Launching a new national political party in the United States may be more difficult than sending a man to Mars.

在美国成立一个新的全国性政党可能比把人送上火星还难。

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who last year was the nation’s biggest known political donor, now says that he is trying to do both. But while the effort to achieve interplanetary travel has made slow progress for over 20 years, the past several decades of American politics are littered with abandoned attempts to disrupt the two-party system.

世界首富、去年美国已知的最大政治捐赠者埃隆·马斯克如今表示，这两件事他都要努力实现。然而，实现星际旅行的努力在过去20多年取得了缓慢的进展，但在过去几十年的美国政治中，打破两党制的努力却屡遭挫败。

It remains to be seen how serious Mr. Musk is about the new political project, and whether it will evolve from musings on his social-media platform to a fact of real life. While he declared on Saturday that “Today, the America Party is formed,” so far he has yet to register it with the Federal Election Commission.

马斯克对这个新的政治计划有多认真、该计划是否会从他在自己的社交媒体平台上的思考演变成现实生活中的事实，这些都还有待观察。虽然他在周六宣布“今天，美国党成立了”，但到目前为止，他还没有在联邦选举委员会注册。

As with many of his tweet-length proclamations, Mr. Musk’s plans for the new party are opaque. His private conversations about it so far have been conceptual and not focused on the details of what it would take to bring it to fruition, according to two people briefed on those talks. Some advisers to Mr. Musk who have also been involved in these early talks, however, appear more focused on those details and are soliciting more feedback from experts, according to one of the people.

和他的许多推文宣言一样，马斯克对这个新政党的计划是不透明的。据两名知情人士透露，到目前为止，他关于该计划的私下谈话都是概念性的，而不是集中在实现该计划所需的细节上。不过，据其中一名知情人士透露，马斯克的一些顾问也参与了这些早期的商谈，他们似乎更关注这些细节，并且正在征求专家的更多反馈。

Mr. Musk’s advisers have indicated privately that they plan to use a super PAC to organize initial support for the new party before it is formally established, according to one of the people briefed.

据一名知情人士透露，马斯克的顾问私下表示，他们计划在新政党正式成立之前，利用超级政治行动委员会来组织起对该党的初步支持。

Mr. Musk has said the America Party would be a new entity and would have the goal of disrupting the two major parties’ hold on the federal government.

马斯克曾表示，美国党将是一个新的实体，其目标是打破两大党对联邦政府的控制。

Should he eventually tire of the idea, it would not be the first time he offered a grand pronouncement in an X post before either walking it back or letting it wither as he moved on to a new pursuit. Still, some notions that originated as seeming jokes by Mr. Musk — like his early purchase of shares in Twitter — have ended with world-altering investments.

如果他最终厌倦了这个想法，那也不会是他第一次在X帖子中发表豪言壮语，然后要么收回，要么任其枯萎，转而追求新的目标。尽管如此，马斯克一些最初看似开玩笑的想法——比如他早期购买Twitter的股票——最终以改变世界的投资告终。

Public opinion polling has long shown that Americans are hungry for an option beyond the two major political parties, though third-party candidates have seldom performed well in elections.

长期以来的民意调查显示，美国人渴望在两大政党之外另有一个选择，尽管第三党候选人很少在选举中表现出色。

Should Mr. Musk make a sustained investment in his America Party project — either in monetary terms or by expending his political capital — it would face steep hurdles. Here are a few.

如果马斯克对他的美国党项目进行持续的投资，无论是在金钱方面还是通过消耗他的政治资本，都将面临巨大的障碍。下面列举了其中的一些。

Rules in each state are hard to follow

各州规则不一，难以遵守

Mr. Musk boasted on Sunday that his plan to radically transform American democracy would not be difficult — suggesting he had spent little time studying state ballot-access and federal campaign-finance laws.

马斯克周日夸口说，他这个从根本上改变美国民主的计划并不困难——这表明他几乎没有花时间研究各州选票准入和联邦竞选财务法。

Congressional candidates for a theoretical new party face a labyrinthine system of signature requirements that vary from state to state. The most restrictive laws are in Georgia, where candidates outside the two major parties must gather 27,000 signatures from their district. This hurdle has kept third-party congressional candidates from being on a general election ballot since the law was enacted in 1943, according to Richard Winger, the publisher of Ballot Access News, which has tracked election laws since 1985.

