These third party pres runs, whether Perot 32 yrs ago or Kennedy now, are pie in the sky vanity projects for the top of the ticket. That’s it. They can steal votes from the major parties, but I doubt they could ever even do enough to win a state or 2 and toss the election to the House (something I mused about with a theoretical No Labels run).

That’s because there is no platform for those guys. “Moderate” can mean different things to different people. I think the 2 party system today doesn’t support your view that there isn’t a less polarized majority in the country. It’s more most folks like that check in and out of politics cyclically, not paying attention like we do. But the extremes who are constantly engaged pick the candidates. Building from the bottom up allows for development of party philosophy, a real platform, exactly what’s meant by “moderate”, which could be: not inflexibly ideological and searching for compromise solutions.

Decades of building partisan tribalism will never be undone by a moonshot third party candidate. It would have to be dismantled gradually.