I don’t know if there is a polite way of putting this, but 3rd parties are a bit crazy. It’s not that 3rd parties are inherently bad, but we’re a first past the post system. 3rd parties tend to act as spoilers to whichever party they are closer to. Until the spoiler effect is fixed, you have to be a little crazy to run as a 3rd party candidate.
And like you mentioned, ranked choice is one of the options to making 3rd parties viable. But the leadership for the democrats is luke warm on it and republicans are actively working against it. It’s going to take a bipartisan grassroots effort to drag these curmudgeons into a better system.
I don’t know if there is a polite way of putting this, but 3rd parties are a bit crazy. It’s not that 3rd parties are inherently bad, but we’re a first past the post system. 3rd parties tend to act as spoilers to whichever party they are closer to. Until the spoiler effect is fixed, you have to be a little crazy to run as a 3rd party candidate.
And like you mentioned, ranked choice is one of the options to making 3rd parties viable. But the leadership for the democrats is luke warm on it and republicans are actively working against it. It’s going to take a bipartisan grassroots effort to drag these curmudgeons into a better system.