General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson running for President. A progressive alternative to Obama [View all]Old and In the Way
(37,540 posts)You can imagine whatever you like, of course, but the reality is, a messiah type 3rd party President comes into town with his own agenda - built on trashing the evil Republican and Republican-Lite Parties. The Inauguration comes and goes...then what? Assuming this Party-less President has some grand legislative agenda to fix all of the political and social problems of our society - it's going to be an impressive body of legislation (who writes that?) - who's going to stage manage it through Congress? If Republicans are in control of the House...game over. He gets to wait 2 years to see if the electorate decides to put the RLs in charge while he spends his time vetoing that agenda.. But what if the RLs have control of the House? Are they going to move this guy's legislation? Nope. They could give a rat's ass about rubber stamping his legislation They'll write their own, reflecting their vision and priorities. If it passes, he can sign it or veto it. But in no case is it going to be in any way his legislation. Talk about compromising principles, he'll be horsetrading everything to get anything.
Now you're including "new faces" magically appearing in Congress with the magic 3rs Party President? Lots of wonderful conjecture and hypotheticals...but they won't fare any better in reality than your 3rd Party President.
No, you want a 3rd way? You're gonna have to build a foundation for it to sit on. That means creating a Party and organizing at the precinct level. Running slates of candidates locally...building accomplishments that can translate into state offices...then run candidates for national office. And you're going to have to do it in all 50 states, concurrently. If you start now, you should be realizing your goal of national significance in about 20 years. Look at the Green Party for inspiration. They've been at if for 40 years....look what they've accomplished. And along the way, to succeed, you'll have to be willing to compromise on just about every facet of your agenda.