“But more than money it takes people, and we are rich with them.”įorward is less than two weeks old, but has already attracted a good deal of both cynicism and criticism, not least for the false equivalency it deployed when describing the need for a third party. Instead, it will focus on gaining ballot access and recruiting candidates to run in races across the country. In terms of how it will compete with Democrats and Republicans, the party said it “isn’t looking to drop a billion dollars in a 2024 presidential race”. The hunger for that simple but revolutionary kind of politics is immense.” “The glue that holds us together is not rote ideology, it is a shared commitment to actually solving problems. In a statement, the Forward party said it “can’t be pegged to the traditional left-right spectrum because we aren’t built like the existing parties. But once it does set out its positions on divisive issues like abortion, social security and tax cuts, Hershey said, “some of that middle is going to disagree with other parts of that middle, and the so-called huge middle is no longer huge.” The Forward party is yet to lay out a detailed platform. “There are a lot of people who would consider themselves moderate or centrist, who disagree very strongly with other people who consider themselves moderate or centrist. But there are doubts about what a centrist party might actually look like and stand for. FORWARD,” as its slogan lays out, is a noble one. That means rejecting the far Left and far Right and pursuing common ground.” “The rigid, top-down, one-size-fits-all platforms of the outdated political parties are drifting toward the fringes, making solutions impossible,” Forward’s website reads. The first-past-the-post system, in which one person is elected in each congressional district, means that a third party could, in theory, win 49% of the vote in a given area, and it would count for nothing if their opponent wins more.įorward, which launched on 23 July, was formed from three existing political groups: Renew America Movement, made up of dozens of former Republican administration officials the Forward party, which was founded by Yang after his failed bid to become the Democratic party’s nominee for New York City mayor and the Serve America Movement, a centrist group of Democrats, Republicans and independents. The two dominant parties also have huge structural advantages: mailing lists, email addresses, existing supporters and name recognition, things that have taken decades to build.Ī more fundamental issue is that the US election system just isn’t set up to accommodate a third party. Forward’s $5m pales in comparison with the $1bn Joe Biden raised from donors during his 2020 election campaign.ĭonald Trump raised $774m from donors, according to Open Secrets, while data from the Federal Election Commission shows that House and Senate candidates raised $4bn between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020, spending $3.8bn. Third parties face resource problems, for one thing. “Slim to none,” says Marjorie Hershey, professor emeritus of political science at Indiana University Bloomington. So what are the chances of Yang and co winning office, and holding forth on the floors of the US Capitol? People wanted a new third party, and they have been given one – one that has boasted of already raising more than $5m. This should be prime ground, then, for the Forward party, founded in July by a group of self-defined centrists including the former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and former Republican New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman. Even a majority of self-identified Republicans said they wanted a new party in the mix. In 2021, as the fallout from the 2020 election continued, polling showed widespread support among Americans for a fresh third party that would offer something different from the status quo. Other parties, like the Reform party, the Greens or the Libertarians have never really broken through.
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