The Road Not Taken: 3rd parties in American politics

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where this week your hosts set course on a journey in search of answering a simple, yet nuanced question: do “third” (political) parties matter? Historical and contemporary electoral landscapes are littered with candidates and movements from outside the two-headed Democratic/Republican stranglehold: Whig, Reform, Libertarian, Green, Working Families and on down the line. What place at the table: yesterday, today and moving forward, do the presence of these parties and their respective candidates have? The question takes a complicated turn when considering efficacy on the national versus the local/municipal level. Where third parties nationally often sway elections to one of the two aforementioned major players, outsider candidates at the local level have found some degree of success finding their way to elected office. But as we’ve been known to do in this space, we lead with an explosive trilogy of rants: where Zak considers track and field’s place in the sports ecosystem in light of the ongoing World Athletics Championships American debut and primetime coverage on network television; Ed brings us up to speed on the most recent inequities of Texas AG Ken Paxton and his continued dogged pursuit of “state-sanctioned femicide;” and finally Andrew offers a three-quarter recap of the Open Championship and the significance of Tiger Woods’ perhaps final on-course chapter playing out on the sport’s grandest and most storied stage.

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