Why Can’t We Have More Parties? with Lee Drutman

Summary

Episode Summary: "Why Can’t We Have More Parties?" with Lee Drutman

Podcast Information:

• Title: Smart Girl Dumb Questions
• Host: Nayeema Raza
• Episode: Why Can’t We Have More Parties? with Lee Drutman
• Release Date: July 18, 2025

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions, host Nayeema Raza delves into the complexities of the American two-party system with political scientist Lee Drutman. The conversation explores the historical foundations of the two-party system, the systemic barriers preventing the emergence of viable third parties, and the potential impact of Elon Musk's proposed "America Party."

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Historical Context of the Two-Party System

Lee Drutman begins by tracing the origins of America's two-party system back to the late 18th century. He explains how the initial political divisions arose from debates between agrarian interests, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and urban industrial interests, championed by Alexander Hamilton.

Lee Drutman [08:17]: "The original Democratic Republican Party represented the agrarian farmers, while the Federalist Party aligned with urban industrialists."

Drutman highlights how these early factions eventually solidified into the modern Democratic and Republican parties, emphasizing that the parties have undergone significant transformations over time. Notably, the Republican and Democratic parties of the 19th century differ markedly from their contemporary counterparts, with shifts in geographic strongholds and ideological bases.

Drutman [12:57]: "Look at the electoral map of 1896—it’s completely reversed from today’s map."

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Systemic Barriers to Third Parties

Electoral System: First Past the Post and Winner Takes All

A major focus of the discussion is the "first past the post" (FPTP) electoral system, which Drutman argues inherently favors a two-party system. Under FPTP, the candidate with the most votes wins, often without securing a majority, which discourages voters from supporting third-party candidates perceived as unlikely to win.

Drutman [18:05]: "FPTP is a shorthand for whoever gets the most votes wins. It’s like a horse race—first past the post wins."

Electoral College

The conversation also touches on the Electoral College's role in reinforcing the two-party system. Each state allocates its electoral votes on a winner-takes-all basis, further marginalizing third-party efforts.

Drutman [24:57]: "The Electoral College reinforces the winner-takes-all approach, which propagates the two-party system."

Ballot Access Rules

While ballot access laws vary by state, Drutman suggests that these rules are a barrier to third parties, albeit not the most significant one. The primary challenges lie in the resources required to navigate these bureaucratic hurdles.

Drutman [25:49]: "Ballot access varies across states and doesn't strongly correlate with third-party activities. It’s a barrier, but not the major one."

Campaign Finance and Money's Role

Drutman emphasizes the disproportionate influence of money in American politics, especially post-Citizens United. He explains how campaign finance rules and economies of scale advantage the two major parties over insurgent third parties.

Drutman [26:10]: "Campaign finance rules privilege the two parties in how they collect, organize, and spend money. Parties get discounted ad rates and fundraising advantages."

Voter Behavior and Turnout

Low voter turnout and disengagement further entrench the two-party system. Drutman notes that many voters feel their choices are limited, leading to a reluctance to support third-party candidates for fear of "wasting" their vote.

Drutman [27:10]: "Most places are solidly red or blue, so your vote doesn’t matter much, leading to disengagement and low turnout."

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Current Political Climate and Negative Partisanship

Drutman and Raza discuss the rise of negative partisanship, where voters are more motivated by opposition to the other party than by support for their own. This intensifies the "doom loop," a feedback cycle of escalating rhetoric and polarization that stifles cooperation and reinforces the two-party dominance.

Drutman [31:43]: "It's an escalation of rhetoric where each party justifies extreme tactics in reaction to the other, reinforcing negative partisanship."

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Elon Musk's Attempt to Start a Third Party

Timeline of Events

The episode chronicles Elon Musk's attempts to disrupt the two-party system by proposing the "America Party." Starting with a May tweet criticizing President Trump, Musk conducts a survey in June gauging public support for a new political party. With significant responses favoring the creation of this party, Musk formally announces its formation.

Raza [53:02]: "Elon Musk tweets out a survey asking if it's time to create a new political party, which receives substantial support."

Potential Impact

Drutman remains skeptical but acknowledges the unprecedented influence Musk could wield due to his social media presence and financial resources. He outlines the logistical challenges Musk would face, including the need for sustained organization, candidate recruitment, and overcoming systemic barriers.

Drutman [53:56]: "Starting a third party is not ridiculous, but it's incredibly difficult without electoral reform. Musk would need to recruit charismatic candidates and invest heavily in organization."

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Strategies for a Successful Third Party

Drutman suggests that for a third party to gain traction, it should focus on electing candidates in competitive districts where they can act as spoilers or balance points between the major parties. He also highlights the potential of fusion voting, particularly in states like New York, where multiple parties can endorse the same candidate, allowing third parties to gain influence without solely relying on winning seats.

Drutman [64:48]: "Targeting swing states and competitive districts provides the highest leverage for a third party. Fusion voting could also reintroduce multi-party dynamics."

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Lee Drutman's Vision for Political Reform

In concluding the conversation, Drutman emphasizes the need for systemic electoral reforms to facilitate a more pluralistic and representative democracy. He advocates for proportional representation and fusion voting as steps toward breaking the two-party monopoly, fostering a political environment where diverse voices can thrive and collaborate.

Drutman [70:15]: "Books like mine aim to change how people view the political system, encouraging a move towards multi-party democracy for a better functioning government."

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Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive exploration of why the United States remains entrenched in a two-party system and the significant hurdles that third parties face in gaining legitimacy and power. While acknowledging the challenges, Drutman remains cautiously optimistic that with strategic efforts and potential reforms, the American political landscape could evolve to accommodate more diverse political voices.

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Notable Quotes:

• Lee Drutman [08:17]: "The original Democratic Republican Party represented the agrarian farmers, while the Federalist Party aligned with urban industrialists."
• Drutman [18:05]: "FPTP is a shorthand for whoever gets the most votes wins. It’s like a horse race—first past the post wins."
• Drutman [24:57]: "The Electoral College reinforces the winner-takes-all approach, which propagates the two-party system."
• Drutman [26:10]: "Campaign finance rules privilege the two parties in how they collect, organize, and spend money. Parties get discounted ad rates and fundraising advantages."
• Drutman [31:43]: "It's an escalation of rhetoric where each party justifies extreme tactics in reaction to the other, reinforcing negative partisanship."
• Drutman [70:15]: "Books like mine aim to change how people view the political system, encouraging a move towards multi-party democracy for a better functioning government."

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This episode serves as an insightful guide for listeners interested in understanding the entrenched two-party system in the U.S., the challenges faced by third parties, and the potential avenues for political reform and diversification.

Transcript

[Naeem Raza]

This episode is brought to you by JCPenney. And if you've been to JCPenney recently. Yes, JCPenney, you'll know it's becoming the way to find good clothes for prices that still make sense. They've got hidden gems for everyone and every budget, with deals and rewards that actually make a dent. If you already shop JCPenney, you feel like you know a secret. But if not, it's time to ask. Wait, am I sleeping on JCPenney? Shopjcpenney.com Yes, JCPenney. What is a doom loop exactly?

[Lee Drutman]

You've probably had this experience where you have this microphone that it starts picking up the sound from the speaker and then it keeps cycling through until it blows out your ears and blows out your speakers.

[Naeem Raza]

And that's where you think our politics are?

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, pretty much.

[Naeem Raza]

Very upliftingly.

[Lee Drutman]

Well, you know, I'm just a realist here.

[Naeem Raza]

Smart Girl, Dumb Questions. Welcome to Smart Girl, Dumb Questions. I'm Naeem Ereza, and today we're nerding out about parties, the political kind. How did we end up with these two? When will a third party finally make a dent? And is what's standing in the way a billion dollars or, I don't know, $400 billion? It's a big topic of conversation these days because President Trump and Elon Musk are in a feud and the world's richest man is proposing a third party. He's calling it the America Party. I have the perfect guest to geek out with me about this. His name is Lee Drotman. He's a lecturer at John Hopkins, a fellow at New America, and the author of the book Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop. Optimistic, I know. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for being here, Lee. It's great to have you.

[Lee Drutman]

It's great to be having this conversation.

[Naeem Raza]

You chose the worst week, I think, to go on vacation. You're the third party guy. And Elon Musk is tweeting out surveys like he's like a galaxy. And you were in Maine.

