A grassroots political party for the middle
The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and creating a better independence movement in the US.
What if we created a third political party in the United States?
Not the Republican National Committee on the right or the Democratic National Committee on the left, but an Independent National Committee in the middle.
If our existing parties are funded by wealthy individuals and organizations, our new Independent one could be funded by us (and maybe eventually public funding). And if our existing parties represent the interests of their wealthy donors, our independent one would only represent the interests of us.
We could crowdfund a SuperPac from within our supporters and we could structure a citizen’s assembly to decide how to allocate those funds. This group of citizens could be randomly selected from our supporters, allowing them to deliberate on which candidates we should put forward and vote on which should receive our funding.
The citizen’s assembly could also function like a think tank, coming up with solutions to various problems with bipartisan support. These ideas could be backed by candidates who, early on might wind up running on a Republican or Democratic ticket depending on what will make them most likely to win, but as an official backed by the INC, they will be vetted to represent the interests of all Americans, and be funded by them rather than the rich.
Some of these ideas might fall to the right, and some of them might fall to the left, but we don’t care about the labels here, just solving problems. For instance, the left wants education to be free for everyone and the right wants to have more choice in the education their children receive. Can we make education free for everyone while allowing parents to choose the schools that are best for their children?
Might our citizen’s assembly be able to come up with a solution that works there? And might a candidate be willing to run on that compromise?
Eventually, people might trust the INC more than they trust the RNC or DNC. Knowing they aren’t donor-captured by big party money might make these candidates more electable, and since their policies came from us, they’d represent ideas most Americans want. Maybe then we’d have a political party that actually represents America, rather than the rich and the fringe.
Maybe then our Congress will start to look more like our country, and better represent our interests. If it has enough funding, maybe the US government will finally decide to match donations, providing public funding for candidates while outlawing the Supreme Court rulings that allow the rich to have more say about our government than we do.
There have been many attempts to build a third party in the United States. The Forward Party is the newest incarnation. Founded by the Democratic politician Andrew Yang and merged with the Republican-founded Renew America and Serve America movements, the group focuses less on party lines and more on solving problems important to all Americans. They endorse candidates in both red and blue, but more often favor centrists in a combined purple category. The Party is on the ballot in 5 states and has organized teams in 27 others. It focuses most of its efforts on sponsoring individuals to get involved at the local and state level where 70% of elected positions go uncontested and extremists have easily slid into positions of power.
I have hope for this party but I can’t help but be reminded of its predecessor, the Reform Party, which was founded in the aftermath of Ross Perot’s independent presidential bid in 1992. Perot garnered 18.9% of the popular vote against Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush back then, and attempted to carry that momentum into the creation of a third party after that. But by 1996 he won only 8.4% of the popular vote. A spattering of politicians ran on the label in the years after, but they received less and less of the vote until they became largely irrelevant. By the end, it was an odd group of political misfits that more accurately represented the fringe than the mainstream. Donald Trump was briefly a member of the Reform Party in 2000 but left saying, “the Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep."
The Reform Party’s failure, as well as the failure of other independent movements is probably why modern independent candidates like Bernie Sanders opt to pick a side for the sake of being elected, further entrenching the two-party system. Oddball candidates who run on an independent label don’t help matters—the third party we’re left with doesn’t represent what most Americans want, rather it represents whatever politicians don’t fit cleanly into party lines and thus self-select into being Independent. It becomes the island of misfit politicians—usually the least liked ones.
To protect against this, a true independent movement would have to be grassroots funded, and it would have to be citizen’s assembly informed.
It has to be our money and our say. We simply won’t donate our money to bad politicians, which will keep the party from getting weird and/or fringe candidates. And we simply won’t vote to back a bad policy that doesn’t meet what most of us want to achieve, which will keep it from putting forward unpopular or partisan proposals.
In other words: I’m bullish on the citizen’s assembly part. By its very nature, any policy or person put forward by a randomly selected citizen’s assembly would represent what most Americans want, rather than what fringe voices and wealthy donors want.
The Forward Party is nearly there. Unlike the Reform Party, which was largely funded and run by the billionaire Perot himself, the Forward Party is funded by grassroots support. Of the $4,905,145 they raised during the 2023-2024 election cycle, the highest sum contributed by a single donor was only $500,000 and the vast majority contributed well below that. Use of those funds and endorsements are chosen by committee. A working group composed of national headquarters staff, state leaders selected through a nomination and ranked-choice voting processes, and party advisors evaluate and decide on each endorsement and donation made through their PAC.