一个理论上的新政党的国会候选人面临着一个错综复杂的签名要求系统，这个系统因州而异。最严格的是佐治亚州，在那里，两大政党以外的候选人必须从其选区收集27000个签名。《选票访问新闻》的出版商理查德·翁格自1985年以来一直在追踪选举法，他说，自该法于1943年颁布以来，这一障碍一直使第三党国会候选人无法出现在大选选票上。

Qualifying a slate of 435 House candidates, were Mr. Musk to take his idea national, would require about three times as many petition signatures as putting a presidential candidate on the ballot in every state and could cost more than $50 million just in signature gathering, Mr. Winger said.

翁格说，如果马斯克想把他的想法推广到全国，那么要获得435名众议院候选人的请愿签名数量，大约是在每个州将总统候选人列入选票的三倍，光收集签名就可能要花费5000多万美元。

“I was on a Zoom call yesterday with people talking about this,” Mr. Winger said in an interview Monday. “A lot of them predicted that he’s the kind of person who, when he finds out how hard this is, he’ll give up.”

“昨天我和一些人在Zoom上讨论了这个问题，”翁格在周一接受采访时说。“他们中的很多人都预测，他是那种一旦发现这有多难就会放弃的人。”

Parties require a sustained commitment

政党需要持续的投入

It is not yet clear whom Mr. Musk would designate to set up a new party on his behalf. Some people who are friends with Mr. Musk’s Republican advisers privately worry about those advisers’ career prospects should they attach themselves to an anti-Trump effort. President Trump has punished Republican consultants who have joined or even tenuously linked arms with his opponents. The White House in recent days has been closely watching Mr. Musk’s allied operatives, a person briefed on the White House’s posture said.

目前还不清楚马斯克会指定谁来代表他成立一个新的政党。一些与马斯克的共和党顾问交好的人私下担心，如果这些顾问参与反特朗普的行动，他们的职业前景会受到影响。特朗普总统惩罚了那些与他的对手联手、甚至是有微妙联系的共和党顾问。一名了解白宫立场的人士表示，白宫最近几天一直在密切关注与马斯克结盟的人员。

That could leave Mr. Musk dependent, at least somewhat, on the mercenary types who populate the world of minor parties and ballot-access campaigns, and who may be willing to suffer reputational damage with national Republicans if the paycheck is big enough.

这可能使马斯克至少在某种程度上要依赖那些活跃在小党派和选票准入宣传活动中的那种拿钱办事的人物。只要报酬足够丰厚，他们可能不惜在全国共和党圈子中承担名誉受损的代价。

In recent days, cash-hungry ballot-access operatives have been conducting frenzied research and developing proposals with the hopes of getting them in front of Mr. Musk, according to one person doing just that. Some of them have begun spending inordinate amounts of time analyzing his social media posts.

据一位知情人士透露，最近几天，渴望获得现金的竞选工作者一直在加紧做调研并制定方案，希望能把这些方案送到马斯克面前。他们中的一些人已经开始花大量时间分析他的社交媒体帖子。

Aside from minor parties like the Libertarians and Greens, which have been successful at qualifying for ballots and occasionally at spoiling general elections, American third parties have generally had a short shelf life.

除了像自由党和绿党这样的小党派曾成功获得选票资格并偶尔破坏大选之外，美国第三党派的寿命一般都很短。

The Reform Party, created by H. Ross Perot for his presidential campaign in 1992, petered out after Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota on its line in 1998 and Mr. Trump declined to run for president on its line in 2000.

1992年，罗斯·佩罗为竞选总统而创建了改革党，在杰西·文图拉1998年代表该党当选明尼苏达州州长、特朗普在2000年拒绝代表该党竞选总统后，改革党逐渐衰落。

Mr. Perot won 19 million votes in 1992 on a populist platform that in some ways preceded Mr. Trump’s rise. Mr. Musk so far has espoused no real policy agenda beyond deficit reduction and anger at Mr. Trump.

1992年，佩罗凭借民粹主义纲领赢得了1900万张选票，从某种程度上说，这个纲领早于特朗普的崛起。到目前为止，马斯克除了削减赤字和对特朗普表示愤怒之外，没有提出任何真正的政策议程。

Unite America, a 2010s project to put forward centrist candidates, stopped nominating candidates after the 2018 election and shifted its focus to pushing for changes in election laws that would make it easier for independent and third-party candidates to succeed.

