America Can Create a Workable Third Party. Here’s How.

A year into the repeat Trump absurdity, with the world freaking out, it is time we understood that there must be a real alternative to Republican and Democratic parties

Exactly a year ago Trump returned to the White House, disturbingly and incredibly enough. Presently he’s at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he will be at bitter loggerheads with pretty much everyone representing the free world America used to lead and now appears to disdain. He is burning up NATO, driving allies toward China, delighting Putin daily and upending the global economy. All of it was predictable, and was indeed predicted on these pages.

At this absurd-yet-interesting conference (which I have attended numerous times), he will be seen by America’s still-allies as a demonic caricature who is in no way a friend. They do not observe “tough love,” nor a “course correction,” but a total departure from free world values. They see Trump as mainly aligned with Putin — not quite the same yet, but living the same area code.

How could this have happened? Is there horribly something wrong with the voters? I have another answer: There is something horribly wrong with the US political chessboard.

On the right, the MAGA movement has turned the Republican Party into a destructive force that harms America’s economy and global standing and is antithetical to everything that actually made America great. On the left, the progressive movement is way out of sync with the American and even Democratic majority, yet the party will not alienate its members for fear of low turnout. So American politics is trapped in a stalemate between two parties that no longer reflect the country they aspire to govern and delivers absurd outcomes.

The US urgently needs a viable third party — not a fringe crusade of left or right, but a political home for the exhausted, pragmatic and centrist majority.

Is there such a large center? Well, consider that Trump’s brutalization of the democratic system — he essentially believes in an elected dictatorship in which executive power is limitless as long as he’s the executive — is hugely unliked. Polls showed most people were aware of Project 2025 — the barely disguised blueprint for this, which Trump lyingly denied knowledge of during the campaign — and hated it. They simply didn’t believe such notions could possibly be serious — that anyone could actually try, say, to abolish the Department of Education. People tend to forgive lunacy as “bluster” and “provocation” and “showmanship.” Now that this catastrophic mistake is clear, Trump is unpopular at historic levels.

So the problem isn’t that voters are crazy. It is that the broad center of reasonable people, when confronted with crazy ideas, tend to think it all must be just a crazy show. How wacky! Very entertaining. There are sad precedents in history to this miscalculation. So despite skepticism about the viability, the need is crystal clear.

Even if America needs such a party, how do we build it in a system that has crushed every similar effort for more than a century? Here’s the game plan:

The main problem right now, of course, is the Republican Party. This is the party of power at the moment, and because of quirks and absurdities in the American electoral system, the Republicans have a huge advantage in the Senate and the Electoral College scheme for electing the president. To perhaps oversimplfy but also clarify, it is as if the left in another country needed to beat the right by 3 percent in order to actually win. And could constitutionally block any reform.

The current Republican party has no more room for the reasonable likes of Mitt Romney, John McCain, or even Dick and Liz Cheney. Soon, there will be no place in the Democratic Party for the likes of Joe Biden or Bill Clinton. Yet every one of these people could live in a centrist grouping called, say, the America Party.

Yes, the US electoral system punishes new entrants. Ralph Nader siphoned votes from Democrats in 2000; Ross Perot hurt Republicans in 1992. Third parties splinter whichever major party they most resemble and thus strengthen the other side, generally.

A centrist party — fiscally responsible yet socially tolerant, respectful of institutions, firm on democracy — would split both sides. It could unite the soft left and right and independents and reorder a system badly misaligned with reality.

For it to work, we would have to forget about the noble idea of a grassroots birth. Without institutional power at launch, media, donors and voters will all ignore it. Even Elon Musk’s recent experiments in “bottom-up political innovation” collided with the same brick wall.

Rather, it would have to start with quiet, secret talks among a core group of donors, thinkers and existing legislators that constantly expand until going public. It would focus on people who already serve: moderate Democrats pushed leftward by activists, traditional Republicans stranded in a MAGA-centric ship, respected former officials who retain national credibility. These leaders have constituencies, visibility and governing skills, but not a safe structure into which they can defect.

Creating that structure would require an extremely well-funded organization. A new center party should have no trouble raising the necessary funds, as it would be a relief to much of the donor class. Its mission would be to make it viable for sitting legislators to switch affiliation. With strong financial backing and infrastructure ready to deploy, lawmakers would be free to act on convictions that current parties no longer reflect.

This is not unprecedented. The Republican Party itself was born when elected Whigs defected en masse. The Southern realignment reshaped the Democratic Party coalition in the mid-20th century.

For this to happen again, start by securing private commitments from a critical mass — say, five senators and 20 or 30 House members from both parties. Then launch the new party publicly, with committee assignments negotiated and leadership roles prepared. On Day 1, the media and voters will see an institution, not a protest movement; donors will understand they are investing in stability, not romantic futility. More congresspersons will follow.

Overnight, America shifts from two parties poorly representing three ideological blocs to three parties that finally map onto how people actually think. The center party should be able to attract a plurality of about half the public.

Legally, nothing stands in the way. Members of Congress may change affiliation at any time.

