We’ve reached the dog days of summer and it’s usually a pretty slow political time of year. Once they hammer out some kind of deal on the debt ceiling and go home for the August recess, we’ll be looking for something, anything, to talk about. Mocking Tommy Friedman is usually a good bet, and this year we have him promoting an asinine plan called “Americans Elect.” Ben Adler does an adequate job of dissecting and dismissing the idea that we can solve our problems and our differences by electing a third-party president. I want to talk about something different.
What about third-party candidates for Congress? Now, I hope you are familiar with our winner-take-all system which is mandatory in federal elections because of our Constitution. What this means is that you can win an election with a mere plurality of the votes, and that if you lose by even one vote you lose everything. And this has very real consequences. Suppose you have candidates from the Red, Blue, and Green parties. The Red candidate disagrees with you about abortion rights and the blue and the green candidates both represent your views on the issue nicely. Assuming this is a dealbreaker issue for you, in the sense that you won’t support someone who disagrees with you, you can eliminate the red candidate and choose between blue and green based on some other considerations. If everyone behaves like you do, the blue and green candidates will split the abortion vote (for your position) between them while the Red candidate will get all the votes opposing your position. It’s possible for the Red candidate to win with as much as one vote shy of two-thirds of the voters opposing their view on abortion. You can substitute for abortion any issue which sharply divides the Democratic and Republican parties, which increasingly means almost every social and economic issue under the Sun.
So, the first problem with third-party candidates is that they have to win or they risk being spoilers that throw the election to a candidate who holds views out of the mainstream for their district. A recent example of this occurred in Illinois’ 8th District. Tea Party activist and deadbeat dad Joe Walsh won election by a margin of 291 votes. Green Party candidate Bill Scheurer won 6,494 votes. Democrat Melissa Bean was out of a job. The people of the 8th District were left with a moron to represent them.
Of course, once in a blue moon a third party candidate can actually win. This most often happens through the consent and conniving of one of the two major parties. For example, the Democrats simply agree not to field a candidate against Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Or, another example, the Republicans fielded a joke candidate against Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont, and openly pulled for Lieberman’s victory.
But it’s instructive to see what happened to Sanders and Lieberman once they got to Washington DC. If they wanted to sit on any committees they had to agree to join one of the two major party caucuses. This also involves voting for that party’s leader to be the Majority Leader of the Senate. For the House, it involves voting for that party’s candidate for Speaker of the House.
On top of this, they can be removed from their committee assignments or stripped of their seniority on those committees at any time. And, if they aren’t fairly loyal on important votes, they’re unlikely to rise to the level that they can actually chair a committee. Sen. Lieberman is an exceptional case in that he was already a chairman with a lot of seniority before he was officially kicked out of the Democratic Party. He did lose his slot on the Environment & Public Works Committee, but he otherwise maintained his positions and his seniority. Had he lost them, it’s likely he would have simply switched to supporting the Republican caucus.
In other words, even if a third-party candidate can somehow get on the ballot and beat a Democrat and a Republican, they will immediately discover that their path to power and influence and effectiveness is blocked unless they fall in line with one of the major parties. They might be to the right, left or center of whomever they replaced, but they’ll find that the can’t get too far out of line.
This is our system, flawed as it may be. It really doesn’t allow for third-parties. A third-party president is possible, but in our polarized political climate, they’d quickly discover that only one party was willing to work with them. They’d wind up being effectively a Democratic or Republican president.
My advice to the people who are trying to set up Americans Elect is to forget about it. The best thing to do is take all that hedge-fund money and start running Eisenhower Republicans in Republican primaries. Focus first on the states that let independents vote in Republican primaries and build from there. New England is probably the best place to start, but California and the Pacific Northwest could also work. Maybe even in the Scandinavian part of the Upper Midwest where there’s a history of progressive Republicanism. We’d all be grateful for an aggressive effort to moderate the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has its flaws but it isn’t what is screwing up all our lives right now.
