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Tim Pawlenty talks to Tea Partiers in February.
In a system such as the US’, with no ranked-choice voting (the same lack of which is why the French in 2002 got stuck with Jacques Chirac as Prime Minister president when they, instead of voting for Lionel Jospin, frittered their votes away on several fringe left parties and were then forced in the runoff to vote for Chirac to avoid the Nazi LePen), third parties can almost never be anything but spoilers. This is shown in how the Republican Party treats third parties on the right (which threaten to take votes from the GOP) and the left (which threaten to take votes from the Democrats).
Republicans love actual third parties, but only those that are likely to take votes from Democrats. This is why over the past couple of decades, Republicans and their big-money patrons have made a point of buying ads for various Green Party candidates (like Nader in 2000) — and have often provided (most notoriously in the 2006 Pennsylvania Senate race) the bulk of a Green Party candidate’s funding.
But when a third party or even a mere third party movement is formed that threatens to take votes from the Republicans, the GOP has a much different response. When the original TEA (“Taxed Enough Already”) Party movement formed in the late 2000s, it was formed not as a branch of the Republican Party, but as an actual, separate third party movement with secular-libertarian leanings. The Republicans could not allow this to stand, so they used an old trick — create well-funded “vacuum cleaner” groups to suck up potential TEA Partiers and keep them within the GOP fold before they could find and join the real TEA Party.
Republican activists, armed with mountains of cash, much of it from the Kochs via their backing of Dick Armey’s Citizens for a Sound Economy, which merged with another conservative activist group Empower America to become FreedomWorks, created a Potemkin movement in 2009 called “the Tea Party Express” to serve as a vacuum cleaner to starve the true TEA Party of members. Armey’s movement had lots of cash available for “Tea Party” candidates — but only if they promised to a) uphold the Republican Party platform, and b) caucus, once elected, with “like-minded representatives” (in other words, Republicans).
Thus was the TEA Party neutered and reabsorbed back into the GOP.
Photo by Gage Skidmore under Creative Commons license.
249 Comments
A quick Google of Green Party/Republican’contributions gives the story you reference in 2006 in PA, and a story this year about attempted Republican contributions to Green Party candidate Ursula Rozum in FL, which Rozum, when she learned about it, then donated to charity.
Do you have further evidence that this is an on-going problem for the Green Party, or one which they don’t make every effort to detect and contain?
There was, of course, at least one other incident this year of a major party campaign contributing to influence the election of an opponent:
It’s really funny to hear Democrat apologists scold everyone else about the pernicious money of the GOP, when the same money has bought your party and turned it against the Democratic base on every issue of interest to the 1%.
Thanks PW.
Let’s hope we can find more wingnuts for wind.
Red State Renewables
I linked to this article on Republicans buying ads for Nader in 2000:
http://www.greens.org/colorado/list_archives/grns-colo-nader/msg00220.html
There are more examples out there — I’ll be back with a few.
Again, without ranked-choice voting, this is all that third-party groups can be. The rare successes occur when a third-party candidate, like Jesse Ventura, has enough positive celebrity (generally outside of politics) that he or she can get habitual non-voters to vote for him or her. Even so, those are successes of individual candidates, not of a full slate of third-party candidates for various offices.
I’ll continue to vote third party until the Democrats give me a reason to vote Democratic. It won’t be the mean ol’ GOP duping me either. It’ll be ME telling the Democratic Party that they have a responsibility to earn my vote(and you won’t do that with a “grand bargain” either.)
I have little doubt that if a third party were to succeed the powers that control the Democratic and Republican parties would attempt to co opt it just as I’m aware that third party candidates like Bloomberg are the powers that be attempting to control an annoyed and frustrated electorate that is increasingly deciding to opt out of party affiliation. That being said the fact is that the Democratic party is already largely controlled by those same powers- my vote is my leverage. I assure you that the Democratic Party has absolutely no problem using a third party to promote their own agenda and thwart Democratic activists (see Lieberman or Angus King) so why the Hades should I even think twice about using mine in such a way?- oh right? Evil kitten eating Republicans will win if I don’t vote Democratic. Meh. There are enough kitten eating Democrats that I find the idea of one of them winning as a reason to vote Democratic less than compelling.
You can call people rubes until the cows come home. In my mind a rube is someone who is convinced to vote against their own self interest and as long as Democrats are GOP lite then voting for them isn’t in my self interest either.
So the truth has a Democratic bias? Because everything I said in my post was truth, and with cites (you know, the words in blue that once clicked on take you to other places?) to back it all up.
The truth is that the GOP only puts enough money into the Greens to keep them as spoilers. If we ever got ranked-choice voting on a national level in America, GOP funding of the Greens would end instantly as the Greens would no longer be useful to the GOP.
As far as I see it, the biggest problem for third parties is that most of their members are typically not all that interested in the 24/7/365 grunt work involved in setting up and continuously running a political party that actually has power. They’re interested every four years when one of their own runs for president, and they might get interested when a third-party person runs at the local level, but the sort of concerted, constant, nationwide effort to field viable candidates down to the local level is generally missing, in large part because it takes constant, long-range, and usually unremunerated commitment.
The hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Particularly when if you scroll down and read the article about how Obama for America is using their campaign contributions to push for the “grand bargain.”
But hey, I’m totally the naive, manipulated soul, not the people who contributed to get Obama elected and are now having money left in the apparatus being used to decimate their safety net. *shrugs*
Rs donating to the Greens? Oh no you don’t. Don’t do that!
The meme I wish progressives would fixate on would go something like this….
“The reason I won’t vote for Democrats is they are against democratic reforms–namely transparent elections and ranked choice voting. They pretend they represent working people but their actions are that of an anti-democratic corporatist organization.”
And just stick with that. Of course, there are plenty of other issues the Democrats are bad on. But the 2-party duopoly is a good issue to focus on because it shows the Democrats for what they really are–an actual evil and not simply a lesser evil.
That’s true from all I know. It’s hard work getting a political movement started. To do it you have to start at the precinct level. I was wondering if the Greens had their organizing meetings yet? Heard anything? Maybe the met in secret at a local Mickey D?
