An Idea So Crazy It Just Might Work
The hostile takeover of a 3rd party shell company
Why Start a Third Party When There’s a Perfectly Good One Waiting to be Taken Over?
Of course, this is gonna sound crazy, but hear me out.
There’s a massive coalition of Americans sitting out there with no political home. I’m talking about the 69% of independents who want a third party, the 53% of Democrats who think the two-party system is failing, and millions more who are just politically homeless. These people want economic policies that work for regular folks - Medicare for All, higher taxes on the rich, stronger unions, affordable housing. But they’re stuck with a Democratic Party that can’t talk to working people and a Republican Party that serves billionaires while throwing them culture war red meat.
Here’s what makes this even more interesting: new polling from Echelon Insights shows that 65% of American voters are economically liberal. That breaks down to 43% who are liberal on both economics and culture, plus another 22% who are economically liberal but culturally conservative - what they call “populists.” These are the Bruce Springsteen working-class voters who want good jobs and healthcare but got turned off by Democratic messaging on other issues.
So you’ve got this huge coalition - nearly two-thirds of the country - that wants similar economic policies but has nowhere to go politically. Meanwhile, the actual free-market, privatize-everything libertarians? They’re 5% of the electorate. Five percent.
The work it takes to build a third party from scratch is massive. Getting on all 50 states’ ballots for presidential cycles is a Herculean effort; an independent candidate needs over 860,000 signatures nationwide. We’re talking tens of millions of dollars and armies of lawyers just for the privilege of competing. Even the richest man in the world talked about funding a third party and then apparently took one look at the bill and said “never mind.” Or maybe he was just full of shit from the start. I’m betting on the latter.
The Takeover Strategy That Actually Works
For years, people have been trying to change the trajectory of one of the two major parties. Trump largely managed to do it with the Republican Party, turning it into a vehicle for MAGA. But folks like Bernie Sanders and others have been trying to do the same thing with the Democratic Party, and it’s been a disaster.
I should know - I’ve been in this fight for over a decade, co-founding Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, working for Bernie and AOC. I’ve spent ten years trying to change the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, and failed spectacularly. The Democratic establishment built superdelegates specifically in 1982 to stop “outlier candidates” and other defensive mechanisms designed to prevent exactly the kind of hostile takeover Trump pulled off with the GOP.
Even The Boss gets it. He recently said “We’re desperately in need of an effective alternative party, or for the Democratic Party to find someone who can speak to the majority of the nation. There is a problem with the language that they’re using and the way they’re trying to reach people.” When you’ve lost Springsteen…
But here’s the thing - there is an easier way. Take over a party that has already done most of the hard work but serves almost nobody. That would be the Libertarian Party.
A Party is Just Infrastructure
What is a party, really? It’s just the sum of the people within it. The name is marketing. The platform is words on paper. What matters is who shows up and what they decide to fight for.
The Libertarian Party has achieved 50-state presidential ballot access six times and currently has ballot access in approximately 30 states for general elections. That represents decades of legal work and millions of dollars in investment that someone else already spent. They’ve built the infrastructure. They just have no idea how to use it effectively.
Think about this: they’re sitting on valuable political infrastructure while advocating for policies that serve 5% of the electorate. Meanwhile, there’s a 65% coalition waiting for a political home - people who want the government to negotiate drug prices, break up monopolies, strengthen unions, and tax the wealthy. These aren’t radical ideas. 69% of Americans support breaking up monopolies, including 62% of Republicans. 68% support unions at levels not seen since the 1960s. 59% want Medicare for All.
What are current libertarians fighting for? Eliminating antitrust laws while Americans want to break up monopolies. Privatizing everything while people want public solutions. It’s political malpractice on a massive scale.
The Playbook Already Works
This isn’t some fantasy. In 2022, a small hard-right faction called the Mises Caucus executed a complete hostile takeover of the Libertarian Party. They organized, showed up to low-turnout state conventions, and steamrolled the existing leadership. Several state parties disaffiliated rather than accept the new direction, but the takeover succeeded.
And they did it while pushing one of the most unpopular political ideologies in America - the kind of hardcore anarchy that makes normal people’s eyes glaze over. And just like the Mises takeover, we’d expect most current Libertarians to quit which is exactly the point. We don’t want them. We want ballot lines.
Now imagine running that same playbook with policies that 65% of the country already supports. Picture the recruitment drive when you’re fighting for Medicare for All and higher taxes on billionaires instead of trying to convince people we should eliminate the Department of Education.
