That’s where the third-party possibilities get interesting. If the Democrats do go with a progressive, and if Trump or someone in his mold is the Republican candidate, voters will face one of the starkest electoral choices in American history: lurch further to the left than the nation has ever gone before, or further to the right.
Evidence suggests that most voters aren’t interested in either option, nor in the continuing cycles of outrage and conflict either of these extremes would likely entail. “The two major parties are more extreme than ever before,” says David Shor, head of data science with progressive nonprofit OpenLabs and a leading Democratic polling analyst. “At the same time, the percentage of people dissatisfied with the system is larger than ever.”
Liz Cheney’s Ouster Makes a Third Political Party More Likely
by David H. Freedman
https://www.newsweek.com/liz-cheneys-ouster-makes-third-political-party-more-likely-1590678
In a voice vote Wednesday morning, Republicans stripped the important role of House Republican Conference leader from Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, following her outspoken repudiation of former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. In so doing, the GOP continues to make it abundantly clear for the foreseeable future it is the party of Trump.
Which raises a question: Might Cheney, along with other prominent Republicans on the outs with the party because they have withheld fealty to the former president, mount their next election bids as independents—or even form a third party?
The conventional wisdom says no, given the poor showings most independent candidates have historically turned in against the combined might of the two major parties. On the other hand, these are unconventional times in politics, and for the first time in decades the prospects for a third party may be better than poor.
At the moment, those prospects largely depend on Joe Biden. He’s popular right now, at least by recent presidential standards. His 55-percent-and-climbing average approval ratings in the polls are far above the low-40s ratings in which Trump dwelled for almost his entire presidency and well above the mid-to-high-40s that held for most of Obama’s. And no wonder: The swift vaccine rollout is taming the pandemic, a big stimulus package has provided economic help, and a massive infrastructure program that could further prop up the economy is in the works.
What about 2024? In his first press conference on March 25, Biden said it was his “expectation” to run but conceded there was some uncertainty. He’ll be 82 years old, nine years older than Ronald Reagan was when reelected. Before then, Biden will have to navigate the midterm elections and, perhaps, two years of a hostile Congress. By then, Democrats may well be clamoring to give Vice President Kamala Harris or another more progressive and youthful candidate a shot at leading the party and the country.
That’s where the third-party possibilities get interesting. If the Democrats do go with a progressive, and if Trump or someone in his mold is the Republican candidate, voters will face one of the starkest electoral choices in American history: lurch further to the left than the nation has ever gone before, or further to the right.
Evidence suggests that most voters aren’t interested in either option, nor in the continuing cycles of outrage and conflict either of these extremes would likely entail. “The two major parties are more extreme than ever before,” says David Shor, head of data science with progressive nonprofit OpenLabs and a leading Democratic polling analyst. “At the same time, the percentage of people dissatisfied with the system is larger than ever.”
While Biden’s early tentative successes have for the moment subdued the polarization that was laid bare in the previous administration, most observers expect dissatisfaction with the two major parties to come roaring back to the surface soon—perhaps in the coming months as campaigning starts in earnest for the midterm elections—and continue right through to 2024.
A third party could be the way out. Many political observers seem to think so. In the past year there has been more talk of the need for a new centrist political party than there has been in over a century. Several political organizations have sprung up to create or support new alternatives to the two major parties, and some are starting to gain traction. “Since the January 6 attack on the capitol, unsolicited traffic to our website is up 10,000 percent compared a year ago, and donations are up 2,000 percent,” says David Jolly, a former Republican U.S. Congressman from Florida and now executive chairman of the Serve America Movement, an independent party formed in 2017. “We haven’t seen this sort of movement toward a new party in years.”
A third-party president in 2024 is not the most likely outcome, but neither is it far-fetched.
Falling barriers
There is reason to think that things might be different in 2024. For starters, record numbers of voters say they want a third party, including 46 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Republicans, and 70 percent of independents, according to a Gallup poll in early February. Only a third of Americans say the two major parties adequately represent the public, a historically low number for the poll. Meanwhile, half of voters currently say they are independents, a record high.