Your point may very well be true, however when it comes down to voting for the proven war criminal or the war criminal wannabe who really gives a shit who wins? Frankly, if we are going to have Republican policy shoved down our throats regardless, I would far rather it be someone with the guts to call himself a Republican who does it, at least that way it inhibits our incessant political movement to the right, however slowly. Constant agreement with conservative initiatives does not make Republicans any more pleasant to deal with and it only serves to disgust the left flank that is always called upon at the last minute to vote for the Democratic “sucks less” alternative. Were the Democratic Party to actually try to represent those who vote for them, they might not have to worry about such things as close elections caused by third parties composed of folks utterly repulsed by them.
We’ve already seen what happens when a third party movement arises that threatens the GOP: They sic their institutional funders after it to create Potemkin groups that pretend to be independent but are in reality adjuncts of the Republican Party.
Why haven’t the Dems tried to do that to the Greens? One reason is that they couldn’t afford to do so, as they simple don’t have the sheer number of deep-pocketed funders with cash to burn that the GOP does. That’s why so many Republicans in “safe” seats wind up running unopposed in election years: Because Democratic leaders have to concentrate their cash on races they figure they can win.
Thank you for your concern, Phoenix Woman.
Those who wish to donate to the Green Party can click here.
Heh, remind me again which group had the bigger challenge when it came to getting their candidate on a ballot?
Third party people don’t work hard indeed.
Remind me again about how your “activism” convinced the party apparatus to mount a challenge to the guy who offered up the Heritage plan as his grand health care plan? Oh that’s right, it threatened to “KICK OUT” the caucus that dared to voice out loud their displeasure with the Democratic Party. But hey that’s totally democratic right? Because democracy activism means standing around and getting kicked in the teeth over and over while sharpening your pencil for those sternly worded letters that threaten or else(that’s where the real activism is dontcha know.)
Phoenix Woman
You make good points. Part of the problem is it’s hard to motivate people to be active in either a “left” or “right” political party that has little to no chance of winning anything, and which is continually being co-opted by the major parties, since the ideology of the 3rd party movement frequently validates the logic of lesser-evilism. Namely, that either left or right parties will invariably prefer the major party closest to them, and are thus easy to co-opt.
If third parties were rational actors, and not being subtlety manipulated by their rulers, then they would unite under one banner. They would base their platform on what all the 3rd parties already agree on, and agree to disagree on the rest of the issues (until process reforms that allow for more transparency and democracy go through). A unified populist third party is probably the available ‘political’ strategy for breaking the duopoloy’s hold on American politics.
The powers that be don’t see the Greens as a big threat at this moment. It’s a money thing to them (and they are in some ways correct, so far they managed to keep third party choices out of the media for the most part) It’s one of the many reasons I see it as a best option for people that don’t want corporate lite any longer. That being said the powers that be do see which way the wind is blowing. Over 40% of the electorate no longer identifies with either party. It’s why we’ve seen a surge of “independants” come forward and float the idea of running. It’s a matter of time before a fed up electorate figures it’s way around a system that continually kicks them in the teeth.
You mean that the GOP really isn’t interested in the Green Party’s message? WOW that is a BIG surprise!
Personally I don’t care why the GOP gives money to the Green Party, as long as they keep doing so.
And frankly, most of my own support of the 3rd parties is for the same reason as the GOP. I want to spoil the democrats—I want to make the democrats lose. Making the democrats lose to a progressive 3rd party will force them to shift to the Left.
It is pretty much irrelevant whether the GOP funds the Greens or not. What is relevant is that the Democrats do what they can to keep Greens off the ballot and keep the 2 party gerrymandered corrupt process going. So if Democrats are claiming to represent the people, then they deserve to be ‘spoiled’. Keep spoiling them until they either cease to exist or start representing the people.
Are you really suggesting that absorbing the Tea Party has had absolutely no impact on the Republicans?
Historically 3rd parties tend to get absorbed by one of the two major parties which co-opt some of their issues.
http://www.thisnation.com/question/042.html
Having the Democrats “steal” some of the Green’s issues is exactly what I want to see the democrats do. The problem is that the modern Democrats seem allergic to any truly leftist ideas.
Wow, you’re reading an awful lot into my post that I didn’t write, C. I must have struck one of your nerves.
Personally, I’d love to see a well-organized political party on the left that knew how to talk to the masses instead of alienating them. But the farther left one goes, the greater the disdain for electoral politics; a disdain that I suspect has its origins in Leninist belief that participating in electoral politics validates and serves to prolong a system that needs to collapse so the workers can rush into the arms of those who will lead them to Nirvana. (I used to hang out at the Socialist Liberty listserv, back in my youth; it was both maddening and instructive to watch other listserv members gang up on David McReynolds, who is as sweet and smart a guy as you’d ever want to meet, and call him a bad Communist because he ran for president every four years — not because he had no chance of winning, but because his running for president served to validate the system.)
Here are the cold, hard facts: Unless and until we get ranked-choice voting on a national level (and IRV must have ranked-choice voting or otherwise we run into the LePen Problem France had in 2002), third parties in America can never be major political parties capable of pushing the national conversation in their direction; instead, they are more likely to be used, on the “divide and conquer” principle, to push the conversation away from where they would want it to go.
Look at the original Tea Party movement, before the Kochs and the neocons and the religious right hijacked it. It was decidely secular and libertarian, equally opposed to Bush as to Obama on the question of big bailouts. But when Armey et al got done with it, the secular and genunine libertarian elements got flushed down the toilet rather quickly and it became, as David Dayen said back in early 2010, just another RNC adjunct.
As if manipulation is only a GOP sport. As someone pointed out above Akin won his primary because the Democrats funded him. 1.5 million dolllars from Democratic coffers went to a TEA party candidate- but I’m sure THEY totally agreed with what Akin stood for.
Both parties do it. Lather, Rinse and repeat.
Hmmm. Maybe the Rs have succeeded. They now control the Green Party. Nice game. Is this what you call a false flag operation?
It appears the teabaggers are doubling down on the crazy, post-election. This means (among other things) that John “Orange Boy” Boehner is forced to perform some serious tap-dancing to keep the bagger faction at bay, while simultaneously trying his best to avoid getting shanked in the back by Eric “Creep Vibe” Cantor. Heads up, Boner!
Good times…
Sweet! Let the games continue.
It’s more along the line of I’m tired of hearing how I possibly could not fathom all the nuances of the strategy that I’ve chosen as if I’m some small child incapable of reasoning or unaware of all the information. I’m tired of hearing about how “lazy” or “stupid” people are for choosing an option different than the two major parties.
