More silly third party hype from Unity '08 co-founder Jerry Rafshoon in an insider interview on National Journal (sub. required):
Rafshoon: Our No. 1 goal is to elect [our ticket].
...Twenty percent of the vote is our minimum goal. It's our minimum.
We'll take it, certainly, if that's what we get. But think about this: By the time we have this convention, we'll have 5, 10, maybe even 20 million people on the Web site having this convention. Let's say it's 10 [million]. That'll be more people than have chosen the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties, because they will have been chosen by the early primaries. It may not even break a million that have chosen those candidates.
That person will probably leap ahead in the polls then, because everybody's going to have them on the cover.... There may be people who wanted to get either one of their party's nomination and didn't get it; there could be new people; there maybe people from other disciplines than politics.
The Unity '08 nominee will "probably leap ahead in the polls" after their online convention? This whole proposition is absurd. What everyone fails to understand is that third parties are a giant coordination game. And once the participants realize, as they inevitably will, that barriers like ballot access, party loyalty and the Electoral College make a third party victory extremely unlikely, then the whole thing collapses before it begins.
Also, I'm offended by the vaguely anti-democratic notion of "unity." Yes, polarization is extremely high. Yes, it would be nice if some semblance of bipartisanship were possible in Washington. But disagreement is inevitable, even necessary, in democracy. We should not want unity. There is no one optimal set of positions that everyone should agree on. Don't give in to this fantasy.
I understand the improbability of a third party movement, but I'm not entirely sure a charismatic movement might not be, if not completely successful, at least effective.
Why do you think it's implausible that a 3rd party might get 20% of the vote? Ross Perot did well, and he's far from the charismatic, known quantity that, for example, McCain could be.
Posted by: Jon Henke | December 12, 2006 at 10:53 AM