Because the vast majority of independents tend to drift toward one of the two major parties as election day approaches, most of the votes for a third-party candidate would have to be diverted from one or both of those parties. Few people question that the Republican party, at least, is currently primed to leak a substantial fraction of its once-dependable voters. State voter records indicate that in the weeks following the January attack on the Capitol more than 100,000 registered Republicans took the trouble to delist themselves from the party’s rolls.
Seeing this initial wavering of support, Trump and many of his most loyal supporters immediately talked of forming a breakaway “Patriot Party.” But Trump soon abandoned that idea, insisting he would maintain control of the Republican party—if not as the 2024 candidate, then as the party kingmaker looking to anoint Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley or some other supplicant. That declaration of control, in turn, led to an early February Zoom meeting of some 120 current and former Republican officials and activists to discuss an anti-Trump spinoff from the party. Many prominent moderate Republican leaders beyond Cheney have already openly expressed their disgust with Trumpian Republicanism, including Utah Senator Mitt Romney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, while others have left or are planning to leave politics, including Arizona’s Jeff Flake, Ohio’s Rob Portman, and Pennsylvania’s Charlie Dent and Pat Toomey.
To be sure, the path to a formal split remains murky, and Trump appears to remain largely dominant. But the breakaway talk is strong evidence of internal turmoil that leaves the Republican party ripe for voter defections. “At least 20 to 30 percent of Republican voters want a new direction,” says Evan McMullin, a former Republican activist turned independent, and now co-executive director of Stand Up Republic, which organizes fundraising and outreach in support of anti-Trump, center-right candidates. “There’s an opportunity for a pro-democracy movement to give people from the right a new home that’s more comfortable for them.”
A new party consisting mainly of former Republicans would simply split the Republican vote, leaving itself and the remaining Republican party uncompetitive. To have a shot at winning, a new party would need a chunk of the Democratic party, too. Even with Democrats currently riding high in the early days of the Biden administration, there’s no guarantee the party will hang together between now and 2024—not least because the party is poised to move left in a way that could leave many of its voters uncomfortable. “Joe Biden is proving to be the right person at the right time for the party, but I’d be shocked if he runs again,” says Russ Tremayne, a historian at the College of Southern Idaho who studies U.S. elections. “That would open up a real divide in the party between progressives and moderates.”
If there were a front-runner to replace Biden, should he step aside in 2024, it would be Vice President Harris. Harris has some progressive credentials: She was one of the first senators to back Bernie Sanders’ call for Medicare for All; she stood in line with McDonald’s workers striking for a $15 minimum wage during her own 2020 primary run for the presidency; and as a woman of color she could be expected to be a compelling advocate for racial justice.
But progressives have also expressed frustration with what they see as Harris’ inconsistent record on key issues. As a prosecutor she defended the death penalty and pursued cannabis convictions. She ultimately disavowed support for Medicare-for-All in favor of private insurance. And in March she declined to go to the mat on the $15 minimum wage when Senate Republicans refused to include it in the COVID-19 stimulus package.
Whether out of frustration with the perceived failures of the Biden administration to push for progressive goals, or flush with whatever successes the administration can achieve, progressives may well push for a more aggressive candidate than Harris in a hypothetical 2024 search. Should the U.S. be dragged into a major recession, an unpopular military conflict, or a new public-health crisis, the demand for an uber-progressive could be all the more intense. That could be Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, or even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who will reach the minimum presidential age two months before inauguration day). Any of those candidates, or someone in their mold, might well leave moderate Democratic voters open to a centrist third party.
