Maybe it is time for the U.S. political scene to give birth to a third or even a fourth political party.

I will propose a different, maybe even skewed, take on the 2016 races for the parties' presidential nominations. Both parties have traditionally pursued the "bigger tent" road to victory. Each has tried to attract an increasingly larger proportion of the voting public. In the attempt to accomplish this objective, each party's message has become more and more dilute on one hand and more and more strident on the other. The very real doublespeak that results may have worked in another time and place. Currently there are too many video cameras, cell phones, social media, search-able databases and other technologies available so that it is impossible to maintain the secrecy of narrowly focused utterances. (Think of M. Romney's 47% comment.) As these technologies have disclosed duplicity on the part of the current political leadership, they have also provided a vehicle whereby those disillusioned and disenfranchised are able to communicate and collaborate.

As the "bigger tent" efforts become effective, it makes for stranger and stranger bedfellows, who may share a common language of politics but a very different political reality. This difference often only becomes available when a particular party assumes leadership on the national or state scene and then proceeds to legislate in response to the interests of a narrow subset of the public which voted it into power. This may be particularly true for the Republican party, but my position is that the Democratic party has performed in like fashion.

It certainly is attractive to work within the two party system and attempt to take over one or the other party. There is all this political infrastructure in place; there is a history or hagiography for which to feel some allegiance and affection. Furthermore, we all want to believe that there is at least a modicum of sincerity in the utterances of each party's leadership as they pursued to date the goal of a "bigger tent." It is time to at least consider to stop doing the same thing that we have been doing for 50 years and to expect a different outcome this time. The U.S. society is too diverse to be divided into a two-piece pie. More pieces to the pie will mean that more folks can eat pie, that is, have their interests more clearly and vigorously represented. A substantive third or fourth party movement will immediately dilute the power of the Republican and Democratic parties. Politics will become the art of the possible and a negotiated resolution of divergent interests. This effort will not be successful without considerable time, effort, and sacrifice. There will be forces that will directly and indirectly work to thwart any movement towards a third or fourth party. Current actors will restate old promises ("It will be different this time.") and, when that doesn't work, will throw up barriers to any upstart political organization.

It is time to think such thoughts and to give voice to such ideas.