Let’s Party
Ask Me Anything returns, and we are ready to party.
Everybody likes to party. Even the most introverted among us can get behind the idea of being together with people we like, the possibility of finding a new friend, or reconnecting with someone we haven’t seen in a while. Parties can be educational, the opportunity to learn something new, or an escape from the world that is relentless in making you feel anything but happy. Partying is a mix of ingredients that, when put together thoughtfully and intentionally, is just a positive thing.
Parties come in all shapes and sizes and have different vibes. A house party is different from a confirmation party. You have your standard birthday party, and then there’s the office party. Of course, there is the political party, which has the worst vibes of any party, because it’s not always put together thoughtfully, and you hope it’s not as big and keeps people you don’t like out.
So it’s the political party we are making the subject of our long-awaited return of the Ask Me Anything series.
Founding Subscriber ECM wants to know – What’s the history of third parties in American politics?
Great question, ECM. This thoughtful, out-of-the-blue inquiry was not provoked by a text from me.
Care to Party?
Americans have this wild idea that the only thing that can cure our present political environment, the one where we either continue to descend into fascism or someone decides to step up and stop it, is by creating this magical thing called - a third party.
Since 2003, Americans have believed we are only one additional political party away from toppling the two somehow equally ineffective and damaging political gangs of the blue and the red.
And yet, for most of our history, we have not only survived but thrived under a two-party system.
Don’t believe me?
Before diving into ECM’s question and beginning with our founding, let’s quickly stop at the 2020 election. You remember that one, right? After four years of President Donald Trump and a deadly pandemic, America was ready to tell the Donald, “You’re fired,” and they did so in a convincing manner.
Before that glorious November day, the Democratic Party had many contenders hoping to become the nominee and defeat Trump. But I’ll just focus on one: Andrew Yang.
Yang ran for president in 2020 as a novelty candidate. He came across as a mix of libertarian, progressive, and conservative. He even had his own gang and a slogan, “Not Left, Not Right, Forward,” which foreshadowed what was to come.
Yang is almost exactly one year older than I am, and that’s about all we have in common. He is the son of immigrants and was afforded the best education one could have imagined—a prep boarding school in New Hampshire, followed by an Ivy League undergraduate degree, and finishing with an Ivy League law degree. I went to Harvard once – and they let me check out two books from one of their libraries. I also bought a sweatshirt and a hat.
Back to Yang. I think the best way to describe him is that he has professional ADHD. At 50, he has a laundry list of job titles under his belt—lawyer, author, founder, entrepreneur, politician, lobbyist, political commentator, and businessman. How does he fit that into a business card?
While Yang has collected all of these professional descriptions with mixed results, his main hope is to change how the political party is thrown.
I’m picking on Yang because I want to put this right out there from the beginning—no one has ever established a political party simply by waking up one day and declaring that they are going to create a third party that is “centered” and therefore more reasonable than the parties created long ago and now entrenched in our civic society for a reason.
Andrew Yang didn’t win the nomination in 2020—he was never going to—but he didn’t walk away empty-handed; he extended his public shelf life by leaving the Democratic Party in 2021 to begin the “Forward Party.”
To date, the Forward Party has about four elected members (none on the federal level) and a few others who still affiliate with Democrats. But basically, in four years, the Forward Party hasn’t changed anything.
Our Party
The American system of government is unlike other democracies in the world, where multiple parties vie for leadership in all areas of government. Great Britain and its former colonies, like Canada and India, have parliamentary democracies that allow governments to be formed with multiple political parties. Think of it like having multiple tailgates before a football game. After eating and drinking amongst their group, everyone is ready to lead the team to victory. It works well for them.
However, in America, our system is a federal republic, which is very complicated because only one party can win any given elected position. This system also creates two groups that fight against each other on any given issue. In fact, the two groups rarely agree on anything.
From the start, Americans couldn’t agree on how the new government should run, so we immediately formed teams. There were the Federalists—people like our boy Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. They wanted a strong central government that collected taxes, financed everything, and generally ruled the states.
The other side was the Democratic-Republicans. Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, all the Jameses from Virginia fell into this group, which was dedicated to the preservation of states’ rights and their desire to chart their own course, federal government be damned.
However, as new political parties started, they established two conclusions. Eventually, they would either:
1. Stop existing entirely
2. Morph into something else
And that’s precisely what happened. The Federalists disappeared after the presidential election of 1816, while the Democratic-Republicans snapped in two during the presidential election of 1824 – the Democrats and the Whigs.
Breaking Up Because of the Party
As the country marched toward Civil War, the issue of slavery caused another rupture in the political party scene. The Republican Party came out as a third option between the two parties, but at that point, the Whigs were effectively dead, thanks to Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore. Whigs who hated slavery became Republicans, and Southern Whigs who benefited from slavery joined the Democrats.
Since the end of the Civil War, the two-party system has become more pronounced. The Republican Party remains the only third party in history actually to replace one of the big two. Every other movement since then—Progressives, Populists, Socialists—changed the national conversation but got absorbed before they could win.
People like Andrew Yang have no hope of winning the presidency as a third-party candidate, and that’s because even former presidents can’t do it. Teddy Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate in 1912 (Progressive Bull Moose Party); all he did was prevent the sitting Republican president and former ally, William Taft, from winning.
Ross Perot is the last person to pull a Roosevelt in a presidential election. The billionaire launched his candidacy as a third-party option in the 1992 presidential election. He got twenty percent of the vote (one of my sisters voted for him), but got zero electoral votes.
Perot would establish the “Reform Party,” which is hilariously still around, at least on paper. Donald Trump ran for president in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket, and we all wished he had stopped there. When Obama got elected, the Tea Party formed, but it was housed as a faction of the Republicans, much like the MAGA movement during Trump’s first term as a Republican. Trump, having given up being a Reformer and a Democrat, treats the Grand Old Party like he treats the women he married.
So that’s it, ECM, when it comes to third political parties. It’s not much. The two parties change because primaries and groups within them can force changes, making the magical third-party creation a distant dream.
Ying and Yang
The funny thing about Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential election run was Elon Musk’s endorsement. Despite their libertarian leanings, both men agreed with the concept of the government giving every citizen over 18 a universal basic income of $1,000.
A few years later, Musk endorsed Trump and was given the keys to destroy the federal workplace, the entity that made him a billionaire many times over. After his predicted fallout with Trump, Musk has declared his desire to form a third party—the “American Party.” I guess Andrew Yang was forgotten about? I mean, I can see why.
It’s doubtful, even with billions of dollars, that Musk could create a sustainable movement and change history.
Does this help? What do you all think about third-parties? Do you think the two big gangs can be transformed further?
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I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Monday is a holiday, so I will be taking it off. I’m still playing catch-up in various areas of life, and Anonymous has us deep into a house project that kicks into gear next week. But I will be back by the end of the week!
Appreciate you all.
Okay,
Chris
Thanks for fielding my question!