even Reagan.

The question is, what kind of Party will rise to take its place?

It all depends on how brutal Hillary beats Trump in November. Personally, I'm hoping for 45 states plus DC going for Hillary at 59 percent of the popular vote, but that's just wishful thinking. It's really wishful thinking, because we all have to f-cking get out the vote and stop Trump from winning, period. Even a 51-49 percent win for Hillary with 272 of the Electoral College will suffice.

All that matters is stopping Trump, and getting the Republicans to wake the hell up and fix themselves.

What If: Trump Wins Nomination But The Republicans Still Say No?

Here's a little thought exercise:

What would happen if Donald Trump did last all the way up to the Republican convention in 2016, with enough delegates to even win the nomination to run as President... and the Republican party leadership is the one that bolts to run a third-party candidate instead of him?

It's an odd thought, I grant you, but it's one that might play out.

This came to me while reading up on reports of how Virginia and North Carolina's - and perhaps more states - local officials were re-writing their rules - rigging the game again, eh boys? - to require for each candidate to pledge NOT to run as a third-party or independent candidate in the general election.  It's a rule clearly aimed at the one candidate who defiantly remains open-minded about the idea (Trump) and who was hit with that pledge with the very first question at this past August debate.

Deal is, such a pledge is meaningless: if the candidate who bolts is willing to risk it, to risk his standing in the GOP afterward, he'll do it.  (It's happened before by the way, hi Pat Buchanan!)  Trump owes the Republican Party nothing, regardless of the success he's having now as the lead candidate going into 2016.  Part of the reason the GOP leadership is pushing this idea is based on pure ego: they want to rein in their wild cards, try to (re)establish themselves as The Boss Of You All.  They want to set it up so that if Trump does bolt on an independent run, he'll look like a rule-breaker / oath-breaker.

Trump could still do it anyway.  He could argue - rationally - that the pledge is a joke, skewed against only him in the first place, and that the party leaders themselves are rule-breakers for trying to implement such a code at this late hour.  His voting base would easily agree with him on that (they mistrust the Establishment already).

But here's the thing: Trump right now doesn't even have to think about bolting.  He's in the lead, by an absurdly comfortable number in most polls.  He's got the largest factions among the GOP base - the anti-immigrant nativist crowd - backing him, and he can well get enough delegates to even clinch the nomination outright in Cleveland this 2016.  Threatening him with pledges to stay in the party does nothing but alienate his followers into convincing themselves ever more that the Republican leadership does not care about "their" rights/issues.

The only thing the Republican Establishment - the ones backing "rational" players like Bush and Walker, who are both struggling to even make themselves coherent to their audiences - have going for them is the very thing any party fears this day and age: a brokered (broken) convention where no one goes in with a clear count of delegates.  That means keeping as many candidates afloat in this election cycle than they've ever done in ages (if ever: usually the delegate counts narrow down to two clear choices with a dark horse compromise waiting in the wings).

This is actually easy to do this election cycle.  With so many Active-Negative types (ambitious muthahumpers) running, few will want to volunteer to drop out.  And if they play the long game out, each candidate would see the benefits of staying in the race all the way to the end: any sizable delegate total weakens everybody else, yet gives each of them enough playing chits to demand a seat at the table when the back-room deals are hammered out.

If the Republican leadership can go into a Cleveland convention center with six or seven serious players - Trump, Bush, Walker, Rubio, Cruz, maybe Huckabee, maybe Kasich, maybe one other - they could finagle a deal where they win out (with their boy Jeb!) and make Trump accept some peace offering.  But that will only work if Trump is nowhere near the lead...

However, if Trump is in the lead - although without a clear win - there's no guarantee he'll give up his spot.  He'll claim a win is a win, and will use any trick left in the books the GOP can't write out of the Roberts Rules of Order to muddle the convention until he gets the coronation he desires.  And with enough delegates and with that threat of a third-party run - which could easily break the GOP in two as Trump's faction is clearly large enough to matter - Trump could get that nomination.

But will the rest of the Republican Party accept it?

