When Elon Musk posted a poll to his social media platform asking whether it was “time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle,” third party diehards saw their moment.
Former Democrat Andrew Yang popped into the mentions almost immediately, hawking his Forward Party. “Working on it!” he posted, adding, “⬆️🇺🇲 @FWD_Party!”
That same hour, Yang Cisco WebEx’d onto CNN, where he doubled down on the X post. “It was only a matter of time before Elon broke up with Trump, because Elon has a mission and a vision in mind around innovation and how technology can advance humanity,” Yang said on air. “I personally think that Elon falls into this middle ground that the Forward Party is trying to establish.”
Other past Democratic surrogates jumped on the third-party bandwagon. Mark Cuban, who stumped for Kamala Harris but kept his distance from her at the same time, reposted Musk’s poll with three checkmarks.
Finally, 2024’s buzziest attempt at a third party, No Labels, entered the chat.
“👋” the party quote-tweeted Musk’s poll. The group held mainly Democrats in suspense for months last year as they teased and then abandoned plans to run a candidate for president. Democrats hated them at the time, because their main contention was that Joe Biden could not win reelection. (Democrats feel very differently about Biden now than they did then.)
Republicans didn’t think as much about No Labels in 2024, but when they did, they didn’t like it either — because the party was fixated on defeating Donald Trump. The lack of a NoLabels presidential candidate was at least in part because there was immense establishment pressure not to split the vote and make it harder for MAGA to lose. Musk was on the other side of this argument, obviously.
But now that Musk and Trump have broken up…? “Absolutely,” No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy told NOTUS when asked if he welcomes Musk’s third party musings. “This is a conversation Americans want and deserve to have.”
“No Labels launched our 2024 ballot access effort because voters were so clearly frustrated with their political choices,” Clancy added. “They still are.”
This time, No Labels may reach some more sympathetic Democrats. Rep. Ro Khanna this week said the Democratic party should be “in dialogue” with Musk, given his opposition to the reconciliation bill. Though Khanna doesn’t sound like he’s in support of a third party, as much as he is in pursuit of a new coalition for his own party.
“When we refused to meet with @RobertKennedyJr, Trump embraced him & won. We can be the party of sanctimonious lectures, or the party of FDR that knows how to win & build a progressive majority,” he posted amid the Musk-Trump online breakup.
Everyone was in the business of seizing the moment.
“You don’t need to build a new party from scratch. There’s already one that believes in free markets, limited government, innovation without interference, and the decentralization of power. It’s the Libertarian Party, let’s talk,” Steven Nekhaila, Libertarian Party chair, replied to Musk Thursday.
The Libertarians were not done. “It already exisits [sic]!” the official party handle replied to Musk an hour later. “Join The Party of Principle 🗽”
By the end of Thursday, Musk’s poll about a third party was pinned to the top of his feed. However, there was talk that the wackiest parts of the feud with Trump might be dying down. After a user tweeted at Musk begging him not to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and to “Cool off and take a step back for a couple days,” when it comes to Trump, Musk seemed to be in agreement with the idea.
“Good advice,” he wrote. “We won’t decommission Dragon.”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro is a reporter at NOTUS.