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Essay:Who Killed The Third Party Movement?
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This essay is an original work by FallenMorgan. It does not necessarily reflect the views expressed in RationalWiki's Mission Statement, but we welcome discussion of a broad range of ideas. Unless otherwise stated, this is original content, released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 or any later version. See RationalWiki:Copyrights. Feel free to make comments on the talk page, which will probably be far more interesting, and might reflect a broader range of RationalWiki editors' thoughts. |
from my blog
First of all let me say that I've decided to write my blogs in WordPad instead of OpenOffice.org, because it doesn't parse links constantly. Let me get to the point of the blog now: what the bleep killed the third party movement.
The 1892 election is one of very few where a third party got a few states. Other examples though include the election of 1860, and uhhhhh...the 1912 election, and the 1924 election, where the progressive party won a state, as well as the 1948 election, where the Dixiecrats won, of course, the southern states, most of them.
The last election where a third party atleast got a margin was the 1868 election. After that, it was only the Republicans and the Democrats. Here's what I think killed the third party movement: television.
In 2004 the Libertarians got only .12% of the vote. Ralph Nader was in third place, but guess the percentage he got! .32% of the popular vote. Hilarious. Just, bleeping, hilarious. Now, let me get to what I was saying about how tv killed the third party movement.
On CNN, Fox, and so on, all the attention goes to the Democrats or the Republicans. You never at all hear about the Libertarians, the Greens, or, God forbid, the Constitution Party. The Libertarians have no campaign! They don't have the ability to throw away a few million for a commercial, like the Democrats or Republicans. Back before tv, you got attention if you were a good candidate. You could get something mentioned about you in the newspaper, you could send out letters, or you could just go into the small towns and shake hands and whatnot. Now, you need the support of rich people and the like, to contribute millions of dollars to the election campaign.
The Libertarians would get a higher margin of votes if CNN would follow their campaign. Just now actually, I found out that they need ballot access. The US system is two-party: the Democrats and Republicans. The Libertarians are on the ballot in only 28 states, which is a sign that we are largely doomed, since the Democrats and Republicans seem to not care too much about the people.
I read the Wikipedia article about Mike Gravel, and quite frankly, I almost had a heart attack when I read his political positions. He even supports a constitutional amendment that would allow citizen-led initiatives, like in California, or Switzerland. If he were president, I'd wave a fucking American flag around all day - sorry, I'm just bursting with enjoyment that this man is alive.
Anyways, back to the original subject. Television killed the third party movement, and thus killed any chance of a really fair election. The elections these days are unfair, simply because the third parties are swept under the rug by television news channels, newspapers, and the American people in general.