A Third Way? Americans want an alternative to the two-party system,

A new NEWSWEEK Poll, conducted Wednesday and Thursday nights, suggests a majority of registered voters agree with Bloomberg: 57 percent say the two-party system does not do a good job addressing issues important to Americans, according to the poll. The same percentage of registered voters say the country needs a third political party. That's up from 46 percent in 2003—and virtually identical to the 58 percent who said they favored a third party back in 1996, the year Ross Perot mounted his second independent run for the presidency.

While voters may support the notion of a third-party candidate for president, they aren’t necessarily sure Bloomberg, the billionaire business-news entrepreneur now weighing a run for the White House, is the man for the job. According to the new poll, nearly two out of three registered voters, 65 percent, say that if Bloomberg runs they are “not too likely” or “not at all likely” to vote for him—including 55 percent of independents. (Only 5 percent of registered voters say they would “very likely” vote for Bloomberg, while 21 percent say it is “somewhat likely” they would support him.)

(((entire story @ link below)))

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19375653/site/newsweek/

Of course, that's just me.

we could vote for the girl from Ipanema

Don't use the words Third Way, that is part of the DLC. This whole process is being pushed by Republicans to keep power and centrist dems who want to help them do it.

The more choices the better.

apart from the rest of us. That's the problem.

Then they can join their brothers the "moderate" Republicans and they can play together out in the open.

When it comes to actual elections, third parties only get support by pulling from the fringes of the big parties, and virtually none of that 57% cares enough about the issue to push for instant runoff voting, or publicly funded elections.

I think people say that they want a third party because they think that that would somehow cure the ills they perceive in the existing system, or because they think that it makes them sound well informed, not neccessarily out of a real belief in the idea.

The problem with a third party has been almsot every challenger has been a party of one...a Perot or Wallace that had no under-ticket...no party to run with or support them if they were elected. It's top-down that leaves little to build on before and after the election...thus the 19% of the vote Perot got in '92 had little lasting affect as it had little affect other than for that one election.

The only real way for a third party to succeede is taking the long, expensive steps of party building from the roots up. It's not starting with a Presidential candidate but with dog catcher and works its way up so that in several elections the party has a full ticket to run and a platform that can endure.

Unfortunately, a third party winner is rarely a winner...they are on the outside as both parties have little incentive to work with a Ventura or whomever. They can wait out the 4 years and block things from getting done that then reflects on the "inefficiency" of the third party since it doesn't have the political muscle to push things along.

There has never been a third party president elected. Some people say Lincoln's an exception, except that by 1860 the Republicans were the second party (plus he won with less than 40% of the popular vote). People are pissed and so they say stuff like "I want a third party" but in the end a third party will not emerge.