An anonymous reader e-mails this mess o’questions:

Predict the future! Ok, well maybe just give us your best guess. Do you see the possibility of a third party becoming president within the next 50 years? Are we stuck with either a Dem or Rep or could we see a Libertarian one day? Or I guess, perhaps another party as president? I ask because, while I lean heavy as Libertarian, I’m registered as a Republican and don’t know if registering as a Libertarian would simply mean I get to vote less without much say in who’s running the show? (And yes, I know: If everybody thinks my way, of course we’ll never have anything other than Dem/Rep. So do I take the leap?)

Right now, every Representative and all but two Senators are members of the two major parties. Forty-nine of the fifty state governors are members of the two major parties. That means it’s pretty darn difficult for third-party and independent candidates to win, even in areas as small as congressional districts. Now consider that to win the Presidency, a third-party candidate would have to win pluralities in enough states to win a majority of electoral votes. That’s unlikely to happen in the next 50 years.

The most electorally successful third party was Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive “Bull Moose” Party in 1912– but the circumstances were different from any likely to occur in the next 50 years:

1. The progressive movement was roughly 20 years old at the time, and was far more widespread than the libertarian movement is today.

2. Small-p progressive Democrats and Republicans had already won office at many levels, which may have made the idea of voting for an official Progressive Party more palatable. There aren’t too many Democrats and Republicans bragging about how libertarian they are today.

3. The Progressive Party’s candidate in 1912 was the Bull Moose himself, Teddy Roosevelt. Voters could see him as President because they had already seen him as President, from 1901-1909. The modern equivalent would be if Carter, or either Bush, or Clinton, or Obama announced that he was joining the Libertarian Party and running for the White House. But that’s unlikely to happen either because of the 22nd Amendment (which prevents Clinton and Bush 43 from serving again) or because the single-termers were single-termers because America got sick of them (Carter and Bush 41). So the presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party can’t replicate the advantage of TR’s prior experience as President.

Also keep in mind that despite the advantages Teddy had that the LP doesn’t have, he still lost. It was a three-way race, and he split the Republicans while attracting few Democratic voters.

In terms of replicating Teddy’s experience, the Libertarian Party‘s best shot is to find a libertarian who has already held elective office– say, the former two-term Governor of a southwestern state– and get him to run. But the libertarian movement might be better served to work within one (if not both) of the two big parties, and drag both of them towards libertarian beliefs. We’ve seen that happen before, with late-19th/early-20th century progressivism. Any failure to win elections should not dissuade libertarians from trying to change the hearts and minds of members of both major parties.

To answer your question about how you should register: I’d say it depends on how involved you want or hope to be in the politics of the Libertarian Party of Florida. If you want to vote in Libertarian primaries, then register LP. If you’re okay with not voting in LP primaries, then I say register with one of the major parties and vote for the most libertarian candidates you can find.

(All this reminds me: if the Koch brothers were really smart, they’d give millions of dollars to Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate.)

An anonymous e-mailer e-mails anonymously: “How much did Romney’s alienation of grassroots and Ron Paul voters at the RNC hurt the GOP’s chances of winning this time around?”

Hard to say. If it did hurt the GOP’s chances, it hasn’t shown up in the polls yet. So I’m not sure the grassroots/Paul voters are all that alienated.

Neither libertarians nor Tea Partiers are part of Romney’s natural constituency, but there seemed to be an effort to court them. Look at some of the stars of the convention. Rand Paul is the scion of the GOP’s libertarian wing. Clint Eastwood is libertarian. Mia Love, John Kasich, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Rob Portman, Paul Ryan, and Marco Rubio are (for now) darlings of the Tea Party. Ron Paul, even though he chose not to speak and refused to endorse Romney, was the subject of a tribute video.

Maybe it was all lip service, maybe it shows that the GOP is actually starting to trend toward economic conservatism. Either way, the poll numbers suggest (again, for now) that the libertarians and Tea Party are no more upset with Romney than they were heading in to the convention.

