 I'm so sorry that I have to do this to you, but I have to remind you that Donald Trump exists. Yeah. We were all taking a mental break from the stress that he causes with his dumb ass tweets and whatnot, but I've got to talk about this story. It is absolutely fascinating to me, and I can't pass this up. So we didn't actually address this on the program, I don't think anyways, but about a month or so ago, Donald Trump reportedly floated the idea of starting his own political party, and he would call this the Patriot Party. And the idea is that this party is necessary because the Republican Party is just out of step with its conservative base, and they're not extreme enough for Donald Trump and his sycophants. If you can imagine that, thinking that Republicans are not extreme enough for you. But that's the goal of starting this new party. And you know, I wasn't necessarily sure what to make of it. I don't know that Donald Trump is actually going to follow through with this. I think this is just a thought that he has. It's probably more interested in starting Trump TV or something like that. But the Hill and Harris X took a poll of Republican Party voters between January 28th and 29th, and they wanted to gauge interest in a new party with Donald Trump as the leader. And to my surprise, there was a lot more support for this than I could have ever anticipated. The results are just shocking, and I want to talk about this. So the Hill reports, a majority of Republican voters said if former President Trump were to start a new political party, they would likely join a new Hill-Harris X poll finds. 64% of registered Republican voters in the January 28th through 29th survey said they joined a new political party led by the former president, including 32% who said they would very likely join. By contrast, 36% of Republican respondents said they are either very or somewhat unlikely to join. The survey found 28% of independents and 15% of Democrats said they'd likely join a third party led by Trump. 37% of voters overall said if Trump started a new political party, they'd likely join. Last month, Trump reportedly floated the idea of starting a new political party, however, no concrete plan concerning a Trump-led third party has emerged. And that is probably because starting an entirely new political party is a lot of work. It requires resources and organizing. Donald Trump isn't going to do this unless somebody else does it for him. And there are enough people that would be willing to put into work for him. This is, it's crazy, 64% of Republicans would jump ship for Donald Trump. Wow. Now I've got to talk through the implications of this because this can go one of many ways. I think the obvious thing that would happen is at least in the short term this would cause catastrophic damage to the Republican Party because conservative voters would now be splitting their votes between the Republican Party and the Patriot Party, which paves the way for Democrats to get a plurality in almost every single election. So if Donald Trump were to do this, this would be great for Democrats, albeit in the short term only. Long term. However, I don't necessarily think this would pave the way to three parties existing or pave the way to a multi-party system because I truly believe in Duverger's law. I wish it didn't always hold true or never held true, but it always holds true. Duverger's law, for those who don't know, is the idea that posits that anytime a political system has a majority and first pass the post, win or take all system, they're always going to see two parties. Doesn't matter what. You know, you're going to see a lot of parties pop up from time to time, but they're never going to be electorally viable. You're always going to see two major parties in the United States. So the question is like, how would there still be two parties if Trump creates a third party? Well, I think what would ultimately happen is that the conservative base would be consolidated. I think that more than anything, rather than this leading to like a long lasting multi-party system, what would ultimately happen is this would catalyze party realignment where you see the remaining Republicans, such as Mitt Romney, maybe even Liz Cheney, they would jump ship because they don't want to join the Donald Trump party and they would become Democrats. And as a result, Democrats, ideologically speaking, would embrace them and become more conservative. And then you see the Donald Trump party become the de facto conservative party in American politics. And therefore you'd see two main parties again, either the Donald Trump party would, you know, absorb the Republican Party or vice versa. Either way, at most I think this could cause long term party realignment. I don't think that would be good. If the Democratic Party embraced folks like Mitt Romney, which they absolutely would or Susan Collins, anti Trump Republicans, they would just become more conservative and the right wing party in America would become even more right wing than it is already. So, you know, at face value, I feel inclined to think, well, OK, go ahead, Trump, do this because you're just going to, you know, split the Republican base. But long term, this could be worse for American politics in terms of like what it does to the Overton window. But this is really fascinating because it really gives us some insight into the habits of Republican Party voters. They're a lot less disciplined than Democratic Party voters because what we usually see more often than not is a level of loyalty to the Democratic Party, even among socialists and communists and artists that we just don't see on the other side, you know, consistently in every election, the libertarian gets more votes than the Green Party candidate. And now when Donald Trump considers starting a new party, you see a lot of Republicans, they're willing to shed that Republican label like that and support this new