Your plan is a good one, but it is far too sensible to appeal to a numbskull like Friedman. The idea that a third party is the route to salvation for the American political system is closely entwined with the belief that Both Sides Do It. Pushing for a more moderate GOP clashes with the fundamental conviction of the Very Serious.
Dude. Just reference the Atrios snark.
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2010/10/this-column-has-been-written-before-and.html
[blockquote]The lazy but very typical pundit column is the one that desires a third party to appear out of nowhere, have massive popular support, and magically implement the agenda that the pundit wants.[/blockquote]
History:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/07/third-parties-in-american-history-not-usually-effective-
agents-of-change
The best way to implement change is to do what you said. Well, on the Republican side anyway. The other way is to primary meddlesome Democrats and make them more scared of losing a primary than a General Election. It can’t be done everywhere, and it will take a lot of losing in the GE, but it’s really the only way.
It doesn’t have to lead to Democrats losing in the GE – if battles are picked so that Democrats whose voting record is more conservative than their district are selected to be primaried. It’s not rocket science – it just takes some polling and an examination of Congressional voting records (so money) to figure out who is out of whack and then run a primary against them. Either they lose the challenge and the Republican candidate is up against a Democrat whose views represent the district, or they win the challenge after being pulled somewhat to the left to win their primary. Either outcome is a victory for moving the discourse to the left.
What is an outright failure is to run primaries against candidates who are less conservative than their district or right at the edge. Yes they’re annoying, but it doesn’t help to primary them. You need to move the overall dialogue to the left before you can hope to knock those folks out – or better yet get them to shift as popular opinion shifts.
Well yes, it doesn’t have to mean losing in GE’s. However, we inevitably will lose a bunch of GE’s by doing that because there is no longer an incumbent, and that is a significant advantage. It will all depend on the national mood at the time, but it will involve a lot of losses.
Now we might be in an era where being an incumbent is no longer as advantageous as it once was, which would throw a lot of the calculus off.
Not if you restrict your primaries to districts where the representative is significantly more conservative than the district as a whole and you’re running someone from his/her left.
Either the incumbent wins and you have the advantages of an incumbent or the challenger wins in a liberal district and is facing off against a Republican.
So long as you’re not running primary campaigns in marginal districts – where the incumbent is actually as conservative or more liberal than the district itself – you shouldn’t lose a lot of GEs with that strategy. The Democratic primary essentially becomes the election because the Republican isn’t going to be able to be substantially more liberal than the conservative Democrat that was ousted.
But that’s the problem! The 111th Congress is just about as liberal as we can expect in the current era unless we start primarying people even in the off-chance that we lose the GE. You aren’t going to find many Democrats who weren’t sufficiently liberal to represent their district except for a few outlier candidates like Jane Harman.
Now in 2012 we’ll have a good chance at picking up swing districts that Obama won, and we could do so with candidates who are around Tom Perriello’s stature rather than assholes like Evan Bayh. Tom’s not a leftie, but he’s a team player who doesn’t undermine agenda that’s well to the left of himself. A lot of this would be risky, but it’s the only choice we have to start moving the conversation to the left.
But look at how the progressives capitulated on ACA. 70+ went on video to pledge a no vote if the bill didn’t contain a public option, and then they voted for it anyway. Running more left candidates in primary challenges hasn’t amounted to anything in the way of change. If they could dominate the Democratic caucus the way the Tea Party dominates the Republican caucus, I’d say let’s keep with this strategy. But at this point the only long term hope is a third party challenge from the left, even if it has to start regionally. If it puts Dems out of power for 4, 8, 12 years, then so be it. They are no longer our party. See Jane Hamsher here: http://firedoglake.com/2011/07/07/the-breaking-point/
Explain the mechanism on how a third-party challenge from the left causes better votes in the Congress?
Seriously – I’m at a loss to see how running a third-party challenge, rather than a primary challenge, does anything but shift the dialogue to the right. I can at least see a mechanism for how a primary challenge from the left targeted in the right districts can shift the dialogue to the left.
