You Say a Third Party Cannot Work. Let’s Debate.

Whenever I casually mention that America finally has an opening for a viable third party, someone almost immediately cuts me off to tell me it cannot happen. Then comes the familiar advice: moderates should work within the Democratic and Republican parties.

If that is your position, I invite you to debate me. Explain what will bring those parties back to the center, and why Americans should keep investing their hopes in that outcome. But don’t base your explanation on the parties as they existed decades ago, when their broad coalitions encompassed the left, center, and right. That system gave moderate voters a political home and left little need for a third party.

I am a political strategist with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science and doctoral coursework at UCLA. My studies focused on American government, political institutions, and electoral systems. I also spent decades building and improving organizations as an entrepreneur, management consultant, technologist, and Fortune 100 chief information officer.

My research over the past few years led me to write The Opening. Its starting point is a Congress that has become a dead branch of government when it comes to its essential responsibility of solving national problems through durable legislation. Today, our presidents effectively fill that vacuum with executive actions, taking on decisions that must belong in Congress under the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Changing presidents or congressional majorities will not repair the system that produces this failure. Congress has broken down because the parties have abandoned cooperation, compromise, and moderation. My research identifies five forces that have radically transformed both parties and driven them away from the moderate center.

1. Campaign money rewards ideological intensity and flows toward the parties’ extremes.

2. Partisan cable news profits from political anger and feeds the division.

3. Innovation, particularly the Internet, allowed parties to replace local organizations with marketing agencies. Instead of building consensus, they could concentrate on mobilizing committed partisans who turn out to vote.

4. Gerrymandering shields incumbents from competitive general elections.

5. In safe districts, compromising with the other party has become a potential career-ending risk because a challenger can use it to unseat an incumbent in the primary.

Together, these forces reward confrontation, punish cooperation, and drive moderates out. The collapse is clearly measurable: Pew Research Center found that Congress went from more than 160 moderate Democrats and Republicans in 1971–72 to just about two dozen in 2022 (Pew Research Center).

My conclusion is that both parties have permanently abandoned the moderate center. They cannot return without dismantling the donor relationships, electoral incentives, and political machinery their organizations depend on like a drug.

What evidence today shows that either political party will stop pandering to its fringes and start serving the moderate center? Where is the commitment to shape policies and put forward candidates that appeal to these voters?

The moderate center has not disappeared from the country. Gallup found that 33% of Americans described their political views as moderate in 2025, while a record 45% did not identify as either Democrats or Republicans, compared with 27% who identified with each party (Gallup).

Taken together, these trends leave moderate Americans in need of a new political home because both parties have abandoned them. That creates an unprecedented opening for a third party in modern America, followed by the question of what kind of organization can serve them.

We should also be clear about what kind of third party we are discussing. In my book, I distinguish between a niche party organized around a particular ideology, such as the Libertarians, and a contender party built to compete for governing power, such as the Forward Party. I am proposing a contender party built as a broad, durable organization that can earn support across political differences, rather than another presidential campaign built around a personality, such as Ross Perot.

A viable contender party requires three conditions: a defining problem the existing system cannot resolve, a substantial body of voters without a satisfactory political home, and an enduring organization capable of bringing them together. The first two create the opening; the third must seize it.

I founded the Centercratic Party because my research revealed that opportunity. Its purpose is to help restore a functioning legislature and give politically displaced moderate Americans a political home.

Our strategy begins with building in 2026 for targeted House races in 2028, not a presidential campaign. A small group of legislators in a closely divided House can help negotiate legislation long before the party wins a national majority.

There are five unique debate topics here that must be tackled in order:

1. Has Congress become a dead branch of government?

2. Have both parties permanently abandoned the moderate center?

3. Has that abandonment created an unprecedented opening for a third party in modern America?

4. Is the Centercratic Party’s design viable?

5. Can the Centercratic Party become the political home for America’s moderates?

We may agree on none, one, or more, and that’s perfectly fine, but we need to take them in order since each topic builds upon the previous one.

If you believe the two existing parties can give moderate Americans a political home, I invite you to bring your evidence, and I’ll bring mine. Let’s examine what has changed and whether it gives us a better way forward.

I welcome readers, political scientists, journalists, and podcast hosts to a friendly, fact-based debate, live or in writing. The first four chapters of The Opening present the diagnosis and opportunity; the remaining chapters present our proposed answer.

There is much more to this argument than I can cover in one article. Visit The Opening’s website for previews of all eight chapters, a fuller explanation of the book’s case, and background on my research and experience.