So I was reading this survey of Occupy Wall Street participants (.PDF) when I noticed something completely unsurprising:

If the 2012 election for the U.S. House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate in your district? Democratic candidate 42

Republican candidate 4

Wouldn’t vote 22

Someone else 32

Respondents give Obama much lower approval than the general public does. In fact, OWS represents broad public dissatisfaction with the current state of all American politics and the economy. But it’s that “someone else” I find most telling. Why is it that so many people want a third choice of political party, but so few actually put forth the effort to build one?

The most significant third party movements in my lifetime have been Ross Perot’s Reform Party, which never ran a candidate other than Ross Perot. After ensuring Clinton’s election and reelection took place without any kind of majority, the Reform party left zero impact on any level of American government — state, local, or federal. The only other third party movement of any consequence was Ralph Nader’s Green Party run in 2000, about which the less said the better; it, too, failed to make any significant or positive impact on American politics.

It is already too late to build a third party movement for the current election cycle. Indeed, advocates of the approach should start now if they want to affect the 2014 midterm cycle. Anyone prepping a third-party run for the White House in 2016 is well advised to start creating ground-level infrastructure in Iowa and New Hampshire by the beginning of 2015. Whenever I read Occupy Wall Street adherents saying they refuse to build Democratic Party infrastructure, my response is “fine — so build infrastructure!” Yet they never do, and complain at their lack of choices the following November.

There’s another popular idea that voting is useless (the 22% above). These same people will carry signage advocating new laws, such as a transaction tax or millionaire surtaxes, without explaining how their issues will become the law of the land unless Congress holds a vote on them, or recognize that a Republican-controlled Congress is very unlikely to ever do so. Moreover, if voting is so useless then why are Republican legislatures trying so hard to disenfranchise millions of Americans?

Some seventy percent of survey respondents say that OWS protests are “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to change the views of elected officials in the Democratic Party. As I’ve argued before, the absence of a significant change movement in America is a huge part of the rightward-drift in American politics since 2008. Now that people are showing up in the streets to express dissatisfaction and demand their hope and change, Dems — including the president — have stiffened their spines in a predictable manner. That’s the value of showing up.

But it will take more than camping in Zuccotti Park, or even a general strike at the Port of Oakland, to change America in the way these folks would like. To build a real third party requires more than a charismatic front man: an organization must challenge every level of the ballot, from top to bottom, in order to take political power and prove its members have the ability to govern. A third party must seek and promote candidates for dog catcher, county commission, school board, etc. If not through a third party, the Occupation must still affect the candidates that WILL be running.

How to achieve that? Simple: the movement can offer candidates of both parties a platform — say, three to five important ideas like the transaction tax — and let them make the choice to adopt it, earning the movement’s energy and GOTV activism on their behalf, or else reject it, and make do on their own. The problem with this approach is that it necessarily involves dirtying the Occupation’s hands with the nuts-and-bolts business of campaigning. The advantage is that it allows the movement to advance its agenda without regard to party affiliation.

The real danger is that nothing changes, or that things get worse. Believe it or not, both of those possibilities can still happen; it’s right there in the data.