party. When I think that you wouldn't really see that on the Democratic Party side. Like in theory, if Bernie Sanders were to do something similar to this, I think that there would be a number of folks that would be inclined to leave the Democratic Party and support this new party with Bernie Sanders, hypothetically speaking. But I think the number wouldn't be 64 percent. I think it would be a lot less than that. Because, you know, left wing people are a lot more, they're in tune with like the needs of the people and a lot of folks won't risk voting for a third party if it means that Republicans will have an easier time winning, whereas Republican voters don't really care. If they have to like break a few eggs to make an omelet, lose a couple of elections, they'll do it. And in the long term, that's probably more strategically beneficial for conservative voters in America, because if you're willing to be ruthless, then you can win. But on the left, you know, I can't see any actual real momentum for a third party unless we get electoral reform. And what this tells us is that there is a demand for third parties or more specifically a multi-party system where we have like five to six viable party options. Because I mean, if you look at public opinion polls, most people, a plurality of folks, they identify as independence, not Democrats or Republicans. Republicans are actually a minority party and Democrats as well. But to a lesser extent. And so what I've been trying to push is electoral reform. If you want to have a multi-party system in America, which we all should, you've got to change the system. Otherwise, I just I can't see that happening. The duopoly is always going to reign supreme unless we get true electoral reform. And that sucks. Like it's not just the electoral institutions. I also think that the two-party duopoly is culturally ingrained in America in a number of ways. But imagine the difference that having a multi-party system would make. So think about how unfair and how rigged our system is currently against the third parties. So we have a majoritarian winter takeoff system, which means that in every single district, you're only going to see one winner. So if I live in a district where the Republican got 52% of the vote and I'm part of the 48% that didn't vote for that Republican, well, 48% and myself in this district, we're not going to be represented. And that Republican has no incentive to represent the people who didn't vote for him, because why would you? If they're not going to vote for you, then you appeal to the people who helped you get elected. Now imagine if we changed that and we increased the district magnitude from one to say three. District magnitude just means like the number of representatives you send to Congress per district. So let's say that we had three representatives per district. Well, instead of everyone except the winner getting representation, well, let's say in that same scenario, the Republican got 52%. The Democrat got 35%. And, you know, some Communist Party got 15%. Well, if you're in the top three, since three seats will be awarded, those individuals get representation. So now I have someone in Congress, even if we only made up 15%, representing my interests. This is why proportional representation is something that I try to talk about as much as possible, because proportional representation gives more people a voice, and it's really difficult to live in a representative pluralistic society if you shut out so many voices, if you force people to constantly vote for the lesser of two evils, because they fear that they're going to help another party who they disagree with the most get elected. So we need electoral reform. Now, I will say that getting electoral reform, this is incredibly difficult to do. But even if there was a true grassroots movement around this issue and we all pushed for electoral reform, that's not going to solve everything because we live in a capitalist society, and capitalism is very corrosive. So those new parties that pop up are just as likely to be corrupted as the Democrats were. They were once the party of the working people, but look at them now. So, you know, having a multi-party system that's not going to solve everything, but does it help? I'd argue, yeah, it does. So overall, the main takeaway is I can't really see Trump's move here, leading to long-term change, electorally speaking. I don't think this will permanently like thwart the duopoly and any benefits that we'd see would probably be short-term. But long-term, I think we're always going to see two parties unless there was a real concerted effort at the grassroots level to fight for electoral reform. But that's tough because to get electoral reform, we basically have to convince people who got elected with this system to change the system that helped them get elected. We have to force or convince Republicans and Democrats to minimize the amount of power they have and change the system so that way more parties can get power and that way their parties have less power. Like, it's so difficult. It really is tricky. But I mean, this is all speculation. Who knows what Trump could do? Perhaps he really can create a third party that has staying power for a decade or two. We don't know because Trump is a political phenomenon who has a cold following. So they're going to follow him regardless of what he does. But ultimately, will he do this? I don't know. Again, I think he's probably more inclined to opt for Trump TV or something like that. Either way, this is a fascinating conversation to have. It does show you that there is certainly a demand for multiple parties and a multi-party system. But it's just disturbing that it's because folks think that Republicans aren't extreme enough. Like, that's pretty alarming. Either way, I'll continue to update you on this development. If Trump creates this new party, that is going to be entertaining at a minimum.