New political party

[flaja]

Two good reasons for this.

#1 - Lack of money to run a national campaign.

Why would it take money to win a national campaign? A candidate will not attract donors if voters don't support the candidate's ideas. The trouble right now is that Iowa and New Hampshire are left-wing/libertarian states that do not represent the nation as a whole either separately or jointly. But all of the media attention lavished on these states almost guarantees the nomination of a left-wing Democrat and a libertarian Republican who will do nothing more than give lip service to conservative social issues.

#2 - The wide spread belief that voting for a third party is the same as wasting your vote. Both the GOP & DNC help foster this notion.

True. But the real problem is that there are too many 3rd parties. Ideology aside, the presence of so many 3rd parties means that the 3rd party effort cannot coalesce around a single party and thus demonstrate the true size and scope of the country’s dissatisfaction with the major parties.

 

[WinterBorn]

Why would it take money to win a national campaign? A candidate will not attract donors if voters don't support the candidate's ideas. The trouble right now is that Iowa and New Hampshire are left-wing/libertarian states that do not represent the nation as a whole either separately or jointly. But all of the media attention lavished on these states almost guarantees the nomination of a left-wing Democrat and a libertarian Republican who will do nothing more than give lip service to conservative social issues.



True. But the real problem is that there are too many 3rd parties. Ideology aside, the presence of so many 3rd parties means that the 3rd party effort cannot coalesce around a single party and thus demonstrate the true size and scope of the country’s dissatisfaction with the major parties.

Why would it take money? Because the candidate is going to have to buy time so they will be seen. The media is not going to give them the time, that is for sure. Look at the last presidential election. Do you think the media covered the candidates equally?

The real proble is that people have been told they are wasting their votes and the 3rd parties that we do have are so specialized that they get ridiculed too quickly.

 

[flaja]

I agree with your analysis of Perot but was addressing your question on how to organize a new political party. I remember his supporters setting up "stations" in various neighborhoods and asking people to sign petitions to get him on the ballot. His debates and flip charts, etc. seemed to address questions people had but he jumped the rails with that craziness about his daughter's wedding.

Perot could have easily paid the necessary fees to get his name on the ballot in each state. The petition effort was not needed, and was just astroturfing. He wanted to create the impression that he had mass popular appeal in amounts that didn’t really exist. A lot of Perot’s voters just went along for the ride. If voters had really been concerned about the size of the government and deficit spending both would have been reduced and both would have remained reduced following the GOP capture of Congress in 1994.

Also, Perot’s success would not have been what it was if it weren’t for the fact that the Democrats had the country convinced we were having the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. The reality was that the recession, that was triggered by the first Gulf War, was long finished by Election Day, and at its worst it wasn’t even close to what the country had endured in the Carter Administration. For that matter, the last 6 months of 2008 were not even as bad as the Carter Administration. But in both 1992 and 2008 voters allowed themselves to be stampeded into voting for the more liberal of the two major party candidates.

 

[Minister of Truth]

In the end he was a few bricks shy, but has to get some credit for the way he mobilized people before he went off the deep end.

Perot deserves no credit for his loony-bin candidacy/non-candidacy/candidacy once more 1992 shenanigans.

As I said before, 19 million retards = 19% popular vote for Perot. Are course, there are far more retards running about this country than a mere 19 million...