In the US, if one wants big changes, should one run as third party or run as D or R?

[bilby]

The entire purpose of representative democracy is to prevent any one person from making big changes.

If one person can make big changes, what you have is a dictatorship (of which monarchy is a subset).

So the only way to make a big change (if the US is working as designed) is to garner wide support for your proposal.

This is absolutely correct.

Actually, there is one way for one person to make big changes without garnering wide support, without being a dictator, without making the US stop working as designed, and without making his changes through either a major or a minor party. (Which I guess makes the correct answer to the poll Magical Brownies.) This guy made the states equalize legislative district populations, made the police tell suspects they have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney, desegregated the schools, and legalized interracial marriage.

It's highly debatable whether judiciary led change is 'working as designed'. The Judiciary are supposed to interpret law, not generate or make sweeping changes to it.

 

[Bomb#20]

Actually, there is one way for one person to make big changes without garnering wide support, without being a dictator, without making the US stop working as designed, and without making his changes through either a major or a minor party. (Which I guess makes the correct answer to the poll Magical Brownies.) This guy made the states equalize legislative district populations, made the police tell suspects they have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney, desegregated the schools, and legalized interracial marriage.

It's highly debatable whether judiciary led change is 'working as designed'. The Judiciary are supposed to interpret law, not generate or make sweeping changes to it.

Well, as a rule, judges don't make up new rules in a vacuum, but point to existing laws for their rulings to be interpretation of. People who approve of the changes will see what the judge does as interpreting the law and people who disapprove of them will see it as generating law. If you want to take personal approval off the table and decide who's right objectively, there's really little for it but to pick the actual judicial opinions apart and check if the legal reasoning makes sense. In Warren's case, Congress and 3/4 of the states had properly enacted a constitutional amendment mandating equal protection of the law; and the constitution said from the get-go that the constitution is the highest law of the land; and that's what the states agreed to abide by when they delegated part of their sovereignty to the feds. So I think it's hard to argue that Warren saying "Hey government, stop violating your own rule." doesn't count as "working as designed". Police having to read people their rights on its face looks a little dicier; but I haven't read the ruling so I can't say whether Warren had a solid legal argument for it.