I want a viable third party as much as you do. I’d like to actually have a choice instead of always choosing Democrats because I’m not insane. But third party votes aren’t the way to change that. I think plenty of people have mentioned the game theory and FPTP, so I’d like to touch on two other points.

For one, if you look at the third parties, they’re laughable. They aren’t even serious about winning! What power would a Green or Libertarian president even have if they somehow won but Congress was still just Democrat or Republican? This is an important litmus test with these parties. You don’t grow top down. You field every election, but your priorities are local and state. If you want to be a serious national contender, you need to start influencing local and state elections. Then, elections for the House and Senate. And finally, president. You need candidates who have plenty of experience throughout government, and right now no third party can offer that. The fact that they only care about the presidency tells us something very important. They’re only in it for the grift. It’s their cash cow. Hell, look at their platform, and you don’t need to even be against third parties to vote against them. Vaccine hesitancy and anti nuclear are instant rejections from me.

Second, it does actually seem like we could see a third large party, and it isn’t from any current third party. Republicans are heavily fractured. There’s sharp divisions between the extremist Trump wing and the more moderate and establishment Republicans. It’s very possible the Trump wing breaks into its own party, especially if Trump doesn’t seem like he’ll be the GOP nominee. We can examine this dynamic. The faction is probably 10-15% of Americans, which puts them at the third largest. And if they become a new party, it’ll be after having exploited the Republicans to get themselves off the ground, and they’ll be taking some infrastructure and voter networks with them. There’s also the possibility that a third party forms if Republicans do disastrously in the next elections, but that’s a way more involved situation.

In my world history class, we learned about two men who disliked the Catholic Church’s corruption and wanted to see it cleansed. One was Martin Luther, who left and made his own successful sect. The other is Erasmus, who worked within the church and eventually brought about the changes he wanted to see. Luther may have influenced matters at the time, but it still took someone like Erasmus to create the change. So, who in the end was actually successful with their goal to purge corruption? Erasmus, by working within the system. Luther was quite successful, but he failed horribly at his original goal.

Vote for who you want in the primary, but in the general, vote blue no matter who. We’ve already seen that this works at changing the party. This is why there’s now a prominent progressive wing, and why Biden, a moderate, has championed progressive legislation. It’s much easier to co-opt and use an existing system.