It’s insulting.
I can’t wait to hear what Karen Handel has to say.
That’s going to be one fun primary. I wonder how much the Democrats will contribute to her?
Interesting stuff. It’s true, many leftists are ambivalent about democracy. Some feel democracy is a tool for domination by finance capital. It’s a complex topic, but ultimately it’s highly unconvincing that more democracy would make things worse, and there are good reasons to believe more democracy would make things better.
A genuine democracy would not allow the kind wars we have been fighting. Wars are indeed the cover for robbing and oppressing the people.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get the various populist right-winger groups to agree on the virtues of democracy (eg as a check to corporatist abuses). But everyone can agree on the virtue of having laws and following them. Which leads us back to the bailouts and other corporate injustices as a good basis for a populist movmement. The Tea Party may have tried to be that movement, but it was quickly co-opted into the Left/Right paradigm and became a useful foil for Occupy in the left/right propaganda machine.
My computer must be broken.
I can’t find any diaries (with photos) you’ve written about your arrests at OCCUPY protests and other forms of civil disobedience.
Please don’t tell me that such an ardent defender of social justice as you claim to be is filing and paying 100% of their federal income taxes? For shame. Aren’t you just enabling Obama?
They don’t want to control the apparatus- at least not now. They want it to act as a spoiler in the same way the Democratic Party wants the Tea Party to act like a spoiler(and thus funded Akin in his primary.)
Here’s the thing, the TEA party has influenced the party apparatus. They added a no exception clause to their platform. The Democratic activists should be so lucky to have the Greens influence a part of their platform and get something like a Medicare system as part of the Democratic platform. Of course, instead of embracing the idea that a third party could cause the Democrats to pull left, it’s far more fun to call the Greens lazy , duped, and stupid.
Of course, that’s just one of the many different Green Party factions in the US, which is splintered up worse than the Judean People’s Front (not to be confused with the People’s Front of Judea) in Life of Brian.
Nader ran in 2000 not under the banner of the main Green Party in the US, but under the label of the Association of Autonomous State Green Parties, or ASGP, which was created because the G/GPUSA was like so many far-left US groups generally averse to electoral politics, and there was a worry that some GPUSA positions (such as abolishing the US Senate, nationalizing the 500 biggest corporations, or freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lori Berenson, or Leonard Peliter) might turn off large swaths of the potential electorate. The ASGP is now the GPUS, by default the chief national electoral arm of the Green movement as the G/GPUSA lost its party status back in 2005.
No, sadly, everyone can not agree on the virtues of having laws.
As a matter of fact a good portion of third party support goes to the idea that we should just let markets roam free and get rid of laws.
False flag operation. The Rs would like to be the spoiler. With all the money they have this seems almost like a natural. The only real way to avoid it would be an actual political party rather than a once every four year thing. If the Rs haven’t thought of it yet, they will. They may be slow but…. Stay tuned.
The original Tea Party was a libertarian and a secular movement against bailouts of all kinds — they were knuckleheads in their anti-tax stance, but they were at least consistent in it. They were coopted by the Koch-funded Armey neocons and far from changing the GOP, were changed by the GOP back into good little Republican corporatist footsoldiers as Chad Peace, an original member of the original 2007 Tea Party movement, describes:
Now, of course, it’s the punch-drunk cynics with incoherent talking points, the Michele Bachmanns and Todd Akins and Sarah Palins, that are the public face of what is now the Tea Party wing of the GOP, and the secularism and opposition to bailouts of big business has been dropped into the memory hole, along with the knowledge that people like Chad Peace were the ones who founded the movement that Armey and the Kochs used Bachmann and Palin to hijack.
Nonsense. See The Jesus Christ of Political Game Theory on the Stupidity of Lesser Evilist Voting. If the Greens had a reliable 5% of the vote, the Democrats would have given serious thought to accomodating some of the Green agenda. If the Greens had a reliable 10% of the vote, the Democrats would be going nuts in many states and districts, trying to figure out how to peel some of them off. They’d be that much more accomodating.
Of course, if they maintained 10%+ over multiple election cycles, they’d be in good position to exploit a re-alignment.
Also, if 3rd parties (including the Greens) had more brains, IMO they’d be intervening in Democratic and Republican primaries.
While 10% of the vote (= 5% of eligible voters) in a general election will only allow Greens to force the Democrats on a couple of issues, in an off Presidential election year, getting such a voting bloc to vote in either a Democratic or Republican primary can actually get your candidate elected as the nominee in the general election. (Of course, the 3rd partiers would have to register as either a D or R, in most states where this strategy would be pursued. Big Deal.) Am looking at things mathematically. I’m sure both the D’s and R’s would engage in sabotage, which makes things more complicated, but the general idea is simple enough to grasp.
I have faulted the Jill Stein for many things, but one of them was not using her campaign more to break the D and R stranglehold. (See UPDATED: I see yet another “Dead Person” – Jill Stein failing to degrade the stranglehold of the D/R duopoly.
Hopefully, Greens and others will mostly ignore your simplistic framing. You’d think a party that can do so well with ballot access would be inclined to organize enough to hire a political game theorist to help them develop voting strategies that make the most sense. Crowd funding has been around for a while – Green growth activists wouldn’t even have to wait for an authorized move in this direction.
Not gonna hold my breath for that one. Progressives in the US generally aren’t too smart, in a collective, strategic sense. Today I posted the same strategic advice I’ve been giving to Greens, and other progressives, on WattsUpWithThat.com, but in their case regarding conservatives pamphleting schools, to get climate science message out, bypassing the usual bottlenecks. I was actually thanked by the moderator, which shows more receptivity than I’m used to at places like FDL.
Your post is an example of either/or thinking that functions as a straight-jacket – yet another mental bloc for the voting public to overcome, in order to most ably strategize, and then vote their self-interest.
“If” big word there.
I was looking for something more recent than 2006, as well as any evidence that the Green Party doesn’t try to prevent this.
Tea Partiers, and radical right wing conservatives generally, have shown themselves willing to withhold their votes from establishment Republican candidates, both before and after they were coopted by the Republican establishment. Democrats “of the left” don’t seem willing to do that. Maybe if there were ranked choice voting they would vote for a third party second choice, who can say, but the right didn’t seem to need that at all in order to vote for the policies they wanted.
Oh, the climate-change denialist is back and lecturing me? The guy who keeps getting spanked each time he pushes his denialism?
