Elon Musk (Photo: EPA-EFE / Justin Lane) 
When Elon Musk and Donald Trump angrily – or was it petulantly – ended their unique political marriage, utilising Trump’s rhetoric and Musk’s money, Musk soon enough began talking about creating a new third party to challenge the Democratic-Republican parties’ seeming lock on American politics.
A big chunk of that talk revolved around the ostensible overlapping similarities of the Republicrats/Demopublicans in their basic ideas in contesting elections, with the argument that nothing really changes, no matter who wins.
Instead, the national debt continues to grow, the federal deficit continues to balloon, and, courtesy of the country’s actual politics in the congressional-presidential partnership, it is all just about taxing, spending and borrowing.
The usual understanding of American political parties and the country’s political architecture is that the system basically precludes the rise and success of third-party challenges to that duopoly. But that is not entirely true in the historical record, and thus what it might mean for the future of Musk’s presumed intentions.
From the beginning of the republic, it is important to realise that political parties were not even mentioned in the American Constitution or any early legislation.
Washington’s warning
The nation’s first president, George Washington, in his last major public utterance, his “Farewell Address”, had warned the country that political factions would seek to obstruct the execution of the laws created by the government or even to prevent the branches of government from exercising the powers provided to them by the Constitution. Washington had further warned that factions might claim to be trying to answer popular demands for solving pressing problems, but their real intentions would be to take the power from the people and place it in the hands of unjust men. Some of that warning still rings true.
In fact, by the time Washington had offered such advice, the nation’s political leadership was already splitting into two parties – the Federalists under John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, who urged a stronger national government and infrastructure development, versus the Democratic-Republicans under Thomas Jefferson, who favoured a weaker national government.
Over time, the Federalists withered away due to their opposition to what the Americans called the War of 1812. They were eventually replaced by the Whig Party, which advocated strongly for national improvements such as railroads, harbours and canals, as well as the expansion of the nation to the west, at least in part to elide around the question of the expansion or preservation of the institution of legal slavery.
On the increasingly vexed issue of slavery – including its abolition, expansion, or the prevention of expansion into new territories – the Whigs remained largely silent even as slavery was becoming a key political division of the nation.
By 1856, however, the tangled issue of slavery had given rise to entirely new political movements, first the Free Soil Party and then the Republicans. Four years later, in what remained the country’s most successful third-party effort, the Republicans successfully ran candidates for congressional seats as well as their presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, winning in a four-way race.
In the northern half of the nation, Lincoln trounced a divided Democratic Party, winning sufficient electoral votes to gain a majority of the national electoral vote total. In the South, the other half of the Democratic Party faced the last gasp of the Whigs, now renamed the Constitutional Union Party, winning most of the electoral votes at stake there.
The geographical split became the harbinger of the Civil War that began shortly after the election. The Constitutional Union Party disappeared entirely – as it had attempted to push slavery off the national discussion agenda, something impossible given the tenor of the time.
Thus, the outcome of the 1860 election points to a key question confronted by every potential third (or fourth) party challenge. Winning popular votes does not easily translate into electoral college success sufficient to win a state’s electoral votes – unless one wins a plurality of the popular vote, state by state. As a result, winning even 20% of an election’s popular vote total can still translate into zero electoral votes – and it is the electoral votes that determine an electoral outcome.
In a phrase, the presidential electoral system is a kind of indirect election as opposed to simply winning x number of votes. Many countries have proportional electoral systems for their parliamentary governments and thus prime ministerships. Such systems do not discourage the formation of third, fourth, fifth or even more separate parties – if they win sufficient parliamentary seats, the respective parties negotiate to form governing coalitions.
By contrast, the two long-time dominant American parties, in the absence of any overwhelming national question that threatens to destroy the nation, such as slavery’s continuation or expansion, build their respective electoral coalitions within the organisational confines of those two parties. They negotiate compromises among factions within the party and potential supporters and often incorporate ideas, proposals and visions from beyond the party to gain sufficient support to win at the polls.
Perhaps the best example of this was the Democratic Party’s victory under Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Under his leadership, the party enthusiastically embraced ideas for social security measures, broader rights for union recognition, emergency employment relief and other social welfare messages previously proposed by various proponents of what were often called socialist ideas.
Those proposals, made amid the Great Depression, helped Democrats gain a massive victory over the hapless incumbent Republican president, Herbert Hoover.
More recently, the Republicans have absorbed a whole range of marginal, conspiratorial views and attitudes from fringe groups and made them central to their party’s ideology in the hands and language of the current president, Donald Trump.
Musk’s third party
Looking ahead, what about Elon Musk’s promise, or threat, to sponsor and underwrite a new third party? Beyond the origins of the Republican Party, numerous other third-party efforts have taken place – usually in response to the sense that the feelings and concerns of whole classes of potential voters are being ignored and have not – or cannot – be incorporated into either of the two major parties’ offerings.