Traditionally, the opportunity for drawing away moderate Democratic voters has come with candidates who combine economically conservative policies with more liberal social positions, much as Arnold Schwarzenegger once did in California. But when it comes to today’s Democratic party, the opposite is likely the better strategy, says polling analyst Shor. That’s because some of the policies and stances pushed by many progressives, including “cancel culture,” Medicare-for-all, defunding the police, reparations, and looser immigration controls, tend to be turnoffs not only to older white Democrats, but also—perhaps surprisingly—to a big percentage of minority voters. Defunding the police, for example, is an idea supported by only 34 percent of Democrats and 28 percent of Black Americans, according to an early March Ipsos/USA Today poll,
Nearly a third of Black and Hispanic voters label themselves conservative, according to polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. “The share of non-white voters in the Democratic party is large and only going up,” says Shor, “and those voters are substantially more moderate than white Democratic voters.” The hyping of hot-button issues by young, white, college-educated progressives is pushing moderate working-class minorities away from the party, he claims. Many Democratic leaders blamed the loss of a dozen seats in the House in 2020 on progressive stances.
That dynamic is already playing out in California, says Tom Campbell, a former five-term Republican Congressman who is now chair of the centrist Common Sense Party and a professor of economics and law at Chapman University in Orange, California. Campbell points to a November ballot measure pushed by progressives that would have opened the door to affirmative-action programs in the state government, including state university admissions. (Such programs are currently prohibited by state law). The measure was rejected, Campbell says, largely through the opposition of Hispanic and Asian voters. “Our party is getting substantial numbers of former Democrats who believe the party is moving too far to the left,” he says. “They’re rejecting progressive orthodoxy, and that’s giving us a winning strategy.”
The ability for a centrist third party to draw some Democrats could make the math work in a presidential election. If a third party took most independent voters, a third of Republicans, and a fifth of Democrats, it would win.
Mixed history
Conventional wisdom holds that the country’s voting processes favor major parties, and that new parties are crushed by the fundraising and voter-outreach infrastructures the two major parties have built over more than 150 years.
Pundits and academics sometimes cite “Duverger’s law” in dismissing third-party runs as sure losers in the U.S. voting system. The “law”—it’s really just a rule of thumb—notes that countries in which voters get a single vote for a single candidate in a single round of voting usually end up with strong two-party systems. That voting set-up tends to raise the bar on third-party candidates, because getting almost as many votes as the leader is still a flat-out loss; in countries with more flexible voting systems, a second- or even third-place finish can force run-offs and power-sharing. But, as Shor notes, several countries with voting systems like the U.S.’s have effective third parties, including the U.K., Canada, India and the Philippines. “It’s a terrible law,” he says. “The U.S. is really the exception in not having strong third parties with this type of voting, not the rule.”
And the U.S. isn’t entirely an exception. In the nineteenth century important third parties were plentiful. They included the Know-Nothing Party, the Free Soil Party, and the Whig Party. The latter was eventually knocked out of contention by an even newer third party called the Republican Party, led by a former Whig Congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. Since then, the only truly competitive third-party presidential run came in 1912, when former two-term President Theodore Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination to William Howard Taft and formed the Progressive Party in order to run, coming in second to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
The only two third-party runs in modern politics to attract more than a tiny share of votes were Ross Perot’s Reform Party in 1992, which garnered just under 20 percent of the vote, and George Wallace’s American Independent Party, which in 1968 pulled in about 14 percent of the vote. Otherwise third parties have at best served as spoilers to whichever of the two major parties they most drew votes from. In 2000 Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy pulled in less than three percent of the vote, but that was enough to tip the election from Al Gore to George W. Bush. Likewise, the Green Party’s Jill Stein drew enough votes from Hillary Clinton in 2016 to account for Trump’s margin of victory.
Perot’s centrist run, which drew almost equally from both major parties, is often taken as proof of concept for modern third parties, especially given the fact that he was leading the race early on but gave away his momentum when he temporarily dropped out of the race mid-way. Still, the two major parties have access to vast levels of funding, staff, volunteer networks, and donor and voter lists which they can deploy to target and bombard voters with messages aimed at keeping them in line.
Charlie Crist, currently a Democratic Congressman for Florida, got to feel the full brunt of that machinery back in 2010 when he was a Republican governor for the state running for the Senate. When the Republican party nominated Marco Rubio in his place because of Crist’s support for Obama’s recovery effort, Crist continued his Senate run as an independent. “I saw how difficult it was,” he says. He ended up with 30 percent of the vote, compared to Rubio’s 49 percent, and later became a Democrat.
