Story Comments

This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »

My point is it does not matter what you want but you have to live with what you get. The biggest chance recently was Ross Perot. All he accomplished was to throw the election to Clinton for two years. The problem is that the two parties split the political spectrum. Democrats have liberals and the Republicans have the conservatives.

The point in time that a third party might have had a chance was when the two parties were in the middle of the political shift. Before 1900 the Republican party was liberal and the Democrat party was conservative. FDR and Wilson started the shift of liberals into the Democrat party and Goldwater finalized the shift of conservatives into the Republican party. That time is over.

Now the real fight is for the moderates to decide the elections. Like it or not that is what we are forced to live with. If a third party gets big enough then either the conservative or liberal group will end up taking it into that party. The platform will include that third parties ideas and suck them back into where they came from. That has happened many times. People want to be in a group that has power. All a third party can hope to do is bend one or the other party to them if they get big enough.

6 Replies