From 1913 until 1948 no serious third party movements emerged. There were the brief anti-communist Palmer raids, and there were rumors of ways Eugene V. Debbs planned to persuade voters to elect socialists and speculation that "Big Bill" Haywood and John Reid dashed off to Moscow to secure the blessings of utopian Marxism to us and our posterity, but these movements gleaned only slight mention so readers of the daily press would know they existed. Devout in their fervor, they hoped to bring changes to the established order.
In 1948 it seemed as if the Communists might break the Democratic Party into shreds. Senator Strom Thurmond ran as the "Dixie-Crat" Presidential candidate. Vice-president Henry Wallace courted the hard left of the party, and President Truman repeatedly cast himself as the only safe pair of hands available.
Through the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson years a sort of apolitical balance endured. In 1968 Governor George Wallace and Senator Eugene McCarthy tried quite unsuccessfully to have third party candidacies. In 1980 John Anderson tried the same thing; again it failed miserably. In 1992 the clamor for a third party came again, and billionaire businessman Ross Perot was the standard-bearer. Mr. Perot got 19% of the vote, no electoral votes, and had just enough impact to swing the election from Mr. Bush to Mr. Clinton.
In 1996 the Perot movement kept some of its momentum and placed a new party (the Reform Party) on the ballot in several key states. It joined the list of other obscure parties such as the Libertarian, New Alliance, Natural Law, Socialist, and Communist Parties who seek the "independent" vote. Their membership is not strong enough to win them Congressional seats; they control no state legislatures or governorships; but they stand candidates for President who generally collectively receive at most 2% of the vote.