[Lee Drutman]

I was, but it was a very special vacation because it was actually my mom's 75th birthday.

[Naeem Raza]

Happy birthday to your mom. That is more important.

[Lee Drutman]

So it was a big family vacation week.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay, great. So I want to divide this conversation into two big buckets. The first, I kind of want to have a diagnostic conversation to understand why two parties exist in the first place, whether more of these parties would help or hurt us. And then I want to get to the now. Talk about if Elon's political shakeup is going to grant you your wish and the wish of many Americans for more parties that worked. Yeah, you're very well studied in the world of politics and policy. Why, of all the things that you could have been nerdy about, did you choose to be nerdy about this thing, the two party system?

[Lee Drutman]

I'll give you a bit of the origin story here, please. I guess it all goes back to when I was in graduate school, the University of California at Berkeley, and I got really interested in the topic of corporate lobbying. So I went to Washington D.C. talked to a bunch of lobbyists, wrote a dissertation, eventually wrote a book, came out in 2015 called the Business of America is Lobbying. At some point I realized that maybe the more pressing problem was this increasing hyper partisanship in our politics. And that was what was really making Congress dysfunctional. And it was 2016 and Donald Trump strode onto the scene and like a lot of people say, well, how did this, how did this happen? And I started to realized that something really fundamentally had changed in our political system that for a long time we had these two parties that were really these broad overlapping coalitions. You have liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats alongside liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. So it was something more like a four party system. And it really collapsed. There had been a kind of collapse of dimensionality and a bifurcation of the party system and it had really oriented around these geographic cultural lines. And yeah, it seemed, seemed pretty bad, seemed pretty destructive. And I said, all right, there's some way to correct this. And you know, it was, you know, 2016, so there were a lot of folks in Washington like, oh, we just got to get people having dinner together and more bipartisanship.

[Naeem Raza]

Wow. Very kumbaya.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, it was very, very kumbaya. I said, I'm not sure that's, that's going to work. Seemed to me that there were really broad dynamics that had been developing for many decades and had been playing out through our electoral system, which at the time, like many Americans, I just sort of took for granted. Like an ignorant American, I said, oh, I think they do things differently in other countries. How does that work? So I start reading the comparative political science literature, which I hadn't really read that much. And I said, oh, interesting. In other countries they use their system of proportional representation and they have shifting coalition governments and oh wait, actually everybody who studies comparative electoral systems says that we have the worst electoral system. And so, well, now this makes sense. So the book that I published in 2020, breaking the two party doom, the Case for Multi Party Democracy in America was really a reflection of that intellectual journey and, and becomes a super nerdy rabbit hole to go down.

[Naeem Raza]

So you go to Washington to talk about corporate lobbying. Donald Trump becomes president. This wakes up a question in you about how does our electoral system works, sends you down an international rabbit hole and you come out with this book. A lot of people had this question predating Donald Trump. For the last 20 years or so, between 50 to 60% of Americans have said that we need a third party. So this is the majority of Americans saying this question. We live in a country where 43% of Americans are independent. Right.

[Lee Drutman]

So they register as independents. Yeah.

[Naeem Raza]

Yes. You clarify that because.

[Lee Drutman]

Or really identify as independents when polled and said are you a Republican, Democrat or independent? How do you classify yourself?

[Naeem Raza]

But then they go and vote, presumably because they don't want to waste their vote.

[Lee Drutman]

Yes. And often that's the only options on a given ballot.

[Naeem Raza]

And yet I think a lot of people, including myself, don't really know the history of why we're here in the first place. So I want to take a six minute creative eddy into history.

[Lee Drutman]

All right, how far back do we.

[Naeem Raza]

Want to like I'm talking Hamilton times, like where did the two parties come from? Was it a beef between Washington and Jefferson? Why do we have two parties?

[Lee Drutman]

More like between Hamilton and Jefferson. Oh, all right. So it's 1787. A bunch of dudes are in this hot room in Philadelphia and they're furiously trying to figure out this constitution.

[Naeem Raza]

We call it the room where it happens in musical literature.

[Lee Drutman]

Kept it very secretive. They even covered the windows so nobody would know what's going on. And they developed this somewhat confusing plan of our US Constitutional system. And you know, there it is, you know, three branches, a house directly elected in single in, in constituencies. Actually some of them are multi member and then a Senate appointed and then a president with the electoral college business. Now the system of elections at the time was, was, it was, you know, pretty, pretty rudimentary. Right. You just had whoever gets the most votes win. Yeah. At the start of the framers say, oh, parties are bad. We don't want to have parties. Although, you know, Madison does in federalist number 10. Very clearly say there are going to be factions. Maybe that's different than parties in, in his head. But this whole idea of a national legislature is actually going to prevent tyranny because it's going to bring all this diversity of interests together. So Madison is sort of this theorist of pluralism and diversity, but he thinks parties are bad because they sort of can only envision this idea that there's going to be two parties.

[Naeem Raza]

And why doesn't Madison like that idea of two parties?

[Lee Drutman]

Well, because there's going to be one party that's dominant, one party that's in the minority. And then the minority part is going to say this is not legitimate. And the majority party is going to say, well, we control all the power, so why should there be any opposition?

[Naeem Raza]

Wow, this sounds like foreshadowing.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, they were pretty good political theorists given what they were working with. So they, they say, all right, well you know, so we're not going to have political parties, they're going to be bad. Now you get to governing and suddenly there's this fight about the bank of the United States, which I guess people know from Pendleton the Musical a little bit.

[Naeem Raza]

Yes.

[Lee Drutman]

Whether the we're going to have this centralized banking industrial system or whether we're going to have this farm based system. And Madison and Jefferson are on the side of the agrarian farmer. Hamilton is on the side of the urban industrialist. And that becomes the initial division in U.S. politics. And it turns out that if you want to organize a legislature, a political party is a very effective way to organize a legislature. So Madison and Jefferson organized the original Democratic Republican Party. It also turns out to be a very good way to run elections and say, you know, here's a candidate. It also turns out to be a very effective way to organize a media system. And there are papers that are on the Democratic Republic inside and the Federalist side.

[Naeem Raza]

So to be clear, they set up Madison and Jefferson set up the Democratic Republican Party at the time. That's one party. Yes, correct. And that's the one party that's going to represent the farm dudes, not the city people.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, yeah, okay. That's the Agrarian Party.

[Naeem Raza]

It's confusing because the Republican Democratic Party of course is the name of the two parties separate that we have now. So in today's term, what was the Republican Democratic Party of today? Was it more Republican or more Democrat? More elephant, more donkey?

[Lee Drutman]

I mean, it's confusing because the, the parties have changed a bit. So the Federalist Party eventually just collapses. And you have this brief period in the 1820s when it's basically a one party system often known as the era of good feelings. James Monroe was present, but a one party system is actually a hidden multi party system. And then you get this election of 1824 which, and it was where John Quincy Adams becomes president even though he got fewer votes than Andrew Jackson, but nobody had a majority. And it went to the House. Jackson's folks are furious. And so Jackson and Martin Van Buren organized what comes to be the modern Democratic Party, which is a anti elite party, anti establishment party. And then of course, Jackson becomes President. Then the Whigs are the organized response to Jackson.

[Naeem Raza]

They're, they're like the pro establishment, pro elite.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, kind of. Although nobody's really pro elite in America.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah, that is the thing about America. It's very funny because I just landed from London and I feel like in the United States everybody's like stretching in their family history to tell you about who struggled to come here. Like, you'll be talking to a very wealthy person, but they'll tell you about their great grandfather in the uk you'll be talking to somebody who's kind of like house poor these days. They have an estate and they'll be telling you about their great grandfather who was very wealthy. It's completely different relationship to institutions and establishment culture.

[Lee Drutman]

Yes. So there's very, very anti elite history. So I mean, in some ways, like they're both kind of anti parties, but there is this kind of structured two party competition. So by the 1840s, 1850s. But of course there is a suppressed issue in the political conflict, which is slavery. And as you get westward expansion, it becomes a tension within the parties. It splits both of the parties, but it' splits the Whigs more aggressively and they can't hold together between the northern and the Southern Whigs. And so you have the emergence of the modern Republican party in the 1850s and then Lincoln becomes President, we have the Civil War and you know, pretty much the Republican and Democratic Party have existed. Although, you know, what's really fascinating is when you look at electoral maps from that era, it's like completely reversive today. Like, you know, look at the electoral map of 1896, for example, which, you know, if people really want to know, I just was.