Goody!
I’m aware of the history of the TEA party.
I’m also aware that it’s been utilized to pull the party rightward.
Democratic Activists could utilize the Green Party in the same way but their too busy scolding people that are their allies on a large portion of issues for their ——(fill in the blank with laziness, stupidity, naivete,etc, etc)
Thank you for stating the obvious, but I am sure that you are in for an huge amount of undeserved opprobrium from the Sparkle Pony Unicorn Party crowd. Good luck and keep up the good work.
I guess that means that what the Democrats really want is the TEA party agenda since they funded Akin in his primary.
Then again there WAS that contingent of the Democratic party that allowed the health care debate to be hijacked by anti choice advocates so you may be right it may be a Democratic master plan to send women back to the dark ages.
More evidence more recent than 2006? Here you go:
From this year: http://www.theforecaster.net/news/print/2012/10/18/brunswick-gop-leader-under-fire-sign-backing-green/138532
Again from this year: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/ursula-rozum-green-party-new-york (the strategy failed as the Democrat won: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Maffei#2012_congressional_election)
From 2010: http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/10897/attention-democrats-dont-vote-green-party-in-the-comptrollers-race
There are lots more out there, but I’ve been too busy responding to other commenters, alas — including our pet climate-change denialist (yippy skippy!).
If one goes into a fight arguing that everything beyond sucking marginally less is a sparkle pony, then the fight is lost before it starts.
Republicans never have this problem. For example, they never say repealing the ACA (with Dems in control of the Senate and WH)is a sparkle pony. They run for office on repeal, argue for it every chance they get, never let their view out of the public eye.
Dems won’t do that for universal health care, or even something less, like repealing the prhohibition on negotiating drug prices. They never make the case, and their supporters undermine the case by saying any such push for something better is a sparkle pony.
Conspiracies everywhere. If I were a billionaire R, it would be an option to help the Greens and other third parties take a chunk of the vote in Ohio , for example.
The Tea Party actually ran and won a good many seats in congress.
The establishment Democrats are playing the game. It’s just the activists that refuse to see third parties as a tool.
I hope Phoenix Woman sent a sternly worded letter to the Democratic party for their third party support of Angus King. It was lazy, stupid and naive of them for supporting a third choice over their own candidate to advance their goals. *bangs head on desk*
As I said in the Ursula Rozum case, when she found out about it she signed the money over to a charity. I haven’t followed your links to see if there was comparable pushback in other cases. I understand that it happens, as it happened with the Dems and Akin.
How it’s a criticism of the Green Party or of third party politics I don’t know, as long as the Green Party is alert to the possibility and tries, with limited resources to fight back.
After all it’s not like corporate interests funding both the D’s and the R’s and then expecting payback no matter who wins. The Greens aren’t going to adjust their polices to please their Republican donors.
That was the Dems trying the GOP’s spoilerism trick, as while the GOP primary base loves the corporatist version of the Tea Party brand that Dick Armey and Sarah Palin have fed them, the people that vote in general elections don’t, even in Missouri – as was shown when Akin went down in defeat a few weeks ago.
The truth about the much-vaunted, all-powerful Tea Party, at least of its current corporatist Armey version, is that it is an electoral boat anchor when it comes to general elections. In 2010, the Republicans would have won the Senate if they’d went with non-Tea-Party-branded GOPers, as Teepers went down in droves that year — a year which was otherwise a big year for Repubican candidates.
That’s why Republicans like to buy ads for Green candidates: Unlike donations, those can’t be undone or stopped by honest or principled Greens.
I daresay Jane would say that Google ads “owns” this site. She uses it and it’s funding to defray costs. I have no problem with the Greens doing the same with some billionaire that wants to throw his money away in hopes that the Green will act as a “spoiler.”
Heh! There are a lot of folks whose biases interfere with their reading comprehension, that’s for sure.
No they won’t change, but then the corporate or Rs know that and can play off it.
Think Angus King could have won in Mississippi?
Again, not seeing the nature of the problem here, other than the general problem of all money in politics. It’s not the fault of the Greens that this happens, if they fight it where they can, and it’s not like it’s going to change their policies, because they don’t owe anyone for this.
And you were worried that the dems were the corporatist party? Ahh the difference.
And it worked. How much you want to bet they’ll use it again too in 2014 when they are handicapped again?
The truth is that both parties do what they can to manipulate election results.
You saw it back when Lieberman was running as an Independant to thwart Democratic activists.
The only ones on insisting on “purity” ironically enough are the people insisting that there is only one way to achieve progressive goals and that is through the Democratic Party.
Let me get this straight. If the dems take corporate or big money they are corporatists. But if the Greens do it they are pure as the driven snow? Like it.
This is an argument against the D’s and R’s, not the Greens.
were…..uh they ARE a corporate party.
I didn’t see the Greens handing out AT&T grab bags after voting for telcomm immunity or holding their convention at Fraudsters of America colliseum 4 years after those savvy businessman tanked our economy. I must have missed that.
Progress. Yes they do. All political parties take money and ultimately become beholden to it at least to some extent. Blame Citizens United.
I think a third party could win in Mississippi or could impact it’s election enough that a major party candidate might co opt some of its message to win the election.
They need a little more money for that. At the moment you can consider them pure (maybe).
Of course I didn’t say that.
If the Greens receive money from a source that they can’t readily recognize for what it is, and if they do recognize it, they return or reverse the contributions, that’s different from the D’s and R’s taking money and knowing exactly where it came from, and what they need to do to keep the money coming, and then doing it.
I think that’s what I said. They will use it to manipulate third parties.
If the original TEA Party was as successful as you claim, Chris Peace’s name would be a household word. Instead, it’s Bachmann’s and Palin’s names that are the household words associated with the corporatist Pod Person GOP adjunct group now going under the “Tea Party” brand name:
The true TEA Party was not more right wing than the mainstream GOP, but it was more libertarian and more secular. Rather than make the GOP more conservative, the basic point on which the two groups kinda-sorta agreed — that is, opposition to taxation — was used by corporatist and religious-right-affiliated conservatives such as Dick Armey to hijack the movement, shear it of any actual independence as well as its secularism and libertarianism, and use the branding and now-false reputation for independence to gather up Republicans and keep them from straying — or as DDay said back in 2010:
Well yes. The Greens are from the future. Money has no meaning to them. So they just give it back. Hmmmm
I don’t know what you mean by progress. I still intend to vote third party until the Democratic party actually does something to earn my vote. I’ll give you a hint. Cutting Social Security or raising the age for Medicare ain’t gonna do it for me.
