America, especially at this time, strikes me as rather very focussed on 'winning'. They're also extremely used (in that it's been that way for almost the entire

America, especially at this time, strikes me as rather very focussed on 'winning'. They're also extremely used (in that it's been that way for almost the entire existence of the country) to a 2-party getup. (That desire to win would strongly indicate that voters want to vote for a winning party and are thus unwilling to go out on a limb and vote for a long shot like this; it will be reflected in the polls which further highlights that the party can't win, and thus, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy). Thus, unless I'm really missing something, this party can't actually win anything and will just siphon off a few votes. I don't think it's particularly easy to determine which party gets more votes 'siphoned out', but any effect on actual winners of elections that this party might have is focussed solely around: [A] if it siphons significantly more votes off of one party vs. the other, and [B] if either major party is afraid of getting the short end of the stick in the above, and will slightly change their platform (or at least their message) in order to prevent it from happening. I can see an argument that engendering change in politics can be done even if you stand no chance of winning by changing the focus of public discourse, but given the polarized nature of the US, shouldn't you first, I dunno, start a party that tries to fix elections e.g. by applying the ranked voting system as used for e.g. New York majoral elections, or Maine's governor, to presidential elections? Until then whatever message Yang cares to put out there will just be drowned out by the masses eager to just paint them as an insiduous tool of the opposition, where all they will accomplish is to siphon votes off of the party that they are most similar to (probably the democratic party at this point in time). Thus, giving Yang and whomever likes his points the opposite effect: A vote for Yang is actually like half a vote in favour of the party you'd least want to govern. Even if you think that's an acceptable sacrifice on the road to a new party / a change in politics, it's not going to work simply because the news will obviously paint this new party as utterly irrelevant except in regards to which party it siphons more votes off of. Nobody will even be talking about what this party stands for. Am I missing something, or is it all just doomed, in that such a party can neither win, nor meaningfully influence the topic? Maybe Ross Perot had the right idea by tossing down a giant bag of cash to air very long ads that explained his idea to the populace. That way, his take on things was at least part of public discourse (regardless of how you feel about said ideas).