[Naeem Raza]

Lee, that was so interesting that you bring that up. Yes. Tell us about the electoral map of 1896. Is it just completely different? Red, blue, swap.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, it's completely reversed.

[Naeem Raza]

Wow.

[Lee Drutman]

Of what it is.

[Naeem Raza]

So a state like California would have been red in that map.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah.

[Naeem Raza]

And then Texas was blue.

[Lee Drutman]

I mean, the entire south was Democratic after the Civil War for, you know, until the 1960s. Because the Republicans were the party of Lincoln. Right, right. And just as a, a fun, fun fact, in 1936, there were two states that voted against FDR. They were Maine and Vermont. So Vermont was the Republican stronghold and in fact the Senate seat that was held longest consistently by a Republican. It was the Vermont. Is the Vermont Senate seat that's now held by Bernie Sanders. It was held from 1854 to 2001 when Jim Jeffords switched from Republican to independent continuously by Republicans.

[Naeem Raza]

That's so funny. So, okay, so I just want to quickly break down the history a little bit as I understood it. And then we're going to play a game called it's kind of like presidential wife swap, except I want to know what party they would be part of now. So just in terms of the history. So it took slavery to kind of this big issue of slavery to kind of push the Republicans out of the wigs.

[Lee Drutman]

That's the last time. Yeah. Last time you've had a successful third party is when slavery split the be wigs.

[Naeem Raza]

And that party was the Republican party and the Whigs went away. What a good name for a party. I wonder what animal they would have been.

[Lee Drutman]

Maybe an owl.

[Naeem Raza]

An owl?

[Lee Drutman]

Why not?

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah, that feels about right, actually. Like an owl with some big glasses. Nothing like a donkey. So this, this history of the morphing parties is really complicated. So Thomas Jefferson in 1801-1809, he was president. He was a Democrat, Republican, which today sounds like a little by. I would say in relationship terms. Today, he would be a Democrat or Republican.

[Lee Drutman]

See, it's hard. It is. I mean, there were certain.

[Naeem Raza]

What do you think? You're an expert. What do you think?

[Lee Drutman]

I mean, the Democrats have claimed him for a long time, but I don't know, I mean, he might be more of a Republican today, honestly, because, you know, very sort of. Sort of much more pro agrarian, limited national government.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay.

[Lee Drutman]

But, you know, I'll put, just to. Just to be provocative, let's. Let's put him in the Republican category today.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay. We love. We love provocation on smart girl. Dumb questions. And I can say I won't be able to fact check this with Tommy, so I think you're good. Abraham Lincoln, 1860s, was a Republican. In this new third party today, he.

[Lee Drutman]

Would be, I think, pretty solidly a Democrat. He got kind of woke.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah. Teddy Roosevelt, early 1900s, he was a Republican and then he ran as an independent. He of course became president out of an assassination, I believe. I didn't grow up in the US So my history is bad, but most.

[Lee Drutman]

Americans don't know that.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay. And then he ran as an independent, then as a progressive. Right.

[Lee Drutman]

Progressive. Yeah, yeah.

[Naeem Raza]

So today would Teddy Roosevelt be so progressive?

[Lee Drutman]

1912, Teddy Roosevelt would be a populist.

[Naeem Raza]

Democrat, like a Zoron mamdani. Kind of.

[Lee Drutman]

Or maybe like a Bernie Sanders, the vintage Teddy Roosevelt think would be a bit more of a Republican, although, you know, a much more moderate Republican.

[Naeem Raza]

Like a Bush one? Yeah, yeah, like a Papa Bush Republican. Okay. All right. And in that world. What about Dwight Eisenhower? He was a Republican.

[Lee Drutman]

He was. Although nobody knew what his political affiliation was. And the Democrats were trying to recruit him to run as their candidate in 1952 as well.

[Naeem Raza]

He was just such a good soldier. Right. He came from the army and people.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was. He was like the ultimate centrist president. Like, he'd be like the no labels president.

[Naeem Raza]

Oh, great. They needed him. That's why they didn't work out. The Nobles. Yeah.

[Lee Drutman]

Unfortunately he wasn't. He wasn't answering his, his emails. So. Yes.

[Naeem Raza]

You know, he's probably still on AOL mail. That's why.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah.

[Naeem Raza]

Are politicians like people, like, the older they get, the more conservative they get? Except for Bernie Sanders.

[Lee Drutman]

Well, I think, I mean, politicians are people. Yeah. They're just people in a particular environment. I don't know if they get more conservative. I think it's kind of a myth that people get more conservative as they age. People just get more of what they always have been as they age. I think it's a bit of a myth that people become more conservative as they age.

[Naeem Raza]

This gets back to the more systemic question. So we've kind of covered the history, but why are we stuck with two parties when this isn't etched into the Constitution? What are the systemic realities? And here I want to do a bit of like a Political Economy 101 where we get definitional and systematic in a way that you do in your book. Because we always hear this term that America has a first past the post winner takes all system.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah.

[Naeem Raza]

Let's break it down. So what is first past the post?

[Lee Drutman]

Okay, so first past the post is a very antiquated term that is just a shorthand for whoever gets the most votes wins. It's like a horse racing thing. Right? Like whoever gets first past the post wins.

[Naeem Raza]

So first past the post is about plurality. It's like you have the most people in this camp. It's not about majority, which is most of the people have ascribed to this camp.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, I mean, I mean, functionally it's the same thing because almost all, all of our single winner elections are won by a majority. In fact, most of them are won by such a lopsided majority that they're not even competitive. So, you know, I mean, definitionally it's it's plurality but practically majority winners are everywhere and it's really hyper, hyper majority is really the problem and what is.

[Naeem Raza]

The alternative to a first past the post system? Is it ranked choice voting?

[Lee Drutman]

No. Well, so ranked choice voting is one alternative but it's a, it's a pretty limited change, right? It just says we have to make sure that, that we get the majority winner so a plurality winner needs to be a majority winner after all the votes are transferred and yes, you do.

[Naeem Raza]

Multiple rounds and you keep on like transferring up to the top now practically.

[Lee Drutman]

In like 95% of the elections, the majority winner is also the plurality winner the main problem is not that we have a crisis of plurality winners is that we have a crisis of uncontested or uncompetitive elections that are really hyper majority winners so I once upon a time was very enthusiastic and hopeful about Rancho's voting Now I'm just kind of, it just feels like it just doesn't really change anything, it doesn't get to the core of the problem which is the system of single winner elections that leave us with only two options.

[Naeem Raza]

This is interesting. So you've moved away from thinking the problem is the first past the post part of it to thinking the problem is the winner takes all part of it. Increasingly that is helpful to know so winner takes all. This is the idea that if you win through whatever system there is, whether it's first past the post or whether it's ranked choice voting where you're hearing the candidates and they're transferring their votes, then the winner takes that whole place, whether it's that place is the district or whether that place is the country in the case of the national election. And the alternative to that would be.

[Lee Drutman]

A system of proportional representation which is widely used throughout the world so this is like the UK So actually, so, so it's important to make a distinction here because actually, actually the UK is also a first past the post system with single winter elections I just want to clarify something because I think this is a common misconception that you need to have a parliamentary system in order to have a proportional system. Okay, we think of like Germany or Denmark or Sweden or the Netherlands, these are, these are proportional parliamentary systems in which the head of the legislature is also the head of the state. There's no separately elected president now so a proportional system is how the legislature gets elected so here in the US we divide up, we have 435 House members and we divide that up into 435 separate constituencies arbitrarily Defined by having equal size, although the lines get drawn and red drawn. So the idea of having a constituency sort of makes no sense. For an extreme version of the opposite, you go in the Netherlands, where the entire country is one electoral district. So when you vote in a Dutch.

[Naeem Raza]

Election, because it's a small country, it's.

[Lee Drutman]

About 20 million people.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay, it's not a small country.

[Lee Drutman]

Sorry. Yeah, I mean, it's small compared to the US so it's 150 seats. So you vote for a party. It's an open list system, which is the most common type of proportional system. And you can vote for a party and vote for a candidate within that party, and then that party gets seats in the legislature based on the proportion of votes it gets. So it's the most permissive portional parliamentary system in the world in that your party could get less than 1% of the vote and you could get a seat in the legislature. So there, there are like 13, but.

