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Politics, Political Parties
A Third Party? Divided We Fall
Third parties are a nice, but naive idea
Will you please stop telling me that Joe Biden gave Donald Trump the presidency? He didn’t. And why are you still talking about “Biden’s dementia,” often using the exact words that Trump uses?
Do you think these conversations are helpful? Or are you simply trying to kill the Democratic party in the hope that a new party, which you envision will be “above today’s politics,” will be created and bring us all, the right and left, together.
Several people, including some admirable ones, advocated for a third party — they called it “No Labels” in 2024. It was a dud, but that hasn’t stopped some of its advocates from renewing the quest to give voters who don’t like either the Democrats or Republicans a party to rally around.
America doesn’t need a new political party. It needs to “fix” the existing ones. Maybe that can be done, and perhaps it can’t. But creating a third party, one that would presumably siphon moderate voters away from both the Democrats and Republicans, is not the answer. It would make today’s political mess worse.
I focused my column in Spy Community Media’s Eastern Shore newspapers this week on the idea of a third party. The piece doesn’t…
