Third Parties

In today's episode, I look at the what, why, and how of third party politics in the United States. Specifically, why the introduction of a third party into our two party system could reduce political pressures, and how a third party can be successful in the polarizing times in which we find ourselves.

Transcript

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Welcome back to relief valve podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Anthony. Today we're going to be talking about the third prong of the relief valve, third parties.

All right. Well, as we're working out the kinks of these first few episodes, I think we're finally starting to settle on a format here at the relief valve podcast. It seems to go intro, the intro music, and then I give some kind of shout out at the beginning. And then we actually get into the subject matter, and then their show notes at the end. So I'm going to continue with this format. If you have any complaints with this, or if you have any issues or if you think there's a way we could be doing it better. As always, you can reach me on Twitter at M Daniel Anthony. And you can also reach me via email at relief valve pc@gmail.com. So for this week's shout out, I want to give a shout out to my wife's good friend and my personal good friend as well, Esther, I probably should have given a shout out to Esther, in episode one. But we weren't really doing shout outs back then. So that's my only excuse. But Esther deserves a shout out because she is actually the one who first sat down with me and explained to me how to run a podcast how to make a podcast I didn't understand how any of this worked. Until she worked. I don't know I had I stretched it out. I said work could but anyway, I didn't know how any of this worked until she sat down and talked with me all the way back in February of this year in 2022. And she actually sat down and talked with me about how to record how to use Buzzsprout, how to publish all that good stuff. So a shout out to Esther today for helping me with that I was still very early in my journey of figuring out how to make a podcast and deciding the format and what I was going to talk about. But I'm very thankful to her. So if you're listening, Esther, thank you if you're not, well, that's a little hurtful. But still Thank you. So let's talk about today's subject, third parties. Now, if you're one of my, like three listeners in Europe that I apparently have, you may be confused by the idea of third parties, specifically, if you're from a country like France, or Italy or Germany, because you come from a country where there are multi party, what's called a multi party system. Here in the United States. However, though, we have what is called a two party system, we have the Democrats and the Republicans, there's of course, a large number of other smaller parties, but those but none of them really claim any seats in Congress or have ever held the presidency. So we really refer to ourselves as a two party system. So for a two party system, the first question that needs to be asked is why am I talking about third parties in the first place? If our government was set up to only support two parties, then why should we try to enter introduce a third? And the answer to that question is that nowhere in the constitution does it say you shall have you know, thou shalt have two parties? I don't I don't think the Constitution says Thou shalt anywhere. Actually, I'm thinking I'm thinking of Moses. But anyway, there's nowhere in the Constitution says that we can only have two parties. As a matter of fact, political parties aren't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution whatsoever. And as he left the president, the office of the presidency, George Washington actually cautioned against the idea of political parties at all, because he saw that they would only be used as a device and tool for division rather than unity, which he believed the fledgling American republic needed. It will come as no surprise, though, to my American listeners that this advice was not heated. And today we have the Democrats and the Republicans. Shortly after Washington left office, though the first two parties emerged, I believe they were the Federalist party in the Democrat Democratic Republican Party, which were then replaced by the Whig and Democratic Party, which were then replaced by the Democrats and Republicans if I'm remembering my history classes correctly. So we didn't really listen to Washington's advice, the second he left office. And I'm not going to propose that we return to an era before political parties simply because I don't think that it's possible at this point in time. What I am going to propose, though, is that we need more than two parties. Today's episode talks about a third party but in reality I propose when volve as many parties as possible, we introduce as many parties as possible into the system. I'm going to kind of follow the same format as I used last episode I'm going to talk about we talked about the what already what a third party is by talking about our two party system. But now I'm going to talk about the Y and then I'll discuss the house a little bit. So let's talk about the Y for a second. Why do we need a third party? Why do we need multiple new parties introduced into the American political system?

