I'm gonna say something unpopular now

[JT45242]

67. But it is true, unless a third party has infrastructure up and down the government

The last two truly important third parties were the Dixiecrats and the Progressive party.

The Dixiecrats were basically a response of white supremacists to the civil rights movement and the laws associated with it (civil rights act, voting rights act,etc) and helped to elect Nixon. Then, the republican party adopted a lot of their policies and rhetoric to pull those voters in.

The progressive party had a strong infrastructure getting people elected at state and federal level in legislatures. The response -- the Democratic party assumed many of the progressive policies and rhetoric to attract the people of the progressive party.

Yes three or more parties work when you have coalition governments and prime minister or indirect mayor elections in city elections (look at Cincinnati which had Democrats, Republicans, and Charterites on city council for decades with an indirectly elected mayor). But we have a winner take all presidency. there are no coalition governments, except for ratfuckery like the Hayes-Tilden brokered election that killed the reconstruction and brought on Jim Crow laws.

Until the Green party or libertarian party get serous about and successful at electing people to state house seats and Congress, these parties only serve to split the less unified party, the big tent party, as republican voters show great orthodoxy, they will vote for anything with an R next to the name. As Democrats, we are less likely to do that. Plus, the independent voters who vote for third party candidates pull would be votes from Democrats far more than Republicans. Sure libertarians are really economic Republicans who want to legalize weed, but in the end Republicans wont shift their vote away from the party just to get that one issue.