Can Musk's New Third Party Matter?

The road of challengers to our major party duopoly is strewn with carcasses. Does Elon Musk's revived "American Party" have a chance, or is there a better strategy he should follow?

Name America’s earliest major “third party” and when it was launched.

Name the most recent third-party nominee for President to win electoral votes, and name a state or two or three that he won, in what year?

Name the most recent third-party nominee for President who won nearly 19 percent of the popular vote but not a single electoral vote, in what year?

What former President ran and lost for a third term under a third-party banner?

Hint: none of the answers are this guy, this party, or this election.

The answers are provided in the following order: The Anti-Masons (1832), George Wallace (1968), who won five southern states, including Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia; Ross Perot (1992); and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 under the “Bull Moose” banner.

Lastly, what do all major third-party or independent nominees for president have in common? That one is easy - they’ve never won, or even come close, either in the popular or the electoral college count, and all were short-lived. And none since the 19th Century have successfully elected Members of Congress. Notably, several Senators and House members were elected under Minnesota’s “Farmer-Labor” banner and others under the Progressive banner from the early 20th Century through World War II, but they weren’t major national third parties. I’m not counting independents (technically, we have two in the US Senate today, but they’re really Democrats) or party switchers.

But have third parties influenced outcomes? In some cases, absolutely, most notably when Bill Clinton won with just 43 percent of the popular vote but 370 electoral votes in 1992. The reigning theory is that the preponderance of Ross Perot’s 19 million votes would have gone to incumbent President George H. W. Bush, who, with 39 million votes, lost the popular vote by about 5 million votes (and 202 electoral votes). We’ll never know, of course. Perot ran again in 1996 but collected just 7 percent of the vote, about the margin between winner Bill Clinton, with 49 percent, and Bob Dole, with about 41 percent of the popular vote.

Perot’s Reform Party briefly ran slates and tickets for Congress and state offices nationwide, but none were successful.

In Congress, Libertarian and independent candidates have a long history of siphoning GOP votes and helping Democrats win at all levels, especially in western states. However, Democrats blame Green Party candidate Jill Stein for siphoning votes from Hillary Clinton and contributing to Trump’s 2016 win. The same can be said for Ralph Nader, who is blamed for taking votes from Al Gore in Florida in 2000, which George W. Bush won by a margin of barely 500 votes after a lengthy and court-influenced series of recounts, and thus a very close Electoral College victory (Gore narrowly won the popular vote, not that it matters).

Roosevelt survived a .38 caliber shot to the chest, blocked mainly by folded speech papers in his right jacket pocket. Despite bleeding from being “pinked” by the bullet, Roosevelt continued his speech for about an hour.

The same could be true for the pivotal 1912 election, when Roosevelt, the former two-term Republican president, did more than siphon votes away from incumbent and future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft, ultimately losing to New Jersey Governor and former Princeton University President Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt carried six states (88 electoral votes) and finished second, besting Republican Taft in both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

Taft defeated Roosevelt for the GOP nomination earlier that year. One could argue that Taft siphoned votes from Roosevelt, whose third-party candidacy is probably closest to being successful at the presidential level.

However, sometimes third parties don’t cause the damage that some think they will. In 1948, the conventional wisdom was that the presence of Dixiecrat and South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond, as well as Progressive former Vice President Henry Wallace, would siphon enough Democratic votes from unpopular incumbent Harry Truman to throw the election to Republican Governor of New York, Thomas Dewey. How did that work out?

While Thurmond (winning 39 electoral votes) and Wallace siphoned off more than 3 million votes combined that might otherwise have gone to Truman, he proved the Gallup Poll, the Chicago Tribune, and others famously wrong that year and handily won the Electoral College. Polling in those days, not unlike today, mainly relied on phones, but only 75 percent of households had them at the time. Many of Truman’s lower-income voters didn’t, and as a result, they were severely underrepresented in polling that suggested a Dewey landslide. So confident pollsters were of a Dewey win that they stopped polling early. Truman won the popular vote by about two million ballots.

Some suggest that Wallace’s 1968 campaign harmed the election of Democratic nominee and incumbent Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, resulting in Richard Nixon’s narrow victory. The South at the time was heavily Democratic; Humphrey still carried Texas.