I think that in those states where the election is close, the Tea Partiers and libertarian-leaning Repubs will probably hold their noses and vote for Romney. Getting Obama out of office will seem too important to do otherwise. In the states that are strongly Democratic or strongly Republican, you’re more likely to see them vote for Gary Johnson in hopes of pushing the Libertarian Party towards 5% of the popular vote, which would mean matching funds in 2016.

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It might be really interesting to see what happens if Romney’s numbers and the GOP’s congressional numbers don’t match. Say Romney sinks in the polls, but the GOP is a lock to keep the House and looks likely to take over the Senate. Maybe some of those libertarian-leaning Republicans start thinking “Congress can stonewall Obama till 2016, so I’m voting for Johnson or writing in Ron Paul.” Obama wins, the Republicans take over Congress. Then in 2016, the GOP puts up someone the Tea Party actually likes, and someone the libertarian GOPers can tolerate better than Romney.

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Not happy with the title. “Jilting” might not be the right word, but I had the Granny Weatherall story in mind, so there it is.

An anonymous reader writes: “”What do you think of this article? I know it’s a bit out dated but do you think it’s likely to happen?”

In short, the article claims that there’s a ginormous stock market crash coming, and that investors need to prepare for it. Peter Schiff is quoted as saying that the 2008 crash wasn’t the “real crash,” and that the real crash is just around the corner. Another economist, Robert Wiedemer, is quoted as claiming that beginning in 2012, we will see “50% unemployment, a 90% stock market drop, and 100% annual inflation.” Wiedemer’s credibility lies in the fact that he “accurately predicted the collapse of the U.S. housing market, equity markets, and consumer spending that almost sank the United States.”

So what do I think?

First, to be frank, the article read like an ad. Somebody’s trying to sell me something.

Second, I really don’t know what the stock market’s going to do. Macroeconomists are very good at making predictions, but they’re not as good at making accurate predictions. Folks are constantly predicting recessions and crashes right around the corner, and some of them are right on occasion. Probability dictates that some of them are right twice in a row, but I don’t think being right about the 2008 recession means you’re a lock to accurately predict the timing and magnitude of the next one.

Third, while I can see a recession happening (continuing?) in the near future, I think Wiedemer’s specific predictions are absurd. This country hasn’t seen 25% unemployment in the last 75 years; I seriously doubt that we’re going to see unemployment twice that bad in a recession that is supposed to begin this calendar year. A 90% stock market drop is marginally more believable (back during the Depression, the DJIA dropped 85% from peak to trough) but it’s still highly unlikely. I think moderate-to-high inflation is likely, but I mean 10% annually in a worst-case scenario, not 100% annually.

Fourth, I can safely say that I think Wiedemer’s numbers are wrong, because if they turn out to be right, then I won’t be able to afford this website anymore anyways and any evidence that I disagreed with him will disappear.

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Do I think we’re soon to face another recession? I don’t know. Do I think that the next recession, whenever it occurs, will be worse than the 2007-09 recession? Sorry, I really don’t know. I do think that barring some serious reforms, our debt problems will eventually blow up in our faces, but who knows when that’s going to be? I wouldn’t presume to make predictions about how soon it’ll happen, or how bad it’ll get, or whether the debt will cause the next recession, or the one after that, or the one after that, or…

Today I discovered that, for the first time, there are students enrolled in my class who were born after I graduated from college.

In my class. Not just at my school, like little freshmen who won’t be my problem for another two years, or like toddlers whose moms are checking on their older siblings. I mean they are sitting in desks in my classroom and I’m supposed to teach them.

This is an intolerable reminder of my advancing age. I’ll have to do something youthful and irresponsible to compensate, like not pay my bills until just before they’re due, or go five weeks without a haircut instead of four.

Today’s just-dodged-violating-my-resolution post consists merely of a quote, appropriate given the occasion of the first day of school. Here tis:

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.

–Paul Johnson

I’ll have to put this on my wall at work.