We’re at a structural disadvantage with dialogue.
I’m more curious to see how Democrats react to being in the minority. This could happen as soon as next year. Will they adopt the tactics that the Republicans have used since Obama was elected? In that environment I could see primary challenges being much more relevant than third parties.
You remember 2002 through 2006, don’t you? That’s how Democrats react to being in the minority. Like lapdogs.
Beating Republicans is even more relevant than primary challenges.
abandonedprogressive, I read Jane Hamsher’s column. I’m not persuaded. When she states that the 2006 election results were a surprise, she loses some credibility with me. Six years into a presidency the governing party almost always loses a lot of seats in Congress.
The 111th Congress passed more progressive legislation than any session in the past 35 years. Do I wish it had passed more, and more progressive legislation? Yes, but as Booman points out, it is structurally virtually impossible to create a viable third party in American politics. If you wanted to start a 3rd party regionally, which region would you choose and why (serious question)? I’m not familiar with any region in which election laws and state constitutions support such a strategy.
Hello! There are already other parties. Libertarians and Greens already are on ballots. But let’s face it, Progressives and the Tea Party-ers are the resonant voices on the left and right. They either need to dominate their current parties, as the Tea Party has so successfully been doing, or they need to form their own.
Those of you advocating change from within the Democratic party, especially as a minority party which may be the best hope for it, really should be in admiration of the Tea Party. They have hijacked the Republican Party under a feverish populist banner and have completely blocked the party leadership from any compromise on their values and what they belieive their constituents elected them to do. When is the last time we have seen anything even 1/10 as affective from the Progressives???
Third parties succeed when they destroy one of the two major parties to replace them. To the extent I support a third party, it’s because I want them to do just that. In fact, the ultimate longing would be for the GOP to become so far right that the Democrats become the conservatives (which they already are) and then a real leftist parties takes up the left slot.
The problem is not so much that there are two parties, it’s the institutionalization of the system.
“We have two parties because the two parties control the governmental processes”.
Microsoft controls the computer market because they got in first and almost everyone uses their operating system. Apple has a much better product in the Mac but many won’t switch to it because it’s not compatible with what their friends use or their programs at work.
So we’re left with the shitty Democrats, Republicans and Microsoft because of inertia?
We should all put our heads between our legs and kiss our ass goodbye.
I disagree with your assessment of Microsoft vs. Apple, but agree with your overall point of it being shitty that we’re stuck with Democrats vs. Republicans.
With all due respect Ed J(full disclosure: I have days when I feel the same way), that (giving up) is a copout and a luxury most people don’t have.
As messy and messed-up as our politics are, there’s no escaping them. And no escaping our responsibility to do the best we can—even on the bad days.
I have decided that I will only vote for or give money to third party or independent candidates.
The Democratic party does not exist to promote a liberal ideology. It exists to win elections. Winning elections, in a Citizens United democracy, means doing the bidding of big corporations. So while there will be differences between the parties on some issues where corporations are agnostic (like same-sex marriage), on issues with an economic impact, including all of the Ralph Nader type issues, there will be little effective difference between the two parties. Any strong advocacy for the environment or consumers (or unions, for that matter), will come from third parties, and only from third parties.
Take the demonstrations in Madison as a case in point. This was a tremendous opportunity for Democrats to show how they stood with the unions. Did any Democrat of national standing show up in Madison? Not really. Only Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson came, and they are fringe figures, more like third party types when you get down to it. Obama, who for the first 22 months of his term never passed up an opportunity to make an appearance in Wisconsin, eliminated the state from his itinerary. Alright, so the President is a busy man. But what about Joe Biden? Is he really too busy to fly out to Wisconsin? But Joe Biden, friend of the worker that he always seemed to be, never bothered to make the trip.
I am happy to support the Democratic party of the Kennedys. But that party doesn’t exist anymore. The two parties that do exist aren’t worth supporting. I think it’s time to devote our energies to third party alternatives.
You’d be better off giving your money to poor people who need it to eat.
