Anti-Climacus

LINK: Brendan Nyhan points out, yet again, the flaws in the third-party idea which everyone seems to be picking up nowadays. He covers all the usual electoral reasons to believe that the two main parties will be able to effectively shut out third parties (and have virtually every electoral cycle). It strikes me that there are two other reasons to be skeptical of such a possibility:

1. The success of outside parties generally reflects the existence of some new dominant issue which neither party addresses effectively or ignores (the Republicans, for example, take over from the Whigs because they're willing to take a position on the slavery question that's noticeably different from what else is being offered), with two requirements: there has to be one big, new cleavage issue which is obviously of primary importance, and there has to be room for a new position or a voicing of a position widely held but not represented in government. I think our current situation fails on both counts. The closest thing to an issue is "good government," a position either party could easily move to--especially because voter memories of policy stances tend to be short-lived, and the parties are in part in good positions to do this because

2. Political parties, being more-or-less coalitional, actually need to take positions on a wide number of issues to be able to draw in people who are oriented towards things other than the party's main issue--that is to say, one might think both parties are bad when it comes to good government issues, but one still probably lines up as a D or R when it comes to entitlement spending, the deficit, foreign policy, etc. A lot is needed to uproot people from where they are.

This actually makes me think that the closest analogy to the current climate is the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, which was primarily (if I remember my Hofstadter right) middle-class Republicans who temporarily defected from their party because 1. progressive candidates actually did differ somewhat substantially from regular Republicans on their policy positions and 2. they had (in 1912, anyway) someone whom they could plausibly back as a presendential candidate, but mostly because TR had already won before. McCain might be popular, but he has yet to be able to deliver on that level.