The entire point of this podcast is to figure out solutions to reduce political tensions in the United States. The injection of a third party into our two party system would do exactly this by forcing compromise into a political structure that currently operates as a zero sum game. Basically, if you're not familiar with American politics as of late, let me just sum up how it works for you real quick. Red wins the presidency, House and Senate. The blue media then talks about how this election proves democracy is somehow dead. Two years later, blue wins either or both the House and Senate and then nothing gets done. Then two years later, blue wins the presidency, but still gets nothing done, because their majority isn't big enough. Right here, I'll go ahead and just make a major prediction. Red will win either the House or Senate this fall. And then blue will say they still can't do anything, because now they've lost one of those, then in two years further in the future, then in two years from now, red will win the presidency, but the House or Senate will stay blue, and nothing will still get done. And red will shake their fist angrily at the heavens and say, Oh, if only we had Congress, then two years from then, maybe red will win the House, Senate and hold the presidency. But what will read do? Not much. And whatever action they do manage to take will be immediately forestall two years from then when blue gets swept back into power, who will then do very little to that is the exciting world of politics. Like I said, the injection of the third party into this system can force compromise. And this bring about our idea of a relief valve on the national scale. If a third party was able to take seats, a significant number of seats in Congress, and maybe even the presidency at some point, suddenly, the two parties would have to work with this third party to get anything done. Like I said, right now it's a zero sum game, blue waits until they hold all the cards before they pass any significant legislation. And then red does the exact same thing on variant. And then if they don't hold all the cards, if they don't hold the presidency, the Senate and the House all at once, then they just decided to do nothing for two years except sit, get fat and get rich. If I sound a little bitter about all this, it's because I am. And frankly, you should be to not having every single domino in place exactly the way you want. It isn't an excuse to just hold up the entire game until things are sorted out the way that you wish they were. The good of the American, the goodwill of the American people depends on Congress actually doing its job. And for the last over a decade now. They haven't done their jobs, which has eroded which has eroded public opinion and confidence in our government and its institutions. In addition to not getting anything done, this 12 year log jam has given rise to increase tensions as well as each side blames the other for not being able to do what they want. Even a cursory glance at each side's record, though, will show you that the two parties have actually come to count on this excuse, rather than needing this excuse to explain why they're not doing anything. Back in 2017, just for an example, after Trump was sworn into office, the Republicans held both houses of Congress, as well as the presidency. Think about this for a second, they held both houses of Congress and the presidency. Up until this point, every year Republican leadership had brought forward bills to get rid of Obamacare. However, what did they do once they had all this power? Nothing, because they had expected to lose the 2016 election. And none of the bills they brought forth before then were worth the paper they were written on. So you can see that Congress prefers the current state of affairs where they get to twiddle their thumbs and shrug their shoulders and point at the other side to explain why they're not getting anything done. But even when they do hold power, they still don't do anything with it because it blows their mind. They don't know what to do with it at this at that point.

