There are a lot of third party America TLs, but I've never seen this topic explored. Basically, America develops a 2.5 party system, with the two major parties being a conservative one and a leftist one, and there is a third party which doesn't win elections, but does decently in elections and is a centrist party. How could this occur?
AHC: American Liberal Democrats/Free Democratic Party
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Dems repeat 1948 in 1968 -- a second party purge. US has nixonite reps, FDR/JFK/HHH/Jackson dems and Peace & Freedom/Freak Power as a basically social democratic party.
GOP becomes Center to center-right party due to Nixon winning in 1960. Dems remain liberal to progressive a la Humphrey or Kennedy. Opponents to civil rights end up forming a new party similar to the AIP or Dixiecrats that wins most of the South in presidential elections on multiple occasions and elects plenty of lower officeholders. Eventually it moderates from a segregationist party to more a social conservative one.
Reagan wins the 1968 Republican Primary and picks Ed Brooke as his running mate. Economic conservatives are content but social reactionaries don't break for the GOP.
Wallace picks Happy Chandler as his 1968 running mate and gets 20-25% of the vote and wins Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
The GOP remains firmly committed to Civil Rights but moves further to the right economically. The Democrats continue their historic development towards liberal center-left politics. Southern reactionaries move into the AIP rather than the GOP here, and the AIP has a pro-labor populist vibe here. Wallace historically did quite well with northern hardhats, which I think would translate into the AIP. Frank Rizzo maybe?
Wallace picks Happy Chandler as his 1968 running mate and gets 20-25% of the vote and wins Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
The GOP remains firmly committed to Civil Rights but moves further to the right economically. The Democrats continue their historic development towards liberal center-left politics. Southern reactionaries move into the AIP rather than the GOP here, and the AIP has a pro-labor populist vibe here. Wallace historically did quite well with northern hardhats, which I think would translate into the AIP. Frank Rizzo maybe?
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Alternatively, have the Minnesota Independence Party do better and run some house candidates. Dean Barkley, Tim Penny, and Tom Horner are all viable house candidates I think. Democrats tried to get Barkley to run against Bachmann in 2008, so perhaps he does that here and wins which results in Tim Penny and Tom Horner running for office. In 2012 Seth Moulton wins as an independent in Massachusetts, and the four of them form an Independence Caucus.
The combination of first-past-the-post with the presidential system makes this very unlikely. The FDP (which incidentally is not a consistently "centrist" party and has oscillated between left-wing social liberalism and right-wing classical liberalism) would not have been viable if Germany did not have proportional representation. The Liberals and their successors the Lib Dems would not be viable if the UK had a presidential system in which the presidency was so powerful that any party that could not elect a president would be considered a "minor party"--votes for which would be "wasted." (By contrast, in a parliamentary system, even parties with relatively few seats in parliament can hold the balance of power in determining the composition of the government and can even be part of a coalition government.) Even in OTL the Liberals almost became extinct in the 1950's.
I don't see why a party that exclusively focuses on House and Gubernatorial races couldn't function like the LibDems in the US.
America just seems to be a two-party country. It's not necessarily the same two parties--Federalists gave way to National Republicans who gave way to Whigs who gave way to Republicans, and in each case the new party was not merely the old one under a new name--but it is remarkable how the system tends to reassert itself every time an old party dies or as in 1912 seems to be seriously challenged. And for some reason, to Americans the presidency is so important that any party that cannot seriously compete for it is not worth voting for--for any office.
Well, we always talk about a party which is economically conservative and socially liberal, but this doesn’t seem to gain traction in the real world.
Maybe this becomes the .5 third party.
A Canadian told me somewhat similar. He didn’t think we’d ever move to a parliamentary system because we give so much adulation to our presidents, much more so than Canadians do with their prime ministers.
I think the best way is just to mirror the developments in Europe at the turn of the 20th century: An upcoming socialist movement splits the progressive party into a social-democratic populist party and a libertarian trade oriented one. Of course, the big difference with the US is that in Europe, the traditional workers parties only became possible when the various countries established universal suffrage, which the US pretty much had since it's founding days (or since 1865 if you bring in the slavery issue...)
Still, there is something to be said with the argument that the third party was originally the second one. It just got upstaged by the workers party when that one gained traction. So the best way for the US to have a three party system would be to have the new class of factory workers in the new megacities repeatedly being overlooked by the two traditionalist parties until they start forming a party on their own.
Still, there is something to be said with the argument that the third party was originally the second one. It just got upstaged by the workers party when that one gained traction. So the best way for the US to have a three party system would be to have the new class of factory workers in the new megacities repeatedly being overlooked by the two traditionalist parties until they start forming a party on their own.
Ps, What about Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party? Could that one have a shot on becoming the new Christian-right populist party, leaving the traditional republicans to become the new libertarians?
Ps II, What about the parties that came before the current Republican and Democratic ones: the Federalists for instance? Could one of them survive by taking on the business-libertarian and/or Civil Rights cause?
Ps II, What about the parties that came before the current Republican and Democratic ones: the Federalists for instance? Could one of them survive by taking on the business-libertarian and/or Civil Rights cause?
@Minuteman The "Bourbon Democrats" were pretty much this. Look up Grover Cleveland's Presidency.
One could make a snarky comment that given how it is now somehow plausible for both Bloomberg and Sanders to run in the same party's primary and nobody bats an eye, the Democrats are prone for some kind of Social Democrat vs Neoliberal Democrat split somewhat like early 20th Century Europe. NeverTrumpers and moderate republicans proceed to join the neoliberal democrats, and thus we have Social Democrat, Neoliberal Globalist, and Populist-Nationalist parties.
But sticking with the broader idea of "third party displaces second party but the displaced party stubbornly sticks around" I can think of three 20th century prospects.
1) Roosevelt's Progressives ultimately replace the Republicans and the GOP just sort of hangs around afterwards
2) The GOP is utterly destroyed in the 1930s politically. The Democrats proceed to split between the liberal and conservative factions, and the GOP just sort of hangs around in New England and a few other scattered congressional districts.
3) In the 1960s-1970s the Conservative movement forms its own party after continually being blocked from power and influence in the GOP. They proceed to replace the GOP as the second party, and the Republicans end up as a minor congressional presence.
It's actually somewhat fascinating. There's often discussion of the Nolan Chart (a chart with two axes, economically libertarian vs authoritarian and socially liberal vs socially conservative) but in practical political terms it seems a triangle is more accurate: Conservative, Liberal, and Socialist.
America needs a big-tent third party that can pitch new ideas from a "neutral" platform that won't contaminate the proposal in the eyes of half the country as a democratic/republican position.