Because people are clearly unhappy with the democratic party, so there’s obviously a market for it. People that would’ve otherwise stayed home instead of voting for the democrats now have a voice. That’s what democracy looks like, at least in most European countries that is. It’s fairly normal to see smaller parties pop up that better represent a subsection of the electorate than to see huge monolithic parties that try to encompass everything.
Oh the paradox of the third party. They’re too weak to make a dent, but also the root of all evil. This sounds like fascism to me.
If they’re so harmless, then why do you care if a very small portion of the electorate votes for them? After all it won’t make a dent, right? :)
If they make such a big dent that the democratic party needs to run smear campaigns against them, then how come they’re so harmless and underrepresented?
To me it looks like you have a dysfunctional system. They are popular enough to be voted by a huge chunk of the electorate, thus hurting the big legacy parties, but your system is built in such a way that they end up being underrepresented at the national level.