As for the major parties’ massive fund-raising and voter-outreach infrastructures, many experts and politicians believe that machinery can be overcome with the right candidate armed with the right policy mix and backed by savvy marketing, especially in a progressive-versus-Trumpian faceoff. Right now, they say, that strategy would involve loudly embracing broadly popular economic programs such as a higher minimum wage, increasing spending on education, and modestly expanding Medicare coverage—while quietly taking vaguely middle-of-the-road views on hot-button cultural issues that tend to divide voters, such as defending women’s right to choose but only up to a certain point in a pregnancy, supporting the right to own guns but beefing up background checks, calling for efforts to crack down on police racism while objecting to defunding departments, and limiting immigration but supporting dreamer-type programs. “There are ways to finesse some of these issues to avoid drawing attention to them,” says Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “You can talk about law and order without sounding like a white supremacist.”
That’s the sort of strategy that both Jolly’s Serve America Movement and Campbell’s Common Sense Party are planning to enlist in 2022 and 2024. Campbell has been focusing on state-legislation elections in California for now, where he says the biggest barrier to running as an independent is the up-front one of getting on the ballot by getting 73,000 voters to register for the party. “We were signing up 10,000 voters a month before the pandemic hit and we had to shut down,” he says, adding that the effort will spin up again in April. The party has targeted seven of the state’s 80 districts, and if it can win those elections it will have enough votes to swing most state legislation. At that point the party will start targeting other states and even elections for national office, with the goal of gaining some high-profile wins that build the party’s credibility and sway.
Jolly, too, sees his party as poised to start building influence, boosted by high-tech data tools that he says Silicon Valley companies are offering to make available to him in order to punch above the party’s weight when it comes to targeting voters. “We think voters are ready to split evenly between Democrat, Republican and independent,” he says. “All we have to do is establish a brand and front a candidate with name recognition.”
Finding a messenger
That need to find just the right candidate to steal enough votes from the two big parties is a challenge for the third-party movement. “The candidates who did well with third parties, like Theodore Roosevelt and George Wallace, already had a lot of stature when they entered their races,” says Patterson. “You need someone like that in order to get enough early momentum to overcome Republicans’ and Democrats’ advantages.” Without a well-known, riveting character to front the party and make a quick splash, he says, most voters will dismiss a third-party candidate as someone who can’t win and isn’t worth wasting a vote on, even if they like the candidate’s positions.
A big, well-timed endorsement might be enough to do the trick, notes Crist. “It was amazing to watch what Jim Clyburn’s endorsement did for Joe Biden,” he says, referring to the South Carolina Congressman’s February 2020 electrifying endorsement a few days before the state’s primary. “It raised him like Lazarus. After that, he was rolling.”
Biden, of course, wasn’t a third-party candidate, and it could be difficult convincing real contenders to abandon a major party to be one—especially given how relatively easy it is to simply throw one’s hat in the ring of a major party’s primaries. What’s more, notes William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, Democratic candidates in particular might fear that jumping to a third party and siphoning away Democratic votes might unintentionally open the door to their worst nightmare. “The specter of Trump holding onto power has united the Democrats for now,” says Frey. “If Trump runs again, the same might happen.”
But the Trump-unites-Democrats theory may not hold if the Democrats go too boldly progressive heading into 2024. The resulting gap could invite a third-party run from one of Congress’s highly visible moderate Democrats, such as Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, or an anti-Trump moderate Republican like Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger—or even from a celebrity like actor Matthew McConaughey, who has already expressed interest in the Texas governership without aligning with either major party.
Even if a sufficiently well-known, charismatic candidate doesn’t materialize as a third-party candidate by then, that doesn’t mean a third-party movement can’t influence the election, perhaps by pressuring one or both major parties to nominate someone on the moderate side. “Becoming a major national party isn’t necessarily our only goal,” says Stand Up Republic’s McMullin. “Even if we can get only five percent of the voting public behind us, we’d have a lot to do with deciding who holds power in Washington.” A third-party candidate positioned to win just a handful of states could even threaten to prevent either major-party candidate from winning the required 270 electoral votes, which would send the election decision to Congress, where anything could happen. Perot almost pulled that scary trick off in his run.
