Eight-party America

[AltWorlder]

This isn't meant to be a necessarily plausible scenario.  What I'm wondering if it's possible to represent all four corners of the Political Matrix.  For simplicity's sake, I'm just co-opting already existing parties, plus adding a few.  Note that I'm not trying to completely model this after the political landscape, i.e. I'm not able to shoehorn every major interest group/voting demographic into this.  It's more of a way of representing the four fundamental political ideologies based on the Political Matrix.

Democratic Party: The McGovern Coalition.  Pretty much the Dems of the real world, except perhaps with bits and pieces filed off.

Green Party: Same as our world, except perhaps with social democrats, peace and freedom types, and more pragmatic socialists who have left the other third parties in order to join a more viable side.

Republican Party: The Reagan Coalition.  The GOP of the real world except really missing certain portions that have gone to the other alternative parties.

Constitution Party: A less fringe version of the far right we know.  Perhaps Pat Buchanan had really joined them instead of taking over Reform.  Paleocons with a theocratic bent, plus some unrealized theocratic dreams.  But somehow moderated to have more appeal, probably by appealing more to the grassroots movement conservatives that populate places such as FreeRepublic.

Reform Party: Imagine Ross Perot hadn't jumped ship, and remained in control of his personal vehicle.  The Reform Party is pretty much the centrist party with insurgent intentions but a rather bland platform- fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, campaign finance reform, moderation in social issues, etc.  However, that's the sort of different-but-not-scary-different thing that Independents might vote for every so often.  This Reform Party would actually live past the Clinton administration without falling apart, and have the slightly libertarian (probably more 'classical liberal') bent to appeal to people such as Schwarzenegger or Bloomberg.

Libertarian Party: You know 'em.

Populist Party: Composed of the more moderate but not liberal elements of the Evangelical Movement (think Rick Warren), plus conservative minorities, Southern/Midwesterners who are tired of Republican economic policies, maybe.  In any case, this party would appeal to a lot of people in both of the two major parties right now (much like a moderate libertarian party would), but in reality they're unable to breakaway and form their own movement.

Nationalist Party: Lou Dobbs type nativists.  Or perhaps Huey Long type populists.  Not adverse to government intervention to protect their personal interests.  Perhaps more socially conservative than the Populists, but their extremism is mostly related to the immigration issue.

I make no attempt to explain how there could be eight parties, nor even to guess at how big each party would be, thus I don't even know which ones would be the two major parties.  I would guess that there would be two parties, and several minor parties, but said minor parties wouldn't exactly be as insignificant as say the People's Socialist Liberation Marxist Party out of Podunk College, Liberalartston.

Just imagine the matrix:

                                                                       Nationalist Party


                                                                       Populist Party



Green Party                     Democratic Party                   Republican Party               Constitution Party



                                                                        Reform Party


                                                                        Libertarian Party

[AltWorlder]

It's fixed.

[AltWorlder]

So- does anyone think that I'm missing any possible political ideologies/configurations?

Also, I just realized that my visual map was following the Political Compass, not the Matrix.  The Matrix one would look more like this:

Nationalist Party                                                                     Constitution Party




            Populist Party                                        Republican Party




            Democratic Party                            Reform Party



Green Party                                                                Libertarian Party             

[AltWorlder]

Any ideas as how that could work?

[AltWorlder]

That sounds about right.  I had imagined the "inner" parties to be more likely to be mainstream and thus bigger and able to appeal to more people.  The "outer" parties are more ideological and fringe.  It's not unlike the situation right now with the Greens, Libertarians, and Constitution Party.  I'd have to say that more people are indifferent or in favor of moderate interventionism abroad than those third parties.

[AltWorlder]

Anyone else interested in this?

[AltWorlder]

Twelve years later, does this still configuration still make any sense?

[AltWorlder]

Well the Reform Party is dead

Yeah, but I'm just coopting the name and attaching it to the more or less the original Perot platform of "radical centrism with balanced budgets and no NAFTA". I find the Alliance Party name to be really generic.

Alt-Reichers are mainly content running in militia groups and voting straight R for now.

Yeah, Trump has given Nationalists a home there. Guess we'll have to see it shakes out in the next 4-8 years. That said, even outside of this hypothetical, it makes me wonder if disaffected Trumpists (neo-paleocons?), national conservatives (assuming if the GOP goes back towards its business establishment/Tea Party small-gov't roots), and alt-lite/alt-rightists will pull a Howard Philips and found something like the Constitution Party or the American Independent Party but for modern American (Jacksonian?) Trumpist nationalism, or even take over those increasingly shell-like "parties" for the ballot access. (And then, like the CP, create a bunch of weird split-offs that litter the parties page on Politics1).

But yeah like you said, they seem mostly interested in forming paramilitaries, dutifully voting for Republicans (particularly MAGA/Qanon extremist candidates), or running YouTube personality grifts than creating a third party. Maybe that goes to show running third parties or independent candidacies have fallen in terms of being a way to express political dissatisfaction compared to the early '90s or even in 2000.

Nowadays in reality, the American Solidarity Party is sort of like the Populists, except based mostly around Catholics instead of moderate Evangelicals.

religious boomers are going to die out sometime in the coming years.

Post-Bush, the evangelicals seem quite spent as a political force and Trump has forced a lot of soul-searching, but their bloc is still around for a while. I think they'll take longer to decline than the paleocons.

I don’t think an alternative centrist party is going to make it in this environment, or ever tbh.

Yeah true. fwiw, when I originally created this back in 2008 I wasn't really thinking that it'd be a realistic split of the American electorate, more like trying to force eight parties based on the political compass + the preexisting third parties. That said, I can see a sort of centrist technocratic (both wonkish and reddit science boosterism) party gaining ground centered around personalities like Andrew Yang, Elon Musk, and other similar figures.

People's Party: Based on agrarianism and labor unions. Goal would be to revitalize the Midwest, Rust Belt and the Plains. Sort of a big tent party.

I'd love for such a new Farmer-Labor Party to exist, but seems like first you need revitalization of that space. Also, they'd have a lot in common with Progressives; it's not the '30s anymore where there would've been more of an urban-rural leftist split.