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Third parties rarely run for Congress. This is actually how you can tell that the US has no serious third parties. None of them make Congress even a remote priority. If they somehow won the presidency, they wouldn't be able to do anything because they have no Congressional support.
You've inadvertently highlighted why your only options are to vote Democrat or Republican. No other party is serious about trying to win. If they were, they'd be building up a local presence in all 50 states and winning local elections. Then they'd look at state legislatures and governors. Then Congress for the House and Senate, and then the presidency.
That's a lot of work though, so they'd rather run presidential candidates and grift for donations. The argument typically goes that they're trying to bring awareness to their party through the presidential election -- but how exactly is that going for them? It's readily apparent that strategy doesn't work, and they'd be better off putting in the hard work to become actual political contenders.
If you don't like how Congress represents you, support your desired representatives and senators in primaries, and then vote for the person you dislike least in the general election. Or, encourage a third party candidate to run who has statewide recognition and plenty of political experience.
Democrats and Republicans are the only options because all the other choices are batshit insane or just want to steal your donations.
Absolutely. Anyone who would waste a lot of money on an election they stand zero chance of winning and spends nothing on elections they actually could win. Is not a serious group. Until you know basically all third parties in America are simply presidential spoilers. Outside of the likes of the DSA Etc who have run candidates in a few state and local races as well.
Yeah they're pretty much the only group that seems to understand this. They have other struggles though with having greater appeal -- mainly from what I can tell, there's a lot of discord between different chapters.
That said, there actually is one socialist who did win a state legislature election, in Virginia. And they were able to get an insulin cap bill passed because they worked cooperatively with democrats.
This is the model that people need to follow if they want to move beyond Democrats and Republicans. This single socialist legislator in one state has done more than the entire green party combined.