Forward party

[Phoebe]

Not a big fan of Andrew Yang but a HUGE fan of having a new political party in the "middle" (i.e. a solidly right-of-center, conservative party to wedge between the mild liberal party and wild anti-democracy Christian nationalist party).
Will be interesting to see how it goes. Obvious conventional wisdom is that they're a doomed flash in the pan. However, there are so many non partisans and independents these days and so many people who dislike both parties, and enough absurdly wealthy guys who might prefer Republican lite to Trumpism and help bankroll it.

[poorpete]

In our current system, a third party without ranked choice is just a spoiler. Fact is Dems are going to pick someone slightly left, GOP is going to pick someone toxic, and this will help the toxic guy get elected.

With ranked choice, it gives third parties a better chance AND removes their ability to spoil. We need third parties to succeed so let's do this, America.

[Phoebe]

I like the ranked choice voting along with a third party. One way we might discover whether this new third party is serious about preserving our democracy while offering another alternative is whether they begin at the grassroots level by trying to elect members of the city council or legislature, or if they want to interfere with national races, which definitely seems like a recipe for getting the Republican into office. I guess we will find out what they are up to. I sometimes vote for third party candidates locally because I like to see them running and often that's the best you can do. In general it's nice to boost a third party. I wanted to see more libertarians here but sometimes they turn out to be even more conservative with little to no evidence of liberty promotion. Like if the only Liberty you care about is being able to smoke weed and not pay taxes, you're not really down with that principle.

[Phoebe]

New developments: the forward party emails feature efforts to use ranked-choice voting in more states, and tout the success of that method where it being used. They're focusing big on the fact that most voters in both parties express frustration and disappointment with their choices of candidates, and that big majorities of each party consider the other party fundamentally immoral. So the messaging has been about how to build up ballot access starting from the ground up. This is interesting because they may be focused on getting people into lower level races that will have a long-term impact, rather than playing spoiler in big races.

But another question on my mind is whether they're laying a foundation that could be used by someone like Liz Cheney to run third party (recent emails mention her in positive light). I will support her campaign against Trump if they both run for the GOP - even though she will lose, she will make it a completely different race because the media will tell the story about the two of them duking it out, she'll make him look like shit to any sane person observing, and she'll continue to drive the wedge in what remains of the Republicans. She must really get it, I don't know - there could be a purely selfish payoff in this someday insofar as she WILL be her party's leader if any version of sanity is ever restored over there. But on the assumption that sanity is a long way coming back to them, she's going to do something that the Democrats and the media have been completely impotent at accomplishing, except for Biden (and that was far too close for comfort).