[Naeem Raza]

You couldn't get less than half a percent of the vote because then you wouldn't get one of the 150 seats. Right, that's right. To get.

[Lee Drutman]

Okay, that's right. So the cutoff is I think like 0.67% if I have my math right. So there's like an animal rights party and you know, a few, few smaller parties. And yeah, it's probably too many parties.

[Naeem Raza]

But everyone in the country votes for every one of those parties, irrespective of where they live or anything, can vote.

[Lee Drutman]

For one of those parties. And then. Right, so, so a party that gets, you know, you know, like 1, 1% of the vote could get one suit.

[Naeem Raza]

So what this, the equivalent of this would be like there are, you know, whatever. Look at our House of Representatives. And then anyone in the nation could vote for any buddy in the House of Representatives, regardless of what state they're living in. And like, if you're an animal lover in Utah and an animal lover in California, you're still voting. And there could be an animal lover seat or 10 of them in the House.

[Lee Drutman]

Right, Correct.

[Naeem Raza]

By the way, I think this should be the third party, the animal lover party. That seems like what is going to bring America together. Have you seen people and their puppies?

[Lee Drutman]

People love puppies.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah, the puppy loves. And some people love cats. And therefore it will always be a two party system.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, it's true. And some people live neither. So you can imagine a state like Massachusetts, which has currently nine members, all are Democrats, but Massachusetts is not 100% Democratic state. So there's A disproportionality there. Say the entire state of Massachusetts becomes one district with electing nine representatives. In theory, you could have nine different parties representing the state of Massachusetts. And you know, people would, you know, if, I mean it's, it's unlikely because usually you have that the math is going to break down perfectly like that. But the idea is that you would get a broader diversity of parties and then they would, as they do in every multi party system, they form coalitions and they figure out how to build a, a legislative majority to operate the legislature.

[Naeem Raza]

Right. And we're gonna come back to the idea of coalitions and competition in a second. But first, let's do a quick lightning round of, you know, beyond first past the post and winner takes all. I want to know there are kind of a few other structural limitations. What role does the electoral college system play in kind of propagating a two party system?

[Lee Drutman]

So it plays some role because it reinforces the winner take all. The way we do the electoral college is that each state allocates its votes in a winner take all way. So it has, it has some effect in propagating the two party system.

[Naeem Raza]

What role does kind of what I would call ground fair play. This is, you know, local parties keeping people off the ballot, having all these bureaucratic rules for how you get on the ballot and you just needing party organization to even run to be, say a council member in Oklahoma or Ohio or wherever.

[Lee Drutman]

So you mean like ballot access rules? Yeah, I mean it varies from state to state. I'm not sure to the extent that people have looked at the variation of ballot access rules across states doesn't seem to correlate too much with third party activities. So it doesn't seem like the major barrier, but it is a barrier.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay, and what about the role that money plays? So there's a lot of money in American politics, even more so after Citizens United. And money likes to move in flocks and become more powerful. And scale, does that have a way of keeping our two party system alive and well?

[Lee Drutman]

Well, I think it's more about the campaign finance rules that privilege the two parties over insurgents.

[Naeem Raza]

How do they privilege the two parties over the insurgents?

[Lee Drutman]

Well, there's benefits to being a party in terms of how you can collect and organize and spend money as opposed to not being a party.

[Naeem Raza]

Can you give a specific example?

[Lee Drutman]

Well, parties get discounted ad rates as opposed to, to outs to.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay, so there's economies of scale basically in the way you can use that money. And also probably like some, some kind of subsidization of how you can fundraise across a party.

[Lee Drutman]

Right. On the other hand, you know, if you have $400 billion, say maybe that's.

[Naeem Raza]

Not such an obstacle, we're going to get to that $400 billion, then you can do some things. And what role does kind of people's optionality in participating in the voting system play? Because in other countries you have mandatory voting. So that sounds very un American mandatory voting. But what role does tuning out play in terms of keeping these two parties alive and not seeing it shake up?

[Lee Drutman]

Well, I mean, I think for a lot of people tuning out is a totally reasonable response because in most places there's not much competition between the two parties. Most places are either pretty solidly red or pretty solidly blue. So your vote doesn't matter all that much. And frankly for a lot of people, I think doesn't seem to affect their lives all that much or they don't perceive that it affects their lives all that much, whichever party is in power. And there's just sort of a general distrust. So I mean, I think the US is on the very low side of voter turnout among advanced industrial democracies. And there are a lot of people who are really disengaged. There are some countries that have mandatory voting. Australia, Belgium, it's, you know, Mexico, Brazil.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah. And they charge you like 20 bucks if you don't vote or something.

[Lee Drutman]

It's all, you know, I'm not, you know, I think it probably improves turnout slightly. I'm not sure it changes politics all that much. And I, I don't, I don't see it ever happening in this country.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay. But a majority or I guess a plurality of Americans because it's 43%, believe that the two parties we have kind of suck. Right. So they're double haters. The question is, why do we want more of these parties? It's like wanting more toxic boyfriends if you have daddy issues. You know, it's like, dude, why is more parties a good idea in the system of bad two parties?

[Lee Drutman]

Because political parties are sort of the essential institutions of modern representative democracy. And it's really hard for modern representative democracy to function without parties to structure and organize political conflict and engagement. So, you know, maybe, you know, I mean, I'm sure there are some nice boys out there even if you're.

[Naeem Raza]

Yes, that's a good, a good use of the analogy. There's also this theory that like the two party system captures evolution. Like, I mean, I hear all kinds of complaints about the two party System one is that there aren't really two parties, there are really one. There's really one way of thinking in American politics and they kind of divide on the margins of some 10% of issues that they'd like to keep in the spotlight of things they disagree on. But they're all the same old guys doing the same old things. That's a critique you hear.

[Lee Drutman]

All right. Well, you know, there's something to it.

[Naeem Raza]

There's another critique you hear where you're like, well, there are actually many parties and to Madison's point, there are factions within these parties and those factions are in competition. You see that with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party versus the more moderate wing right now. And in your book you talk about kind of four, a four party system that did once exist of kind of wings within that party. So that's another critique that you've heard and that the two party system will evolve to expand it. But what do you think is the true reality of American politics? Are we in a real two party system? Are we in a one party system? Are we in a four party system? What is happening?

[Lee Drutman]

So a bit of a Rashomon analysis here. That depends on how you look at things. Despite the differences between the two parties, there is a lot of overlap. Compared to many other countries like the US Democratic Party is pretty center oriented. So there's not a real genuine left party in the US as there is in some countries. So if that's your perspective, then does seem pretty similar. Everything depends on your perspective. It's sort of like that famous New Yorker cartoon where the map of New York is very large and then there's west of the Hudson river and the rest of the country seems kind of flat and undifferentiated.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah, it's a real Rochart task.

[Lee Drutman]

Yes. On the other hand, there are real differences within the parties. There are factional fights and the parties are still very big tent parties. It's just that the tents are really non overlapping at this point. And so what happens every election is that Democrats say to everybody in the coalition, you may disagree with us on this or you may disagree with us on that, but if Republicans win, it's the end of the country, end of democracy. And Republicans do the same thing, say you may disagree with us on this or that, but Democrats are worse. So precisely because the parties are these somewhat heterogeneous coalitions, the unifying force is, well, if the other side wins, it's terrible. The enemy of my enemy is. Is my friend.

[Naeem Raza]

And this in your is what you think of as a two party doom loop, this feedback loop that gets louder and louder. The parties are just more and more opposed to each other, shouting more heavily to each other. I mean, I don't want to state your book. Why don't you tell us what this political doom loop is?