At one time (briefly) I thought the Tea Party was a libertarian group. Then I woke up.
Are you running for congress or supporting a Green who is? And are you active on the local level to organize the Greens? if not how do you realistically think anything will change? How will you know for sure someone with money is not just playing you? Doesn’t matter?
Book Salon up with Thomas Ricks’ The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today hosted by Susan Glasser
LINK
What Obamabot apologist bullshit. You must have never opened any middle-of-the-road-pluralist textbook used in any middle-of-the-road-pluralist introductory University-level American National Government course. I taught such a course, I am sorry to say, and any such textbook discusses how minor parties that get any attention at all always force the major parties closer to their perspective by drawing attention to issues, the major party is then forced to adopt those positions to peel away support for the minor party (known as “co-opting”). Check out this article on Ross Perot (from the radical newspaper the LA Times). Without such third parties (I was one of 799 to vote Socialist Party USA in Florida)you will never pull the republicrats to the left.
Here’s an example that support’s PW’s argument about the need to put hard time into organizing if you want a third party to gain traction: Here in Quebec we have a fairly new Socialist party Québec Solidaire, which was founded over a half dozen years ago by a woman who broke from the separatist Parti Québecois on the grounds that it was not a truly progressive party, though like the Democrats, it is definitely more progressive than the alternative Liberals. In the first election after it was formed, QS got no seats and only a small proportion of the votes in the ridings where it had candidates. In the following election it won by a tiny margin the riding of the Plateau in downtown Montreal, which is the core of the arts and intellectual community and had long been a stronghold of the PQ. In the last election, the party won two seats ans came close to winning three more and eight percent of the total vote.
They had feet on the ground and a real organization. Although the part is separatist, it is getting significant support from the progressive Enlish-speaking community.
The result of its progress has been to force the newly elected government distinctly to the left.
It’s as if there five Bernie Sanders instcead of just one in the Senate and twenty or so in the House with their independent electoral machinery.
The Tea Party is a power struggle within the GOP and yes it has been successful.
http://rebelpundit.com/2012/08/rnc-attempts-to-thwart-grassroots-activists-and-to-counter-partys-conservative-wing/
If it weren’t you wouldn’t see attempts within the party to change the rules.
That should sound vaguely familiar to Democratic activists considering Democratic establishment insiders are no strangers to throwing their own hissy fit when they feel the “f’in retards” that it calls a base aren’t acting in their interests.
When the Democratic Party Presidential candidate gets arrested while standing up for people in need of governmental intervention against the oppression of corporations then I’ll reconsider my spoiler vote.
Nice duck. The Jesus Christ of Political Game Theory on the Stupidity of Lesser Evilist Voting records my correspondence with Bueno de Mesquita, a political game theory analyst, employed by the CIA, who was twice as accurate as their own analysts.
Your political game theory bona-fides are what?
Bullshit? Let me tell you about bullshit. Someone posted elsewhere that if you really want to change something walk into the local political meeting. Many, if not most, of them are old and tired. They will give you whatever you want. That’s where you start. On election night they showed a video on TV here of the local democratic party waiting for results. There were nearly all gray hairs in there along with a few of the recognizable money people. If you want to make a difference go do it. If you don’t like the democrats, start it with the Greens. But don’t blow smoke up my ass that once every four years one of five third parties is going to make all the difference in the world. That’s bullshit.
I will not be running for Congress. I will continue to support third party candidates, including Greens, until such a time that they either succeed in moving the party sufficiently left or become a major player in danger of being co opted(quite ways off.)
As far as knowing whether someone is being co opted- I already know that the Democratic Party has been co opted. It’s there is their deeds. I have nothing to lose by supporting a choice that is marginally less owned as evidenced by the fact that corporate America doesn’t even recognize their existence in polling, debates or in any other number of venues which might allow them to become part of national discourse.
What you’re talking about are the religious-right conservatives like Bachmann, Armey and Palin who have hijacked the original movement, which was founded by people like Chris Peace. Far from taking over or even influencing the GOP, Peace’s movement was hijacked out from under him by movement Republicans like Armey and its “independent” brand used to trick potentially-rebellious Republicans into doing the RNC’s work.
Your “bona fides” consist of having your butt kicked so often in the past on global warming and other issues that most folks don’t even bother with you any more. But keep digging that hole! I’ll be elsewhere.
I don’t consider any one party or candidate pure. Right now, the Greens come closest to what I believe. There may come a time when that changes.
My position is the Democratic Party has a responsibility to earn my vote. If they haven’t I will continue to choose options other than them until such a time that they change how they act or disappear. I owe no loyalty to them. My loyalty is to my principles, not a political party per se or its candidate.
Does a party have to be perfect to earn my vote? No. But they better be a darn sight better than pee all over me and call me an idiot in non election years and then expect me to vote for them come election time because they aren’t Republicans.
Now maybe you’ll understand how I felt before the election when the third party purity trolls kept lecturing me. PW is spot on. Jill Stein is a wonderful activist with whom I agree on almost everything but in the end, she was about as prepared to put an administration together as PeeWee Herman.
There are two independent US Senators in the next Congress, one is a self-declared socialist. Independents have captured the goverships of states. But the Green Party continues to waste its resources on the brass ring of the Presidency first. Is there a list of Green Party state legislators? How about members of county commissions? How about city councils? I hope there is, because that’s were your leadership is going to come from when you start winning. And we will know that when there is a Green Party member of Congress (who, in the current environment, will likely caucus with the Democrats).
If I were a part of the leadership of the Green Party I wouldn’t be wasting my time in senseless battles with folks who voted for Democratic candidates. Or snarking back as snarkers who mention 0.35% of the vote. I would be looking at which precincts those 0.35% of the vote came from, where it was strongest, and figuring out how to expand that base in those precincts to actually elect someone to office next year and leverage that to run a strong candidate for Congress in 2014. And if you don’t see yourself as part of the leadership of the Green Party locally, you really are doing nothing but kibbitzing.
I disagree that the US system inevitably means two parties. A party that can have enough power to shift alliances on issue by issue can sustain itself in the American system, just as long as it has a concentrated base geography. But what PW is arguing is that when that happens one major party or the other will succeed in co-opting the issues of that party by turning them into legislation. What the Green Party defenders argue is that the two parties institutionally suppress the growth of third parties.