This is a dangerous state of affairs for our country. Our nation was founded on the principle of checks and balances for the federal government. The executive, the legislative and the judiciary are supposed to work in harmony balancing each other out. With Congress not doing their job. That means that now there's a vacuum, and we know that power hates a vacuum. So what happens the judiciary and the executive start taking away congressional power and hoarding it for themselves? We've already seen this whether you're on the left or you're on the right, no one can argue that the Supreme Court is now legislating from the bench far more than they were ever intended to, which really was not at all. And the executive branch is now legislating its on its own through the use of presidential authorizations in the form of executive orders. Through these power grabs, we now have unelected official was in the form of judges, effectively issuing legislation, as well as the president issuing legislation, which leads to the problem that we talked about last week, when we were discussing how everyone has come to obsess over who's the president, because they feel that if their party's their party doesn't get the Presidential Nominee than they don't have a voice in government for the next four years. Okay, now I'm going to take a breath and take a step back, because I realized that for the last like five minutes, I kind of went on a tangent about what the problem is, you know what gripes I have with the current state of Congress. And while that's very entertaining, for all of you, I'm sure it doesn't really speak to how a third party would fix this problem. So let's get back to talking about a third party and talking about compromise, because that's exactly what a third party would force about compromise, all of the problems that I was just talking about with relation to Congress, how they refuse to work with one another, and then how once they even get to power, they don't know what to do with it can be solved by the injection of a third party into the discourse, because then there's no longer this zero sum game, there's no longer this argument that the Democrats and Republicans can make where, well, if we were empowered, then we could fix this, because with a third party, now, no one gets to be in complete control, no one gets to have total control of the government. And because of that, they lose that excuse, they lose that crutch, and suddenly they have to legislate, suddenly, they have to actually work together to maintain their relevancy in the national discourse. Coalition Government is what I'm thinking about here. What I'm thinking about is you have a third party. And so let's say, for instance, that the Democrats want to pass some environmental bill. Well, if they want to get it through the legislature, then they're going to have to work with this third party and bring over some of those votes in order to get it through. Or if the Republicans were interested in bringing about a tax cut, they would have to work with this third party to bring that through. And in my mind, this third party would probably be the dominant force in politics, not just because they'd have to be swayed one way or the other to get legislation through but also because I see a large portion of Americans in the middle who are not being spoken to on either side right now. This isn't fit sitting either. There are people with hard opinions on major issues who are unsatisfied with the current dichotomy that we're set up with. A Pew Research poll that recently came out showed that nearly half of people between the ages of 18 to 49% said say that they wish that there were more parties to choose from it was 47%. To be exact. That's a sizable portion of the electorate, that's probably only going to grow since it's the largest portion of people wishing they had a third party option right now.

I don't know how many millennials and Zoomers, you know, personally, but I know a lot. And most of them have very hard opinions on things. So these aren't people who are just, you know, mealy mouthed, though, well, I just can't decide what issue is important to me, at least people care about the issues and they're passionate about the issues myself included, but they're not satisfied with the way things are because they realize that one, the duopoly we currently have is ineffective to address the issues that we're facing. In two, they also realize that a lot of times the duopoly just doesn't address one of the neither party fully addresses their concerns or holds their values. Another little statistic from that Pew study that I'll just throw at you real quick is that 27% of everyone polled had negative views of both parties regardless of age. So that means that a full quarter of Americans don't like either party at all, regardless of whether or not they're affiliated as a Republican or as a Democrat. So this goes back to what I was just saying that a third party could be a major reckoning force in American politics, not just as a Oh, if you sway us to your side will vote for your legislation, but as a political party and as a political force all its own because people are dissatisfied with the current way things are being run. And a growing number of people are dissatisfied with the way things are being run. So if you can create a third party that spoke to that middle, because it's my personal belief, from just watching our society spiral these last few years, that both parties are just reaching more and more into the wings of the far right and the far left to appeal to those voters while ignoring everyone else. So if you could speak to that middle that wanted to see things get done that want to see true economic reform, who wanted to see a government that worked for the people and not for its own profiteering interest than you would have a dominant political force within a matter of years. I do already foresee one counter argument to my point that someone can make, they could say, well, Daniel, if the Democrats and Republicans are already in the process in the business of pointing fingers at each other to say that, that the other side is the reason they can't get anything done, then wouldn't a third party just create another excuse for the Democrats and Republicans? And my answer to that would be No, because a third party would bring with it in order to create a third party in this in the current political environment, one would have to have a group of followers and candidates that were passionate about the issues, you