I had been meaning to start up this thread for quite some time, but it was Newflyer's recent comments in the Ted Stevens thread that actually inspired me to get off my duff and do it. I got involved with the Libertarian Party in December of 2004, so I can provide you with an insider's perspective. Unfortunately, my involvement in politics may soon be a thing of the past.

The most commonly asked question about third parties is something along the lines of, "why do third parties have such limited success?" My observation has been that there are two main reasons why this is so: 1) Minor parties are working against systems that are designed to work against them and 2) The two major parties have enough momentum, chiefly in the number of people out there that vote straight party tickets, that the chances of a third party candidate prevailing in a partisan election are nil.

The systems that minor parties have to work against are defined by elections laws, which vary from state to state. In some states, such as Oregon, it is relatively easy for a third party to gain the legal recognition required to appear on the ballot. In this state, these requirements are a set of bylaws and a treasurer. However, there are other states where placing candidates on the ballot under a partisan name requires a petition with tens of thousands of signatures. If they do not meet the signature requirements, these third party candidates, if they can appear on the ballot at all, will appear as independents. This year, for instance, the Bob Barr campaign had to spend a great deal of money to hire signature gatherers to get Barr on the ballot in some of these tough states.

The political momentum of the two major parties is something that I am sure we are all familiar with: virtually all of the candidates in partisan races that have won during our lifetimes came from one or the other major party. Many people don't want to "waste their votes" on somebody not likely to win, so they don't consider third party candidates.

However, what has been frustrating about my political adventure is not the external factors that work against third parties. Rather, the internal tensions and factionalism within the Libertarian Party are what has led me to become disillusioned. There are a number of people within the party who, in my opinion, are dealing in ideology for ideology's sake, and I am sick and tired of that. These are the kinds of people who one finds spending a lot of time talking about a utopian libertarian society or trying to impress others with discussion of political and economic theory or shouting bumpersticker slogans, such as "all taxation is theft!" or administering ideological "purity tests" to others within the party. These same people are the ones who are generally nowhere to be found when it comes time to walk a precinct, to help organize a campaign, or to go out in public to promote a candidate or the party. Many of these people subscribe to an ideology that is like a toy airplane: it is fun to play with, but it is not going to take you to the airport!

One thing that specifically holds back the Libertarian party is that its founder, David Nolan, is still involved in the party, and he has repeatedly stated that he wanted the party to put its focus on ideology rather than in winning elections. Prospective members of the party have to sign a little pledge that says that they do not advocate the use of force to achieve any political or social goal. Some of Nolan's ideas, in my opinion, helped to bring in and entrench people who deliberately want the party to look like an extremist organization, even if that means losing elections.

[To be continued...]

Third parties work against themselves. They usually support non-mainstream ideals or have very strict and principled beliefs. Therefore, the mainstream of people vote D or R.

My advice for any Libertarian is to register as a Democrat or a Republican but work towards the same ideals. If those ideals are accepted, then you go from there.

Alfredo_t: There are a number of people within the party who, in my opinion, are dealing in ideology for ideology's sake,

Bingo! You've summed up my aversion to the Libertarian Party perfectly. I definitely have a libertarian (small "l") bent, but clearly, some government is required for a civil society, beyond a military and police. The big-L Libertarian utopians want to make every road a toll road in one way or another. Sorry, that's just not practical or ever going to work.

Most of the third parties, not just the Libertarian Party, seem rooted first in ideology and not practicality. And I'm more about pragmatism than ideology most of the time. (One thing I like about Obama: he's not an ideologue, and he's going to piss off some Democrats for sure in his march to make some changes.)

Too often the Libertarian Party puts up candidates who seem almost like jokes, just Joe Blows who felt like running for office. I don't buy the idea that anyone is suited for any position in government. ("Representative" is one of the few jobs I think almost anyone can fill, though.) I believe in competency first. I don't want some Anyone with no experience in government running for Governor just because he's a Libertarian. Give me a candidate I can take seriously, who is more than an ideologue, and I'll consider voting for him/her.

Andrew

Many people don't want to "waste their votes" on somebody not likely to win, so they don't consider third party candidates.

This is usually heard during presidential elections. You can't just declare you're a third party and expect to get my vote. You've got to work your way up at the local level, then getting a bunch of House seats and perhaps a Senate seat or two to be viable.

If you don't want to do do all this groundwork, then don't expect to win a national election, ever.

Clearly, the people have spoken. Either there aren't enough people actually interested in doing the hard work to make a viable third party OR voters aren't interested in a third party (or both).

Man, this is a good thread.

Bummer about politics Alfredo. Maybe just stay low key for a while. After seeing the dynamic of this last coupla cycles, it's important that we all at least do our basics, or things get away from us.

Speak or be spoken for. It really is that way.

Anyway, I think the best thing for third parties is primary politics. Kos showed how it can work, and applied it to progressive Democrats desire to open up the party and compete in all 50 states. The catch phrase was electing more and better Democrats.

The results are impressive with a fair number of new freshman, one of which is Jim Webb, who got us the GI Bill. We've also seen quite a few challenges be successful. Clearly some of that is the wave of anger pushing down ticket, but it's hard to deny the impact that prepping in 2006 had on the results seen today.

We might have still seen Obama take it, but I'm quite sure we would NOT have seen as serious of a majority as we do now.

The mess that happened in 2000, where a lot of people thought they could vote Nader, really hammered home the potential risks of spoiler politics. Basically, if they are successful, we end up suffering more to learn whatever lesson they bring to the table.