Would voters accept it? Absolutely. Polls consistently show that majorities want:

• Abortion rights with limits
• Border controls with immigration rules that are humane but real
• Taxation that rewards work but does not enable insane inequality
• Recognition of climate risk without economic self-immolation
• Health care that somehow offers a baseline to all citizens

All that applies to issues that predate Trump. As for his new insanities, almost no one wants the Greenland nonsense — especially military threats; almost three-quarters do not share Trump’s dismissal of NATO; very few people have been fooled into supporting the tariff war; and as we have already seen, few want to live in an elected dictatorship.

In the United States today, therefore, a broad center already exists on almost every major issue. It simply has no representation. The missing ingredient is elected leadership willing to move first. If those leaders step forward — protected, funded and united — the public will follow instantly. Americans are not rejecting alternatives; they are rejecting hopelessness.

Hopelessness is what the current two-party system now offers: rule by alternating extremes, rising mistrust, and government that can barely perform its basic functions. Without structural change, this downward spiral continues. Moderates keep losing or being “primaried,” especially in the Republican Party.

If the Democrats make inroads in the coming midterms, they may be tempted to think all is well, but it isn’t. Their progressive wing will be an electoral thorn in their side for many years to come. It will cause much of the country to hate them.

A third party is not a fantasy. It is a missing institution: the one that allows the majority to govern. Build that from the top, with seriousness and scale, and the realignment can happen almost overnight. Unless this happens, cynicism about politics, distrust in politicians, and despair about democracy will continue to build. The educated elites will eventually lose faith altogether and become anti-democratic in outlook..

I have seen this happen in many developing countries, and we do not want it in the United States.

___________

Paul du Quenoy: No, the US does not need and cannot support a new political party. The two-party system we have evolved into is far from perfect, but it has stood since the Civil War as a duopoly of tents broad enough to cover broadly the political beliefs of almost all Americans to the right and left. The need for intraparty consensus bolsters national stability, for that need for consensus tends to moderate dangerous extremes and encourage bipartisan compromises for the good of the republic. A testament to the system’s durability is the persistent failure of any third party to take root, be it Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party, the socialist and communist parties of the early half of the 20th century, George Wallace’s racial segregation movement, Ross Perot’s spoiler campaign in 1992, the perpetually fringe libertarians and the pathetic “no labels” movement of 2024, among others. The two-party system may not always have the answers, but it is strong and better than any alternative anyone has put forward for over 150 years.

Dan Perry: Yes, we most certainly do [need a third party]. The two-party system works only when the country actually has two dominant ideological streams, and then splits are badly punished by the system. But we now have three: a broad centrist majority that straddles the soft left and soft right, a radical progressive left and a MAGA-captured right which is a reckless personality cult as well. That reality breaks the core logic of the system. Instead of two big tents balancing each other, we have one tent stretched over incompatible factions. We get paralysis, distortion and a pro-democracy center with no real political home. A third party isn’t a novelty—it’s an adjustment to a landscape the two parties no longer serve. The center is the largest stream. For this to actually work, it would need to be created by a large number of defectors from both parties who are currently in Congress, with a massive PAC behind them.

Paul du Quenoy: Our radical fringes at most make up 20-30 percent of Americans. The other 70-80 percent face toward the center. The fringes can be loud at times, but the business of the country is getting done, our wealth and population are on the rise and the problems we face have found, are finding, or will find solutions. The third parties that have been tried have long gone nowhere, largely because they fail to address that spirit of compromise or offer the effective solutions the broad center demands.

Dan Perry: Actually, what I’d call radical on the right is a slight majority of that side, while on the left it’s a slight minority. Roughly half of the public are in the center. Someone like me on the center-left shares more with John McCain than with the far left. The center isn’t truly represented by Republicans and soon won’t be by Democrats either. Past third parties failed by splitting one side or the other—I’m calling representing the majority.

Paul du Quenoy: This is of course a matter of perspective, and the definition and values of the “center” do change over time. Positions that leftists may consider “extreme” are in some cases now broadly shared among the body politic. Look at the so-called 80-20 issues where large majorities of Americans agree with Donald Trump on illegal immigration, transgenderism and other issues. The slide does not, however, mean that most Americans can no longer reasonably find a home in the two major parties.

Dan Perry: I tend to agree that on many issues, indeed, the soft right and the soft left can agree. And I do believe that applies to abortion, and to health care, and to gun control, and to reasonable taxation, and the degree to which there should be reforms in the system and to climate policy. It’s just that the two-party system is getting in the way because it pulls to the extremes. And that is precisely my point.

Paul du Quenoy: Third parties have been a fantasy of the marginal and disgruntled for most of our country’s history. Our vital center has long been served well by two camps which, while not perfect, encompass the views of most Americans, restrain extremes, solve problems in a practical way and reach compromise solutions. With them in place, stability is assured and our future is guaranteed. Third parties, which are usually based on fringe views or a sense of grievance, are vehicles for ideologues, provocateurs and contrarians whose appeal is as limited as their problem-solving skills. As elections have shown for well over a century, Americans neither want nor need them.