Like BooMan, for example 😉
At least then your money is doing something worthwhile, instead of just pissing in the wind.
I support this idea.
But, seriously, I am not a Democrat because I’m enamored with the party or impressed by its performance. I’m a Democrat because the party is the only institution in existence that can stop the Republicans from creating a dystopia in America. This country, for all it’s flaws, is still awesome (in the sincere meaning of that word). I’d like to keep it that way.
If another party came along that was right in prison reform, right on the War on Drugs, right on the War on Terror, right on the Middle East, and right on economics, I’d be tempted to support them. But I wouldn’t unless they proved that they could actually replace the Dems as one of the two major parties.
My biggest issue is controlling and containing the Republicans, and every thing else is negotiable.
Exactly. I had a discussion yesterday with a friend over lunch where we were talking about the two parties. My argument was that they’re all corporate whores, but at least the Democrats don’t hate black people, women, gay people, foreigners, etc. He agreed.
Wouldn’t it be a glorious day if they could replace the Republicans instead? I wish.
“Awesome” is a pretty strong word. The drug laws alone make it worthy of severe criticism, if not outright condemnation. In 2008, 1.5 million Americans were arrested for drug offenses. 500,000 were imprisoned. Marijuana constitutes almost half of all drug arrests, and between 1990-2002, out of the overall drug arrests, 82% of the increase was for marijuana.
We are currently in 5 wars and are killing civilians almost daily.
Income inequality is at third world levels.
We’re already a dystopia and the near complete sellout by the Democratic party of everything it has stood for since FDR is not something to cheer about.
Well, yes and no. It’s sort of circular, isn’t it? Third party candidates don’t get votes because they don’t get enough contributions to run effective campaigns. So you shouldn’t contribute to them, because they aren’t going to get many votes.
Not that I have anything against giving to the poor, or to BooMan.
I used to think that way too, but I don’t anymore. What that theory doesn’t take into account is that the system is engineered (and becoming more and more so) to prevent a viable third party option without first having a collapse of one of the other parties.
So my new theory is that giving money to third party candidates is at best a waste of money, and at worst heightens the odds for catastrophe. Of course, giving money to the Democratic party also just furthers the status quo. So I’ll give them my vote, but not my money, which I choose to make work on a smaller, more intimate scale where I feel it has larger a larger effect anyway.
JLG, I won’t tell you who to give money to, but if you’re “happy to support the Democratic party of the Kennedys” then I’d think you would continue to support the Democratic party of today.
Jack Kennedy was one of the more conservative Democrats running for president in 1960. He largely governed that way too and was, at best, mediocre on civil rights (one of the great moral issues of the day—but it hurt his base in the South).
Robert Kennedy started his career as an ally of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn. As Attorney General, he was his brother’s “fix-it” man and again, mediocre at best on civil rights issues.
Ted Kennedy would cut a deal with anyone. He wrote much of the first wave of deregulation legislation in the 1970s and cut the deal to pass No Child Left Behind with W. Bush. He also was a key supporter of DLCer Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and dramatically endorsed Obama at a key point in his primary fight with Hillary Clinton.
I’m not knocking the Kennedys. I’m just saying the Democratic party you seem to imagine they helped lead never existed. It was always a big coalition with multiple factions and interests. Will Rogers had it right, “I’m not a member of an organized political party; I’m a Democrat”. It was true; the disorganized and messy nature of the Democratic party didn’t stop him from being a Democrat because he recognized it was the best available vehicle for his values.
I think the Democratic party is so watered down from what it was at its peak (which I think of as the Kennedy era), that it is really a different animal, just like today’s GOP is not Eisenhower’s GOP.
But first, on the subject of the Kennedys themselves.