On a lot of levels, I'm just not ok with that. It's a negative politics and that just sucks. We've been too negative about a lot of things and people.

Third parties can do these things, and I think they should do these things. If libertarians, for example, want to make their voices heard with some teeth, they need to post somebody solid up, and compete for a house or senate seat.

IMHO, use of the Internet funding model, demonstrated by Obama, means really getting all the libertarians focused nationally, on a few viable seats!

If they pick marginal politicians, from either party, the upsides are many.

They get to apply some serious pressure to existing members of congress, and that's always good. Run marginally, and there are the libertarians right there, ready and willing to take a seat at the table.

If they win, they get a voice they didn't have before, and we lose a marginal politician. The libertarian winner might be marginal too, but we won't know that, and that's the point of the process really, isn't it?

Finally, we can actually start to vet the ideas. If they actually win seats, then it's real right? They get votes and can begin to influence the major parties in a big way. It will be a sobering reminder to every major incumbent to see those third party or independent people sitting there at the table.

I just don't see that as a bad thing!

Spoiler politics are just as bad as divisive politics are. Each depends on us feeling some pain in order to see things their way. Not good. Frankly, not good enough to ever support, no matter how good the ideology might be.

It's not hard to see 2-5 seats won over a 5-10 year period. That's enough to change the congressional dynamics forever! Major party majorities won't matter, if there are, say 5-10 non-major party participants.

At first they will have to caucus with the majors, but that won't always be the case. And look at how far Lieberman has been able to push the rules! That's a lot of latitude, and tells me that the caucus won't be the end of the world.

It's largely a chance to do some good advocacy, while returning the favor on issues where there is mutual agreement. This is how Bernie Sanders runs it, and he's been successful.

No reason why others can be successful, other than perhaps their ideology is not well aligned enough to compete.

...and finding that out might be rough! Perhaps that's why going the spoiler route is so appealing. No real accounting on the viability and alignment of the ideas, while getting the word out. This is what Nader and others currently do, and I just don't see the point of it.

I want third parties, but I won't support spoiling their way in. It's gotta be a ground up movement. Looking at what Obama just did, there really is absolutely no excuse.

Betcha the Ron Paul supporters are building as we speak!

> Too often the Libertarian Party puts up candidates who seem almost like jokes, just Joe
> Blows who felt like running for office. I don't buy the idea that anyone is suited for any position
> in government.

When I became involved in the party, one thing that disappointed me somewhat was their approach to running candidates for office. I had expected that the party would have a lot of structure intended to prepare prospective candidates for office. By that, I am talking about workshops or other resources where one would learn what the responsibilities and qualifications are for different offices, how to run a campaign, etc. Instead, it seemed like everybody was expected to reinvent the wheel when running for an office. Furthermore, I believe that there was a culture, as Andrew said, that almost anybody in the party should run for office, just to increase the number of Libertarian candidates on the ballot. Running a "paper" campaign just for the numbers or even just for the joy of seeing one's name and photo in the Voters' Pamphlet were considered perfectly legitimate by many in the party.

Another unpleasant surprise was that the party seemed to spend a lot of time and manpower on internal issues, such as the proper application of Roberts Rules and the wording of platforms and bylaws instead of things going on in the political landscape, such as issues, public opinion, rallies, campaigns, initiatives, etc. There were even some in the party who were so married to anti-"collectivist" ideology that they believed that the political things that I listed above were the job of individual activists and not of political parties (!!)

Please note that I am not trying to piss off Libertarians, and I am not trying to discourage anybody from getting involved in political parties, regardless of size. I think that those who do decide to get involved with parties or other political groups will find that there are some good people there who have their heads on straight and are willing to do as much work as they can to make the organization a success. However, they will also run into stuff that is bullshit, people who believe in and advocate for said bullshit, and a lot of pointless fighting and factionalism. My advice is to work with the good people, avoid wasting too much time and energy arguing with the bullshitters, and occasionally try to step back and ask oneself, "is this organization really doing what I was hoping to help it do when I joined?" The latter is the most important and probably the hardest to do.

I think that national third parties are "forced" to run Presidential candidates in order to project the image that they are national organizations. These campaigns are promotional stunts for the respective parties. The more rational members of these parties do understand that their candidate is not going to win. Some of them hope that if their candidate captures more than 5% of the vote nationally, the party will qualify for some federal sponsorship in future campaign cycles. Back in 2000, part of the excitement for Greens regarding Nader was that they thought that Nader's popularity would make it feasible for them to hit the 5% mark.

Well, Alfredo, one way to look at it is that you can influence and change things! Don't like the way the local Libertarian party is being run? Take it over! You may be surprised to find others agree with you, that they want to find more pragmatic candidates who see things as you do - they have a libertarian philosophy about government but want to work in a realistic way to get a few candidates elected.

I know activists on the Democratic side who have literally taken over sleepy county party chapters because they disagreed with the way things were being run. You can do it, too. Shoot, use the internet as an organizing tool. Start a Facebook group, man!

Andrew

Right now, I'm taking a bit of a break from politics and evaluating what I should do. There are a lot of non-political interests that also compete for my time, and I have come to realize that my time is limited.

One option, of course, is to try to change the party. At this stage, this is probably easier than ever because many people got disgusted by all the infighting that was going in the Oregon Libertarian party a year ago, and they simply walked away. The other option is to start going to Hillsboro city council meetings and other city meetings that are open to the public, research some offices that might be coming up for election, and get involved in citizens' committees to get some governmental experience, and run for a city office. If my goal is to make a difference to the community at large, I think that running for a non-partisan office is probably the way to go.