Well, that’s the situation that third parties have to beat. And complaining about it doesn’t move you forward.
And going in with the tactic of claiming the folks are moral lepers if they don’t vote your way – Green or Democratic – is not likely to win you support for your cause. Nonetheless, some seem to do it for the LULZ.
The way that the right-wing took over the Republican Party was through a strategy of primarying, and then winning the general election. It’s the winning the general election part that is the major hurdle because you have to appeal beyond your normal ideological confines. And it took twenty years of winning a seat here or a seat there for movement conservatives to gain enough traction to elect Ronald Reagan and another 14 years to have a cascade election that put a lock on a number of states. To do this, you have to know locally what constituencies will deliver the votes needed to win and the number of voters you have to have actually voted to win.
But all of this electoral politics stuff is a sideshow right now compared to what is beginning to break loose movementally. Except for New Jersey and Virginia, which have elections next year. Third parties lined up any candidates in either of those states yet? Put out the word here. Now. Early. It’s time to stop navel-gazing and get back to work.
Another duck, and more lies. Nice.
I invite people to look at my diaries and comments regarding global warming, to see how badly I got my “butt kicked”. (I don’t count people smearing me, making up crap about me working for the Koch brothers, and making counter-factual claims, which I refute with links to analyses and data showing otherwise, to constitute me getting my butt kicked. But hey! That’s just my opinion.)
Most of the MyFDl community (there were a whopping 2 exceptions) declined my challenge to define “climate change denier” (which rhymes with Holocaust denier), which is not a favorable indicator of people even capable of kicking my butt, other than in the smearing sense, described above.
BooRadley, you seem to want a lot of personal information from
people-including photographs. Do you plan to do some stalking?
Anyone not jumping on the obot bandwagon gets stalked and harassed ?
You keep expecting me to care that an original player is no longer running things. Movements evolve. They don’t stay static. Key players get replaced by other key players. Issues get added as times go on.
If you are a movement you adapt. We’ve seen this with Occupy. They’ve adapted as time has marched on. What matters isn’t the adaptation as nearly as much as the results that adaptation produces.
In the TEA parties case it has moved the party right, much to the chagrin of the establishment(and to its detriment I might add.) My point has been to use a third party to force Democrats to the left in the same manner. Pick an area where you have very little to lose and make a stand. Use third parties in the same way the GOP and the Democrats have been using them to advance your agenda.
I’ve even got the perfect candidate to utilize this strategy. In 2008 Mark Pryor ran with only opposition from a Green candidate that got 21% of the vote. He’s for a grand bargain. Make him your target. He’s got a progressive score of 6 and the insiders in the party have protected him. They’ve ensured he’s had no challenge.
http://irregularnews.com/statesprogress/2008/02/mark-pryor-targeted/
(A) I’d rather have PeeWee Herman than Obama.
(B) Nobody really thought that Jill Stein would win, the point was simply to make Obama lose by having large numbers of people vote for a Lefty alternative.
Remember when Jill Stein was getting herself arrested for freedom AND IT WAS NOT A PUBLICITY STUNT FOR HER CANDIDACY?
Yeah, she doesn’t do that so much anymore…
#UpperMiddleClassWhiteDilettante
I didn’t lecture anyone.
A person has a right to vote the way they wish. As a matter of fact, stupid, lazy, naive me on several occasions pointed out that there was no perfect solution.
But hey I guess I’m supposed to consider myself acceptable collateral damage in the whole entire “purity” campaign.
I didn’t say “cwaltz” or “you” lectured me. I just said maybe now you’ll know how I felt when I was similarly being lectured.. And it continues to this day. Sorry I wasn’t clear.
That’s precisely why I believe she was a great activist but a crappy candidate.
Obama for America just sent out e mails to call on liberal activists to support a grand bargain.
Ahhhhh if only his campaign comments on the social safety net being on the table were a political ploy. Instead you and the people who voted for him get to own that.
“#UpperMiddleClassWhiteDilettante”
Stalinist tactics much-tboggy ?
I’m saying these posts that insist that people who vote for Greens in general are stupid, dupes or are lazy aren’t particularly helpful.
Most of the people who come here aren’t lazy, stupid or dupes. There are legitimate philosophical differences and those should be discussed but it ought to start from a respectful place that doesn’t make the assumption that someone is being conned by voting for something other than a democrat.
Which made a vote for her a protest vote. The thing is, protest voting doesn’t work. The politicians never take the right lesson from it. Did putting a bunch of teabaggers in Congress in 2010 make the Democrats more liberal? Clearly it did not.
I don’t think that’s what Phoenix Woman is arguing. That’s not what I got from the post. It was about how there are systemic problems in the way we do things. Her post said that third parties under our system can only be spoilers and then described how the TEA Party threatened the Republicans so the absorbed it, rather than find themselves at odds with it, not that voting for a third party makes one a stupid, lazy dupe. I respectfully think you’re reading a whole lot that ain’t there.
Here is what I’d like to see. . . .
The democrats swing to the Right, and lose.
The democrats swing to the Right, and lose.
The democrats swing to the Right, and lose.
The democrats swing to the Right, and lose.
The democrats swing to the Right, and lose.
The democrats swing to the Right, and lose.
The democrats swing to the Right, and lose.
The democrats swing to the Right, and lose.
I can’t make the light bulb go on in their heads, but I’d like to keep making them lose until it does.
A lot of verbiage for a Party that barely got 400k votes. The Vichicrats won the argument before the selection and hearded the sheeple into the Veal Pen. Now we are all going to witness the slaughter here and abroad.
The only reason i can see for PW and others to revisit this nonsense is that they are still furious with Nader for trying to practice Democracy and possibly causing the downfall of their Glorious POS Gore.
I doubt we will see them take responsibility for helping to elect the Glorious POS Obama and the wonderful agenda he has promised us.
This is a very good article. When I try to discuss the Tea Party and how it morphed into this ridiculous racist dork fest, it is hard to explain. People accuse me of shilling for the Tea Party and Repubs and that is unsavory enough to want to give up on the whole endeavor. Trolls scream “gay-basher” “woman hater” and any of the other pat wedge issues crapola they can think of.