In this scenario, Trump is coming in as the lead nominee but not the clear one.  He won't have the over-50 percent count of delegates, after all.  If we're looking at the current polling - Trump tends to sit at 24 to 33 percent of potential GOP voters - we should consider Trump getting around a quarter to a third of the party's vote.  That means there's at least two-thirds of a party that did not want him... which will definitely include a party leadership terrified that Trump's reckless campaign style can hurt their entire ticket.  Control of the Senate is clearly at stake this 2016 cycle, and the Congressional and state elections hang in the balance as well.

In this scenario, Trump may win the nomination for the Republicans but could clearly represent a hate-driven agenda that could depress voter turnout among the Republicans who didn't want him.  Trump will affect the general election count as his open hostility towards immigration - and open hostility to competent governing - will alienate the middle-third centrist/moderate voters.  If he's at the top of the ballot running on that platform it's good odds the rest of the GOP ballot will get shunned by the centrist/moderate voters too.

There is no guarantee with this fractured ballot of 16 candidates (with at least SIX viable choices who could go the distance) that the rest of the party will fall into line behind the eventual nominee (even if it isn't Trump).  A dispirited party would hurt the other races down-ballot.  In the face of this disaster, the Republican Establishment could well encourage one of their own to jump in as a last-minute Independent third-party run.

This depends on if states will allow new names on the ballot post-convention period.  Another likely scenario would be to have a minor third-party group - oh where is the Reform Party when you need it? - able to get on all states' ballots.  It is possible to pull it off.

Would the Republicans risk splitting their spot on the top part of the ticket?  If it meant keeping enough Republican voters invested in turning out, they would.

But who would?

The person who does this runs the risk of being labeled a party pariah for the rest of his political career (the Far Right wingnuts in particular will never forgive him).  It has to be someone who can command enough voter turnout to stop Trump (over 10 percent of the voters) yet convince the Republican base to vote well for the whole ballot.

There are few who could pull it off.  Jeb! Bush would have the means - more money than God, especially if the Koch Brothers still back him - but not necessarily the motivation, nor the fortitude to step outside his own comfort zone.  If there's no guarantee Jeb! gets the White House out of this move - this would likely keep Trump from winning but the Democratic candidate will be the clear winner in a three-way contest - he won't do it.  Walker perhaps, again with proper deep-pocket funding, but if he wasn't able to out-pander Trump in the first place he might not have enough of a fanbase left by then to pull this stunt off.

Cruz won't.  Partly because he's not on good terms with the Establishment faction in the first place.  And if it ever gets to where he realizes he can't out-pander Trump, he's likely to offer himself up - despite his ego - as Trump's VP choice.

Rand Paul is a likely third-party guy since he could in theory pull off a switch to the Libertarian party if it becomes clear he won't win the GOP nomination.  But would he pull enough Republican voters away from Trump while ensuring those voters still back GOP candidates for the Senate and the House?

The only remaining possibility who could and would attempt a third-party run would be the likes of Huckabee, especially if Trump stays on his own message that Planned Parenthood is "okay for women."  If he's convinced Trump is not pure on the anti-abortion stance, Huckabee would make that run claiming a spiritual mandate to do so.

Nobody else would have a support base able to pull off that move.  The Republican establishment would be hard pressed to find any volunteer to third-party against Trump even if it was for the "good of the party" (applies to the leadership only. The voting base is making itself very clear their feelings on the matter).

As a thought exercise, this didn't go very far.  If Trump is at the lead of the delegate count going into Cleveland, the Republican Party is going to have to live with certain facts: Trump won those delegates "fair and square" on a virulently racist anti-immigrant campaign, which reflects on a Republican voting base that supports such hatred.  In this scenario he's the likely GOP nominee out of the convention.

It's also likely that Trump - having campaigned so hard on that issue - will be unable to "turn back to the middle" of the regular election campaign to woo over any centrist/moderates (this is why the 2012 postmortem by their own experts argued FOR immigration reform as something the Republicans needed to pass themselves).  If the Republicans could have gotten Jeb! or Rubio past the finish line - one of the "soft on immigration" candidates who really are not that soft - they'd be in a better position to convince the media (and the public) that their nominee is "moderate" enough to win the votes.

