I know you’re not, I never said you were.

There is no logic to your second paragraph. People join the alt-right because they share those same bigoted views against women, minorities, immigrants & LGBT people. Nobody goes, “I used to be a centrist but then leftists said mean things online and now I support banning abortion, building a wall to keep out migrants & banning books by LGBT authors!”

I think the idea that the "left is calling for violence" is extremely problematic, biggest reason being the left is not some kind of homogenous group. 

It's the same for right wingers. 

A lot of right wingers openly have fantasies about murdering Democrats/"Socialists"/etc, or protestors or whatever other group they feel has wronged them. There are right wingers talking about having a civil war, and even that just comes across as them wanting to have a cause to kill Democrats for. 

But I don't hold that against all Republicans. That doesn't make sense to me. If a particular person has those ideals, i am going to call them out for it. But I am not going to hold it against "the entire right wing for not keeping their ranks in order". 

There are some exceptions to that. I don't think anyone in their right mind would (call themselves/associate with) a Nazi today, unless they were **not** in disagreement with the violence that was inherent in Nazi politics.  

But left wing politics is less of a political position and more of an entire span of different political positions. There are even some people that call themselves left wingers and yet they tend to agree quite a bit with right wingers. 

Frankly I think there's a lot of nuance required. 

- taking people as individuals, and not representative of an entire branch of politics. 

- I might even argue that a lot of people aren't even where they think they are politically. There are a lot of left wingers who espouse right wing politics. There are a lot of right wingers who espouse left wing politics. 

- separating the people from the politics they claim to be. The UK's labor party has been pushing more anti-trans politics, that doesn't mean "the left wing is transphobic too", but rather than the party has shifted. 

- people can kind of be representative of politics. But not that people are the politics or vice versa, but that people can advance certain political positions or espouse certain political positions. 

And frankly this is way too many words for my point. 

My dream is Kasich and Buttigieg form a third party that is middle of the aisle and all extremists can go **** themselves. A person can dream.

I don't understand why some of you are advocating for a 3rd party in the USA.  Hell, as things stand now, the USA is basically divided 50/50 between Republicans and Democrats. If a 3rd party were to emerge, the country would likely be divided along the lines of 33/33/33.  If that were to happen, then even more gridlock would become the norm in DC, and even less would get done than what gets done today. 

Joe Biden, if you are reading this, here is my advice to you:

1. Continue running to get re-elected as president

-------Assuming you get re-elected--------

On July 4, 2026 the USA will celebrate its 250th birthday

2. Resign the presidency on July 31, 2026

Thus allowing Kamala to finish out your term as the first female US president.

In theory, if a third party gains traction, it will force people to the middle.

Since Democrats have tried to overturn elections and claimed that they were stolen or that Republicans cheated, I'm not sure where you're going with this question.  I'm certain none of them has tried as hard as Trump, of course, but being allowed to settle such claims in the courts is actually part of the democratic process.  Would you really prefer the alternative?  I know there are plenty of countries where protesting an election will get you thrown into prison.  Is that actually an improvement?  The process worked exactly as it should, with almost all of Trump's cases being dismissed from a lack of evidence.  

Personally, I consider the idea of one party having too much power over the media to be much more dangerous, though I do understand that many, many people DO want that ... as long as the party they like is the one in charge.  Now that I think about it, the most common sentiment for everything seems to be "it's okay if my side does it but not the other side," so whatever.  It's just something I'll have to accept.

That's not how it works. More than two options result in a less divided political landscape, especially because a lot of the binary views get eliminated. You get more nuance instead.

Right now the USA has the democrats and the MAGA party. Let's call it that, because the republican party has so dramatically changed over the course of the past decade.

As things stand right now, any potential viable third party would certainly not be further on the right of the political spectrum than MAGA. Therefore it would be a party that the democrats could work with on the basis of compromises. Then your hypothetical 33/33/33 split turns into a 67/33 split against MAGA on many topics and that means a lot more would be getting done than gets done today.

Too bad that it's unrealistic for any third party to become viable in the USA, because things aren't decided by popular vote.

Rol, you are wrong calling all Republicans as MAGA.  All anyone has to do is look at the House vote on the $61b aid package to Ukraine.  Republicans voted 111-100 against the aid bill, while 210 Democrats voted for it in unison. Clearly, the Republican party is divided into 2 factions today:

Reagan Republicans vs.  MAGA Republicans

I should know, I registered as a proud Republican back on my 18th birthday and have remained one ever since.  However, Reagan is my president and I've never liked Trump.  

Do you remember the Tea Party?  Ever wondered what happened to them? It's easy, they morphed into these MAGA Republicans.

Also, if people don't want to be Demos or Repubs, then they are known as Independent voters, but there's no official Indy party.

However, let's say that the Indy party does emerge with a viable candidate, then consider this:

1. The electoral college has 538 members and it takes 270 electoral votes to win a presidential election.  If there are 3 viable candidates, then none of them is likely to get the 270 votes needed.  In that case, a run-off election between the top 2 vote getters would have to take place.  Is anybody interested in seeing a second presidential election right after the first?

2. The US Senate has 100 members, today it's almost evenly split.  But, it takes 60 "yes" votes to get legislation passed.  Imagine if the Senate was something like 40 Dems, 40 Repubs, and 20 Indy's.  To get to 60 yes votes would be a slug fest, those Indy's could practically hold up any legislation by themselves, imagine the concessions they could force Dems or Repubs to make in order to get their "yes" votes.

In theory, sure. But in practice it’s just as likely to be a mess. For example, look at Andrew Yang’s Forward Party, “we’re not left or right, we’re forward!”

The problem with being a party whose identity is the middle is they don’t necessarily have a cohesive set of goals.

”The left wants to raise taxes and the right wants to lower taxes, so we’re just going to leave them where they’re at!”

”The left wants to restore Roe v Wade, the right wants to impose a federal abortion ban, so we’re just gonna leave it up to the states!”

”The left wants universal healthcare and the right wants to repeal the ACA, so we’re just gonna leave healthcare alone!”

I’m not saying there aren’t areas where compromise can happen but it’s not like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Joe Biden are far left by any means and often times had to meet in the middle to get something passed. The Democratic Party of the last 30+ years has been a bit left of center.