Would it be easy? Hell no. But would it be easier than taking over the Democratic Party with its superdelegates, closed primaries, and institutional resistance perfected over 50 years? Or building a third party from scratch and spending $50 million just to get on ballots? Absolutely.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
The political moment couldn’t be better. Trust in the federal government sits at just 22%. Congress has a confidence rating around 7-10%, consistently dead last among all institutions. People are clamoring for something to believe in.
Yet instead of seizing this opportunity, we keep trying the same failed strategies. We keep trying to build from scratch what already exists, or reform institutions specifically designed to resist change.
Think about what we’re up against in each scenario. Taking over the Democratic Party means fighting a machine with billions in corporate money, entrenched leadership, and rules designed to prevent insurgencies. Taking over the Libertarian Party means fighting a faction that got 0.4% of the vote in 2024 and whose entire active membership could probably fit in a decent-sized movie theater.
The Coalition is Waiting
The beauty of this strategy is that you’re not trying to serve everyone. You’re trying to build a coalition around economic populism that can appeal to both the culturally liberal folks who want progressive economics and the culturally conservative populists who want the same economic policies but got turned off by Democratic cultural messaging.
This isn’t about recreating the Democratic Party. It’s about building something new that can speak to the 22% of voters who are economically liberal but culturally moderate, plus the millions of independents and disaffected Democrats who want an alternative.
The Libertarian Party name? Most Americans don’t even know what it means. Pew Research has shown that few Americans can define “libertarian” anyway. The brand is essentially a blank slate. You get to define what “liberty” means for working people - the liberty that comes from knowing you can get sick without going bankrupt, the independence that comes when workers have power, the freedom that comes from not being screwed over by monopolies.
The Libertarian Party has spent 50 years building ballot access infrastructure while advocating for policies that 95% of the country rejects. They’ve done the hard work of creating the vehicle. They just have no clue where to drive it.
Meanwhile, there’s a massive coalition hungry for exactly the kind of populist economic agenda that polling consistently shows overwhelming support for. The contrast with other third-party ideas couldn’t be starker. While political observers talk about centrist third parties for the Elon Musk crowd - focused on deficit reduction, deregulation, and free trade - that’s fighting over table scraps.
When Echelon Insights recently asked voters to imagine new political parties, the winner wasn’t some centrist compromise. It was the party that would “put the middle class first, pass universal health insurance, strengthen labor unions, and raise taxes on the wealthy” - exactly the economic populist agenda I’m talking about. That got 31% support, beating every other option.
Meanwhile, the “free enterprise and traditional values” option got 20%, and the “social progress and free trade” neoliberal approach managed just 13%. The math is brutal for anyone trying to build a party around elite consensus while ignoring what regular people actually want.
The most practical path forward isn’t the most obvious one. It’s recognizing that sometimes the solution to your problem is sitting right there, largely unused and ripe for the taking.
The infrastructure exists. The coalition is waiting.
Bold or nuts?
Crazy? Nah, dude, I've been waiting years for something like this. I'm in.
The problem currently is that the two parties have monopoly control over the political process. Both parties know that no matter who sits in the White House, or controls Congress, they will be showered with hundreds of millions of dollars. They have absolutely no incentive to govern effectively or respond to the will of the people. The monopoly that needs to be broken up is the one in Washington, and I'm not at all convinced that can be done through the parties themselves.
But the Libertarians? I'm not against it, but I mean, it would have to be a total takeover. New name, new platforms, absolutely everything. It would be like a corporate takeover where the new ownership changes the name and everything and the only thing left of the original organization is the legal infrastructure. I guess you could argue that this kind of thing happened with both of the major parties over the years so it's not impossible.
And, the enticing part of this is that conceivably you can build a new coalition out of not only the vast majority of people who hate both parties, but people who are only nominally loyal to those parties and would vote for a new third party. In fact, the only people you could not realistically appeal to are the party loyalists, and they are a minority of the overall electorate.
I think, too, the important way to approach this is from the bottom up, not the top down. Don't worry about the White House. Don't worry about big, splashy, national campaigns. Start at the local level. Build the movement from the ground up. I don't care if you have to start at school boards. The problem with top-down is that you get this high profile I'm-running-for-president thing that can't work and once it fizzles out the movement has nowhere to go. Starting local is the way to build a lasting movement across election cycles.
So, like, okay, what next?
How about the Green Party? They were on 38 state ballots in 2024?