don't just start a third party from scratch in this current political environment without believing in something. So if you elected if you really got a third party movement up and going, then at the very least, even if the Republicans and Democrats didn't want to do anything, even if they wanted to continue their their blame game, essentially, this third party wouldn't allow it to happen. Because you have a group of you have a passionate group of men and women who are trying to get things done. Additionally, it's also my sincerely held belief that at their core, the Democrat and Republican parties both rely on each other, whether they want to admit it or not, there are two sides of the same coin at this point, and they're comfortable with each other. So introducing a third party into that mix would deeply unsettled them and make them insecure, and would probably drive them to action to show that they're not useless to show that they're still still relevant in this day and age. So no, I don't think the introduction of the third party would allow just more excuses to be made by the blues and the reds. If anything, I think that it would spur on more legislation, and it would spur on more legislative action, which is exactly what we need. Because as I mentioned, checks and balances. That's the system that our that's the system that our founding fathers came up with. And it's the one that our federal government depends on. And right now it's completely out of whack. All right,
so we've talked about the what, third parties, we've talked about the why compromise. Now let's talk about the how, if you're one of my dozens now of Twitter followers, you may be aware that I frequently retweet and talk with the Ford party. This is a group that was started by a former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and they're basically exactly what I'm talking about a third party that's trying to disrupt this duopoly that we currently have in government. Now, full disclosure, I'm officially a Republican, and I have not fallen under the Ford party Banner yet, but I do like a lot of their ideas. And I've leaned more and more towards them, as time has gone on. And as I've learned more about their platform, one of the things that appeals most to me about the Ford party, is the fact that they aren't super granular. And by that I mean they're focused right now on the issue at hand that we're talking about this moment, which is the duopoly is hold on power in the government. They don't have you know, a policy, they don't have a policy for every single thing under the sun. If you go to their website, you see that they talked about, you know, things like ranked choice voting, they talk about democracy dollars, they're talking about things like civic juries. I mentioned last episode, J Corp status was something that Andrew Yang brought forward in his book, Ford from last year. So they're talking about certain specific issues directly relevant to getting our democracy up to date and preserving our democracy. I like this, because along with thinking that we need third, fourth, fifth sixth parties, I also believe that these parties don't have to be permanent structures. I don't know if the fourth party is meant to be the next Democrat or Republican Party. And by that, I mean, I don't know if they're meant till 150 years from now, if we're supposed to still have a Ford party or not. I think that they're the right answer for the current time. And I think that that's really how political party should work. Generally, I don't think you should just be a fixed to one group of people. For generations, things change, issues come up, and then they're resolved and the new issues brought up. No one could argue that the Democrats and Republicans have today are the same as the Democrats and Republicans of the Civil War era. So I like this idea that there's a party who's coming out that's coming out now, that's, that was made specifically to deal with the issues that our democracy currently faces. I'm talking about the Ford party during the house portion of this podcast, because I think that they've laid a pretty strong blueprint for how you need to do this. I don't know if the Ford party will be successful or not. I'm increasingly hopeful that they will be successful. But I don't know for certain that they will. But I think that they've at least laid the groundwork for something that others can pick up on. One of the big things that I've noticed is that the fourth party is not super concerned right now with national politics. It may seem odd that I'm praising this whenever I just finished ranting and raving about Congress about how we need to fix the duopoly that's in Congress and blah, blah, blah. But what I liked about the four parties right now, they're actually focused on more local elections, local level elections, which kind of ties in neatly with what we were talking about last week, last Thursday, when we were discussing about shifting focus from the National to the local, they're focused more on these community wide elections. And I think that's important for any third party because what You'll notice is what you'll notice, if you look at the history of third parties in the United States is, a lot of times they trip right out right out of the gate, because they go for the, you know, what's seen to be the golden metal up front, right? They, they reach for the highest bar, which is like the presidency, or a Senate seat. And while it's good to get those, obviously, a lot of times a third party's best shot is to start at the grassroots level, start at the community level, get people invested in your message on a local level, and then grow, create a network and then build on that network. And a lot of times, third parties, almost universally third parties in the United States are in have been impatient, and they've refused to do that foundational work. But I see the Ford party doing that foundational work right now they're laying down that they're putting down the seeds for something great in over the course of the next decade. And so I'm believing more and more that this could be the solution to the problems that I just discussed, the you know, breaking in to breaking a third party into the national discourse is not going to be an easy thing in the United States. And I've heard many, many people say that it's just flat out impossible. But I hate that word impossible. Because over the course of our very short history in this country, we've proven again and again, that nothing's impossible.