It's also likely the Republicans are stuck: without a viable candidate able to beat Trump in the first place, they're unlikely to have a shot at running a smart third-party alternative to keep Trump from forcing the Republican Party to collapse under the weight of his own Id.

This isn't a fun thing to watch, though.  We are as a nation running a huge risk of having a neophyte impulsive egotist in Trump becoming responsible for policy decisions that affect the entire world.  If Trump does win the Republican nomination, it may not benefit the disgruntled party leadership to run a third-party candidate to weaken Trump's campaign... but it certainly will benefit the nation from keeping Trump out of the Oval Office.

Instead of Breaking Maps, Let's Go By Proportions

My rants against the gerrymander are often enough that it's one of my key reform arguments since the old days when this was a different blog.

So whenever I see someone else out there offering a suggestion on how to kill the gerrymander, I pay attention.  This time it's Noah Gordon over at The Atlantic suggesting that we can use Proportional Seating - a parliamentary system used by a lot of European democracies - as a way to end the evils of the gerrymander:

What is proportional representation, or PR? It’s a system that aims to gives parties the same percentage of seats as the percentage of votes they receive—and it might be able to end our gerrymandering wars.
Every ten years, state officials are charged with redrawing district maps to account for population shifts in the Census. In practice, incumbent lawmakers often turn into cartographers with the power to change maps to suit their needs. The problem is epigrammatic: Rather than voters choosing their legislators, legislators are choosing their voters...

...Even with good, non-partisan intentions, it’s getting harder to draw single-member districts that get a party’s seat share to approximate its statewide vote share...

In the United States, those geographical areas could be the states. Imagine Oregon sent five members of the House. Under PR, if Democrats got 60 percent of the statewide vote and Republicans got 40 percent, three Democrats and two Republicans would be elected to the House. Or if the two big parties got 40 percent each, and the Green Party won 20 percent of the vote, the Greens would send a representative to Congress. The largest states could use several smaller electoral districts, so that, for example, someone from San Diego isn’t represented only by northern Californians.

There are different ways of determining which candidates from the parties make it in. Most European democracies use what's called an open-list PR system, where each party nominates (at most) as many candidates as that district sends to its legislature. Voters get a single vote for a candidate that also counts for that candidate’s party.

Think again of five-member Oregon. One popular local Republican wins 40 percent of the vote, and two other Republicans win 10 percent each. All three go to Congress because the party won three-fifths of the state’s votes. The top Libertarian candidate receives 20 percent. He or she, too, goes to Congress. No Democratic candidate gets more than 8 percent of the vote, but because the total number of votes cast for Democrats adds up to 20 percent, the last congressional seat goes to the first-place winner among them...

Proportional voting won't affect the Senate: each state still gets two (although this disproportionately favors the smaller states nowadays).  Proportional will affect the Presidency in terms of the Electoral College, with regards to the numbers that the Congressional seats can add to the table.  Especially if we follow through with my idea that we currently have too few Congresscritters for the larger populated states (we haven't increased the representation since the 1920s, during which our population's tripled).

As Gordon notes in his essay, Proportional voting has its drawbacks: it's more complex than the current Winner-Take-All district voting we currently use, and that geographically large states - California and Texas, obviously - will need to make extra effort to ensure all their representatives don't come from one corner of their state (you don't want all of your officials coming from Los Angeles).

But the benefits of Proportional are great: above all, every vote really does matter.  Gordon notes "Under the current system, a candidate who receives 49 percent of the vote and a candidate who receives 5 percent of it in a two-way House election receive the same reward: none. This provides little incentive for Democrats in rural Georgia to vote in House elections at all, for example."  Under Proportional, the odds improve that your Party/field of candidates can win enough seats to matter to where you NEED to get out your vote (as well as your like-minded neighbors).

Proportional does something else: it breaks the logjam of having two dominant national parties - Republican and Democratic - that are polarizing the entire political spectrum.  With a Proportional system, the lesser parties - Libertarian, Green, or any Moderate/Centrist party that can rise up - now have improved odds to getting at least one seat per mid-sized/large state where the percentages favor those getting 10-15 percent of a vote.  They won't overtake the established machines - the Senate and Presidency still favor a two-party, Winner-Take-All electoral system - but the so-called Third Parties can break the frozen static noise of the national political landscape by forcing a fractured House into forming coalitions like they do in the European democracies.