Ultimately, though, McMullin’s and the other growing third parties all say they hope to field candidates who run to win. It may not be a pipe dream. “The conditions are more favorable to an independent candidate than they have been in a long time,” says Harvard’s Patterson.
Perhaps what the party of Lincoln did to the Whigs, one of these parties will do to the party of Lincoln.
中道派のバイデンが退くと、第三政党の大統領候補が躍進する可能性が現実味を帯びてくる。民主党がバイデンより左派の人物を、共和党がトランプや同様の考え方の持ち主を大統領候補に選んだ場合、米国民は極端な二者択一を強いられる。
歴史上経験がないくらい左傾化するか、さらに右傾化するかという選択だ。
ほとんどの有権者は、そのどちらも望んでいない。「両党はかつてなく極端な立場を取るようになっている」と、進歩派の非営利団体「オープン・ラボズ」のデータ科学責任者を務めるデービッド・ショアは言う。「その一方で、既存のシステムに不満を抱く人の割合もかつてなく高まっている」
アメリカ二大政党制が迎えた限界…ついに第三政党の躍進へ機は熟した
by デービッド・H・フリードマン
https://www.newsweekjapan.jp/stories/world/2021/07/post-96623.php
＜共和党の「トランプ化」が止まらず、民主党の次世代指導者も極端な左派になる可能性。中道政党を望む有権者の割合は空前の水準に＞
米共和党はまだしばらくの間、「トランプの党」であり続けるつもりらしい。
共和党は5月12日、党所属下院議員の会合でリズ・チェイニー下院議員を下院議員総会議長（下院共和党のナンバー3）の要職から解任することを決めた。昨年の大統領選挙で不正があったというドナルド・トランプ前大統領の根拠のない主張をきっぱり批判したことが理由だ。
この決定により、共和党はトランプと一体であり続けると宣言したに等しい。
では、トランプへの忠誠を拒んで共和党から離れたチェイニーなどの政治家たちは、次の選挙に独立系候補として、あるいは第三政党の候補者として臨む可能性があるのか。
これまでの常識では、それはあり得ない。歴史を振り返ると、独立系候補の大半は選挙で惨敗している。民主党と共和党という二大政党の力は、それほどまでに絶大なのだ。
しかしその半面、今日のアメリカ政治ではこれまでの常識が通用しなくなっていることも事実だ。過去数十年で初めて、第三政党の挑戦が惨敗に終わらない状況が出現しつつあるのかもしれない。
バイデンの再出馬には不確定要素が
カギを握るのは、ジョー・バイデン大統領の動向だ。新政権発足後、まずまずの滑り出しを見せたバイデンだが、2024年の大統領選で再選を目指すのか。3月25日に行った就任後初の記者会見では、出馬するという「見通し」を示しつつも、不確定要素があることも認めている。
もし再選されれば、バイデンは82歳という高齢で2期目の任期に入ることになる。しかも次の大統領選の前に、バイデンはまず来年の中間選挙を乗り切らなくてはならない。中間選挙で与党の民主党が議会の少数派に転落し、厳しい政権運営を強いられる可能性もある。
もしそうなれば、民主党内でカマラ・ハリス副大統領やその他の若いリーダーを大統領候補に担ごうという機運が高まっても不思議でない。
中道派のバイデンが退くと、第三政党の大統領候補が躍進する可能性が現実味を帯びてくる。民主党がバイデンより左派の人物を、共和党がトランプや同様の考え方の持ち主を大統領候補に選んだ場合、米国民は極端な二者択一を強いられる。
