7 July—Little songbirds of several species were feasting yesterday afternoon on a special summer treat, worms that Mother Nature was frying on the front walk. You had to feel sorry for the worms who weren’t smart enough to stay on the grass and keep out of the sun.

That takes us right back to Elon Musk’s nascent America Party. As Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act squirmed its way through Trump’s Congress, Musk threatened to form the new political party “if this insane spending bill passes.” Consider two things: First, all Musk seems to care about is spending—he unsurprisingly doesn’t give a damn about the bill’s other disastrous consequences. Surely, you’re thinking, Elon must care about people and things other than money. And you’d be half right. He cares about—and craves—power.

Second, Musk’s threat was contingent on the bill’s passage. So if Congress hadn’t passed what’s among the most disgraceful legislation since the birth of the republic, there’d be no America Party to do the Republicans out of votes. Right?

Wrong. Musk knew full well that the Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives wouldn’t have the principle nor the scrotal content to disappoint, disobey, and dissatisfy their fearsome, unforgiving, notoriously vindictive lord and master. And if the pusillanimous Republicans had done the right thing, Musk would simply have come up with another contingency to rationalize the need for his party.

Because—think power again. Elon Musk knows that he can’t be president absent a constitutional amendment that won’t happen in his lifetime. But he can be king. In a manner of speaking, anyway. And it’s not unlikely he can be king maker and sustainer, rather than a mere retainer, as he had been to Donald Trump.

That’s where Musk’s America Party comes in. While third-party candidates have never actually won the presidency, three—former President Theodore Roosevelt as a Progressive “Bull Moose” candidate, George Wallace as an American Independent candidate, Ross Perot as an independent candidate—have managed to get electoral votes, although none affected election outcomes.

It can be done, though. But it likely would be easier for a third party to seat enough senators and/or representatives to keep both major parties from having absolute majorities in their respective houses, causing what in parliamentary systems is known as a hung parliament and necessitating a coalition government. The third party spoilers would be able to make or break legislation, thus wielding more power than their numbers might be said to justify. Strategic politics at its best. Or worst.

America certainly needs serious alternatives to the Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, the Libertarians have been laughable of late and the other parties aren’t even worth laughing at. And, for the record, the Republican Party was a third party when it was formed in the 1850s as a coalition of antislavery activists. The good old days when Republicans were unquestionably the good guys. Certainly not the party of Donald Trump . . .