“团结美国”是2010年代推出中间派候选人的一个项目，在2018年大选后停止提名候选人，并将重点转向推动选举法的修改，使独立和第三党候选人更容易获得成功。

Musk may not know what he wants yet

马斯克可能还不知道自己想要什么

On his social media site, Mr. Musk has floated the idea of holding an American Party Congress this August in Austin, Texas. He suggested that he would be interested in keeping a “laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts” in the 2026 midterms. And if those candidates were to win, he said, they would “caucus independently,” but “legislative discussions would be had with both parties.”

在他的社交媒体网站上，马斯克提出了今年8月在得克萨斯州奥斯汀举行美国党代表大会的想法。他表示，他有兴趣在2026年的中期选举中“专注于参议院的二到三个席位和众议院的八到10个选区”。他说，如果这些候选人获胜，他们将“独立组织党团会议”，但“将与两党进行立法讨论”。

像“无标签”这样的美国第三党派一般都很短命。

Mr. Musk’s team has not yet taken many operational steps to stand up the party, according to people in touch with them. On X, he has ingested feedback about the effort — including what the party’s logo should look like — from Grok, his company’s artificial intelligence chatbot.

据知情人士透露，马斯克的团队还没有采取很多操作步骤来支持该党。在X上，他从公司的人工智能聊天机器人Grok那里获得了有关这一努力的反馈——包括该党的标志应该是什么样子。

Limiting his ambitions to just a handful of races might not fit with Mr. Musk’s often grandiose self-image, but it could leave him with a better return on his investment.

将自己的野心限制在少数几项角逐上，可能与马斯克经常表现出的好大喜功的自我形象不符，但却可能会让他的投资获得更好的回报。

It is easier to work within the system

在体制内运作会更容易

For all his talk about starting a new party from scratch, Mr. Musk may find it easier to work within the existing system.

尽管马斯克一直在谈论从零开始建立一个新的政党，但他可能会发现，在现有体制内工作更容易。

There are still many Republicans in Congress who will privately express disgust with Mr. Trump, but very few who have been willing to cross him in public. In recent weeks, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska announced they would not seek re-election next year, in part because of their inability to be totally committed to Mr. Trump’s agenda.

国会中仍有许多共和党人会私下表达对特朗普的厌恶，但很少有人愿意在公开场合与他作对。最近几周，北卡罗来纳州参议员汤姆·提利斯和内布拉斯加州众议员唐·培根宣布，他们明年不会寻求连任，部分原因是他们无法完全支持特朗普的议程。

Mr. Musk has committed to support Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a Republican who is staring down a potential primary challenge from a Trump supporter.

马斯克承诺支持肯塔基州共和党众议员托马斯·马西，后者正面临来自一名特朗普支持者的潜在初选挑战。

Several veterans of minor parties suggested that Mr. Musk might try to ally himself with an existing party that has a ballot line already, such as the Libertarians.

几位小党派的资深人士表示，马斯克可能会尝试与一个已经拥有选票线的现有政党结盟，比如自由意志党。

Nick Troiano, the executive director of Unite America, proposed that Mr. Musk could achieve a much better return on his political investment by persuading Republican incumbents to align with his new effort than by trying to elect newcomers to Congress.

联合美国的执行董事尼克·特罗亚诺认为，马斯克说服共和党现任议员与他的新努力保持一致，比选举新人进入国会更能实现政治投资的回报。

Whether the new Musk crew operated as a bloc within the Republican Party or formed an entirely new organization could make little difference if members of Congress aligned with Mr. Musk stuck together amid what would certainly be an unrelenting onslaught from Mr. Trump.

在特朗普的无情打击下，如果与马斯克结盟的国会议员能够保持团结，那么无论马斯克的新班底是作为共和党内的一个集团运作还是组成一个全新的组织，都没有太大区别。

“If the hardest thing to do is elect a third-party or independent candidate to Congress, the overlooked opportunity is who is there that would potentially defect to a new effort if they had the backing to get re-elected,” Mr. Troiano said. “Right now, the options are to continue a miserable existence in the party, or retire, or try something new.”

“如果说选出一名第三党或独立候选人进入国会是最困难的事情，那么还有一个被忽视的机会——国会中有哪些人一旦得到连任竞选支持，会有转投新组织的可能，”特罗亚诺说。“他们现在的选择是继续在党内苟且偷生，或者退休，还是尝试新的东西。”