Theodore Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” Party in the 1912 election was a kind of anomaly based on the idea that the actual Republican nominee and incumbent president, William Howard Taft, had backslid from his mentor and former president, Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive policies. Roosevelt actually gained more popular votes than the party’s formal candidate, thus splitting the Republican vote and giving Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson the win.
Other significant third-party candidates – Henry Wallace, Strom Thurmond in 1948, George Wallace in 1968 and 1972, John Anderson in 1980, various Libertarian Party candidates over the years, Dr Jill Stein in multiple elections, and Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 – were actually on the ballots of multiple states.
Save for the experiences of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, while these candidates received significant popular vote totals (and sometimes made the difference in who the ultimate winner would be as was the case with Jill Stein in 2000), they failed to gain a plurality of the votes in any state, thus failing to gain electoral votes in their respective presidential elections.
Thurmond and George Wallace’s candidacies represented racial segregation protest votes over increasing racial integration under federal laws and thereby gained some electoral vote success in the South. Henry Wallace’s run was largely in protest over the increasing drift towards a cold war with the Soviet Union.
Anderson, Stein, and Perot, in different ways, argued that the existing parties failed to address the need for new political approaches beyond a nearly moribund status quo. For Perot in particular, concern over tax policies and the national debt/government deficit were key to his agenda.
However, none of the latter three – plus the various Libertarian Party candidates – ever achieved actual electoral vote success.
The challenge
This goes to the heart of Elon Musk’s task and challenge. To create a new national political party, elections in America remain the responsibility of the several states, not the federal government. That means the creators of a new national party must do so across the landscape of many states – and each state’s rules and regulations are different.
To create a party as a functioning organisation is one thing, but getting that party on the ballot across the nation is very different. Each state will require thousands of signatures on petitions by registered voters in their state, as well as addressing other legal requirements.
Additionally, an actual political party organisation will need to conform to the financial registration and reporting requirements of the Federal Elections Commission concerning recording campaign contributions and expenses, once they set up fundraising mechanisms. None of this is simple, all of it is time-consuming, and most of it is expensive in terms of legal work.
Of course, if you are Elon Musk and you are serious about doing this, money isn’t all that much of an obstacle. Much more important will be answering the fundamental question of why such a party is desirable or necessary.
What are its goals and objectives on the big questions (whatever they are), and how does it propose to address them? And perhaps most important of all, who will put their hand up as a candidate? Where will a serious candidate or candidates come from, and what kind of relevant experience will they bring to the challenge? How will they be picked? What kind of convention or nominating process is contemplated?
One further thing to consider is that there are, in fact, many political parties in the US, perhaps two dozen or more, but mostly active at individual state or local election levels, where the mechanics of managing the creation of a party are less daunting. The Libertarian and Green Parties both already have national presences, and in recent elections, they have fought to be listed on the ballots of every state.
One conceivable approach would be for Elon Musk to simply take over one or the other of those minor parties and thus sidestep the registration and organisation of an entirely new party. However, it is hard to imagine how his ideas would easily comport with either of those two minor parties.
Yet another alternative conceivably might be for Musk to finance an aggressive operation to gain control of the Republican Party machinery, even though that would run into a buzzsaw of opposition from party regulars, the Maga crowd and current office holders under the Republican banner.
But with enough money, he probably could overcome the institutional hurdles of launching a new party. However, the basic questions of what it would stand for, who would be its leader or leaders, and how voters could find such an alternative attractive remain almost entirely unanswerable at this moment.
Election 2028, sans Trump
However, there is the fact that the 2028 general election will be the first in 12 years without Donald Trump as a candidate. At least for now, the challengers’ race among Republicans for that nomination is only beginning to form, and the nature of their respective key ideas remains a mystery.
The one great third-party success was back in 1860. That is a long time ago and came before almost all the contemporary rules, regulations, technology, and campaign management techniques had come into existence.
We are left with the conclusion that Musk’s threat to bankroll a new party is really an effort to do battle with his one-time friend and political partner.
There is one further factor to consider. Rather than aiming initially for a presidential race, Musk and his coterie may be planning to pursue efforts to elect independent candidates in congressional races across the country. The hurdles to such candidacies would be lower, the races could be selected based on popular dissatisfaction with incumbent Republicans aiming for reelection, or where no incumbent will be running due to a retirement, illness or death.
There are, of course, current senators who are technically independents – Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine. Both of those caucus with the Democrats, but have successfully run as independents in their respective races.
Further in the past, other senators and congressmen who were independents or even members of the Socialist Party successfully won their elections. Some of that history may give Elon Musk’s team hope for a viable third party, even if it is one that can’t gain the White House. Perhaps it can, at first, gain a toehold in Congress, or in state legislatures.
But all of that presupposes Musk’s attention will stay intently engaged on such political dreams, rather than colonising Mars or reviving the Tesla brand. DM