JFK: I understand that the segregationist south was key to Democratic electoral strategy in 1960, and that any national Democrat had to walk a tightrope. I suppose Humphrey was more willing to stand up for civil rights than Kennedy, but then Humphrey couldn’t get nominated in 1960. My impression was that Kennedy was bolder on civil rights than Stevenson had been. Kennedy called Coretta Scott King when her husband was arrested during the height of the election campaign. In the context of the times, that was a courageous act, and it could have backfired and cost him the election. And I believe that JFK grew during the course of the campaign, and became more passionate about civil rights (I’m basing that on Sorenson’s book about JFK).
RFK: I know about his early days with the McCarthy team, and though I don’t know a lot about his tenure as AG, I suppose he wasn’t as strong on civil liberties as Ramsey Clark would later be. But if he was mediocre at best on civil rights issues, how do you account for the enthusiasm with which blacks and Hispanics supported him in 1968?
Also, while I do put the Kennedys at the top of my political pantheon, they were hardly the only Democrats of the 1960s who defined the party of that era. Just to recall the names of the senators from that period should remind us of how far the Democratic party is from the party of four or five decades ago. When Ted Kennedy was first elected to the Senate, he served alongside the likes of Paul Douglas, Frank Church, George McGovern, Gene McCarthy, Wayne Morse, Ernst Gruening, Gaylord Nelson, William Proxmire, Ed Muskie, William Fulbright, among others. It’s an impressive list, and you just don’t find their like in the party of today.
The conservative activists who lost the Goldwater election of 1964 did not think the Republican Party of Eisenhower and Everett Dirksen represented them. After that election, the infusion of former Southern Democrats gave them allies. And they set out to take over the Republican party, one primary at a time. And when they won a primary, they set out to win the general election. And they recruited extensively on college campuses, not through the Young Republicans, but through the Young Americans for Freedom (YAFers). The very clearly made the margin of victory for Richard Nixon, and they got token positions in the administration. After the fall of Nixon, they set out to purge the party by hitching their horses to Ronald Reagan and recruiting a bunch of folks who could ride Reagan’s coattails in the primary and the general. And then they worked hard to see that Reagan won.
And the folks the worked hard sat on the sidelines which the scions of the wealthy contributors and traditional Republicans got key appointments to shape Reagan’s (to their minds) centrist policy. They were smart enough to know that Reagan governed from the center because all Presidents govern from the center. They, with the help of folks like Jesse Helms, set out to move that center by challenging Democrats and picking up seats. It took them twenty years to consolidate power to the point of electing W, and he blew it.
This, now old, leadership came by with astroturfing the Tea Party and creating a new purge of Republican ranks and taking seats from Democrats.
Each step of the way they were loyal to the party and they argued forcefully their positions. They persuaded people who persuaded people. To the point that they attracted some big money. And that big money created an echo chamber.
If they had walked away from Richard Nixon in 1968 because he was not conservative enough or deserted him when he created the EPA and instituted CETA, would there have been a Reagan presidency? If they had walked away from Reagan when he raised taxes, would there have been a Newt Speakership or a W Presidency? Or the hold the GOP now has over US politics for ill?
After they walked away from Poppy Bush to vote for Ross Perot, they said, “Never again”.
Some of my progressive friends walked away from Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore. (I am that old and progressive and understand that urge.) And now they want to walk away from Barack Obama and punish the Democrats in the House and Senate. What’s the definition of “crazy”? If it hasn’t worked in 43 years, why would it work in 2012/
Politics is about passion, and I don’t see how anybody can be passionate about the Democratic party anymore. If the choice is between a party that will cut Social Security by 25% and a party that will cut it by 30% (I’m making numbers up), there’s a rational basis for choosing the 25% party. If the choice is between a party that will revoke 60% of EPA’s regulations and one that will only revoke 50%, there’s a rational basis for choosing the 50% party. But do you really expect people to give their time and energy and money and passion to the Democrats under those conditions? And in our Citizens United system, those are the only choices the two-party system will be offering. I’m not willing to accept those choices, so I’m going outside of the two-party system.
And I did vote for Gore, not Nader, in 2000. Citizens United changes the game though.