However, we the people, need to understand what was done and how. On many important issues, the real TP and the Occupiers were aligned. The original TP shot up in a reaction to the bailout. And it was that complete and utter theft by the Bush Admin that busted off this sudden branch off. This original real grassroots movement was a close kindred spirit to the Occupy on the big stuff. As PW explains in this article, this had to be squashed to preserve the power of the Repub party. Of course this came before Occupy.
It is because the TP attacked the bankster dominated Repub party that the bankster dominated Dem party played their role in crushing the TP rather than encouraging the weakening of the Repub. And their role was to demonize the TP as racists and ignorant hillbillies and the bailout and wars of choice, also a TP beef, were intentionally covered, shielded, and protected from amassing public push back.
The much screwed over Dem base could have aligned for a real take-back of the country from foreign bankers and the corporate stronghold, but the two One percent owned parties worked together for the interests of the One Percent banking elite. The public was deceived and lost a chance for democracy and to end the loss of our government to foreigner bankers, which is now the case. Those wedge issues were screamed to the roof tops by paid provocateurs and the O’Rileys and Maddows riled up their prospective bases and drove them firmly into their assigned Dem and Repub corrals.
Remember those expensive looking professional giant signs of Obama as a voodoo doctor. That was blatant sabotage. No self respecting group would behave that way even if they were racists. The whole thing was absolutely a screw job on the people standing up to power.
Then, Occupy came and stood strong against this kind of sabotage. TPTB tried the old tried and true anti-semantic card, then said they were just too stupid and had no real message, which was absurd, and the dirty hippie card, and the “wants to lay around on welfare” card. Most all of that failed because Occupy was not saying anything that warranted that kind of analysis what so ever. Finally, like the Repub party, the Dems put a stop to it. But even more heavy handedly with NDAA.
People need to realize that the Liberal media is not the angel it has been made out to be by liberals. Notice its acceptance of NDAA. As Chris Hedges so eloquently writes, they speak in the language of liberalism but they are not. And, I realize that all liberal media is not exactly accomplices but unwitting fools many times.
We need to realize the Dem party is just as capable of dirty tricks and that it is as sold-out to One Percent bankster and war profiteers as Repubs ever were. I feel neither of these two corporate parties work for We-the-People and that both are destroying the people’s democracy and completely screwing up any kind of cohesive logical discourse.
I ask all people to watch for these kinds of plays, not be so quick to believe info from so called fair liberals, and realize that we are being tag teamed out of our country and sovereignty by the corporate controlled Duopoly owning and operating Conservative and Liberal media.
Did voting for a Democratic majority in 2006 and 2008 make the Democratic party more liberal?
Because from where I’m sitting that particular strategy didn’t work out overwhelmingly well either.
As a matter of fact I think that it was 2006 that the Democratic Party pretty much spit in the Democratic activists eyes and supported Independant candidate Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont if I remember correctly.
Sounds like you’re after revenge more than change. Since there is no evidence that causing Democrats to lose will achieve the desired result, continuing that strategy is arguably foolish. It makes it sound like:
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
People smoke dope so we up the penalties
I don’t see any difference.
I’m not defending the Democratic Party and you’re being intellectually dishonest for making that suggestion. If you want to have a conversation without making insinuations about what I’m saying, then let’s have it. I’ve been nothing but respectful here and I haven’t tried to put words into your mouth or suggest motives. Please show me the same respect.
I find the panic over the “Grand Bargain” on the level with hysteria over “creeping sharia law”
I think there is evidence in the historical record of 3rd parties having exactly that effect.
I cited this above but I’ll do it here again. . . .
In most cases, the issues or ideas championed by third parties have been “stolen” by the candidates of one of the two major parties. Sometimes the issue position taken by the third party is even incorporated into the platform of one of the existing parties. By doing so, the existing party generally wins the support of the voters that had been the support base of the third party.
If democrats are so stupid that they can’t learn from losing, they will eventually be replaced by some other party which is not so stupid.
And no, I’m not suggesting that strategy worked out well either but it is arguably, undeniably better than McCain or Willard would have been. Think I like voting for the lesser of two evils? Cause I hate it. But in order to get more Progressives elected, I need the stability the Democrats offer as opposed to the wholesale gutting of our economy that the GOP wants.
That’s where PW and I disagree then. I don’t think the TEA party is part of the GOP apparatus. I think they are a political movement that evolved. I also think the GOP establishment wishes they could absorb it which is why it has lurched to the right. Yes, I do believe that the TEA party has some powerful backers. I also believe that they are a concerted effort to pull the narrative to the right ad nauseum even if that hurts Republican efforts(which is why you have people like Joe Scarborough practically begging the TEA party to stop utilizing crazy Uncle Mort to primary moderates in places that aren’t rabidly conservative.)
Like us, the GOP is having their own crazy ass version of a discussion on principles versus the practicality of “winning” when the candidate doesn’t match your values.
That’s how I see things.
It’s hard to argue that the TEA party was absorbed when you see Boehner getting the vapors when the TEA party blows up negotiations for the umpteen millionth time.
Okay, that’s an opinion piece. The part you are citing is a conclusion by the author, not evidence of anything but the author’s personal beliefs.
The difference between the Democratic Party and the GOP is that the GOP is willing to embrace their fringe. The TEA Party did evolve independently but they were primarily Republican and Libertarian voters to begin with. The problem with the Democrats is that they see Progressives as a “fringe” and so shun us. It’s primarily because of right wing control of the media but people are slowly learning how absurd it is. The wheels turn glacially slowly but turning they are.
This has been fun but I hafta get my bike riding done. Laters.
Elect more democrats? Elect more progressive democrats?
If you’re going to bang your head against that wall-
wear a helmet. Otherwise you’re just going to hurt yourself.
I think that there needs to be more than one strategy and I think different places will respond to different strategies.
I used Mark Pryor as an example. In 2008, the party WOULD NOT primary him. He had no challenge from the right(why would he with a score of 6 he’s practically a Republican). His only challenger was a Green. Why belittle a group of people that basically did what the Democratic activists couldn’t because the Democratic establishment stymied them? Why not support the Greens in these kind of instances?
Heck for that matter, I’d encourage the right to challenge him too. The worst thing you’d have to lose is a Senator that already votes with the GOP 94% of the time.
I’m mildly panicked every time there is a possibility of a deal. But every time I look at the situation, the clock is running out on the lame duck session. And those automatic actions, as recessionary as they are are more likely to kick in — with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, and military pay and benefits not getting cut.
