Nader is currently running at about 7 percent in most polls, and is in the double digits in Western states. Buchanan has about 5 percent of the vote in most polls. The popularity of the Green Party stems from the belief of many people that Clinton and Gore have sold out their environmental and social principles and gone to bed with big business. Buchanan has made a career as an ultraconservative thorn in the side of moderate Republicans, both as a Nixon speech writer and a television commentator. He has angered many Reform members with his intolerant social views against gays and immigrants, but has attracted the support of blue-collar Reagan Democrats through his protectionist economic ideas.
American history is littered with the carcasses of failed third parties.
But we now have four viable parties, and that trend is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. The immediate goal for Nader and Buchanan is to gather 5 percent of the vote. That would win their parties federal matching funds for the 2004 election and allow them to build and grow into solid, permanent entities. It will be difficult, though, considering that Democrats and Republicans are conspiring to keep them off the debates. The Corporation for Presidential Debates, which decides who gets on the televised face-offs, is supposedly nonpartisan, but is in fact headed by a former Democratic Party chairman and a former Republican Party chairman.