Picture a U.S. House with 435 seats to share, meaning you need 218 seats to hold a majority.  Now, say the Republicans hold only 207 seats to the Democrats 205.  There's 23 seats belonging to various Third Party Congresscritters, say 8 seats are Libertarian, 6 seats are Green, 1 is a radical Right Wing faction, and the remaining 8 are independent non-party rabblerousers.  The Republicans could form a coalition with the Libertarians, some of the independents, and that one Radical and retain control, but the Libertarians will insist on major trade-offs that would otherwise be poison to the GOP (including giving their members key committee chairs, and pushing a more Libertarian agenda that could rile the nation against the Republicans who will shoulder the blame...).  If the Republicans can't get enough of the factions to join in a coalition, the Democrats could team up with the Greens and enough of the non-party members to reach that 218.

An off-shoot of this will be the interchanging of party members: it will become easier for disgruntled elected officials to switch parties with similar bent without losing their support back home.  This gives other parties the chance to gain effective, organized leaders who know how to campaign and govern.  As the Third Parties gain in stature, the probabilities of needing to form coalitions - which can de-radicalize the partisan nature of politics as more moderate factions gain value - will increase.

The greatest argument against Proportional will be the confusing nature of it at the national level.  It will also require an increase in the number of elected seats in order to ensure every state, including the smallest ones, to have enough seats to share.

But this shouldn't be a problem: as I've noted earlier, we haven't increased our number of Congressional seats since the 1920s.  We're now under-represented at triple the current population and with a greater disconnect between the voters and the Congress.  The real trick, in my estimate, is accurately gauging how many seats we should really have.

We've got a lot of small, mid-sized populated states.  There's 8 states with just one Representative, 5 states with two, 3 states with three, 6 states with four.  Double-digit representation doesn't kick in until you're two-thirds of the way through the state count.  By comparison, there's only 2 states with 18 seats, 2 states with 27 seats, then Texas at 36 and topped by California with 53 seats.  California has roughly one-sixth of the entire nation's population, and you'd like to think they should get enough proportional seating compared to all the smaller populated states that can barely total the same number.

Bumping every state up to have two House seats no matter what helps with the smaller states, but then it's a question of how to increase from there.  A simple, barely thought-out idea would be to break it down by sections: bottom five states have two seats, next bottom five states get three, next five states get five (going by prime number), next five get seven, next five get eleven, so on.  But that doesn't reflect the disparity of populations when we get into the top ten/fifteen states, where one state can be double the number of the next-sized state (California almost doubling that of Texas) and thus deserves a specifically-tailored seating count.

The only other problem would be genuine representation.  Proportional seating will be an advantage to the candidates but what happens if the results have every candidate from one city or one region of a large, diverse state?  As Gordon noted, it'll be up to the states - or federal rules, especially if we use an amendment to make this work - to designate special districts (most likely cities) to ensure at least one representative from each district gets elected.  It will favor the urban over the rural, but that's what representation is supposed to do: favor the people who actually live there.

The other thing about representation will be the gender and ethnic, which is an existing problem already (especially the under-representation of women in Congress).  It will be up to the parties to ensure they get representatives that reflect the population's diversity (it ought to be like that already, although such "outreach" efforts by the Republicans towards women, Blacks, Hispanics, and minorities in general have been painful at best).  Without exact district maps to create minority-majority districts, we run the risk of losing Black and/or Hispanic representation.  Proportional may fix that by encouraging voter turnout anyway, and having enough voters back minority candidates at a state level to ensure healthy representation (it would beg the question if moderate or independent voters will vote with such diversity in mind).

As far as breaking the gerrymanders, Proportional is the simplest method of doing that without getting into the partisan divides struggling over "fair" districting (which still gets violated/ignored) or "impartial" committees (which can still get gamed).  Getting Proportional to work, however...