歴史上経験がないくらい左傾化するか、さらに右傾化するかという選択だ。
ほとんどの有権者は、そのどちらも望んでいない。「両党はかつてなく極端な立場を取るようになっている」と、進歩派の非営利団体「オープン・ラボズ」のデータ科学責任者を務めるデービッド・ショアは言う。「その一方で、既存のシステムに不満を抱く人の割合もかつてなく高まっている」
差し当たりバイデン政権が上々の成果を上げていることで、政治的な二極化はひとまず沈静化している。しかし、来年の中間選挙に向けた選挙運動が本格化するのに伴い、二大政党への不満が高まり、その状況のまま24年の大統領選に突入すると、大半の専門家は予測している。
第三政党がそのような不満の受け皿になり得るのかもしれない。実際、中道系の新しい政党が必要だという声は、過去100年間で最も高まっている。二大政党に代わる新しい選択肢をつくるために動きだしている政治団体もある。
「1月の連邦議事堂乱入事件以降、私たちのウェブサイトへの訪問者数は1年前に比べて約1万倍、寄付は約2000倍に増加した」と、元共和党下院議員で現在は17年結成の独立系政党「サーブ・アメリカ・ムーブメント（SAM）」を率いるデービッド・ジョリーは言う。
24年の大統領選で第三政党出身の大統領が誕生するというのは、最も可能性が高いシナリオではないが、荒唐無稽な筋書きとも言い切れない。
そう判断できる理由はいくつかある。まず、2月にギャラップ社が発表した世論調査によると、第三政党の登場を望んでいる有権者の割合は空前の水準に達している。その割合は、民主党支持者の46％、共和党支持者の63％、無党派層の70％に上る。
共和党離れが加速している
特に共和党は、これまで盤石だった支持層のかなりの割合が第三政党に流出しかねない。州の有権者登録データによると、1月の連邦議事堂乱入事件後の数週間で、共和党員として有権者登録していた10万人以上が政党の登録を変更している。
このように共和党への支持が揺らいでいる状況を目の当たりにして、トランプとその周辺は当初、共和党を離党して「愛国者党」という新党を結成する可能性を模索した。
しかし結局、トランプはこのアイデアを放棄し、共和党を牛耳り続ける方針に転じた。24年の大統領選に自らが再出馬するか、そうでなくても共和党のキングメーカーとして君臨しようというわけだ。
共和党を支配し続けようというトランプの方針に対抗するために、共和党内の穏健派が動きだした。2月初めに約120人の共和党政治家と活動家がオンライン会議を行い、共和党の反トランプ派が離党して新党をつくる可能性を話し合った。
既にチェイニー以外にも、ミット・ロムニー上院議員やアダム・キンジンガー下院議員など、多くの穏健派有力議員が党の「トランプ化」に嫌悪感を表明している。
ジェフ・フレーク元上院議員、ロブ・ポートマン上院議員、チャーリー・デント元下院議員、パトリック・トゥーミー上院議員など、既に政界を去ったか去る予定の政治家もいる。
確かに共和党分裂への道筋はまだ不透明であり、トランプの党支配力は圧倒的に見える。だが今回の離党話は、支持者の離反に直結する党内の混乱を強く示唆するものだ。
「共和党支持者の少なくとも20～30％は新たな方向性を求めている」と、反トランプの中道右派候補のために資金調達や支援活動を行う「スタンドアップ・リパブリック」の共同代表を務める元共和党政策顧問のエバン・マクマリンは言う。
「右派の人々に今より居心地のいい『新しい家』を提供するチャンスが来た」
元共和党員を中心に新党が結成されたとしても、共和党支持票を分散させ、共和党残留派もろとも共倒れに終わるだけだろう。新党が勝利を望むなら、民主党支持者の一部も取り込む必要がある。
実際、民主党が24年の大統領選まで現在のまとまりを維持できる保証はない。党の左傾化が進み、支持者の反発を買った場合は特にそうだ。