I don't mean that in the hanging there kitty poster, you know, like inspirational way, I mean that in a very realistic, grounded way. Politically, the impossible has been done over and over again, over the course of our over the course of our national history, right? We've seen the Democratic Party change, you know, a crazy amount from the post Civil War era to where they are now, right? I mean, it was, if you told someone 50 years ago, that the South would be a primarily Republican leaning area, or geographic area of the country, no one would have believed you. Right, you would have been laughed out of the building. But now look at the map, right, the Republicans largely on the south and the Democrats on the northeast, who I mean, you know, who would have seen that coming. But things change in American politics over time. These aren't the as I mentioned, at the beginning of this episode, the Democrats and Republicans are not the original political parties that we started off with in this country. So who's to say that they're the only political parties that we can ever have? The people who say that something's impossible, are really just saying that it sounds like too much work for them. And if that's the case, that's fine. I mean, if you're, I'm surprised that you hold that belief if you're listening to this podcast, but it's perfectly fine for you to not want to have to put in the work to do that. People have their own lives, people have their own interests. And maybe this just isn't interesting to you. But don't say it's impossible, because it's clearly not. So I think the Ford party is laying the groundwork and showing how you can start a how you shouldn't start a third party by laying the groundwork. I also think they've shown how you should start a third party in the US by getting into the national discourse, maybe not as a party, not with their candidates, but just to their representatives. You know, I see Andrew Yang on a bunch of podcasts I see. I mean, I hear him on a bunch of podcasts, and I see him writing op eds and different editorial sections of different newspapers and publications. And, and I see other representatives of the Ford party, on the news on CNN and on Fox talking about what they believe in and kind of putting forward their position. And that's what you need, you need to be getting your name out there, even before he put out a candidate. And right now they are endorsing several candidates, which I think is very good. So anyway, so I think that they're doing a good job of laying this out. I think they're doing a good job of showing how you can start a third party in the United States and be successful. And like I said, whether or not they are successful themselves, they're really doing a good job of giving, you know, of making a run for it, and I'm really rooting for them. All that being said, I you know, this isn't a commercial for the Ford party. I won't spend the rest of the podcast singing the Ford party's praises. But I like I said, I will say that, I think that if we're looking at the how, how would you introduce a third party into the two party system that we currently have? The Ford party is giving us a very strong template for how to do that. One, you focus on local elections and building seeds of support all over the country that can then grow into something greater. And to you stay in the national discourse through the use of op eds editorials podcast, get people talking about you for good, or Ill have people talk about you. And that will grow your name recognition and that will get people interested in you generally, I know that the reason that I first heard about the Ford party was because I heard that Andrew Yang was thinking about starting a third party and hearing what a terrible idea this was. But I wasn't listening to the people talking about what a terrible idea was. I was just interested in the concept of the third party. I think in this case, all publicity is good publicity. All right. I think that's it for today's episode. We have thoroughly covered third parties the what the why and the how. I definitely am going to come back to this concept. You know these first these this first handful of episodes really about establishing you know what the relief valve is and the different prongs of the relief valve. But of course, this isn't the only time we're going to talk about these issues. This is just an introductory laying the foundation kind of thing, I want to come back, I want to talk more about the fourth party, I want to talk about other third party movements in history and how they've done and how they failed, and what we can learn from them. And like I said, I this, this topic specifically excites me, because I think it is probably the most imminent of the ideas that we talked about on this podcast. A lot of the reforms that I'm going to bring forth and that I have brought forth on this podcast are going to take some time to bring about, but I think we're actually in the middle of watching the death throes of the two party system right before our very eyes. And so that inevitability excites me to see this, this change happening in our time. And so talking about third party, talking about the introduction of a third party is something that I'm definitely going to come back to and revisit.

