By Terry Manning
At some point in any discussion about our national politics, you will hear America needs a third-party alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans.
Just recently, an acquaintance lamented on social media, “We need a third party that believes in the majority of our views. They would win in a landslide.” Another person quickly responded, “I agree with that! Neither side represents us anymore. Just their own agendas.”
Consider me less than persuaded. It’s not that I believe the current big political parties perfectly serve our wants or needs, but I’m dubious of the notion a third party would be an automatic solution — or that they would win easily.
First, we already have alternatives to the major American political parties in the form of the Libertarian Party and Green Party.
According to its website, the Libertarian Party was founded in Colorado in 1971 and has nominated candidates in the national presidential elections since 1972. In 1980, the party’s Ed Clark was the first Libertarian candidate to appear on the ballot in all 50 states.
The preamble to their mission statement reads, “We seek a world of liberty: a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and are not forced to sacrifice their values for the benefit of others.”
The Green Party describes itself as “grassroots activists, environmentalists, advocates for social justice, nonviolent resisters and regular citizens who’ve had enough of corporate-dominated politics,” with their four pillars being peace, ecology, social justice and democracy.
The Green Party began in 1984 with the formation of a state-level party in Maine. Ralph Nader was their first national presidential candidate, running in 1996 to oppose Bill Clinton’s waffling on regulating telecommunications and securities fraud, among other issues.
Some of that can sound a little nebulous, but remember that while Clinton’s 1994 crime bill is credited for its ban on assault-type weapons, it is also blamed for helping ignite the explosion in the American prison population.
The Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver won 0.48 percent of the national popular vote and the Green Party’s slightly better known Jill Stein won 0.41 percent of the national popular vote according to Federal Election Commission data cited on The Green Papers web site.
A few random candidates pop up from time to time, but for the purposes of my argument we have four political parties, with two attracting nearly all the votes and a corresponding amount of the credit — or blame — for what happens in our country.
But what if there’s another third party that affects our elections? See, the more I think about it, the decisive battle isn’t always between Democrats and Republicans or liberals and conservatives. If you remove MAGA from the equation, the “agendas” the big parties have aren’t always that different.
Let me be clear: Some of the differences are not insignificant. If any group wants to subjugate or eradicate another group, that’s no small matter and needs to be addressed. Those with strident platforms whose goals can be achieved only by denying or taking away from others the same rights they enjoy must be relegated to the fringes of society, if they are allowed at all.
But the real three-party system I’m talking about comprises people who always vote; people who never vote; and people who only vote when they are extraordinarily motivated.
The last group are like the Obama voters who showed up because they wanted to be part of the election of the country’s first Black president, but didn’t turn out for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
Or they are like the Trump voters who wanted to kill Roe v. Wade or be part of rolling back the “hope and change” the Obama years — and to a lesser extent, the Biden years — represented, even when their votes imperiled their own lives and livelihoods.
Until we can find ways to motivate the unmotivated and, maybe, educate the uneducated on why they need to vote even when it feels like choosing between the lesser of two or more evils, the nonvoting bloc will continue to limit our ability to self-correct.
A nonvote is not a nonvote; it’s an explicit endorsement of the status quo, however lousy the status quo is.
Terry E. Manning is a Clemson graduate and worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.