Several United States political parties routinely appear on the presidential ballots every four years. But, I think they go about it all wrong.

Let’s say the Libertarian party wins. Chase Oliver becomes president. He’s president with a Congress that’s Democratic or Republican in one or both chambers. He’s going to have a hard time with much of his platform as Congress will need to pass it. Probably, they find some common ground, but they also don’t speak each other’s values and principles. It’ll be as rough as the second halves of both Trump’s and Biden’s last half of their first terms. Or Obama after the midterms of his first. It’ll be a lot of executive orders that struggle.

Throw in there the lack of experience in the executive level. Because Trump was an insurgency, his first term was 3 years of figuring out how to govern because… his people didn’t know what they were doing.

In the past, third parties performed an insurgency. They merged with another party and in their alliance dominated. Southern Democrats left the party and became Republicans. Libertarians became the “Tea Party” after seeing how well Sarah Palin was accepted and came to dominate the Republicans.

The Green Party and Social Democrats could do pretty well within the Democratic Party and maybe even come to dominate it.

They need to start at the grassroots. Win some local boards (city/county), then win some state house seats, then get some state agency races, then a governor. Implement those policies at that level, and improve the healthcare, education, and pocketbooks of the residents. Show people how effective you are. That will leverage wins in other states such that candidates could start winning Congressional House seats and the Senate. Now, those ideas are in conversations with the PotUS.