But as I said, that's our episode, before I go in keeping with this new format, or this old format, or just this format that we've kind of stumbled onto, I guess, I'm gonna put some show notes here at the end. First, I want to thank everybody who has volunteered to interview with me, I've received several, I received several messages expressing interest after I put that out a couple episodes ago. So I'm just gonna put it out again, if you're interested in coming on the show and talking with me, I would be happy to have you not really looking to do interviews, I'm more looking to just have conversations around this concept of a relief valve, you know, around this idea of what can we do to reduce political pressures in the United States, and also talk about commonalities among all Americans, you know, we can talk about certain subject matter that is important to all Americans. And we're almost all Americans, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum agree, and how we can advance those interests. So if you have any interest in discussing something of that matter of that subject matter of variety, let me know reach out to me again, my Twitter is m Daniel Anthony, and my email is relief valve pc@gmail.com, you may have noticed that I've paused a little bit in the past before I've given my Twitter handle or my email. And that's not because of any hesitation. That's because I've had trouble remembering my email and remembering my Twitter up until now, but now I have them, you know, down pat, I'm very proud of myself. So Twitter, M, Daniel Anthony. And email is relief valve pc@gmail.com, if you want to come on and have a conversation with me and talk about how we can fix this country, either through the use of the relief valve or through a critique you have of the relief valve or through an entirely new idea that you have, I would love to hear from you. And in the next couple of weeks, we're gonna start, I'm gonna start publishing these conversations that I'm having with people because they've already started and I'm super excited about it. I also have some rather sad news. I, when we were talking about age caps, a couple episodes ago, I proposed that the age cap for Congress be set at seven years old. And I was very proud, I thought I put forth some really strong arguments for that 70 years old age cap. However, I put a poll on Twitter, and I asked people what they thought the age cap should be. And the majority response was 65. So, you know, I'm just, that depresses me a little bit, because I'm disappointed in all of you for not seeing the light of reason that I brought forth. But given that this is my podcast, I am going to just ignore your votes and say that 70 is still no. Apparently people think 65 is the better age, I still think that with the way our system is set up, where it takes a lot of money to even run for Congress in the first place. I think that might prematurely cut people's time and office short, but I do understand, you know, the the idea that people just should not be sitting in office for so long. And you know, it's just one of those things, even my own wife turned against me. But she actually went the opposite direction. Karen said that she thought that an age cap wouldn't matter. She's just all for term limits. She said that, hey, if they're only going to run for 12 years, if they're only going to be in office for 12 years, and why do we care how old they are. If the voters think that you know, a 68 year old is the best person for the job, then let them get voted in at 68 and sit in office for up to 12 years if that's what their constituents want. So anyway, but nobody seems to agree with me on the 70 years old thing. So I just I completely lost that argument. Very sad, very disappointed. But at the same time, I'm actually quite happy because I'm getting feedback on Twitter. People are voting in my polls. So that's always very exciting. The last thing I want to talk about before I let you go is I got feedback after last week's show notes where I asked what you thought about me talking about current events. Should I do it on this podcast? Should I create a second podcast Should I do it on a YouTube channel and the over whelming sentiment seems to be to just keep it on this podcast and just put it under a different banner. So that's pretty much what I'm going to do. I want to update twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. And what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to keep Tuesdays like this, where I discuss an element of the relief valve, you know, bring on some, you know, all I'll include interviews as they happen, you know, conversations that I have with people as they happen. I'll include them in this when we're talking about elements of the relief valve. But then I think what I'll do is Thursday's show will be more of an off the cuff thing, because these episodes, it may not seem like it, but these episodes actually require quite a bit of research and work in just editing and things like that. And I think I would like to have a more of a free flowing discussion with you guys.