No, that's entirely different. Usage of a word by a very small part of the population in a way that is inconsistent - if historically correct - has an extremely small chance of overcoming the predominant usage. You'd basically be fighting all the way and I personally don't attach too much value to any word to go and worry about what people think when I call myself a hacker.
The 'third parties never win elections' thing is likely in reference to America's mostly two-party system. This is for reasons unrelated to usage of words and has much more to do with campaign financing, gerrymandering, media control and so on. It's orders of magnitude more harmful but it is more or less by design and it will take a massive restructuring of American politics before something resembling proportional representation (aka democracy) will be a real possibility.
The 'third parties never win elections' thing is likely in reference to America's mostly two-party system. This is for reasons unrelated to usage of words and has much more to do with campaign financing, gerrymandering, media control and so on. It's orders of magnitude more harmful but it is more or less by design and it will take a massive restructuring of American politics before something resembling proportional representation (aka democracy) will be a real possibility.