In early July, Elon Musk announced that he was forming a third party. He made this drastic step as a response to the reckless deficit spending in Donald Trump’s reconciliation bill. He immediately enlisted the support of political gadfly Andrew Yang, a frequent supporter of third parties in the past. Musk and Yang will likely orient their new party around a set of core principles including social liberalism, lower government spending, and preparing for the growth of AI, although it is much more likely that Musk will become distracted and abandon the project entirely long before 2028.
The announcement of a new party on the right is interesting given that third parties are often more associated with the left in political discourse. Leftists and many Democrats are perennially unhappy with the Democratic Party. They bemoan the party’s inability to fight or pass their programs. Every supposed Democratic victory is viewed as a hollowed-out shell mangled by corporate influence.
Given this level of unhappiness, it is understandable to think many Democrats may look at a third party with a renewed degree of interest. But simply being unhappy with the major party that is closest to one’s political ideas does not mean that they will abandon that party to join a new one. Instead, third parties require both unhappiness and a sense that one or both parties are feckless and incompetent. Democrats are not there yet, but they may be well on their way depending on what happens next November.
Democrats are unhappy
It is of course true that many Democrats are unhappy with their party’s performance. But many of these feelings are recent. In late 2022, it seemed like a wonderful time to be a Democrat. The party had just staved off severe losses in the 2022 midterm elections. They had outwitted Mitch McConnell to secure bipartisan support for both an infrastructure and semiconductor bill. Party leadership believed Joe Biden had good odds of winning reelection, while the electorate supported either him or his successor in 2024.
Of course, these views changed quickly. Biden’s midterm honeymoon ended almost immediately, and public opinion of Democrats soured with stubborn inflation and the war in Gaza. But there was a honeymoon period because Democrats did hold a trifecta for two years and close to one for two more. They were successful and won elections. They provided for their constituents, even though such provisions feel like they happened a decade ago. A party that can win elections and pass legislation within the past five years is not one that Americans will completely abandon for a third party.
This calculus could potentially change if Democrats fail to win the House next year. The party only has to win four seats in order to capture the lower house of Congress. This achievement has happened in 27 out of the past 30 midterm elections. Parties out of power often gain far more than four seats. In several wave elections, they have gained upwards of 40 and sometimes even 60 seats. The exceptions are almost always after cataclysms such as the Great Depression or the September 11 attacks.
Democrats are favored to gain seats
Absent a national tragedy like 9/11, Democrats would have to fail miserably in order to not win four seats in 2026. They would have to be torn apart by internal intrigue and unite around an inherently unpopular position like a foreign invasion or legalization of all drugs. They would have to face wave after wave of scandals at the highest levels of the party.
Such a failure would likely convince the American people that they no longer deserved to be a major party. Given the nation’s short political attention span, successful campaigns in 2020 and 2022 would no longer matter. Americans would potentially lose faith in Democrats and not be interested in handing the country over to them in 2028. They would consider putting their attention behind a third party, one that would at the very least force Democrats to focus on a popular program that brought the nation’s Trump opponents together. Such failures on the national level helped explain the collapse of the Whigs, who were so inept by the mid-1850s that Northerners felt comfortable abandoning them for the more morally unambiguous Republican Party.
The Democratic Party will have plenty of time to find out their future and determine their identity in the runup to the 2028 presidential election. For 2026, they need to come together around an anti-Trump message that will resonate with voters and allow them to voice their biannual dissatisfaction with the party in power. The task of winning four seats to take over one branch of Congress will be essential to their future as a major American party. Thankfully, the task is likely easier than many observers fear it may be whenever a new poll on Democratic popularity is released.