This brings us to this past week’s announcement by the world’s richest man and former Trump BFF, Elon Musk, that he’s relaunching the American Party. I say “relaunch,” because that was the name of George Wallace’s party. Wallace, who later ran for President as a Democrat and would return as Alabama’s governor, was permanently injured in an assassination attempt in 1972. Interestingly, Wallace won Democratic party primaries in Maryland (where he was shot) and Michigan following the assassination attempt. He was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. US Senator George McGovern (D-SD) went on to win the nomination and lose handily to Nixon. Wallace tried once again in 1976, but his candidacy didn’t last long, losing out to fellow southerner Jimmy Carter.

George Wallace convalesced days after surviving a 1972 assassination attempt, with his wife Lurleen, and after winning Democratic primaries in Maryland and Michigan.

Wallace made himself infamous in the early 1960s for blocking the entrance to the University of Alabama in defiance of a desegregation order. His quote from his 1963 inaugural address as Governor lives on in infamy: “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” in fierce opposition to the Civil Rights movement. Late in his life, he disavowed his racist past.

I’m not sure Musk was aware of the American Party’s history. It briefly lived on past Wallace’s 1968 campaign, which garnered nearly 10 million popular votes, by nominating former Congressman John G. Schmitz, a leader of the John Birch Society, as its nominee in 1972. However, Schmitz barely won a million votes and none in the Electoral College, angrily skulking off into obscurity after his miserable performance.

Musk has rolled out his plans for his new political party, prompted by his opposition to the “One Big Beautiful Bill” President Trump signed into law on Independence Day, via his social media platform, X. He ran a very unscientific poll showing that his legion of followers favored its creation, then followed up with his strategy - not to run someone for President in 2028, but an “extremely concentrated” force of strategically chosen US Senate and House campaigns.

He doesn’t say where he will focus his “extremely concentrated force,” to the extent it exists or when (2026 or 2028?). Like Wallace in 1968, he’s trying to tap into the notion that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two major parties, which he derides as the “uniparty,” despite evident and historic polarization. The vote and debate (if you can call it that) involving congressional action on the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last week should underscore that. Bipartisanship is on life support inside Washington’s insidious beltway.

Much of Musk’s frustration appears to stem from the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) inability to achieve promised savings of $1-2 trillion over a decade or make a significant impact on the federal bureaucracy despite a $36 trillion and growing federal debt. However, one could argue that it was impressive, given the opposition and challenges he faced. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, is planning to eliminate 30,000 jobs; USAID (the Agency for International Development) has been effectively abolished, with its remnants folded into the US State Department. The Department of Education is also practically a shell of its former self. DOGE has made considerable improvements in agency IT and related systems, breaking down silos that previously prevented agencies from sharing information (some consider this a threat).

Musk’s failure with DOGE, if you can call it that, stemmed from the haphazard manner and speed at which he worked, as well as his inability to understand how agencies functioned or were organized, or the political ramifications and implications of his methods and analyses. Mistakes and miscalculations led to corrections and claw-backs, providing opponents with ammunition to fuel negative public opinion. The swamp put up a fierce and not unsuccessful resistance.

While he tried to work with Trump officials, there was considerable pushback in many quarters. Had he utilized advisory groups of former agency leaders to navigate the swampy waters of federal agencies and led the White House to provide political cover for his effort (he was primarily left to his own devices and kept at a distance), he might have had more success. It would also have helped if Congress had given DOGE “BRAC-like” powers, referring to the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commissions of the 1990s and early 2000s, when Congress was given up-or-down votes without amendments. What’s left of DOGE can still do that, if there’s the will in Congress to make it so.

Thousands of Federal employees in the Democrat-rich DC suburbs of northern Virginia have been flocking to the town halls of Members of Congress to lament their loss of jobs and promises of permanent employment security. They remain a potent force and are adept at influencing and grooming their friends and neighbors in the Beltway media. And they’re no fans of Musk.

The USAID sign was removed from its former headquarters along 13th Street, NW, in Washington, DC.

The Trump Administration also sent $9 billion in rescissions to Congress, which has yet to act upon them (the deadline is next week). More rescissions have been promised, along with another one or two budget reconciliation bills focused on reducing federal spending.

