Instead of a third-party, maybe independent candidates will change America’s political system.
Time’s Joe Klein says the best third-parties we’ve seen in the recent past have had their ideas stolen by the Republicans and Democrats. But independent candidates could be a complete game changer.
It may be that we won’t see a Third Party, but a rash of Independents breaking out across the country in 2014. Depending on which way the Republicans go, I can see Libertarians running their own candidates in the next two cycles–and especially for President in 2016. I can also see, in certain circumstances, moderates breaking away from the GOP (and maybe from the currently smug, listless Democrats) in the near future. If this happens, I suspect it will happen from the bottom up. Some will be wealthy, vanity candidacies like Williamson. Others may come from the Millennial generation–especially the recent military veterans among them–who find that there’s a lot not to like about the existing parties…or from the tech world. Who knows?
I may be wrong about this; I’m always uncomfortable about making predictions. We’ve been doing this two-candidate thing for a long time, but we’ve reached a point of paralysis–a very un-American state of being–and something is going to come along and shock the system back to life.