My favorite part: The Forward Party doesn’t focus on the presidential election but on local and state-level governance, where everyday people could make a big difference in their communities and where 350,000 elected posts currently go uncontested, bleeding fringe ideologies into our local governments. I could not be more on board with its mission to strengthen local and state governments and that’s where I’ll be spending the bulk of my own efforts. As I live in one of the five states which have FWD on the ballot, I’m excited to participate this year and see how I can help.
But I think we need the citizen’s assembly part. I just think we need to inform our policies and politicians from the ground up rather than from the top down, and there are two options for that here: Either the Forward Party becomes a citizen’s assembly as they grow larger (it seems like they are kind of headed in that direction already) or the coalitions in each state become citizen’s assemblies, which I think is better and more likely.
Representing “America” is an extraordinarily large task, and creating a citizen’s assembly that works for all of us would be extremely difficult. Even if we manage to create a citizen’s assembly of 1,000, 2,000, or 5,000 people, would their decisions really represent America? There might be plenty of things that we agree on, but there are still plenty of things that we don’t, and I’d prefer to allow for that variation rather than try to congeal every American thought and idea into something that “works for everyone” federally at the same time that it doesn’t allow for differentiation between local communities.
For this reason, I think citizen’s assemblies at the state (and even city level) are much more important than federal ones. If our local communities can rally around the policies and politicians that are most important to them, we can slowly strengthen local governments by displacing fringe actors, creating states that more accurately meet the needs of their citizens, and eventually a Congress that better represents those states than our current party- and donor-captured one.
Maybe then we could even back a third-party presidential candidate that most of us like, rather than two that only wealthy donors and entrenched party interests like.
But that starts at the community and local level, and I’ll be talking more about that in the new year. In the meantime, I’d love to know your thoughts 👇🏻
Thanks for reading and thinking with me,
Marginalia
Here are some notes from the margins of my research:
- was a leading participant in the RFK campaign and is very interested in rebooting the American political system. Not only is he a fan of fostering an independence movement for the middle, but he’s also a big supporter of citizen’s assemblies as a way of informing it! I’ll be closely following his ideas here to see how I can support his work.
- ’s Renew the Republic is another publication to follow in this space.
I’m very on board with
’s proposals to improve elections.I’m still very into the idea of lottocracy: A congress made up of randomly selected Americans in each state, rather than one made up of elected politicians, could go a long way!
No Labels is another bipartisan party but with much less support. They do have a newsletter I’ll be following to learn more.
I think we desperately need more bipartisan media sources and
’ The Free Press is trying to be that, hosting interesting debates like “Trump vs. Harris,” and “Should the US still police the world?” In its pursuit of the middle though, I think its writing focuses a bit too much on criticizing both sides, rather than coming up with ideas it likes from both.Similarly, The Flip Side is a nonpartisan newsletter that introduces an issue, then allows a Democrat to write about it from their side and a Republican to write about it from theirs. I can appreciate the both sides approach, but because both authors aren’t aware of what their counterpart is saying, we tend to get two versions of the truth without seeing where they might converge or find common ground.
I like
’s idea to create “democracy vouchers.” “Instead of a government agency arbitrarily distributing campaign funds, each voter would have the autonomy to allocate their voucher to the political parties or candidates that best represent their values.” Citizens could vote with their dollars, rather than allowing the rich to vote with theirs.
Good idea for the US, and also probably up here in Canada. We have less of a left/right split but we still have our major parties - three in our case - looking to define themselves.
The current political system doesn't allow for long term planning because governments and their agendas change every election cycle. In addition to bringing governance back to the local communities, a system for long term planning and execution needs to be implemented. One example: the recycling system in Sweden was implemented with a long term vision. To insure its execution, Sweden contractually obliged each new government to continue the program.
Another aspect is that, unfortunately, people with money can and do influence public opinion to increase their profits. Who will ensure that those local communities are not manipulated into passing laws or approving projects that are not necessarily in their interest? Education and access to proper information must be a priority in these communities. Perhaps one way to do it is by controlling how resources are allocated. At a local level, would we still allow single individuals to grab as many resources as they want to get rich? Probably not.