「バイデンは党にとって適切な時期に登場した適切な人物と言えそうだが、もし再出馬したらショックだ」と、アメリカの選挙を研究するサザンアイダホ短期大学のラス・トレメイン准教授は言う。「そうなれば、党内左派と穏健派の間に真の亀裂が生じるだろう」
バイデン後継の最有力はハリスだが
バイデンが再出馬しない場合、最有力の後継候補はハリスだろう。だが、ハリスはリベラルな面もあるが、重要テーマについての言動が一貫性を欠いているため、一部のリベラル派から嫌われている。
24年の候補者探しでは、バーニー・サンダース、エリザベス・ウォーレン、コーリー・ブッカーの各上院議員やアレクサンドリア・オカシオコルテス下院議員など、より左派色の強い候補が好まれる可能性がある。逆に穏健派の有権者はこのタイプの候補者を嫌い、中道派の第三政党に魅力を感じるかもしれない。
国民皆保険（メディケア・フォー・オール）、警察予算削減、移民規制緩和など、多くのリベラル派が好む施策やスタンスは、年配の白人だけでなく非白人の相当部分から反感を買う傾向がある。
3月上旬に行われたイプソス／USAトゥデーの共同世論調査によると、警察予算削減を支持しているのは民主党支持者の34％、黒人の28％にすぎない。
世論調査会社パブリック・オピニオン・ストラテジーズによると、黒人やヒスパニック系有権者の3分の1近くが自分を保守派と考えている。「民主党内の非白人支持者の割合は大きく、しかも増加の一途をたどっている。彼らは白人支持者に比べ、かなり穏健な政治的立場だ」と、オープン・ラボズのショアは言う。
大学教育を受けた若い白人左派が話題性の高い政治問題をあおることで、穏健な労働者階級の非白人を民主党から遠ざけていると、ショアは主張する。実際、多くの民主党有力者は20年の下院選で議席を減らした元凶として党のリベラルなスタンスをやり玉に挙げている。
20年11月、カリフォルニア州で州機関や大学入試における差別是正措置（アファーマティブ・アクション）の復活に道を開く住民投票が、ヒスパニック系やアジア系の反対で否決されたのもこの動きの一環だと、元共和党下院議員で現在は中道派のコモンセンス党の議長を務めるトム・キャンベルは言う。
中道派の第三政党が一部の民主党支持者を引き付けられれば、大統領選の展望が開けるかもしれない。無党派層の大半と共和党支持者の3分の1、民主党支持者の5分の1を獲得すれば、選挙に勝てる計算だ。
従来の常識では、アメリカの選挙制度は大政党に有利であり、新党は二大政党が150年以上かけて築いてきた資金調達能力や幅広い支持基盤に押しつぶされるとされている。だがイギリスやカナダ、インド、フィリピンなど、アメリカと同様の小選挙区制を採用している国には、一定の力を持つ第三政党が存在する。
過去に躍進した第三政党は？
アメリカが全くの例外というわけでもない。19世紀にはノウ・ナッシング党や自由土地党など、重要な第三政党がいくつも存在していた。
19世紀前半に民主党と共に二大政党制を成立させたホイッグ党は、第三政党の台頭により凋落した。それが元同党所属の下院議員エイブラハム・リンカーン率いる共和党だった。
以後、当選可能性のある第三政党の大統領候補が登場したのは1912年だけ。大統領を2期務めたセオドア・ルーズベルトが共和党の指名争いでウィリアム・ハワード・タフトに敗れ、進歩党を結成して出馬。民主党のウッドロー・ウィルソンに次ぐ2位に入ったのが唯一の例だ。
現代の米大統領選で一定程度の支持をつかんだ第三政党は2つしかない。68年に約14％の得票率を記録したジョージ・ウォレスのアメリカ独立党と、92年に20％弱の票を獲得したロス・ペローの改革党だ。
ペローは中道路線を打ち出し、民主・共和両党の支持者をほぼ同数引き寄せた。そのため現代における第三政党の概念を示すモデルとしてよく持ち出される。選挙戦の序盤では支持率トップを誇ったからなおさらだ（途中でいったん出馬を取り下げて勢いを失い最終的には敗れたが）。
とはいえ二大政党は資金・人材共に豊富。ボランティアのネットワークも全米各地に張り巡らされているし、長年引き継がれてきた献金者・有権者名簿を票固めに活用できる。
