well, could this be the year?
Of interest is that there really are a lot of press articles this year about the dissatisfaction with The Two. Slate has a whole series going called “Two Bad … exploring Americans’ lackluster enthusiasm for the 2024 election and the problem of the third-party candidate. Profound disappointment with the presumptive options has driven some outsize attention to fringe entrants in the 2024 race.”
* * * *
How long? It’s been an “only-two-significant-choices” system since about 150 years ago. It would be a sorry thought to conjecture that the American voter will still have “only two” on the ballots 150 years from now.
One article in their series:
A Romp Through History’s Most Successful Third-Party Presidential Candidates
covers:
1892: James Weaver, People’s Party (Populists)
1896: William Jennings Bryan, Democratic Party and Populist Party
1912: Eugene V. Debs, American Socialist Party
1912: Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive Party
1924: Robert M. La Follete, Progressive Party
1948: Strom Thurmond, Dixiecrat Party
1968: George Wallace, American Independent Party
1980: John Anderson, Independent
1992: Ross Perot, Independent
2000: Pat Buchanan, Reform Party
2000: Ralph Nader, Green Party
[they left out Henry Wallace, Progressive Party, 1948 … he got almost as many votes as Strom Thurmond]
