Of all of Elon Musk’s explosive X posts last week during his public sparring with President Trump, perhaps the one that received the least attention was his call for a third party.
Even if it had gotten more attention, it still might not have gotten much respect. The idea of a centrist third party has been a bit of a running joke in recent years. Every cycle, someone writes an op-ed calling for a moderate bid from someone like Joe Manchin, it gets widely panned, and nothing happens.
But a serious third-party candidacy may not be a joke for much longer. While there are plenty of obstacles, the conditions for a successful third party could be coming into place.
It’s worth being very clear at the outset: I’m not predicting the emergence of a third party. The conditions for pandas to breed may be in place when you put two pandas in a room, but it doesn’t mean breeding is likely. But once two pandas are in a room, it’s no longer a joke to suggest they might breed.
What’s changed? Over the last few years, a new constituency has begun to emerge. For now, it does not have a home in either party, and it is not clear that either party will be able to easily accommodate its demands. The emergence of this kind of marginalized constituency is the overlooked precondition for a third party. Mr. Musk, while hardly representative, is an example of someone who falls into this group.
What’s the group? It doesn’t have a name, but it favors things like deficit reduction, deregulation, free trade and high-skilled immigration. It may be recognizable by the labels its critics on both the left and right have already assigned: “neoliberals” or “globalists.” (Though, to be fair, this new group doesn’t necessarily idealize markets or oppose government spending.)
A decade after Donald J. Trump and Bernie Sanders banished the old neoliberals to the political wilderness, a new set of post-pandemic economic and fiscal challenges have breathed new life into old policy ideas. The combination of rising prices for goods and housing, high interest rates, a soaring national debt and pent-up demand have helped put supply side solutions, deregulation, budget cuts, immigration and more back on the map.
The new neoliberals still haven’t congealed into a coherent group, let alone a party. They still see themselves as Democrats or Republicans, and they continue to work with and within the major parties. But they believe these challenges represent a serious threat to the future of the country, even as they see a rare opportunity to unleash extraordinary growth. If their issues worsen in the years ahead and the parties can’t do enough to address their concerns, the conditions for a third party could be in place.
I can already hear gaskets blowing — neoliberals?! globalists?! — but the idea shouldn’t be dismissed.
First, though, it’s worth thinking about why competitive third parties do or don’t emerge.
Why third parties form
Third parties do not emerge simply because voters dislike the two major parties. While hardly beloved, the two parties are acceptable to a much larger share of the electorate than typically imagined (91 percent of registered voters either liked Kamala Harris or Donald J. Trump in the final New York Times/Siena College poll of 2024). For good measure, the voters who dislike both parties don’t necessarily agree on much, and the structure of America’s democracy tends to favor a two-party system.
But third parties occasionally arise anyway. Historically, this happens most often when a major constituency has demands that can’t be accommodated by the two major parties.
Every era of political history features third-party movements that fit this basic rubric.
In the antebellum era of Jacksonian Democrats and the Whigs, neither party could accommodate the demands of a growing antislavery movement. The Democrats mostly supported slavery, and many Whigs supported it as well. That gave rise to a series of third-party challenges, like the Free Soil and Liberty parties — and ultimately the Republican Party.
In the industrial era, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans could embrace the reformers who wanted to address the problems brought by industrialization. It gave rise to Greenbacks and Populist and Progressive parties that ultimately found a lasting home in the Democratic Party.
During the postwar era, neither liberal Democrats nor pro-business Republicans represented the interests of Southern white supremacists, creating an opening for the likes of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace. Later, there was an opening for populist conservatives, from Mr. Wallace to Ross Perot and eventually Mr. Trump (a third-party candidate in a certain sense) who ultimately brought these discontents into the Republican Party.
And in today’s populist era, neither a left-progressive Democratic Party nor a populist Republican Party can easily accommodate the demands of the new neoliberals.
Over the last decade, the two parties have moved in the opposite direction. The populist wings of both parties were forged in opposition to the so-called neoliberal consensus of the Reagan-Clinton-Bush years, and would hardly tolerate its reincarnation.
The Democratic Party’s alliance with anti-monopolists, environmentalists, unions and the “woke” left already pushed many of the new neoliberals away from the Democrats, especially during the Biden years. Mr. Trump might be in the process of doing the same, as his immigration, trade and tax policies threaten to increase the cost of labor and goods while increasing the size of the national debt. Mr. Musk’s path from the Democrats to the Republicans to exile (for the moment), while extreme, is nonetheless illustrative.
The conditions for a new party
I don’t want to overstate the extent that neoliberals have been marginalized during this populist era. Republicans support deregulation and spending cuts; Democrats support immigration and free trade. This potential constituency also happens to be very influential, with deep pocketbooks and powerful supporters in the media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington. It has good reason to hope it can sway the major parties.
The budding YIMBY and “abundance” movements, for instance, seem to be earning the support of a faction of powerful Democrats. Republicans, meanwhile, are still haggling over their tax and spending bill, and it remains to be seen where Mr. Trump winds up on immigration and tariffs. He’s already walked back some of his policies.
Even if the new neoliberals aren’t satisfied with the major parties, it still won’t be easy for a third party to take hold. The structure of American elections and the animosity between the two parties strongly discourage the emergence of third-party movements.
So it’s easy to imagine why a third party never emerges. But it’s also easy to imagine why the conditions for one might continue to ripen. (Warning: some necessary speculation ahead.)
Maybe over the next few years, the challenges of high interest rates, high housing costs and a growing national debt only worsen. Maybe Mr. Trump’s tariffs and immigration restrictions pull the economy into stagflation. Maybe Wall Street starts fretting about a debt crisis.
Maybe the Democrats aren’t the answer. Many of the party’s progressives don’t want any part of this agenda. Even the party’s mainstream liberals, like Senator Chris Murphy, want to win back the working class by reclaiming the mantle of populism.
And in four years, maybe the two parties aren’t merely unpopular but discredited. Maybe a struggling economy has dragged Mr. Trump’s approval ratings into the 30s, just four years after Mr. Biden’s ratings suffered the same fate.
Maybe — just maybe — this would be enough to spark a third party. If it did, this third party would have many political assets. It could count on the support of wealthy elites. It could earn the support of an array of interest groups and the elements of the private sector that stand to gain. While its policy agenda may not be extremely popular, it would be tailored to many of the most important problems facing the country.
And the critique of the two-party system would be a major asset to a third party. It would allow a relatively establishment-friendly campaign to take advantage of populist themes, and argue that it could take on the system in Washington and represent the vanguard of a popular movement to renew the country.
I’m not predicting a major third party in 2028. Not at all. It remains unlikely, much like panda cubs.
But I’m not laughing about it anymore.
Nate Cohn is The Times’s chief political analyst. He covers elections, public opinion, demographics and polling.
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