Non two-sider thoughts about third parties

My entree is this Gallup Poll piece from the start of the month about the current national support for third parties. First, I’m going to tweak a bit of misframing. Beyond a majority of Democrats and independents supporting the idea, it would be more accurate for Gallup to say something like:

Despite Trump’s cult-like vice grip on the Republican party, nearly half of identified Republicans, and just 5 percentage points fewer than Democrats, support the need for a third party.

That said, as someone who did his duopoly exit on presidential voting at the start of this century, I see things like this every four years, and I do more and more of an eyeroll.

Set aside that the electoral college drives a duopoly-based strong presidential system, first of all. What percentage of this majority votes for a third-party candidate below the presidential level? Slim to none, per the old saying.

Second, the piece has another problem. While it’s correct about the difficulty of ballot access for third parties like Greens and Libertarians, and even more minor parties? Brainworm Bobby, though he did use various minor parties, often special purpose creations, to help get on the ballot, really was an independent candidate, not a third-party one. And, given that his movement was eventually semi-Trumpism with a side-eye, it won’t last.

That said, per the piece, I think most of this is frustration with the duopoly’s candidates. Most people who theoretically support the need for a third party don’t do their research on third parties and their stance on many issues.

To the contrary, before I settled on deciding to vote for the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Claudia de la Cruz by write-in for president, because of Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s investments hypocrisy (plus her now being a three-time retread and the GP probably being past its best-by date), I did my research on other third parties of the left.

I had long ago rejected the Socialist Party USA. In addition, it’s not on the ballot by write-in here in Tex-ass, and beyond that, nominee Bill Stodden has been more of an Invisible Man than Ralph Ellison. He’s on the ballot nationally in very few states and just has no visibility.

The Socialist Equality Party? Also not on the ballot here, but, like the SPUSA, even if it were, I find it off-putting not only in its angles on Trotskyite doctrinal purity (not a Communist and never will be one, even though I’ll be voting for one as a protest vote within the protest vote), but on attacks on the PSL and on some apparent race issues.

The Socialist Workers Party? I knew their early history. Didn’t realize they had become a cult-leadered group of Zionist genocidalists until doing my research.

The one independent of note? Cornel West is a vanity candidate first, attention whore second, and semi-leftist third.

That said, it would be nice to have better third-party candidate coverage. Sadly, we don’t. First, let’s look at theoretically leftist political journals and writers. Jacobin has long been in the sheepdog lane, and the only reason it would look outside is being butt-hurt Berners, not from any non-duopoly principle. (The hypocrisy of Socialist Alternative and Kshama Sawant is also at that link.) Nathan J. Robinson? I gave up on him for good months ago. Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal? Pseudo-leftists; until proven otherwise, I presume Max is paid by Beijing and maybe Moscow, too. Not sure about Aaron.

A couple of biggies?

Counterpunch rarely talks about electoral politics in general. And it never talks about third-party electoral politics. But, Jeff St. Clair can let duopoly-endorsing Ralph Nader have his space, and he, and even more, Joshua Frank, could even on occasion talk about political chess game type issues from a Blue Anon-leaning angle. They got a long callout earlier this month. Frankly, I think St. Clair, like the butt-hurt Berners at Jacobin, is a butt-hurt Naderite who either doesn’t know the full story of Ralph on things like labor issues or else choses to ignore it. It’s funny how he can (rightly) call out “the more credulous precincts of the left” on Assange, but yet continue to platform Nader. (It’s also funny how his own mag can publish stuff on Assange by the more credulous precincts of the left, even as late as 2020, when Patrick Lawrence and the people on whom he relied were already known to be full of shit.)

Well, what about Alternet? The “what about it” is that they’re full-on BlueAnon trashers of the Green Party and don’t even talk about people further to the left.

Neither does Counterpunch, on the “further to the left,” for that matter. It’s funny as hell that sites like this can talk about the likes of Maduro or Evo Morales, but ignore actual socialist or beyond political leaders here in the U.S. (It’s also funny that none of them can be skeptical about the likes of Morales, as I am.)

Truthout? Re-checked it, too. It doesn’t dive into electoral politics at all.

Most other supposedly leftist sites, like In These Times, also don’t delve into third-party news at all. By their silence mixed with their framing, they’re ultimately duopoly supporters.

So, for the most part, would-be leftist voters are left with “house organs” of individual third parties. One of the most activist of these is the World Socialist Web Site, or WSWS. For the semi-familiar, it’s the SEP’s official house organ.

There are a couple of exceptions: Ballot Access News and Independent Political Report. The former has a focus on what its title claims, but Richard Winger and Bill Redpath drop in on other stuff between election cycles. Independent Political Report is somewhat broader. Both, despite coming from people with a Libertarian Party background (though many people at IPR are ditching the LP over Mises Caucus issues to go to the new Liberal Party), they do a decent-to-good job of looking at third parties of the left. For example, even with my degree of knowledge, I’d never before heard of the Freedom Socialist Party until the IPR did something on it. I then did my own research.

But, both have problems, as I have noted as part of a larger lament, starting with the lack of moderation, which in IPR’s case, resulted in one mentally defective (the term “mentally ill” isn’t right) commenter making a semi-explicit threat. The comment was hauled down, but the nutter is still there, pushing the edges. Both are run on budgets that probably make Counterpunch’s look like it’s corner-office level.

And, that leads to another issue. Lack of editorial unity at most these places. Counterpunch, per what I referenced above, is an obvious example. One doesn’t need lockstep, but on something like Julian Assange and the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, once it’s established it’s a conspiracy theory and you as editor-in-chief have essentially said that it is, why do you publish people who continue to peddle it?

So, the bottom line? Will third-party coverage get any better in 2026 and its run-up, or in 2028 and the run-up to it? No. As a result, ballot access struggles will continue and people will have to do their own research. Speaking from the left, we will also have to wade through inter-party backbiting among smaller leftist parties, and also personally wonder if the Green Party will actually implode like it probably needs to do.