[Lee Drutman]

Right, that's, that's a, that's exactly it. That it's this escalation of rhetoric. And then, well, I mean, you see how terrible Trump is. So we can't have any dissent within the Democratic Party. We have to get on the same page. Trump says, well, you know, do you, do you want the socialist woke Democrats ruining America? You know, get with me and you just get this escalation and it justifies increasingly extreme tactics. Now I don't want to say that it's symmetrical because I think that the Republican Party has gone to a much more illiberal extremist position. But everything is a reaction to everything else. So, you know, Democratic Party talk about like, you know, the FBI or the doj, you know, okay, we're going to like enforce the law and if people breach the Capitol grounds, they should go to jail. So that's like, to me as a person on the left, that's like legitimate use of government authority. But person on the right says, oh, they're just weaponizing the Justice Department and weaponizing the FBI, so we have to do it back to them. Then as a person on the left, I say, well, maybe if they're going to weaponize this, maybe we need to do that as well. So it's this way in which you justify your behavior based on what other people are doing and it gives you a kind of moral license to do that if you feel like the other side is worse and the stakes are higher.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah. And so this doom loop that we are in, and I do feel what I think many Americans feel we are in this doom loop and you know, many are critics of their own party. They might pick a side and they might still critique that side as it seems you're doing right now, as you are someone on the left that reinforces that doom loop, really reinforces the two party system. Right in your argument.

[Lee Drutman]

Yes, yes.

[Naeem Raza]

There's no escaping the two parties because if you're outside of the party, you're against the ideal of America. You're on the other side because there's only two camps to live in. And so this two party system is propagated by the people and the most extreme voices that would want you to believe that they are fighting for, be it the soul of America or the opportunity to make America great again.

[Lee Drutman]

Right, exactly. And you know, if you're not supporting your side, then you're supporting the other side. Right. Because it's zero sum.

[Naeem Raza]

I want to get back to third parties in a minute, but I do think that we have heard this refrain for so long that America is the greatest democracy on earth. Now, you know, your book kind of challenges whether that's true on our electoral systems basis, whether we have, in fact, the greatest design of democracy of the world. You would say that we do not. Correct.

[Lee Drutman]

We do not. And one way to actually know this is because the US has been involved in nation building around the world and democracy promotion.

[Naeem Raza]

Oh, yeah, I'm familiar.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah. Yeah. And we never tell people to copy our system. To the extent that the US Is helping other people write their Constitutions, nobody is copying our Constitution.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah. Noah Feldman or no other kind of constitutional scholars are going out there saying, hey, this is the best way to do it. Okay, so that's a design system. But then on the vibe system or the, you know, the real tick system, I would say of. I think if you're an American looking at the world to say, you might look at one of two kind of assaults on democracy that we have seen in recent history. And I'm not equating them, but I'm saying that two people looking at them, they are similar. And you brought them up, too. One is the trespass on the Capitol on January 6th of 2021. The other being, for lack of a better term, I'll call it weekend at Biden's, the weekend at Bernie's recreation of the debate where we saw the president's kind of cognitive abilities and the subsequent reporting we've seen from Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper and others to tell us about, hey, there was this kind of fait accompli in the party to let Biden keep running. And then there was a kind of fait accompli that the candidate was going to be Kamala Harris. Neither of these two things feel like the peaceful transition of power or the kind of great democracy and choice for voters that we've been sold. How does this compare to you as a moment for a third party, given that on both sides, people are feeling pretty frustrated with, if not their own side, at least the other.

[Lee Drutman]

The moments in which third parties have had the biggest breakthroughs in US Political history, recent political history. The last is like Ross Perot, 1992. He got 19% of the vote, of.

[Naeem Raza]

The popular vote, but no electoral.

[Lee Drutman]

No electoral Votes. Right. And, you know, there have been other third party candidates, you know, George Wallace in 1968, running on a, you know, keep racism alive and well on the south platform. Strom Thurmond, 1948, running on a. Let's not desegreg the military platform. You mentioned discuss Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 as a Progressive candidate. So there have been various moments in which third parties have gotten some purchase when their supporters feel like it doesn't make a difference which party wins. Right. I'm willing to take a chance on a third party because the two parties are effectively the same. And in 1992, when Perot runs, I think a lot of people felt, well, we talked about Bill Clinton and George H.W. bush. Yeah, not that much. Not that much difference between the two of them. They didn't really last. But, you know, to the extent that they got some purchase, it was because people felt like it didn't make a difference. You could vote for a third party now, you know, I think part of the challenge for a third party at a national level in this moment within the single winner system, if we don't keep the current electoral rules, is that a lot of voters feel like, well, I don't love the Democratic Party, but gosh, the Republican Party, they're just evil. So I guess I'll vote for the Democrats. Same with the Republican side is, well, you know, we just got to stop the woke left. Right. Like, I'm willing to tolerate whatever because I want to see the lips being owned.

[Naeem Raza]

The desire for the other party to lose is greater than the desire for this candidate to win.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah. Or as political scientists call it, negative partisanship.

[Naeem Raza]

Negative partisanship. That sounds about right. So what you're saying is, in this moment, it does feel like one of these moments where Ross Perot or Teddy Roosevelt could carry a large number of voters, except for the fact that the other guy is so bad that nobody wants to risk voting for a spoiler.

[Lee Drutman]

Right. And this is, you know, if we rewind the tape and think about how nobody wanted no Labels to enter the race.

[Naeem Raza]

No Labels was a political effort that was launched for the 2024 election to see an alternative moderate candidate emerge out of the. And they got a bunch of money, but they could never get a candidate to actually sit and run.

[Lee Drutman]

Nobody serious wanted to be the person who spoiled the election.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah. Nobody wanted to be that asshole. And is it that nobody wants to be that asshole and cost us democracy? Or nobody wants to be that out of favor with the potential president or the likely president? What is Actually the driver. You spend time in Washington, you know.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, I think it's that they didn't want to see that as their legacy. Right. I mean, like Joe Manchin was the strong, strongest potential, no labels. Candidate is sort of the last centrist in the Senate. And I think ultimately, do I want this to be my legacy? The answer was no. I mean, you know, you're going to be attacked brutally and you're not going to get that many votes. If RFK had stayed in, he might have gotten some 5 to 7% of the vote. I think there were that many people who.

[Naeem Raza]

But he wouldn't have taken any electoral votes away. So the end result would be the same, right?

[Lee Drutman]

Probably. Although maybe he would have taken some votes away from Trump. Who knows?

[Naeem Raza]

And that would have changed the electoral math in certain ways.

[Lee Drutman]

Could have.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay.

[Lee Drutman]

Who knows?

[Naeem Raza]

Who knows? Do you have that kind of counterfactual for. Obviously, by the way, you've just gone through third parties. You haven't mentioned Andrew Yang once. He's gonna be very upset from his. What would have happened if I hear that Elon is talking to. To him as well. We should. We'll get to that part of the conversation later. But what would have happened if Bernie Sanders ran as an independent in 2016?

[Lee Drutman]

You think it's possible he, he. Well, he probably would have lost. He probably would have taken more votes from. From Hillary than he would have from. From Trump. I think he would have won in 2016 if he had won the Democratic primary.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah. Yeah, there is that. The Democratic Party right now just feels like it is embattled because nobody wanted to be that asshole that served democracy to Donald Trump. But in fact, former President Biden ended up being a person who helped make that happen and the Democratic establishment around him. This seems to be where there's a lot of rift right now. And I have to look no further than my own backyard. So in New York right now, we have a mayoral campaign where we have a former Democrat incumbent mayor who has kind of disavowed the Democratic Party. Eric Adams running as an independent. You have a person who's won the Democratic nomination who comes from a progressive wing of the party, actually from a different party, the Democratic Socialist or Ahmadani, who's going to be running as the Democrat on the ticket. And then you have a Democrat who kind of had a dizzying back and forth with the party, Andrew Cuomo, who feels. The former governor who feels like a Democrat Institutionalist in a lot of ways, but couldn't win the primary and is now Running as an independent. So when you look at New York, where the historical Democrats couldn't carry the ticket, what does that tell you? Does it tell you anything about New York and does it tell you anything about the nation?

[Lee Drutman]

I'm not sure it tells you that much about the nation. I think if you know there's a sort of generational split going on that I think is representative. I think people are very eager for a new generation of leaders in politics. I think the Gerontocracy is a real issue. And I mean, I think what happened within the Democratic Party around Biden really destroyed the credibility of the Democratic Party for at least a decade in a way that I don't think we've fully grasped.

[Naeem Raza]

And just for people listening to Gerontocracy, of course, is governance by the old. Yes, governance by the old. But there's something about the New York system because in New York there is this ranked choice voting system. There's something about the system that produced a result that is different, that is worth kind of exploring. Outside of New York they call it a fusion voting system, which makes it sound like, makes it sound like French, Vietnamese cuisine or something. What is a fusion voting system?