What Third Parties Are Doing Wrong

Last night on MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell came out in defense of Third Parties in the United States, highlighting a barely-noticed debate between the lower-tier Presidential candidates that NOBODY in mainstream media ever mentioned until he did.

But then he suggested something I feel is the wrong thing to say in a closely-held election we're having this 2012, when every vote counts for Obama facing a "why is Romney even getting this many voters considering how UNPOPULAR Mitt is" situation.  O'Donnell encouraged the voters in the non-battleground states - especially California - to go ahead and vote for a Third Party Presidential nominee.  O'Donnell may be thinking that "oh, enough party-line voters in places like California will STILL vote for Obama," but making any kind of protest vote even in supposedly solid states can bring up the woes and follies of the 2000 Election all over again.  Where enough votes get siphoned away from a major party candidate that DID NOT deserve to lose those votes (Gore) against the other major party candidate who'll turn out to be an unmitigated disaster (Bush the Lesser).

I get a little bit why Lawrence O'Donnell is saying this: he's as frustrated as a lot of us are about how the Two-Party system is strangling our government, our voting choices, our chances of branching off into different yet potentially incredible actions for our nation.  But O'Donnell is looking at this the wrong way.  Mr. O'Donnell sir, this is NOT how you encourage Third Parties to thrive in the United States.

This is the problem with Third Parties: they are more focused on the top office for election - The Presidency - and almost not at all for the more important offices lower on the ticket - such as Senate, House, Governorships, State Legislatures, etc.

The Third Parties all operate under the assumption that winning the Big One - the White House - will spring up enough voters to maintain a solid party base for years if not decades.  They seem to think that all it will take is the right face, the right celebrity, the right charismatic leader and enough people will rally to that person and viola!  They get a regular seat at the political table.  This is why you more often than not see a ton of names in the Presidential ballot - here in Florida, I'm counting TWELVE party candidates for Presidnet/VP, not including the Write-In option - but barely ANY in the other open elections for Congress, Senate, State Representative, etc.

But this is all wrong.  At least in this day and age.

Maybe back in the beginning, when Parties formed during the first years of our Constitutional system, it helped that the parties had natural leaders around which they formed - Federalists to Hamilton, Republican-Democrats to Jefferson - if only because everyone was starting off on the same footing.  And the way the voting system was set up - Winner Take All per district or state - it was simplest to have two parties fighting over parking spaces in DC (well, for the horse-drawn carriages).  It's interesting to note how when one party died off - Federalists, by the 1820s - the system so abhorred a vacuum that a replacement party - Whigs - formed to fill that vacuum.

But the Whigs quickly demonstrated why a party formed around one person - or one issue - doesn't last very long or do very well.  For the Whigs were formed in specific response against one person: Andrew Jackson.  When it came time to actually do anything regarding issues, the Whigs found themselves disorganized and leaderless.  Hating Jackson - which is natural, considering how much of a bastard he was - could only go so far.  It especially hurt because thanks to fate the first President Whig - William Harrison - died in 30 days, leaving his VP John Tyler the keys to the White House... and Tyler was only a Whig specifically because he hated Jackson.  Tyler quickly turned out to be a Democrat at heart and vetoed nearly every Whig legislation that crossed his desk.  This killed party unity before the party had a chance to solidify.

The successor to the Whigs - The Republicans - succeeded a bit better because they worked not only at putting up Presidential candidates - first in 1856 - but also lined up party members for the House and Senate.  They put a full platform, unlike the other potential Whig cast-offs like the Free-Soil Party: and THIS is how you're supposed to get a successful Third Party going.

The party is not as much its leadership as it is the voting base, the people who actually VOTE for those leaders in the first place.  For all we rail against the wingnut factions of the major parties, they serve a purpose of basic party foundation (the trick is to find the saner members of those factions to offer up for elections).  You need to coalesce a large enough group of like-minded citizens, get enough of them to volunteer for the less glamorous but still-vital offices at the state and congressional levels, and work hard at getting enough of those candidates elected to make a difference in office.

Better still, the ones you elect to the lower offices become viable candidates for higher office.  State Senator can campaign for Governor.  State Representative makes a try for Congress.  From the U.S. House to the U.S. Senate.  And from any of those higher offices, a genuine shot at the Presidency.

