Why No Labelism in America is a fail

Capital New York:

"It isn't like this everywhere. In other Western democracies, actual third parties have thrived for generations. Even those that have never broken through to challenge for the political leadership of their nations have often punched above their weight. Yet this pattern seems as foreign to U.S. culture as the metric system.

Why do third parties—and nonpartisan movements of the kind No Labels aspires to be—fail so miserably to gain traction here?

The clichés of the No Labels declaration—to say nothing of the outsized level of excitement surrounding a perfectly nice, if vague, speech by Mayor Bloomberg at the Brooklyn Navy Yards last week—provide a clue.

In the U.S., it often seems as if the appetite for an extra-partisan movement is rooted in a nebulous discontent with the existing options rather than any enthusiasm for a cogent and rigorous ideological alternative."