それでも適切な候補者を立て、適切な政策パッケージを掲げて、賢いマーケティングを行えば、第三政党が二大政党の集票マシンに打ち勝てる可能性はあると、多くの専門家はみる。急進左派とトランプ主義者が対峙する状況になれば、なおさらだ。
そのためにはさしずめ今なら、幅広い層に受ける経済政策を声高にアピールすること。最低賃金の引き上げ、教育への政府支出の拡大、メディケア（高齢者医療保険制度）の適用範囲を若干広げることなどだ。
一方で保守・リベラルが真っ向から対立する問題については、漠然とした中道の立場を目立たない形で打ち出すのが得策だ。
争点を争点化しない戦略を
例えば産む産まないを選ぶ女性の権利は認めるが中絶できるのは妊娠何週目かまでと限定する、銃の所有は認めるが購入時のチェックは厳格化する、警察の改革を進めるが予算は減らさない、移民の受け入れは制限するが、幼少時に保護者と共に入国した若年層への救済措置は維持するなど。
第三政党が支持を伸ばすには、こうした問題を「争点化させないよう巧みに扱う」べきだと、ハーバード大学ケネディ行政大学院のトーマス・パターソン教授は言う。「白人至上主義者のようなトーンにならずに、法と秩序を語ることはできる」
ジョリーとキャンベルも中間選挙と大統領選に向けてそうした戦略を練っている。キャンベルの党はまず州議会での議席獲得を目指しているが、カリフォルニア州議会選に候補者を立てるには最低7万3000人がコモンセンス党の党員として有権者登録をする必要がある。
「コロナ禍以前には月1万人の登録を集めていたが、中断を余儀なくされた」と、キャンベルは言う。感染拡大が収まり、登録者集めを再開したそうだ。
同党は州内の80選挙区中7区に候補を立てる予定。全てで勝てれば、州議会で大半の法案の成否の鍵を握ることはできる。その後は他州の議会にも進出し、ゆくゆくは連邦レベルの選挙に打って出る計画だ。全米に顔を知られる議員を何人か出せれば、党の信頼度が上がりそれなりに影響力も持てる。
一方、SAMを率いるジョリーは「今は有権者が民主、共和、第三政党に三分割されやすい状況だ」とみて、有望な層に的を絞った運動を展開するつもりだ。「顔の売れた候補者を看板にして党のブランドを確立する。やるべきことはそれだけだ」
そのためには二大政党から十分な票を奪えるような候補者を立てなければならない。「セオドア・ルーズベルトやジョージ・ウォレスなど善戦した第三政党の候補は出馬時点で既に名が知れていた」と、パターソンは言う。「共和・民主両党の強みを突き崩すには、序盤から勢いに乗れる候補者が必要だ」
知名度も人気も高い候補者を擁立して、いきなり話題をさらわないと勝ち目はない、というのだ。さもないと、有権者はいくら政策に共感しても、第三政党の候補者に入れたら死に票になると思って投票してくれないと、パターソンは指摘する。
だが、有力政治家を二大政党から引き抜くのはそう簡単ではない。しかもブルッキングス研究所のウィリアム・フライが言うように、特に民主党の候補者は今、第三政党に移籍して民主党の票を奪えば、意図せずして最悪のシナリオを実現させる結果になりかねないと警戒している。
党が極端になれば結束は揺らぐ
「トランプ再選の悪夢が民主党を団結させている」と、フライは言う。
だが次期大統領選に向けて、党の方針が極端なほうに振れると、結束は揺らぐだろう。
そうなると民主党穏健派のキルステン・シネマ上院議員や反トランプで鳴らす共和党のキンジンガー下院議員、さらには二大政党のいずれにも属さずテキサス州知事選に出馬の意向をちらつかせている俳優のマシュー・マコノヒーのような有名人が第三政党の看板候補になる可能性も出てくる。
「今はここ何十年もなかったほど、独立系の候補が躍進できる条件が整っている」と、パターソンはみる。
共和党も、ホイッグ党から移籍したリンカーンが大統領選に勝ったおかげで民主党と並ぶ有力政党になったのだ。大政党の交代劇が繰り返される可能性はいつだってある。