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gergroy on 07 August 2012
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insomniac17 said:
gergroy said:

Thats a very small part of the reason.  The main reason that 3rd paries dont do well is because they dont have a credible campaign.  3rd party candidates can be successful, it just hasnt happened since the 90s and ross perot.  Ross perot was leading both clinton and bush at one point before he self destructed, and it is because he had a real effort.  

The reason why 3rd parties like johnson arent successful is they dont have money and spend most of the time complaining about lack of coverage instead of actually doing something about it.  

Now, come voting day and a 3rd party candidate is actually polling well then i would consider that candidate an option.  Otherwise, it is throwing away your vote and your chance to have the lesser of the two evils.  Instead, you will just get the bigger evil for 4 years.

Lack of coverage is a large problem, and quite honestly not entirely their fault. It is significantly harder for 3rd parties to do well because the Republicans and Democrats didn't like what happened with Perot, and made it harder for them to get coverage. And if people don't know who they are, how can they raise more money to compete? I think they're right to complain about the lack of coverage. But I also think that they do try to do something about it. It's just that without coverage, it's really hard to do.

The best example is the difficulty of getting into the presidential debates. Many people watch those, but if there are only two candidates in them, then how are the rest supposed to get their position out there? It's exclusion of other candidates based on an arbitrary number. The only limitation for getting into the debates should be based on if it's even possible for a candidate to earn enough electoral votes to win.

And ending up with a worse evil might not be bad. Maybe we need to fail badly for people to wake up and realize that things are not going well. At the very least, if you get a horrible person in for 4 years, there's a better chance of getting someone at least slightly better in the next election.


Media covers those that have a chance of winning.  I agree that it is harder for 3rd parties to get coverage because they arent part of the two mainparties that people are used to.  However, if they actually had a good candidate they could easily get past that.  If they had an amazing message that every american agreed with then they would catch on and get plenty of coverage.  That is what happened with perot.  

The problem is that most 3rd parties are just redudant ideas that are already represented in the two main parties or they are too extreme for most americans.  

The biggest problem though is that these parties just cant field good candidates.  Look at johnson, he was running as a republican and he couldnt even get 2% support needed to get into most of the debates.  He just simply isnt a good candidate.

As far as presidential debates, i agree they should be more inclusive, but having your name on the ballot shouldnt get you an automatic invitation, they should be able show a broad base of support, probably 20% so that the debates can focus on candidates that actually have a chance.

And ending up with a worse evil may not be bad?  That just makes people even more desperate and you could very well end up with someone worse next time.  Thats just bad logic.