New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering a run for presidency. I don't know what kind of an impact such an effort might have, although I suspect it would be minimal. The mayor is apparently being urged to run by former centrist Democratic Senators David Boren and Sam Nunn:
Former Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, who organized the session with former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat of Georgia, suggested in an interview that if the prospective major party nominees failed within two months to formally embrace bipartisanship and address the fundamental challenges facing the nation, “I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent.”
We sometimes hear that there is an opportunity for a viable third party because the major parties are not doing the people's business, as is suggested by Mr. Boren. Without assessing the truth of that claim, it makes me wonder whether there was ever a time in America when there was no third party movement. Off the top of my head the I can think of two eras: the "Era of Good Feelings" in the early 19th Century, and perhaps immediately following the Civil War until the 1890s. In American history we have had the Liberty Party, The Free Soil Party, The American Party (aka Know Nothings), the Populists, Progressives, Bull Moose, and the Southern Populism (with strong flavoring of segregationism) of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace. That essentially gets us to the modern era of third party candidates John Anderson, Ross Perot and Ralph Nadar. And let us not forget that at one time the current Republican party was a third party. It seems some sort of third party movement is the rule rather than the exception. And yet the two party system remains intact. Only once, when the Republicans supplanted the Whigs as the viable second party, has a minor party proven consistently successful. That fact is instructive.
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