Via Dave Weigel, Brendan Nyhan at CJR tweaks “The Third Party Fever Dream“:
National Journal editorial director Ron Fournier is a respected journalist with years of distinguished service as an Associated Press correspondent and editor. So why is he issuing hyperbolic warnings about how “social change and a disillusioned electorate threaten the entire two-party system”?…
Fournier and the politicians and operatives he interviewed are hardly the first politicos to forecast a third-party revolt, of course. His piece this week is just the latest installment in a long pattern of journalists and political operatives predicting a major challenge to the two major parties.
The reality, however, is more prosaic. While we occasionally observe potential insurgent third parties or major presidential candidacies from figures like John Anderson or Ross Perot, the relentless logic of strategic voting and the adaptive nature of party competition tends to deter such challenges before they arise or cause them to quickly fizzle once they are underway. In particular, actual third-party initiatives in recent years have tended to promote an establishment-oriented centrism that has little natural constituency beyond the political and media elite. (If you don’t believe me, ask Unity ‘08, Americans Elect, Draft Bloomberg, and No Labels!) And even if an insurgent party or candidacy did find a way to appeal to an unrepresented or disaffected swathe of the electorate, the two major parties would very likely find a way to coopt its message and restore stability…
It’s well worth clicking over — for one thing, I’m not gonna spoil the snark in the final paragraph. But I think the Very Serious Yearning for a sensible, centrist third party is the flip side of the Politico temper-tantrums about “access”: Our professional betters, who have been happy to consider themselves avatars of the People in Charge any time over the last forty years, have come to an awareness that they no longer control the conversation and establish the boundaries for what can be considered Serious Politics. Mocking the ‘pajama-clad basement dwellers’ and ‘teenage internet L33ts’ having failed to nip this troublesome cohort in the bud (hello, OfA!), the brighter machers among the political-journalistic interface are desperately hoping to distract just enough of their audience with New! Improved! Even More Sensibly Centrist — Now with Grassroots Virality! schemes of safe’n’sane Third Parties that will bleed off popular outrage without actually changing the Beltway environment so much as to require the existing power-structure enablers to learn anything new.
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