The only way a third party will ever succeed is fairly simple, but the rules must be followed explicitly.
1) The party must be oriented to start at the state level. That is, it becomes viable from the ground up not the top down. As such its first election is not even oriented at the state legislator level, or even leadership roles in the big cities, but at all the minor elective offices in a state.
Only when it has a track record at these offices does it move to the state legislature level of the less populous states. It has to focus its national resources to get control of a minimum of one state legislature before it can start running for federal office. This is because the two big parties will agree to exclude third parties from the national election with unfair rules at the state level.
Real power, however, comes with eventually getting a marginal role in the US house, enough leverage to support one party or the other for a majority. This means that they can then wheel and deal with both major parties for their agenda.
2) The party needs to develop a list of its top 100 core values. Then it needs to poll the public about 10 of these that the public most supports. This then becomes their platform. The other 90 are not forgotten, just put on the “back burner”. This way the party can keep its core values *and* give the public what they want, in a simple and clear way they don’t have to equivocate.
Voters love this.
Until such a party is so powerful that it can bring the other two below 33% of the vote, all that will be created is a very effective spoiler.
Rule 3. Organize fund raising and expenditures.
Heck, we might not have the time before the situation goes hot.
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