The YAFers in 1971 weren’t too passionate about Nixon or the Congressional Republicans (who came this close to a bipartisan impeachment and conviction of a President)) either. They wanted to win, to punch the DFHs. Establish the new conservative government, get rid of Earl Warren; well, they did get that eventually.
It just takes more to whip up passion in Republicans these days that it did then. There’s a huge sense of frustration that after 43 years of chicanery and phony issues, they’ve lost it again. And this debt ceiling fight has put the rank-and-file grassroots Republicans in a panic. “Why can’t Boehner get it done?”
Reagan roped them in by repeating over and over “Stay the course”. With Poppy Bush it became a mantra. And they became relentless.
So I don’t buy the “I don’t have the passion.” If you are not passionate about breaking the power of the GOP over the politics and political culture of the US, what the heck makes you passionate politically? That is the precondition for any movement in a progressive direction, lopping off the right wing’s power.
That, and 30 million people getting health insurance—just to choose one example from what Democrats accomplished last year.
And winding down the Iraq War.
And destroying al-Qaeda as an effective network.
And repealing DADT (54 days and counting).
(I could go on, but I hope the point is clear.)
When a party moves to the right the way the Democrats have, they have to expect to lose some voters. When the party abandons its voters, it’s only natural for the voters to abandon the party.
Just one example that hit me directly in the pocketbook. As a public employee in Wisconsin, my now-defunct union was attempting last year to get a contract extension from the then Democratic-controlled state legislature. The union wasn’t asking for any raises or new benefits, just an extension of the status quo, and the Democrats wouldn’t do that. Now, I get about a dozen e-mails a day from Democrats asking me to contribute to them from my reduced paycheck. Fat chance.
Lots of things are impossible, and then they happen. 100 years ago, Milwaukee was represented in Congress by a representative from a third party. Twice in the last century, Wisconsin’s electoral votes went to a third party candidate. Maybe it’s time for it to happen again.
If there’s any possible third party, it has to happen from general unrest among working people. So far that has been co-opted buy Republicans in these ways:
The notion that labor unions are corrupt; there are enough corrupt leaders in any organization to tar with this accusation anytime — even the Catholic church
The leveraging the Cold War fear of communism into a fear of socialism, then into a fear of progressivism, then into a fear of liberalism.
A multi-billion-dollar, thirty-year-long, 24/7/365 propaganda campaign that reaches into every corner of America — into the rural parts of America that were the populist heartland 100 years ago and are pretty much absent of progressives today.
Policies which increase unemployment, poverty, and dissatisfaction on a chronic basis.
Redirection of dissatisfaction to the “Culture Wars” – abortion, guns, God, gays, illegal “aliens”
The labor movement and the socialist movement in America (read S is for Socialism and There is power in a union. were built over a hundred years and grew together. And they depended on the massive immigration at the turn of the century for their strength. If and when the labor move regains its numbers, you might think about a third party.
But saying it’s time for a third party does not get a third party into reality or ensure that it wins.
In my view, impatience is what is killing progressive gains in this country. Dealing with what the Republican conservatives have put into place over the last 43 years cannot happen in the term of one President. Even the President facing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Lots of the impossible things that seem to just happen have decades of quiet struggle and planning and growth of leaders behind them. The NAACP was formed in 1919; de jure segregation did not end until 1965.
So progressives need to start looking at a long term strategy. Over the long term, which was less damaging to your interests as a public employee, a Democratic administration that would not extend a contract in a time of budget crisis or a Republican administration that seeks to destroy all unions? I don’t think there is a simple answer to this question; it requires outlining a strategy. And sometimes making things worse just makes things worse.
Revolutions tend to happen when things that were getting better suddenly get snapped back to worse. Or when things that are getting better don’t benefit everyone equally. They rarely happen when there is a long-term slide toward worsening conditions. They also happen when there is a definite power to blame and not a diffuse condition. Thus the immediate reaction against Scott Walker.
