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My favorite Sunday afternoon program, The McLaughlin Group, donated the entire last episode to the 2008 election, and began with six reasons why this election is the perfect time for a third party candidate to run in the presidential election.
“One, right track/wrong track? Way off track. Seventy- three percent of Americans say the country is going in the wrong direction — 73 percent — an exceptionally negative view in a critical poll.
Two, Anti-incumbency zeitgeist. President Bush and the Senate and the House of Representatives all have approval ratings in the 30s or below. The public wants fresh faces.
Three, a pox on both your houses. Voters are fed up with the red state/blue state designation and duality, with neither Republicans nor Democrats healing the breach. Color us different.
Four, partisan back-biting. Both parties have failed to bring originality to their thinking on vital issues like health care, Social Security reform, energy approaches and immigration realism.
Five, anti-globalist backlash. Outsourcing and immigration have alienated the conservative middle class and the liberal labor unions. In ’92, Perot got his thrust from NAFTA backlash. Today’s Independent gains from globalism backlash.
Six, 2008 front-loaded primaries. Some 27 states are voting on their presidential nominees on or before February 5, Super Tuesday. By then — that’s February 5, ’08, eight months from now — the world will know whom the Democrats and Republicans have chosen as their presidential nominee.
Between then, February 5, ’08, and November ’08, voters will have nine full months to find flaws with the Republican and Democratic nominees, during which time an Independent may be waiting in the wings to seize and conquer center stage.”
But even after these excellent points and the fact that the majority of Americans claim to be Independent (38%) over Republicans (28%) and Democrats (34%) – all of the panelists seem to agree that a third party has no shot of winning the election.
I don’t know – I think the most compelling reason why a third party candidate might step up this election is the time factor, that there are 9 full months between choosing the candidates and the final election. I think with how crowded the election is currently, there are bound to be people popping up in the third candidate category who have more of a shot than other contenders in recent years.
Probably the most disappointing statistic from the show was seeing the percentage of popular vote for the top running third party candidate for each of the past elections, and the electoral college count for each candidate. Although Perot had 19% of the popular vote he earned 0 electoral college votes. It just seems to me that if you earn almost 1/5th of the entire country’s vote, you should at least get a few electoral college votes. This is why people get discouraged to vote third party, Independent party. But I’m hoping this election brings more votes to third parties.
Do you think there’s a shot for a third party in the 2008 election?
Liberman, Democrat turned to Independent, recently was quoted as saying that if the main two parties don’t step up to the plate and address the issuing plaguing Americans, it could be an open opportunity for a Third Party candidate.
When asked what party was the fastest growing party, he replied, “no party.” He add, “the disease is partisanship. The lack of civility is one of the symptoms of that disease.”
I’m glad that Lieberman is trying to shed some light on the real possibility of a third party coming up, I’m hoping that some candidates start to stand up in one of the many possibly third party categories and show that we don’t have to be limited to Democrat or Republican. But who would be the first to really generate the buzz?
I’m sorry, I love taking advantage of technology and new media as much as the next guy, but to allow MySpace to “cast ballots” to the 2008 election and call it a Primary is just plain wrong. As Mike Arrington, the infamous blogger of TechCrunch, points out – numerous members hold fake accounts and multiple accounts on a site based on trying to have more friends than your real friends.
I’m afraid that the outcome of this “primary” could have some impact on actual votes. It’s too easy to “fix” the outcome of this, let’s say having someone’s entire campaign staff holding multiple usernames ends up voting multiple times. Might give some incorrect findings.
It’s great to energize the slow to act population of young voters, but come on. Has the MySpace Impact had any impact so far? Will this bring new interest to the young voter population? Will third parties be represented, right now the focus has only been on the big dogs – Clinton, Obama? I’ll guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Just what we all want to hear. No, I’m being serious. I know so many people who don’t like our political system because it’s a two party system and I tell them, vote for a third party. The reason it’s set up this way is because we, the American people, haven’t casted our votes to bring a third party into play with a decent percentage of votes. But this upcoming election may change all that.
I watched McLaughlin Group this weekend and Eleanor Clift, Contributing Editor for Newsweek following the Washington, stated this,
“There will be at least one, maybe two, third-party independent candidacies next year because the two parties will settle on their nominees the first week of February. That leaves nine months until the election; lots of time for buyer’s remorse to set in.
Unity ’08 will hold a virtual convention in June of ’08, and they will come up with a bipartisan ticket, a Republican and a Democrat running together. And Mayor Bloomberg of New York is looking at an independent candidacy. He could go with Unity ’08. He could strike out on his own. He can spend half a billion dollars and not even notice it. So we’re in for more candidates than just the two major nominees.”
I think she’s right, and brings up an interesting thought that many of these candidates will rise up in a third party, and that Unity ’08 (the group of people who believe neither of the major two parties should win the next presidency) may rise for this election.
What do you think? You think 2008 might be the year to “break the mold” and start to chip away on this country’s two party system?
2008 Election Watch 