The thing the Third Parties need to do in this day and age is build from the ground up.  Don't even run a candidate for President until you've got enough party members elected to other offices who can then prove themselves in those duties that one of them can perform the duties of the President.

The other thing about getting a successful Third Party going is to KEEP GOING AS A THIRD PARTY.  We've had other attempts - The Populists in the 1880s-90s, for example - where that third party was gaining ground... only for that party to get absorbed by either the Democrats or the Republicans, whichever was closest in ideology to them.  Other times - the Bull Moose progressives under Teddy Roosevelt, the Reform Party of Ross Perot - the third parties were the vanity project of a particular headstrong candidate who focused only on the Presidency and did little to establish a solid ground game for their vanity parties to survive.  Once Roosevelt and Perot were out of the picture for each one, both parties crashed and burned.  It didn't help for the Reform Party that they got hijacked by Pat Buchanan in 2000 who turned that party into a mirror of himself - twisted and evil - before driving it into bankruptcy and then heading back to his home party of the Republicans with nary a scratch.

The successful Third Party is going to have to defend their way.  There will be attempts by both established parties - Democrats and Republicans - to kill off a third option for voters (because two parties make it predictable).  The Third Party is going to have to insist on retaining its own existence even when/if it has to caucus in Congress with one of the two major parties (especially making sure their party leaders do get key chairmanships to prove party value, and also not switch brands).

Dear Mr. O'Donnell: if you want a Third Party to come along and talk about the issues that NEED talking, that NEED solutions, then by all means promote the concept.  But do us all a favor: push those Third Parties to do the hard work of getting a groundswell of support by spreading out and getting more candidates into more offices down-ballot.  Meanwhile, right now, GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR OBAMA AND MAKE SURE ROMNEY NEVER GETS NEAR THE OVAL OFFICE.  ahem.  Needed to be CAPS LOCKed, sir...

AND FOR YOU LOT READING THIS!  YEAH ALL SEVEN OF YOUSE: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT!  GO!  GO!  GO!  Stay Sane and VOTE OBAMA!

Now, off to lunch.  When I get back here, I wanna hear back from the most moderate party out there (hope that's the Modern Whigs) about getting on the ticket for Governor in 2014.

A Viable Third Party?

I think I've ranted on occasion re: the need for a viable Third Party here in the United States. Primarily on two points:

• The Democrats are led by spineless self-serving wimps who couldn't enforce discipline if their lives depended on it (and it does);
• The Republicans are batsh-t insane sociopaths obsessed with tax cuts, killing abortion doctors, and insulting or degrading anything they deem 'foreign' or 'Socialist', and willing to purge their party of anyone who doesn't toe the line 100 percent.

The pity of Third Party attempts is that the system is rigged: the two established parties (R and D) may hate the sh-t out of each other, but they're terrified of voters getting pulled to other choices. I still believe Pat Buchanan's takeover of the Reform Party in 2000 was an attempt by the GOP to sabotage Ross Perot's pet project of shaking up the status quo. By making the Reform Party a top-down system, where they focused on the Presidency and failed to push local, state and congressional candidates, Perot made that party vulnerable to a takeover by a name candidate who could then run it into the dirt. You don't see the Reform Party mentioned much anymore anywhere. Pretty much any other Third Party program out there - Greens, noticeably - tend to be single-issue parties obsessed with far-wingnut (left and right) issues, nothing that would attract moderate and centrist voters disgusted with the ideological calcification of the existing Bigs...

An interesting article on Slate's website by Andrew Dubbins, that I saw earlier this morning, offered something promising: The Modern Whigs. Formed by returning war vets, but opening themselves to non-vet voters, the Whigs seem promising. While their platform is as vague on some topics as you'd expect, they don't come across as batsh-t insane (which is a big criteria for me right now). They also seem to be going about this party construction the right way: they're fielding candidates at local and state levels, rather than gambling on a big-name run at the biggest target (the White House) out there.

I'm intrigued. They've got Congressional candidates lined up in my home state of Florida. I'm going to give them a closer look.