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Americans are entrenched into their partisan corners, but the party lines keep moving in weird new ways.
Republicans who grew up in the Grand Old Party might not recognize a party overtaken by the Make America Great Again movement.
Democrats who cheered when President Bill Clinton declared the era of big government to be over might wonder how it is that a democratic socialist is their party’s candidate for mayor of New York City.
Others have followed Democratic expat and scion of Camelot Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with his Make America Healthy Again mantra, to vote for Trump.
For a variety of structural reasons, two options is what most Americans get, even though poll after poll suggests few are happy with either party.
Against that backdrop, it’s interesting to consider Elon Musk’s pledge to form an “America Party,” an alternative to Republicans and Democrats, if President Donald Trump’s megabill becomes law.
“Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE,” he wrote on his social media platform.
Musk’s primary concern is that the megabill adds to the national debt, he said – and not, as Trump alleges, that he’s sore about the end of tax credits to encourage Americans to buy electric vehicles.
The third-party pledge follows Musk’s musings last month that the US needs a party “that actually represents the 80% in the middle.”
It’s an interesting thought experiment to consider what the political middle might look like to a space and computer nerd and technocrat like Musk.
He cares deeply about climate change and wants desperately for humans to be interplanetary and to live on Mars, but he opposes the megabill for all its government spending.
He has strong thoughts about encouraging more American women to have babies, but thinks the addition of people to the country through illegal immigration is an existential threat to the US.
The same thought experiment crossed my mind last month when Karine Jean-Pierre, who was White House press secretary under former President Joe Biden, announced in the run-up to the publication of her memoir that she’s leaving the Democratic Party.
“We need to be clear-eyed and questioning, rather than blindly loyal and obedient as we may have been in the past,” she said in a statement to CNN.
But it doesn’t seem like Jean-Pierre’s version of independence will be in the same galaxy as Musk’s.
One of the more interesting political campaigns of the coming months is likely to be the New York City mayor’s race, in which the upstart Democrat (and democratic socialist) Zohran Mamdani will take on Eric Adams, the sitting mayor who is also a Democrat but is running as an independent. Also on the ballot as a “Fight and Deliver” independent will be former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, another Democrat, although it’s not clear if he’ll seriously campaign between now and November.
That’s a lot of different versions of Democrats New Yorkers will be able to sort through.
There are, of course, existing third parties in the US. The Green and Libertarian parties appear on most ballots for president, which means they have dedicated followings across the country, but they lack the power to get anyone elected to either the House or Senate.
Former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas mounted presidential campaigns as both a Libertarian and a Republican, but he got the most traction as a libertarian-minded Republican. His son, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, is one of the few Republicans now willing to cross Trump and oppose the megabill. Paul, like Musk, is worried about the national debt.
A senator closer to the middle, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, did vote for the bill, but only after securing carveouts that will help her state – but could aggravate every other American. Murkowski is that rare moderate who can survive without party backing. She won a write-in reelection campaign – the triple lindy of politics – after losing the Republican primary in 2010. That was before her party veered even more toward Trump, but Murkowski recently told CNN’s Audie Cornish there are more quiet centrist Americans than people realize. She’s representing them, she said, even if Washington is a dangerous place to be a moderate.
“You’re roadkill in the middle,” Murkowski told Cornish for her “The Assignment” podcast.
Another Republican who opposed the megabill is Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. He said cuts to Medicaid would cost too many North Carolinians their health insurance. But prioritizing the people you represent rather than the national party is anathema in today’s political environment.
“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Tillis said in a statement Sunday.
Fearing a primary and Trump’s wrath, or maybe just tired of defending the shrinking middle ground in the Senate, Tillis also announced he would not seek reelection next year, which immediately made his North Carolina seat Democrats’ top pickup priority. Democrats must hope that a moderate like former Gov. Roy Cooper will jump in the race and defy Democrats’ national branding.
Perhaps Cooper would play the same kind of role as former Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin voted with Democrats most of the time, but his tendency to buck the party leadership made him a thorn in the side of progressives.
Coincidentally, when Manchin left office, Democrats lost their majority in the Senate.
On his way out the door, Manchin said it was time for a third-party alternative, but he opted not to run for president.
Kennedy did run for president after leaving the Democratic Party and his ultimate support for Trump likely brought in some new support for the president, who is now letting Kennedy rethink US vaccine policy to the consternation of the scientific community. Kennedy is also trying to take on the food industry.
Help from Kennedy’s independents probably helped Trump win, but maybe not as much as the nearly $300 million Musk is known to have spent, mostly on Trump’s behalf.
Musk’s political ventures may have now turned off Tesla’s natural climate-concerned consumer base as well as the MAGA faithful. Regardless of the wealth he could spend, what middle would his America party fit into?