[Lee Drutman]

So fusion voting is actually the thing that is really interesting about New York.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay, what is it?

[Lee Drutman]

So in New York you have actually this system that used to be widely legal. Now it's only legal in New York and Connecticut. And it is a system where you have multiple parties that can endorse the same candidate on the ballot line. So in New York you have a Working Families Party alongside the Democratic Party. Now most of the time Working Families Party endorses the Democratic candidate. But because you have disaggregated fusion and candidates can see how much of their vote came on the Working Families Party and how much of their vote came from the Democratic Party, they know where their support is. So what that means is that the Working Families Party actually has some, some real influence. It's probably the most effective third party right now in the United States. And it's effective because it has that fusion ballot line. And actually there are, there's a case in New Jersey right now to re legalize fusion voting in New Jersey. There's a case in Kansas and a case in Wisconsin. So there's a real effort to try to re legalize fusion voting, which was once legal everywhere. So we talked about the split in the whigs in the 1850s, but actually a number of the anti slavery parties, the Free Soil Party, the Liberty Party, were fusion parties and they were able to introduce those issues into the election that the major parties were ignoring because they could endorse one of the two major party candidates on their ballot line. So actually I think this is a, this is a really important first step to bringing back some multi partyism in.

[Naeem Raza]

The U.S. okay, so fusion voting is the path is like the first step maybe to getting toward a third party system even. You know, because the things that we're talking about moving to a proportional system or moving.

[Lee Drutman]

Right. I mean that's a. Yeah, it's a decades long project. We might see some state level ballot initiatives maybe as early as 2028. But.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay, all right. If there is going to be a third party right now, is that third party going to be moderate or is it going to be populist to be popular?

[Lee Drutman]

That is a good question. And this is the challenge of any single third party within the single winner system. You know, no third party is going to be successful without electoral reform. There is the potential that you could have a third party that runs in a few House or Senate seats or state legislative districts where one of the two parties is dominant in a way that the other party doesn't really challenge it. But people want an alternative.

[Naeem Raza]

But, but answer the question because like people have been for a long time thinking, okay, it's the moderate middle that's going to bust out of this extremist system, this doom loop that you're talking about that's going to be birthed out. It's going to be this moderate middle that will come in and either capture the imagination of one of these two parties or become some kind of third party. I think other people think really the trend has been populism. Like that's the trend that was backing Obama to some way. That's the 20% that went from, you know, Obama to Trump. That's the Bernie Bros culture. That's really what's behind, you know, it's headwinds for Donald Trump. What is the reality like is where is the force and the kind of energy right now in the country as you look at it.

[Lee Drutman]

So I don't think it's in the, it's in the quote unquote moderate middle now. I mean there's, it's probably, that's probably 5, maybe 10% of the electorate. But I think, you know, a lot of that moderate middle has, you know, essentially become part of the Democratic coalition at this point and it was never that big to begin with. I think the populist sort of anti system part of the electorate is larger, but it's kind of all over the place. I think this is the challenge without parties to organize that and give it some coherence. It just is sort of this amorphous all over the place, bouncing around. One of the other things that political parties do, in addition to organizing, structuring political conflict, is they give people a sort of collective identity. Right? Yeah.

[Naeem Raza]

A platform to run on.

[Lee Drutman]

Well, not only a platform, but like, you know, if you think of a. If you think of a map, right. You know, like you could think of a map of a city as just like a bunch of streets and not really knowing where you fit. And then you put in certain neighborhoods and you say, you know, people, you know, these kinds of people live. Live in this neighborhood. These kinds of people live in this neighborhood. These kinds of people live in this neighborhood. Well, now, okay, now I can locate myself, right. I can see where I am, but without that structure, it's very hard for people to see, like, where do I belong? And then you get in that neighborhood and you're like, oh, there are people like me. Okay, now we can organize. Now we have some sort of collective identity where, as opposed to just having this big amorphous map, it's sort of hard to know where you belong and where you fit.

[Naeem Raza]

It's so interesting because I think historically there's been a lot of this conversation around the moderate middle, which you're saying is very small. And then there's this wingtip of either party, like, which I think the Atlantic once called it the crunchy granola to conservative access around, you know, people who are kind of on two extremes of both parties who actually might have more in common, but they can't find each other in the same neighborhoods, is your point.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah. And, you know, they have important differences.

[Naeem Raza]

Too, like immigration, et cetera.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I think some of this comes, you know, it's sort of. We have this metaphor of politics on this one dimension, like this liberal to conservative dimension, and we get sort of confused by the idea that there's a middle that somehow between these, along this flat line and we think about the median voter. But if you think about politics in multiple dimensions, when I do a scatter plot of the electorate in two dimensions, you see things emerge. I've yet to figure out a way to effectively represent three dimensions on a two dimensional screen.

[Naeem Raza]

You need the Z axis, I think.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, I've tried that, but it just always looks really weird.

[Naeem Raza]

Venn diagrams. It's something about Venn diagrams.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, yeah. You know, Venn diagrams that's true. I mean, I have a piece that I wrote for the website538 which sadly no longer exists. But I did a Venn diagram where I looked at the overlap between people who said they were independent, people who said they were moderate, and people who were undecided about who they were going to vote for. And the overlap between those three categories is very small.

[Naeem Raza]

One last question here is is the problem that we don't have more than two parties or is the problem that we don't have one sense of country?

[Lee Drutman]

I mean, I guess those are both problems. And yeah, I think part of it is that, I mean, there's a way in which they are related problems in that having a binary political system forces us into these two camps that have become increasingly oppositional to each other and picked up on different aspects of what it means to be an American. My feeling is that if you had a less binary political system with more shifting coalitions, more overlap, you wouldn't have this central conflict over the meaning of America. I mean, you know, I mean, it's funny that we, you know, although, you know, public, there's a public opinion poll that came out, you know, never been higher support for immigrants in America. Something like 79% now think immigrants make America a better country. And actually America has, has generally been a pretty pro immigrant country, much more so than a lot of Western European countries. And you know, yet we have this split over immigration. So it's almost like the party system has created a lot of artificial binaries because people are looking to distinguish themselves in opposition to each other, you know, rather than a more, you know, multidimensional, multi party conflict where the, it doesn't quite trigger these same, you know, us versus them, friend versus faux circuits in our brain.

[Naeem Raza]

All right, we're going to take a quick break and then when we're back, we're going to discuss Elon and if he's going to shake this all up and give us a third party, which is ironically called the America Party. I don't even know if that's going to last. Legal Clarence. Guys, today's sponsor, Dumb Question is from me. I'm going to take the next minute to tell you a little bit about Smart girl Dumb questions and to ask you for your help and continuing to make independent, fact based and curious journalism. No, I'm not going to ask you for money. Here's what I need. I would love you to tell 10 of your friends about the show or 100, I don't know, blast that reunion group that you Muted. And definitely tell your mom and tell your mom to tell her friends too. Even if you don't like the show and you're just like, hate watching it or listening to it, tell 10 of your friends to hate watch it, too. Numbers are numbers, people. So now we're going to talk about Elon Musk and what's going on with this third party, the American party. Elon and Donald Trump were embroiled in a bit of an argument. Elon was calling Trump's bill utterly insane and destructive. He launches these tweets. Donald Trump says that Elon is off the rails, train wreck, he might deport him. And the President had this to say about Elon Musk's third party dreams.

[Lee Drutman]

Starting a third party. I think it's ridiculous to start a third party. We have a, a tremendous success with the Republican Party. The Democrats have lost their way, but it's always been a two party system. And I think starting a third party just adds to confusion. It really seems to have been developed for two parties. Third parties have never worked. So he can have fun with it, but I think it's ridiculous.

[Naeem Raza]

Do you think it's ridiculous, third parties?

[Lee Drutman]

No, I don't think it's ridiculous. It's interesting because Trump initially ran in the Reform Party. He tried to get the Reform party nomination in 2000. It was when Pat Buchanan got the Reform Party nomination. And so he was originally going the third party route and then got nowhere. Then he started going the Republican Party route. So look, I mean, he's going to be dismissive of anything Elon Musk does. And I mean, it's, that's not, it's not a crazy reaction to say that third parties have been the, you know, have not had any success in the US and that we have an electoral system that's designed for two parties. But who knows? Well, says, you know, it's kind of a wild card moment.

