First, the two major parties are so incredibly established that third parties barely exist. So, starting a third party that can compete with the other two is near impossible.

Second, since radio and television (media) started catering towards individual interests (echo chamber) people get so wrapped up in "Hillary/Trump/Somebody is so evil!" that they _don't_ want to experiment because it could cause the person they dislike to win.

Third, nobody cares about politics. We get ~40% turnout in midterm elections, ~60% for presidential. That's pitiful. Those who vote are those who _really_ like voting--those who are engaged.

To break the stranglehold you'd need:

- people to stop consuming sound bite media (Now This, Twitter) and tailored media (talk radio, some major news stations)

- better civic engagement at the local level (this is _the_ most important bit)

- better civic knowledge (the previous bullet point is predicated on this one)

- people willing to run for office as a third party _and_ not be a fringe weirdo

It would probably also help a lot if we split up voting issues over multiple much smaller elections so that people could actually discuss the issues without it all being overshadowed.

In California, for example, I'm supposed to cast votes for over 40 positions and issues this election between choices for the president, federal and state representatives of various sorts, local positions, and dozens upon dozens of propositions and measures. There are over 500 total pages in the official voter guides, and the mail-in ballot is supposedly so heavy this election that regular postage isn't enough! It's crazy!

During the primary, we had the first senatorial election without an incumbent in decades and damned near no one was talking about it! (Barbara Boxer is not running for re-election.) It was completely overshadowed by the presidential election. I don't know if it was because the voter guide was so over-packed with propositions or what, but they didn't even print the senatorial candidates' statements during the primary and I had to go online instead to see them!

And people wonder why this country is so fucked up...

  people willing to run for office as a third party _and_ not be a fringe weirdo

I genuinely believe Bernie could have won if he stayed independent. The two political parties are owned and operated as Corporations. They can choose whoever they want to represent them. There are no laws governing their inter-party behavior. This is why non-party candidates need to be taken seriously.

I voted for Bernie, but how could he win independent if he couldn't win the Democratic primary?

Because the primary/caucus process disenfranchises the majority of the electorate.

I believe this is why the GOP produces such poor candidates in the last 20 years or so; they must pander to the hard core of the party to become a candidate, and the people that pass that test are almost always too far removed from the electorate to win the general.

This is also why we're devolving to a system of ruling families. Clinton was never the best candidate. She was the presumed candidate and the candidate preferred by the party core, so nobody was willing to challenge - except Sanders who could seriously run on ideology.

In theory they can choose whoever they want, however in practice if the small percentage of the electorate who actually vote pick e.g. Trump, the party is stuck with them

I have a feeling this is slowly changing.

Because the moderate party would lose every election in a landslide. What would its policies even be? People tend to be extreme on individual issues that they care about and apathetic on the rest. The more extreme parties could, for example, just come out for or against abortion and steal a huge percentage of your voters. Same with many other issues.

Abortion and other black and white issues would definitely be a weakness for a moderate party.

I would think their strengths for better economic policies, better military policies, better domestic policies and on and on would outweigh the black-and-white single issues but I am afraid you might be right.

People would rather have simple dogma on single issues. It's just easier to understand a single point of view on a binary issue.

Personally, on a related tangent: I find that the weakest part of most discussions is the tendency to try to make every discussion into 2 opposing viewpoints, rather than seeing the billions of permutations possible on nearly any issue. But it happens all the time.

It's so common that I believe it must be something somewhat hardwired into the way our brains work.

How about the moderate party being a democratically governed one, where it's members have an app that identifies them so they can only get one vote. Then whenever the candidate they choose votes on issues, the people decide via the app, how that senator will vote.

If he doesn't go w/ the people he is banned from the party. in this way the moderate party would cater to the demographic of the area... where one member might vote for gay marriage in NY, another in Alabama would not, but still be part of the same party, but only answer to their local constituents.

Now I'm wondering if there are any good existing examples of that sort of Democratic Populism finding support. (Not sure what else to call it)

I'd call it a new TYPE of party altogether one built on top of technology... even the Technology party would be a cool name.

Start it and then convince sama to run as a presidential candidate circa 2020.

That's happened before (look at articles on the "era of good feelings").

What happens is that factions develop along a new politically-important axis which have different answers for a new pressing problem, and the moderate party bifurcates into two.

Because artificially making the 'other side' look evil is an effective way to win elections. If you can find some way to make the other side look bad (no matter how artificial, see Hillary on the Cubs/Yankees issue), then you win.

Huge incentive to find any division.

Read up about "wedge issues".

What do you find extreme about the parties we have now?

The Democratic Party and the pre-Trump GOP were, once you looked past the social signals each sent to pander to certain vocal minorities, practically identical. It's no coincidence that the Bushes endorsed Hillary after Jeb! dropped out.

I don't expect anyone here to believe it, but ironically Trump's GOP is pretty close to being a real moderate party. Dispensing with the astroturfed tribal warfare by supporting gays, not making abortion into a big-ticket issue, reaching out to minorities, and so on, he has drawn in record numbers of supporters from across the line. "We're all Americans" and "America first" are the creeds of him and his supporters. An openly gay man spoke at the RNC to genuine applause, as did Trump holding a rainbow "LGBTQs for Trump" flag at a rally. The barriers once thought concrete are rapidly deteriorating for the ordinary citizens that have successfully pried their eyes away from the propaganda machine.