Not even close, and it’s by design. The closest a 3rd party came to winning was in 92 when proto tea party guy Ross Perot got like 18% nationally, and a strong case can be made that he cost the first Bush his reelection over Bill Clinton.
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beto’s a perfect comparison - to my view and the random snippets i see, he looks awesome, but I could see how someone within texas who was progressive might find him repugnant on a lot of issues too
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I swear I’m not just running around looking for things to be contrarian about, but I think at this exact moment if forced to pick one, I’d hold my nose and vote for the mom-imprisoner
Open to posts of reasons why I should go the other way
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I reminded my MAGA stepmom that Clinton would have lost big if Perot didn’t run and confirmed she has no poker face. My dad was a huge Perot stan, so I knew that her being complicit to the rise of the Bill and Hillary would sting. She replied that she still wants to know who was messing with Ross…also thinks JLL and his cousin’s marriage would have survived if the press had just left them alone, tsk tsk. Just a complete dumbshit. Multiply her by 100,000,000 or so and this is what we’re up against.
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I think there are a bunch of challenges facing a third party.
Specifically looking at President, I can think of several.
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Just getting your name on the ballot in every state is a huge logistical hurdle
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You have to be strong enough nationally to win 270 electoral votes in a three way race (b/c if you don’t hit 270 it gets thrown to the Congress and they’ll never vote 3rd party even if you had 268).
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You don’t have as many preexisting surrogates to campaign for you in one place while you are somewhere else. When Biden was trying to win Pennsylvania in 2020 all of the time and money he spent there was made even more valuable by local candidates running around the state telling folks what the Democratic party stood for (or why Republicans were bad) and what will happen if you vote Blue up and down the ballot. Obama could hold a rally in Philly and be seen as a Biden representative because they belong to the same party. A new third party doesn’t have that kind of infrastructure and branding yet and building that doesn’t happen overnight.
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If you start to gain traction, you will face a lot of collusion from R’s and D’s. They’ll try to keep you out of debates, buy up a ton of the best ad time, and spend a lot of time messaging around the idea that voting third party is “throwing your vote away.”
Basically, my take is that it would be really hard and the person best positioned to do it would not necessarily be the person with great political ideas. More likely, it would be a rich celebrity who may have some ideas but mainly organizes around personal popularity/name recognition (see: The Rock, Mark Cuban, Matthew McConaughey)
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Not to mention it costs 10 figures to run a presidential campaign
Yep, that too
And probably even make threats, legal or illegal, about how you’re not going to get the party’s ad revenue if you sell time to the third party
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Wat?
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You turn in your own scorecard and nobody ever challenges his
Trump is a notorious golf cheat.
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if you had asked me in 2007 to name two people who on paper I probably should like but who in reality made my blood curdle I would have insta answered Gavin and Kamala. That today we are fifteen years down the road and these two turkeys have somehow plinkoed their way into being leading candidates for president, and on the other side is literally Donald Trump, I mean WHAT THE FUCK
btw if you had said name three people then my third wouldve been Papa John and I was right about that jellyfaced crustfucker, and I might like him more than Gavin! Because at least he cums anchovies. He’s affiliated with pizza. It’s something. Gavin’s affiliated with Gavin, a blank, a haircut, an appetite. If I’m ever forced to vote for gavin it’s going to feel like he’s trying to tongue my ear dude just chill you carnivorous zilch you hideous rictus you emerald tree snake. And he’d probably be a better president than Kamala. Choo choo our train’s here
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