And see where I’m coming from. I haven’t given a dime to the Democratic Party since they voted for the extension of the PATRIOT ACT and legitimized warrantless wiretapping. But I vote, and so far I’ve voted straight Democratic ticket because the Republicans were so odious and there is no third party or independent on the ballot. Without a fairly large organization that will vote in lockstep with the way I vote, I don’t have a whole lot of clout with any politician. The folks with the clout are the organizations that can deliver voters and can swing from Democrats to Republicans or the reverse. Those who can sit out in large numbers have clout in proportion to their numbers. The reason that sitting out doesn’t work with progressives to change behavior is that the do not have large numbers of disciplined voters who will vote in lockstep. And while they might spoil a victory, they won’t necessarily guarantee a win. Unreliability is a weakness.
TarHeel Dem: Since this is yesterday’s thread and I don’t think that many people are following it, particularly with big developments afoot, so maybe there isn’t much of an audience for your response except for me. So, I just want to begin by saying that I appreciate the response, and that I always find it valuable to read your comments, which are of consistently high quality and backed up by substantial knowledge and understanding of the political system.
Nonetheless, I’m unconvinced. You say, “Dealing with what the Republican conservatives have put into place over the last 43 years cannot happen in the term of one President.” But that’s not what I’m seeing. I’m seeing half a century of a successful system of collective bargaining in Wisconsin that had been built up with near-universal support of both parties destroyed, absolutely destroyed, in less than three months by the Tea Party.
You don’t mention in your analysis here the effect of the Citizens United decision. But I think we can have this discussion without acknowledging the devastating impact of that decision. It’s now impossible for the Democratic party to be pushed to the left by activists, because the gravitational force field of corporate money is so overwhelmingly pulling the party to the right. Not on every issue, but on every issue that has an economic impact, which is most issues.
The Republicans in Congress are staging an all-out and largely under-the-radar attack on EPA regulations that will save many thousands of lives a year. Steven D had an article here about that yesterday. I’m not optimistic that the Democrats will thwart this initiative. In the last Congress, we saw how the Administration did nothing to address global warming. In this Congress, I’m expecting the Administration to “compromise” on EPA regs in such a way as to enhance the flow of corporate dollars to Dems, while enhancing the flow of corpses to the morgues.
I’m not going to support a party because it is slightly less odious than the other party. I am looking for an alternative, which will be either a party I can believe in, or supporting movements that are working to change society outside of the political process.
oops… that should read “we cannot have this discussion without acknowledging…”
JLG,I am with you all the way. As long as the left’s position is to simply contain the damage possible by the Republicans, let corporations dictate our foreign policy and the final structure of our bills, and supportthe Dems so long as they agree with our social views, we’re not going to see any meaningful change.
The quote that sheriffruitfly cites from Atrio is right on target, even when the commenter is an angry progressive blog commenter (a special kind of pundit):
Appears out of nowhere: This is a requirement that it gain power before one of the existing parties can co-opt its agenda like Nixon did George Wallace’s American Independent Party. That it fly under the radar like Jesse Ventura was able to do in Minnesota.
Have massive popular support: How massive? Massive enough to win a signficant chunk of seats that make a swing vote possible. Massive enough that committees have to reform to accommodate a chair and two or three ranking members from different parties. Massive enough that no one party can count on their vote all the time.
Magically implement the agenda the pundit wants: This is the purity requirement. Winning the agenda without corruption or being co-opted or compromising.
Is it not clear that those requirements set up a three-way contradiction. Small enough to fly under the radar is too small to magically implement and agenda. Having massive popular support automatically begins to dilute the agenda because there are a diversity of ideas among a diversity of people (see: Democrats, Will Rogers). And having massive popular support is not going to be easy to hide or appear from nowhere unless there is some massive disorienting kind of trauma or social psychosis.
But say that three-way contradiction is not an absolute block, but just a problem to solve. What are the possibilities?