Musk’s focus seems to be on our federal debt, and that’s admirable. But the practical impact of his dividing budget hawks, or siphoning them from the GOP (there are no budget hawks in the Democratic Party, at least in Congress, where the only federal program they don’t want to grow is the Department of Defense) is counterproductive.

At best, his gambit will help elect Democrats in close election contests, and perhaps throw control of the House and maybe the Senate. How will that help achieve his objective? And how will Musk build an effective political machine when he’s become a pariah among Democrats with his DOGE efforts and friendship with Trump, but now also drawing frowns of disapproval from a great many in MAGA-verse and others in the GOP? And it’s not as if any Members of Congress, including those more independent-minded budget hawks, such as U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) or any members of the House Freedom Caucus, are flocking to switch party registrations and join his cause (for now).

Also missing are the names of any political organizations or campaign experts to lead or implement his effort. Musk’s personalization of his new party, given his unpopularity, has attracted hurricane-force headwinds into his nascent effort. How will he recruit candidates and additional resources that can effectively compete with established party nominees and incumbents? What kind of winning message will he and his party develop? As a former House and Senate GOP political operative in 35 campaigns over nearly three decades, none of this is easy.

I bet most people don’t even know that Musk has started a new party, given the myopic nature of his rollout. There’s no evidence that he grasps the complexities, nuances, or instincts to succeed in today’s political environment. He may be great at designing and building electric vehicles, satellite-based internet systems, and launching and returning rockets (and astronauts) from space, but that’s no predictor of success in politics and government. Science and politics do not mix like peas and carrots.

Republicans will need to take Musk’s effort seriously because he has proven himself willing to spend heavily to achieve his objectives.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) provided the perfect response and gave Musk superb advice in reaction to a reporter’s question, as reported by Eric Daugherty on X.

"You need to do a BALANCED BUDGET amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and you can do that through the states. You can do it through Article 5. We've got 28 states that have approved this! There's another four or five that are on the docket. Once you hit 34, then you write an amendment and then the states are able to ratify that.

"If Elon Musk wanted to weigh in on that and work on those state legislatures, he would have a MONUMENTAL impact doing this.

"And we also need term limits for members of Congress. So you can do both of those things.

"When you do another party, especially if you're running on some of the issues that he talks about. that would end up. if he funds Senate candidates and House candidates in competitive races, that would likely end up meaning the Democrats would win all the competitive Senate and House races.

"We do have a problem in the Republican Party with these DC congressmen, they always run saying there's out of control spending and they're going to spend less and they never do it.

“Elon Musk was doing DOGE and a lot of Congress didn't want anything to do with actually adopting the DOGE cuts!

"The way you do that is expose that in a primary and show that there's another way forward.

"Honestly, if you're concerned about the debt, I wouldn't even worry about that because I don't think just electing a few better people is gonna change your trajectory.

"The incentives in Washington are going to lead to these outcomes, regardless of the outcome of elections at this point."

Musk would likely attract far more support for an issue-based effort, as described by Ron DeSantis above, or for a Convention of the States, an attempt to hold an Article V constitutional convention that could also enshrine his top issues. Whatever it produces would require 38 states to ratify it, but 19 states have already endorsed it through legislation, with activity ongoing in many more.

And if Musk is serious about a balanced budget, he could embrace an idea that’s been around since the late 1980s - a Constitutional amendment that limits federal spending and revenue to 19 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Until recent years, that’s historically where it’s rested, and today, the government consumes almost 18 percent of GDP. However, spending has grown to 24 percent of GDP. A supermajority vote of Congress would be required to run deficits.

Of course, any effort to tackle out-of-control federal spending and debt will have to reform entitlement programs that too many politicians, including President Trump, have promised not to touch—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. There are other entitlement programs worth a serious look, but these three are the biggest drivers of our growing federal debt. A BRAC-like commission to reform our entitlement programs is also a good idea, but don’t hold your breath.

Given his political distractions and how they’ve rankled his investors and board members, he might be better off focusing on them instead. They may force him to.

It’s true that in many states, registered Independents outnumber Democrats and Republicans. Many polls show that more Americans identify as Independents than with either major party. Still, I don’t see Musk’s effort getting much traction, but stay tuned. Money talks, but bullsh*t walks. We’ll see which winds up driving Musk’s political fortunes.