[Naeem Raza]

Let's maybe talk about the timeline here, which is that Trump and Elon said their goodbyes on May 30, and on June 5, Elon Musk tweets out a survey saying, is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle and 80% of 5 million votes come back on Twitter saying yes. That tweet also got some circulation. Mark Cuban retweeted it with three checks. It was a buzz. How did you see that? As someone who's been kind of studying this two party doom loop for years.

[Lee Drutman]

I participated in that survey and said yes.

[Naeem Raza]

Oh, you did. Okay, excellent.

[Lee Drutman]

You know, I mean, kind of a double barreled question, right? Like do you, do we need a third party and is that party in the middle? And I mean it's not in the middle, otherwise no labels would have Joe Mancha in the White house.

[Naeem Raza]

But yeah, SurveyMonkey is not going to hire Elon Musk to design their surveys. This is a complicated question, but it gets at the issue, which is he brings us, he brings us up because he's upset about the big beautiful bill which is now a law, a big law. I think people will debate its beauty, but. So you voted and you say yes to this survey. Did you take it seriously?

[Lee Drutman]

At the time I thought he's raising the issue of third parties. And I did write a little bit about it. I wrote a piece on my substack under current events that was an open letter to Elon saying welcome to the cause of multi party democracy. But here's what you need to know, which later Politico republished as an op ed. I wrote a piece for Vox about how he could disrupt the two party system by running candidates in a handful of competitive Senate and House districts. Even if they get 10% of the vote, they could be spoilers, which apparently he says he's going to be doing. So maybe he took my advice.

[Naeem Raza]

Did he give you some credit, Lee? Are you sure it was your advice to the timeline?

[Lee Drutman]

I don't know. You know, it's sort of the obvious. You know, if you're in, as I wrote in that piece, if you're an engineer, you'll, you'll quickly see that this is the weak point in the system.

[Naeem Raza]

Right? And he did, he did quickly see that because as people kind of poo pooed his survey saying, you know, this has been tried and tested and never done before, he kind of said, well, what if I just had, you know, a two to three Senate seats and I think it's eight to ten House seats that could really kind of push the system into gridlock or out of it. You know, in essence it's like, can you create many Joe Manchins or Christian Cinemas.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah.

[Naeem Raza]

That are in that era of the Senate. So Elon, then, you know, a month later, around July 4 says Independence Day is the perfect time to ask if you want independence from two party, some would say uniparty system. And he says, should we create The America Party? 65% of the 1 million respondents to this poll say yes. And then Elon decrees by a factor of two to one, you want a new political party and you shall have it. When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom. He proclaims it. So on July 5th or so does. Does tweeting a third party make a third party?

[Lee Drutman]

No.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay. What actually makes a third party?

[Lee Drutman]

Sustained tweeting.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay.

[Lee Drutman]

No, I mean, you've got to, like, you know, run candidates and file paperwork and organize and incorporate.

[Naeem Raza]

This sounds much less fun than tweeting.

[Lee Drutman]

Well, you can do both and yet not either or as many people in politics have shown.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah, that's true. They are great multitaskers in that way. It sounds crazy, but it was like early 2022 that Elon was just. Was tweeting out a poll about Twitter, and by October of that year, he owned Twitter, you know, despite. There was lots of back and forth in there. He tried to get out of it at some point, but the man has some history of making things happen. I want to get into the practicalities of how that would be. So, one, Elon spent $250 million to help Trump win the 2024 election. How much would he need to spend to launch a third party that could win what he's talking about, which is, let's say, three Senate seats and 10 house prices. How much does that cost?

[Lee Drutman]

At least that much money?

[Naeem Raza]

At least 250 million.

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, probably.

[Naeem Raza]

And all the infrastructure and paperwork and everything, you know, I mean, money.

[Lee Drutman]

Money's a fungible resource. Right. You know, you can.

[Naeem Raza]

You hire, you can have $400 billion. Yeah.

[Lee Drutman]

If you have $400 billion, you know, and you want to spend a million of it or a billion of it. There's million. Doesn't get you much. Billion. Yeah. Yeah.

[Naeem Raza]

He could do it for a billion dollars, you think?

[Lee Drutman]

I think so. If that's. And, you know, that's, you know, to him, that's just not that much money.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah. Like, I mean, just to put it in perspective for people, like, $250 million to Elon Musk is like, you know, 500 to a thousand dollars for someone who has a million bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like 50 to 100 bucks for someone who has $100,000, that makes it much more, you know, realistic to us. So asking him to spend four times that is like asking somebody who has $100,000 to spend a couple hundred bucks on this dream.

[Lee Drutman]

It's like taking a weekend trip or something.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah. It's like taking the Acela for 100,000 air. I want to compare, like how Elon Musk is approaching this to how someone like Bloomberg or Howard Schultz or other people with lots of money have approached third parties before or lots of people with, you know, celebrity status. Jesse Ventura's case, you know, have approached third parties because I guess one is Pockets. He has more money. You're saying that matters a little bit. The second is he. It's not personality driven. He himself is not the candidate. He is like the hype man for this thing. Does that help him or hurt him, you think?

[Lee Drutman]

I mean, he has a certain negative charisma. I mean, he also controls a massive social media platform. So, like, there's never been somebody quite like Elon Musk to make this kind of proclamation about starting a third party.

[Naeem Raza]

You seem reticent, you seem reticent to say that it might do something. Is that fair?

[Lee Drutman]

You know, I mean, count me as skeptical, but not dismissing it as out of hand given his track record and his sort of berserk negative charisma and energy.

[Naeem Raza]

You said the whole parties are like, defined by their negative personality, negative partisanship. It seems like negativity drives a lot of the forces of our politics and personality. So he has that in there. What about the actual strategy here of winning a handful of Senate and House seats? Is that a winning strategy for somebody who's looking to do a third party versus, say, run yourself for president?

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, that's a much more savvy strategy.

[Naeem Raza]

Yes, you say that as you advised him on it.

[Lee Drutman]

I don't know, he might have read my piece. I hear he's an avid reader. I did post it on X.

[Naeem Raza]

So in terms of the timeline here, can he do anything by 2026, even with a strategy on the local races? Is he going to be able to be a contender come November 2026? Like, can you even file the paperwork that fast?

[Lee Drutman]

Yeah, sure. You know, I mean, if you have money, you can, you can, you know, you either every state has some signature requirements for, for getting on the ballot, but, you know, plenty of people who will stand outside your, you know, grocery store and, and gather signatures if you pay them, which, you know, the guy's got money, so you can do that. I mean, no, no labels, you know, had ballot access in a lot of states, they, they didn't use it, but.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah, so take that example, the no labels movement in 2024. They had money, they had ballot access, they had good organization, but they did not have a person. They did not have personalities that were willing to come in and take the seat. This is at a local level. And Elon Musk, it seems, I think he's talking to some right wing strategists. He's talking to the Democrat Dean Phillips, who was the one person who tried to go up against Biden in 2024 in the primaries. So give him some more free advice here. Lee, what, what does he have to do to get ready?

[Lee Drutman]

All right, Elon, are you listening? You know, I mean, you, you, you recruit some candidates who, who are charismatic, people who are willing to put themselves out there, give them some training and give them a lot of money, and you might be surprised how well they do. Again, there, there is that portion of the electorate who says, yeah, well, the whole system is broken. And you cat, you know, you can organize a party. That said, this is a vote to upset the system. The system is broken. Vote against the unit party. Right. And I think there's a segment of the electorate that might genuinely feel that I think would be particularly strong among a youngish tech bro, manosphere world, people.

[Naeem Raza]

Who he helped bring to Donald Trump, probably, and people who, Joe Rogan, et cetera. I mean, there's a lot of people of kind of sway in that election as we talk about the 2024 race.

[Lee Drutman]

Particularly if you, if, you know, if, if you can get those kinds of, of folks bringing guests on their podcast who are running, drawing attention. I mean, you know, Elon's good at attention.

[Naeem Raza]

Where would you focus the eight to 10 House seats, the two to three Senate seats. What do you think in 2026 is up for grabs? Are in states that there's a party that's strong enough that it always carries the state, but it's not so strong that people aren't sick of it and willing to upset it. Because that's kind of what you need. Right?

