Third Party in 2008?

It’s been tried before. Actually there are hundreds of parties that are neither Democrat nor Republican. What people are referring to is a party that miraculously gains enough votes to win the Electoral College in 2008. But, unless this mysterious phenomenon can also win a majority in the House and Senate, about all the new president will be able to do is shut down the government by refusing to sign various appropriation bills. The most a third party has been able to do in history is to put pressure on the most similar-minded party. Since both parties compete to assure corporate America that they’ll give more of the store away than the other, a third party shouldn’t have much effect.

Suppose someone arose in the crowd we could believe in and all 30,000,000 of us fed-up Americans sent in $100; at least advertising would be covered. Both houses of Congress would need to be won. Where do you find enough honest men to dirty their hands with politics; the world of the most “I can be bought” humans on earth.

The corporations and the “investor class” that own them would immediately attack the new party in the media, while at the same time attempting to bribe, slander, corrupt, even kill, where the race is close. No oligarchy will allow a system they control completely to fall into the hands of men and women that will refuse to commit treason every day they go to work. So sit down and shut up, there’s not going to be salvation for the American people. Pick which corrupt candidate is the least repugnant to you personally and vote for him just like you have before.

Even though a third party cannot win either branch of government, there has been success in the social arena that came about through third parties. In the late 1800s both the Prohibition and the Socialists parties promoted the idea of women’s right to vote. The Socialists party also endorsed child labor laws. The Populists party insisted on immigration reform. It was this same period that both the Socialists and the Populists parties backed both the reduction of work hours and the progressive income tax. In the 1920s the Socialists party favored Social Security as an institution in America. It took many decades for these topics to end up as laws, neither the Republican or Democratic parties can claim they helped in the early fight for these laws.

The Libertarian party is the third largest, and although they haven’t seen a president yet they have won many local and state elections. Libertarians believe that the federal government should play a minimum role in day-to-day lives of Americans. If you go on Google and type third parties then search you’ll have more than enough reading to do for days on end.