Part 1. Political Science and Third Parties

Many have aspired to launch a new political party in the United States. They have sacrificed millions of dollars and millions of hours to the cause and have very little to show for it. For example, the Libertarian Party has been in place for over 35 years and has yet to elect a member of Congress. They had higher presidential vote totals and more members elected to state houses a quarter century ago than they have today.

I have an audacious claim. Using the ideas in this manual we could launch a new party which could far eclipse any of the existing third parties within a decade, and from there go on to threaten the biopoly of the Demopublicans. Moreover, such a new party could fulfill many of the underlying values of both Libertarians and Greens. It’s simply a matter of applying scientific strategy.

Consider the case of an untrained chess player, one who has spent many hours playing chess with other untrained players. Such a player may be very good at seeing what moves are on the board, designing combinations to take an opponent’s pieces, looking ahead several moves and so forth. Yet such a player can be easily crushed by an otherwise inferior player who understands the theory of chess openings.

The untrained player may open a game with rook pawn moves or moving knights to the rook rows. Or he may deploy one piece and move it about the board. Meanwhile, our trained player knows the importance of controlling the center, and of getting as many pieces in play as possible before advancing to the next tactical stages. Within a dozen moves, our untrained amateur is outgunned and hemmed in, having few, if any, good moves to choose from while our trained inferior player has many good options. Barring outright sloppy play, it is hard for the trained player to lose in this situation.

On the other hand, the untrained amateur could be taught the theory of chess openings in a few hours, which would then allow him to use his tactical skills productively.

The same is true for third party politics. A third party can gain a great deal of hard won institutional experience with FEC rules, getting ballot access, writing press releases, crafting sound bites, etc. and still be trounced on a regular basis. Should that party apply a few fairly simple rules, which can be learned in a few hours or less, said party would get on the path of massive growth of both votes and support base.

The basic rules of strategy and positioning are easy to learn. The nitty-gritty details of running a political party or a political campaign are difficult. Given the choice, I will take the former. You can apply the basic strategic rules in a sloppy fashion and grow a party faster and bigger than by masterfully implementing the nitty-gritty while the underlying strategy is flawed. (In Parts 2-4 we will look at the nitty-gritty details as well, however!)

So, without further ado, we shall derive three easy to learn (but possibly hard to accept) rules of success in American Politics.

Observation 1: You have to win!

Libertarians fantasize about having a presidential candidate garner 5% of the vote. Actually, they would be thrilled to break 1%. LP News boosts morale after November by pointing out the total number of people who voted Libertarian. They had major pushes in the past to contest as many Congressional elections as possible. Should the day come that Libertarians garner 5% of the total Congressional vote there would be great celebration.

Yet, by themselves all these goals are utterly worthless!

The United States does not elect its legislatures using proportional representation. It has district elections, and most of these districts are single-member. A party can theoretically win 20% of the vote overall and still not win a single seat. A party that wins only 5% of the vote overall is extremely unlikely to win a single seat.

The Green, Libertarian, and Constitution parties operate as if the U.S. had proportional representation. Strategies which work in Europe do not necessarily apply in the United States. To obtain a seat at the table in the U.S., you have to win somewhere. In a single-member district race there is no prize for second or third place. Win or be irrelevant.

This is a very simple observation, trivial to verify. Yet time and time again, activists and strategists within existing third parties go into denial and try to rationalize around this fact. While this is an easy to understand fact, it can be hard to accept. It is an inconvenient truth.

True, there are some proportional representation races in this country, especially at the local level. Third parties have done better there. But most of these races are non-partisan, so why have third parties for such races?

While this observation may appear trivial, it has profound implications for marketing a political party. In the next chapter we shall look at our first theorem, based on this simple observation. The laws of political science impose a hard constraint on U.S. political parties, and the Libertarian, Green, and Constitution parties all violate it.

Next: Theorem 1: Extremism Loses

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