Surely, Kevin, you can see that any party beyond the 2 established parties have the deck totally stacked against them. And the big two make it a point to make any other party look like a joke at every opportunity. Going back to my initial point - the Libertarian movement does a good job on their own of looking bad. Just take a look at their stands over the years (support for NAMBLA, unilateral disarmament, LSD). They're even more perverted than the American Communist Party ever was.
But that doesn't mean the deck is totally stacked against them. Had Ross Perot not overestimated himself/underestimated the job, and had he not provided the republicans with the ammunition they were looking for (that he was nothing but a flakey eccentric billionaire), there was (and still is) a very real opportunity for a third party.
Take a look at every candidate since 1992 - probably the weakest consecutive set of candidates in years. We have a Democratic party that failed to learn a lesson in 2 consecutive elections - that 2 liberals like Gore and Kerry were not going to win the electoral college. And yet they came
close - because all the Republicans had to offer was the weakest and most flawed candidate in the post-WWII era. If you ran either Gore or Kerry against someone from 30 years ago (Nixon, Ford), the Dems would be giving their concession speech by 10 PM. What does that tell me? Both sides are more about damange control than really winning.
Save for the party extremists, most of the Bush voters didn't WANT Bush - they simply wanted anyone but Kerry. And it seems that many who voted for Kerry did so because of anger and resentment towards Bush. And while Bush won, I think the people who voted for Kerry had more negative emotion towards Bush than vice-versa.
If you accept those observations as a fair assessment....what better opportunity for a valid third party and a clean start? Sure, the 2 parties are established....established as pretty much a joke.
The big 2 are far more similar than they are different, to the point that they periodically morph and swap (apparent) planks without so much as a blink of an eye. I don't disagree. With each passing election, there seems to be an increasing amout of "me-tooing" going on.
Kevin
