New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is meeting with pollsters and consultants to assess his chances at winning the White House as an independent candidate. Political adviser Kevin Sheekey told Newsweek: “There is no Bloomberg campaign. But we have certainly reached out.” Sheekey adds that whether he runs “depends on who the nominees are for the two major parties, and how much cash Bloomberg is willing to spend.”
You’d have to add that to Unity08 and other third parties. The problem with third parties in America — as any political science student knows from PoliSci 101 — is that the U.S. has a “winner take all” system and the deck is stacked against third parties.
Third parties have traditionally presented ideas which are later gobbled up by the major parties. Or they have helped one side win by siphoning off votes. The only third party candidate in recent history who seemed poised to actually have a chance to win was Ross Perot but his chances vanished when he pulled out of the race. By the time he was back in, his Big Mo — and that of a third party that could conceivably win a national election — was gone. A third party means all the pundit and blog conventional wisdom must be recast, taking the impact of a strong third party into mind.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.