One of our ongoing conversations here at c99 is choosing between joining an existing national party and starting another. As an aid to the conversation, I wanted to share this bit of data from the Green Party that appeared in my inbox today:

We were blessed and honored to have the ability to spend a total of around $580,000 for legal defenses, ground game, and paid petitioners.

That is just the cost in money. The cost in time is that it took until the second week of September before they could start in on the actual campaign:

What if we had been able to use those resources for campaigning instead? How much more we could have accomplished? How much more visibility and press we could have garnered!

With the first debate only a week away, we can see just how absurdly tilted the system is against other voices at the national level.

This is also why it is so important for a national third party to get that magic 5% number. Of course, 5% is even harder when you don't have media coverage - and everyone in the two major parties is telling you that you are being everything from childish to evil if you want to demonstrate even that minimal level of support by merely voting, let alone advocating publicly.

So not only is running a national third party hard, but there are all sorts of obstacles in the way, some of which may not be obvious. So be prepared to raise a few million a year ahead of time for access and media presence of some kind. I think it can be done, but it will not be easy.