Let’s go back to even just 1900. 1912 our first major upset - 41.8%, 27%, 23.2%, and 6%. Looks nothing like a 50/50 split. 1920 had a huge landslide, 60%/34.2%, and 3.4% behind that. 1924? 54%, 28.8%, 16.6%. More landslides through FDR’s term. Fast forward to 1968 - American Independent party with a staggering 13.5% of the vote. 6.6% in 1980. 18.9% in 1992. Only since then - namely, since Bush v. Gore, even though Bush pretty objectively lost the election both in EC and popular (besides Supreme Court intervention), have we really settled into the “lesser of two evils” mentality and been blaming third parties for any Republican victory, with the mindset we MUST vote for Democrats. And yet our methods of popular organization have become dramatically more sophisticated! We have instantaneous global communication, social networks, you name it. So what the fuck is going on? IT’S LITERALLY THE “LESSER OF TWO EVILS” MENTALITY ITSELF.
You are shooting yourselves in the foot, voting for Democrats and ruling out any real change, when the Democrats are so openly genocidal and corrupt. Even the Republicans, for their absolute lack of insight and vision and understanding, are able to perceive something’s wrong with the Democrat politicians, and that’s why Trump is able to sweep them all up into his camp. This has literally enabled the rise of fascism and the defeat of real populism (like your Eugene Debs figures back in the early 1900s). You run something absolutely uninspiring and awful and genocidal, among a voter base that’s SUPPOSED to be the one that’s more motivated by justice and equality, and they predictably lose. I don’t particularly like Bernie Sanders, but the Dem party wouldn’t even let him run, they ran Hillary instead, and bam, Trump won. How many times do you need to see this play out?
The last time we got a shake up in the two party system was with the civil war. Even then, we didn’t get three parties, we just replaced one party with another. 1912 was a notable but unrepeatable exception, but not an “upset”. We still elected one of the two major parties, and four years later it was back to Republicans and Democrats. It’s also notable that Taft and Roosevelt were both Republicans, so Roosevelt running as a Progressive meant that they split the vote and Democrats won with only 41.8% of the vote. Republicans were the left party at the time, so the left split the vote and got a conservative. Your exception shows exactly why third party runs are boneheaded.
Any third party that had the means to run a viable third party candidate would easily be capable of running an inside strategy to replace the Democratic establishment. Unlike the fantasy of a third party approach, that strategy has worked in the past. If there aren’t enough Democratic voters who are pissed enough at the Democratic establishment to do a takeover of the party, then there definitely aren’t enough to win a third party strategy.
50 years is, what, 12 major election cycles. So that’s your sample size - twelve.
Here’s a larger sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election#Popular_vote_results
Let’s go back to even just 1900. 1912 our first major upset - 41.8%, 27%, 23.2%, and 6%. Looks nothing like a 50/50 split. 1920 had a huge landslide, 60%/34.2%, and 3.4% behind that. 1924? 54%, 28.8%, 16.6%. More landslides through FDR’s term. Fast forward to 1968 - American Independent party with a staggering 13.5% of the vote. 6.6% in 1980. 18.9% in 1992. Only since then - namely, since Bush v. Gore, even though Bush pretty objectively lost the election both in EC and popular (besides Supreme Court intervention), have we really settled into the “lesser of two evils” mentality and been blaming third parties for any Republican victory, with the mindset we MUST vote for Democrats. And yet our methods of popular organization have become dramatically more sophisticated! We have instantaneous global communication, social networks, you name it. So what the fuck is going on? IT’S LITERALLY THE “LESSER OF TWO EVILS” MENTALITY ITSELF.
You are shooting yourselves in the foot, voting for Democrats and ruling out any real change, when the Democrats are so openly genocidal and corrupt. Even the Republicans, for their absolute lack of insight and vision and understanding, are able to perceive something’s wrong with the Democrat politicians, and that’s why Trump is able to sweep them all up into his camp. This has literally enabled the rise of fascism and the defeat of real populism (like your Eugene Debs figures back in the early 1900s). You run something absolutely uninspiring and awful and genocidal, among a voter base that’s SUPPOSED to be the one that’s more motivated by justice and equality, and they predictably lose. I don’t particularly like Bernie Sanders, but the Dem party wouldn’t even let him run, they ran Hillary instead, and bam, Trump won. How many times do you need to see this play out?
The last time we got a shake up in the two party system was with the civil war. Even then, we didn’t get three parties, we just replaced one party with another. 1912 was a notable but unrepeatable exception, but not an “upset”. We still elected one of the two major parties, and four years later it was back to Republicans and Democrats. It’s also notable that Taft and Roosevelt were both Republicans, so Roosevelt running as a Progressive meant that they split the vote and Democrats won with only 41.8% of the vote. Republicans were the left party at the time, so the left split the vote and got a conservative. Your exception shows exactly why third party runs are boneheaded.
Any third party that had the means to run a viable third party candidate would easily be capable of running an inside strategy to replace the Democratic establishment. Unlike the fantasy of a third party approach, that strategy has worked in the past. If there aren’t enough Democratic voters who are pissed enough at the Democratic establishment to do a takeover of the party, then there definitely aren’t enough to win a third party strategy.