[Lee Drutman]

Right. Well, I mean, there's two strategies here. One is the target the swing states target the swing House districts where you would only need to get 5, 10% of the vote to show that you can disrupt the system. Right. So essentially you're saying I can give this election to the Democrats by running a candidate. Now you better listen to me because I can take this away. I hold the balance. That small section of the electorate that holds the balance of power in that small number of states is now on my team. That's probably the highest leverage, highest ROI strategy.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah, but that doesn't get you people into the Senate or the House. That just gives you power at, in the local party level to have sway over where the direction of the party candidate or how that party vote potentially.

[Lee Drutman]

Gives you sway over both parties. If you say, you can't win without me. So that's one strategy. The other strategy would be to take a state like say, Idaho, which is a solidly Republican state, Democrats have no chance and run a candidate to take a state that is lopsided for one party. Like, I'm just, you know, thinking about Idaho, for example, you know, small enough state where you could, you could make breakthrough, you know, maybe one of the Dakotas or, you know, one of the smaller population states where the Democratic Party is moribund and you know, essentially with enough money, you, you, your candidate becomes the, the candidate most likely to defeat the Republican.

[Naeem Raza]

Right. Because like the third party, the second, the, in the two party system, the second party is so weak that a third party insurgen actually upset the whole.

[Lee Drutman]

Could effectively be the second party.

[Naeem Raza]

And in that world, the second strategy, you could actually end up with seats in House or Senate. Okay. Having met Elon a few times and having produced interviews with him, I would say he's more of a door number two guy than a door number one guy.

[Lee Drutman]

Okay.

[Naeem Raza]

That is my sense. Do you think that Elon Musk is Pollyannish in his desire to have a third party and call it, I mean, actually, let me ask you this. There has been conversation about how you can't even call it the America Party because in certain ballots in certain states, they won't allow you to use the word America in the party's name and still be on the ballot. We saw this with RFK where RFK was actually only on like 40 something state ballots and not all 50 because of various rules and regulations that happen at the local level. Does that kind of stuff concern you that this, this movement is not going to get their paperwork done?

[Lee Drutman]

Oh, I, you know, I mean, look, look, if he's, if he's committed to it and he wants to throw money at it, it, they'll figure it out. Like, like. Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a silly obstacle. Is he Pollyanna? Ish. I don't know. It depends what his, his goals are. But you know, I mean, I think that that's my understanding of his entire career is that he looks at these things that nobody has done before and says, I'm going to do it. He's made a lot of money doing that. So I mean, he has a certain amount of, of drive.

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah.

[Lee Drutman]

To do these things. So who knows?

[Naeem Raza]

Would you advise him on it if he called you?

[Lee Drutman]

I'd take a conversation with him.

[Naeem Raza]

You have Been questing for a third party. I mean, you used to think the path to get there was ranked choice voting. You said you've now moved more towards the proportional model or the fusion model, maybe? It seemed like in this conversation, yeah, both, I think. Do you think you're Pollyannish? Do you ever like sit there and think, what am I? Should I go back to thinking about lobbying? I can maybe make more of a dent in the lobbying corporate lobbying world than I can in the A2 party doom loop.

[Lee Drutman]

I think we're all. I mean, this is sort of the human condition to be Pollyanna ish. People buy a lot more books than they read. People take out a lot more gym memberships than they use. We're all overly optimistic. I don't know. I think my view is that go through life and try to make a contribution. Try to take the skills and advantages that I have and try to. To leave things a little bit better than I found them. And, you know, if I succeed, I succeed. And if I don't, then I don't.

[Naeem Raza]

When you write a book like Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop or Ezra Klein writes a book like Abundance, which Ezra and Derek write a book called Abundance. What do you want to happen with that thought piece or any thought piece that you're putting out there? How does it influence things? Well, besides, you want to sell books.

[Lee Drutman]

Well, actually, I don't really care that much about selling books. I would give it away for free. I'm not.

[Naeem Raza]

Okay, well, don't tell that to all the listeners who are going to be buying your book, Natalie.

[Lee Drutman]

I mean, they should buy the book because, you know, but they can also email me for a. No, I can't tell it to my publisher. Buy the book.

[Naeem Raza]

What is the mechanism by which a book like Breaking the Two Party doom Loop or Abundance works through the system and results in change. And is there an example of that kind of book book in the history of politics?

[Lee Drutman]

I mean, the most famous example is probably Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which was sort of the progenitor of the modern environmental movement. Or maybe Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed or maybe most famously Uncle Tom's Cabin. I guess you say, here's an idea. Here's a way of looking at the world that makes a lot of sense to me and I want to share it. I want other people to look. Look at the world in this way because I think it would be a better world if. If other people saw the world in this way. And I'm going to write it. I'M going to try to make it as compelling and interesting and engaging as possible. And, you know, then I'm going to go out there and talk about it and write about it and see if other people agree with me and if they do, great, and if they don't, then I give it my best shot.

[Naeem Raza]

I think it's a noble quest to want to put ideas into the world and people see them. And definitely what we try to do on this show is to help people think about how to think about things, not what to think about things, which is why I want to disclaim and separate the politics from the ideas. And I think a lot of people are questing for that right now. Yes, I end my conversations by asking guests what they are dumb about, what they don't know. I asked you a lot of dumb questions about third parties and toxic boyfriends. What is your question that you have not figured out the answer to or would like someone else to go figure out or ask aloud for you?

[Lee Drutman]

All right, so here's a question. So Americans, we waste a lot of money on food that we throw out. Probably 35, 40% of our food gets tossed. And so we're not very efficient in our own lives. So, so why do we expect government to be so perfectly efficient if we're so inefficient?

[Naeem Raza]

Is that a leading question about Doge?

[Lee Drutman]

But, but, but maybe it's, you know, maybe it's that we don't know ahead of time how are, how our week's going to go and we want to have a. This is a good question. Why do, why do we over purchase and, and under consume? Why are we so inefficient in our own lives?

[Naeem Raza]

That is a good question. And as you're asking, I'm feeling all kinds of guilt about, like the kale mix and spring lettuce mix that is definitely going off in my fridge as we tape this.

[Lee Drutman]

Or is it the over optimism bias that we discussed?

[Naeem Raza]

Yeah, could be that. It could be over optimism. That is a good hypothesis. Leigh, thank you so much. We'll figure out the answer for you. I appreciate you coming on and talking to us.

[Lee Drutman]

All right, well, it's my pleasure. Great conversation.

[Naeem Raza]

I learned so much from Lee Drutman. I think it's because he brought together this really interesting perspective, which had the understanding of politics and money, for sure, but it also had this understanding of history and an understanding of how other countries do things that I think fused together in a, a Venn diagram, the kind Lee Drutman and Kamala Harris Love to give us a perspective that I hadn't really heard before, and three things really stood out to me. The first is this idea of constituencies and how arbitrary they are. I mean, in the US we talk about a popular vote maybe for the presidency, where everyone could band together and vote one way or another and we'd figure it out at a national level and not have the electoral system. And that's interesting. But even more interesting was this idea of a legislature where people in California and people in Texas and people in Ohio could figure out that they actually agree on, say, loving animals and vote together in a party. I just think that's a really interesting innovation to think about. The second thing was just the understanding of all these different party systems and fusion voting and particularly like the New York system and how that might look if it expands in the way that Lee is talking about. And it seems like Elon Musk could be a big part of that, that expansion. Which brings me to point three, that Elon Musk really seems to have a fighting chance here of doing something that upends our political system or at least shifts it or grabs some power. Of course we don't know what's going to happen, just like we don't know that Bernie would have won 2016 though. That was an interesting point from Lee. But we do have to wonder about the person who's doing that and also their strategy for change. It reminded me a lot of the conversation I had with Mark Cuban in the first episode of this show show which was called Can Billionaires Save Us? And Mark outlined this path to getting to universal healthcare by going through a really capitalistic route. So I don't know. I think jury's still out on this one. I want to know what you guys think. Does Elon have a shot at this third party? How do you feel about it? Let me know. I'm naimaraza101mail.com check out that episode with Mark Cuban. Check out Lee Drutman's book, which he is not going to give to you for free, but you can check out his substack under Current Events and I believe there's a free option there. This episode was produced with Healy Cruz, Dana Belew and Noah Friedman. I'm Naima Raza, your host. Our music is by David Khan and we'll be back next week with an all new episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. Please tell your friends about it. Please review the episode, share it far and wide. Thanks so much guys. Bye.