First, what about the appearance of appearing from nowhere. That certainly describes the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Popular mood, extensive geographical networks of similar-thinking people through social networking, and….the national trauma of serious confrontation in the streets. Not some Chicago 1968 type confrontation but confrontation that was relentless enough that in 1968, LBJ would have had to call up the Illinois National Guard to restrain the Chicago Police. And the apark in each country of one incident involving a single individual.
Well, the Tea Party appeared to appear from nowhere. That’s what well-planned astro-turfing can do. But if astro-turfing can do this, why not honest-to-goodness interchange among local grassroots movements. Well what astro-turfing has that grassroots movement do not is a relatively closed networks of contact in on the planning. Grassroots movement openness, or it would be something other than a grassroots movement, lacks a way of excluding those who would work against the movement and agents provacateurs.
The second difference is decision-making. An astro-turfing operation is easier to control because the plans and objectives come from one source or a few sources. Ever been in a participatory decision-making session of 1000 people?
Having massive popular support. Popular support is built geographically or through networks that touch all of the far-ranging corners of the geography. For the purposes of a national election, that’s 192,480 precincts (until the redistricting works its way through all the states). Even the major parties don’t have the resources to organize all of that territory in conventional ways. Conventional ways meaning using commercial marketing strategies and tactics and a last-minute volunteer canvassing and GOTV campaign. Republicans have tried to capture as many church networks as they can for their marketing, using the preacher as a celebrity endorser. But neither can cover the territory with a top-down marketing campaign.
Well how about a bottom-up campaign? Tell me how that works. There have been a lot of experiments with social media and meet-ups and house parties and conference calls, and … At some point there is a decision to have a paid staff and full-time coordinator and what you have again is a top-down campaign.
Well, instead of organizing a movement, why not recruit candidates in every one of the 3080 counties, have them pledge to a common platform and let them build their own networks of supporters. And what is the value added by having these candidates organized as a network of candidates? They can coordinate actions and expenses just like a party.
The problems with third parties right now is that they cannot get a critical mass in elected office to make the bi-polar way of operating obsolete even if they get by the winner-take-all voting system.
Within a parliamentary legislative body there is a governing party or coalition and an opposition party or coalition. When the coalition changes, the government falls. Having a large third- or fourth-party caucus within the US system would preserve the current administration and alter the relationships and policies between elections just by shifts of parties from one coalition to another.
Which is why third parties wind up being stalking horses and spoilers. Which also explains why they are ephemeral.
Hey Booman, good post but the last paragraph needs some work.
New England Democrats have worked hard to get Eisenhower Republicans out of Congress and replace them with Democrats who, whatever their personal foibles, will caucus with Dems and vote for Democrat Speakers and Majority Leaders. And the problem with Eisenhower Republicans (e.g., Collins and Snowe of Maine, Brown of Massachusetts) is that they caucus with Republicans.
Revised strategy for Americans Elect: take all that hedge-fund money and start running Eisenhower Republicans in Republican primaries. Focus first on the states that let independents vote in Republican primaries and build from there. Target districts with extremist Republican reps more conservative than their districts. When possible, run Eisenhower Republicans as third party candidates so as to split the conservative vote and elect the Democrat. Anything to raise the cost of being an extremist Republican in Congress.
Plan B: Copy Freedom Works’ tactics and wreak havoc at town hall meetings held by tea party Republicans. (Note: havoc preferably wreaked by blue-haired little old ladies in their Sunday dresses.)
As is the case with he first two “parties”, a viable third party would have to be proven to be well under the thumb of some substantial percentage of the corporate PermaGov before said PermaGov’s wholly owned media would let it have enough positive media presence to be anywhere near effective.
Party 3, the same as parties 1 + 2. Only newier.
Small, almost useless positions? Maybe a few mavericks (non-McCain version thereof) might make it through to the exalted public position of say Dennis Kucinich…that is, official preacher to the lib choir…but substantive change?
Fuggedaboudit.
As I have said before, “change” is only going to happen when a lot of people get hungry and cold. Really hungry and cold.
Bet on it.
The rest?
Corporate smoke and mirrors.
Watch.
So far?
Not even close.
AG