[Third Parties]

The Moderate Mistake, Version 9,243

Perhaps we can squeeze one more post out of the third party meme. The Oregon Bus Project, a grassroots liberal organization here, today kicks off an annual conference. One of the discussions will be whether to follow New York state's lead and create a third party called the Working Families Party. It's not, strictly speaking, a third party.

The plan is to incorporate something called "fusion voting," wherein other parties can nominate candidates from a major party. So for example, the Working Families Party could nominate one of the candidates in a state race who's already running, giving her two spots on the ballot. The notion is that it would then tell the candidate how much of her support was coming from the splinter party.

Naturally, the Dems think this is doom. The local Oregon director believes it will break down the coalition that gives Dems the advantage in Oregon. Maybe so, maybe not. It would depend on whether the Working Families party was working with the Dems or not. They could arguable strengthen Dems by isolating unpopular positions away from the center, but still funnel those votes toward the majority candidate. If the more chaotic state conservatives followed suit, it might also serve to rip apart the conservative coalition (such as it is), which would further strengthen liberal hands.

But I think the main issue is whether you buy the assumption nicely summed up by a commenter below:

Both parties have become controlled by elections and keeping the votes of their respective lunatic fringes that win or lose the election for them. Lunatic fringes now control both parties. Get control back to the middle Americans.

This is definitely conventional wisdom, and it's parroted endlessly throughout the media. That the country is so sharply and nastily polarized right now does not mean that it is split by radical views.* Americans have no political philosophy and are mostly unable to distinguish between the parties (though distinctions--magnificent and vast--there are). Arguments that we move to the middle essentially assert that we let vacuous, single-issue voters determine the political will in the country. This vacuity is easily manipulated by a two-party system in which one or the other will ultimately lure the voter to his team and prevail in the winner-take-all system.

Again, it's obvious we'll never have a multi-party system, but if we did, this myth of the reasonable, rational middle would explode. It would actually isolate the vacuous, fickle masses and force them to sharpen their understanding of politics and develop a philosophy. So at the moment, it's my favorite "what if" fantasy.

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*Obviously, radical views do dominate American politics, but they are not counterbalanced by fringe views on the left. You just have to remind yourself of what those views are, and how they were once held by large numbers of Americans, to see how fatuous this argument is. Exactly who is arguing for violent communist revolution right now? That's the left-wing equivalent of Grover Norquist.