Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman said earlier this week that he welcomes a third-party movement in the United States. He also said he doubts such a party can be effective.
Let’s one-up Lieberman, though, although his new book is a valuable contribution to the discussion. A four- or five-party system might be just what the civic doctor ordered.
The discussion about breaking the stranglehold of uncompromising hard-liners in both major parties is attracting attention from multiple ideological vantage points. Yet none of the three major, recent advancers of the conversation see a third party itself becoming dominant.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is forming what he calls the Forward Party, which will focus on pushing “structural” changes such as ranked-choice voting and open primaries. His party, however, will not actually strive to secure separate ballot access but will instead find adherents to its principles who would then run as either Republicans or Democrats. In sum, it’s not really a traditional party at all.
In that sense, Yang’s concept (although not its specific emphases) is much like the existing No Labels organization that Lieberman co-leads. No Labels doesn’t claim to be a party, but it supports politicians of either party who will adopt its approach to governing, which involves a commitment to negotiation and compromise. As the No Labels website puts it, “The most consequential and durable changes in America have happened when Democrats and Republicans sat down together and hashed out a deal.”
Both Lieberman and Yang come from places at least slightly left of the political center, but a lot of the third-party discussion erupted a few weeks ago when conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg began advocating another right-leaning party, a more Reaganite one, to compete with Republicans. Again, though, Goldberg isn’t focused on a permanent force that can win elections. “The point is to cause the GOP some pain for its descent into asininity,” he wrote. “Giving conservatives turned off by both the Democrats and the Trumpified GOP a way to vote their conscience in the general election would put political pressure on Republican candidates to curtail their Trump sycophancy. It would also serve to remind the GOP that if you abandon conservative principles, conservatives might abandon you.”
In this, Goldberg agrees with Lieberman that the two major parties’ hold on the system is nearly unbreakable.
“We are fundamentally and almost mysteriously a two-party system, and it seems the way we are going to fix our government and make it work better again are with members of the two parties,” Lieberman told me in a phone interview. On the other hand, he said, “I think our political system is in enough of a crisis that if anyone has the vision to form a third party, I encourage them to try it. … Although I think it unlikely a third-party candidate can win [a presidential election], I do think it likely an effective third party can move one or both of the parties in a good direction.”
Perhaps, though, all three, even in their admirable eagerness to shake up the system, are too respectful of the Democratic and Republican systemic power bases.
All three are right that the two major parties are afforded various advantages by law that help make them a duopoly. And all are correct that no new party has been more than a temporary blip on the screen since 1860 (although in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party did seriously contend for the presidency). The reason is fairly obvious: Any single new party tends to divide the ranks of one of the existing parties — whichever is closer to its political philosophy — more than the other one, thus effectively cannibalizing its own “side” of the political spectrum and handing victory to the side further away from its own principles.
The expression “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face” was coined for just such a scenario.
On the other hand, if two or even three new parties tried to form at once, the result could be unpredictable and fluid. If a party of the left-center sprung up to attract those of a Lieberman-like persuasion while a party of the right-center tried Goldberg’s non-Trump-like conservatism, and both were able to qualify for enough state ballots for House and Senate races, each might be able to elect enough members (based on local conditions) to deny either major party a congressional majority.
Each of the two major parties would then be forced to build coalitions in order to get anything done, in much the way that some multiparty parliamentary systems do. The result would be something more closely approximating what most of the Constitution’s framers thought they were creating in 1787: a system without entrenched party “factions” but one in which shifting legislative alliances had to be forged depending on the issues at hand.
This is all far more easily theorized than practiced, of course. Lieberman is wise to say that the U.S. political system would be far healthier with less brinksmanship and more negotiation, but I think this can’t be accomplished unless people completely independent of the two major parties actually hold office. If the goal is, as it should be, to reverse American political polarization, a four- or five-party system could be the way to achieve it.