But the sweetest thing is that the Republican House then has to make proposals either to spend or tax. They can no longer hide behind obstruction.
We’ll see.
I don’t remember Obama for America sending out emails for creeping Sharia law.
Fair enough. But if I can cite something more rigorous, will that be good enough for you?
BTW (as per comment #108) have fun riding your bike. For myself, along with my regular bike, I have a stationary bike set up in front of my TV (it is the only seat in front of the TV), which makes it a bit easier to get my daily riding in.
I personally am looking forward to watching them explain to the electorate why they NEED to keep the taxes where they are despite popular opinion that the rich should pay more.
Talk about a losing argument.
Right about now Democrats should be sending Mitt Romney a big ol’ thank you card. His taxes highlighted the fact that the very rich are paying much less than middle class as a percentage of their income thanks to a very skewed tax code.
I don’t believe that there is any similarity between the crazy Right-Wing concerns about “Muslim-sharia-terrorists” and the legitimate Left-Wing concerns about the One-Percenters’ efforts to screw the rest of us.
The only problem I see is that there is not enough hysteria over the fascist crap that the two major parties have been involved with lately.
I took a look at this assertion before the election. It turns out that it is true that third parties have influence, but that only happens when either the third party wins one or more states in the electoral college (Wallace 1968) or pulls a substantial percentage of voters (Socialists in 1920, Progressives in 1924, Perot in 1992). There are oodles of third parties that split the vote of those dissatisfied with the two parties, plus even more independent candidates. No less than three major socialist parties split that vote. With no unity or numbers outside the two parties, there is no incentive for the two parties to attempt to co-opt one or more of those parties.
To my estimation, the TEA Party was a movement not a party before 2009 and certain Republican operatives found it useful to use as a scourge of Obama without having the GOP fingerprints on it. So they co-opted it with Fox News and astroturf funding and tried to inflate its numbers so as to restore their fortunes in 2010. And when their massive use of deception (“saving Medicare”) and advertising created a major victory they pointed to this movement and said they were just responding to a popular rebellion against Obama. There are a lot of TEA Party movement folks who now feel terribly used by being sucked into GOP politics.
Occupy Wall Street decided to remain a loose movement without electoral ties. It indirectly will move political discourse in a more progressive direction regardless of whether either party attempts to co-opt them. Labor issues, for example, as a result of the Walmart strike supported and networked by a coalition that includes OWS folks, are now back on the agenda. Before this fall, labor issues were untouchable for politicians.
Agree with your analysis. We need a populist party to represent the people and the Dems ain’t it.
Webster Tarpley used a phrase to describe our situation that I found apt–we are in a “ideological hall of mirrors” where we can’t even recognize what our interests are and who represents us.
In a few years, 2017 at the earliest, 2025 at the latest, in my best educated guess range, none of this will matter. The fascist system you support, PW, will collapse because it does not work for the vast majority of Americans. It’s only propped up by financial bubbles and hot air now, anyway.
The people you love to bash are the future. Resistance is futile. I’ll just wait to be proven right or wrong. At least I was right about the electoral college vote several months in advance, and that was not guesswork.
I do agree with you on one thing: Instant Runoff Voting is preferable to our current winner of the plurality take all system. But the Party you back will join with the Party you oppose to stop that from ever happening peaceably.
that’s good. so true.
I voted for several Greens this cycle, as I do every cycle. Just not Stein.
Yeah, I have one of those too. For crappy weather.
And of course, if you have some numbers, I’ll be more than happy to look at them. I think some of you guys have got me all wrong. I have nothing against the Greens. In fact, I mostly support them. The problem is in our system. As for Stein, I admire her greatly but traveling around the country trying to get arrested, while admirable for an activist, is not what I look for in a Presidential candidate. I wish the Party would grow up, I truly do but they aren’t there yet. I’ve always said, since the beginning of this website that a viable third party is necessary, along with money coming out of politics. The word “viable” is extremely important though. They need to work harder to move their message away from the street protest arena to the political arena. That being said, I always choose some Greens, every election. The fact is I never vote reflexively, nor do I vote because other people are insisting I vote their way.
What a stupid fucking comment. Inexcusable on FDL, IMHO.
Do you need a hug or something, ’cause, the comment referred to was fine in my humble opinion. Sounds like some other issue.
((econcobuzz))
Yeah, I’m with you. I respect you buzz but I didn’t see anything wrong with the comment. While I may not agree with it 100%, it wasn’t out of line or anything.
Yo, Peggah!
Fight Right On.
I reiterate, it was a stupid fucking comment that disrespected all of the concerns that have been stated repeatedly by the very best writers on FDL on the subject of the so-called “Grand Bargain.”
well done, taxtynn; excellent supplement to pw’s post.
((((buzz)))) I love you still.
Back at ya.
Im sure one “the grand bargain” is official youll be back to tell us how its really not that bad and the people who complain about the massive cuts should just calm down… youll urge us to “hey look over there a Republican did something stupid hahahaha…”
“I admire her greatly but traveling around the country trying to get arrested, while admirable for an activist, is not what I look for in a Presidential candidate.”
How many votes did Eugene V.Debs get while in prison?
“Debs’ speeches against the Wilson administration and the war earned the enmity of President Woodrow Wilson, who later called Debs a “traitor to his country.”[35] On June 16, 1918, Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio, urging resistance to the military draft of World War I. He was arrested on June 30 and charged with ten counts of sedition.”
I don’t know but if I was interested enough, I’m sure I can find out. The situation isn’t analogous. Nobody has charged Stein with sedition.
I really don’t care if you’ve posted here 1 time or 1 million times.
When did you get elected commisar ?
What the hell are you talking about? I’m a “commisar” because you asked a question and I answered it? WTF are you smoking?
Yawn, pompous,pretensions,pontificating…………..
do go on……………………
Please continue your name calling, the more I flag, the sooner you leave.
Yes, what panic is there over the Grand Bargain?? It’s accepted by 98 percent of Americans as what has to be done. It’s been an organized success by both parties thinking cutting government spending drastically in a recession is a grand thing. There’s no panic. Because 2 percent of the population on very liberal websites rail against the Grand Bargain correctly so does not mean there is panic. Just like sharia law was maybe accepted by the 2 percent crazies on the extreme, extreme right.
The difference is in my opinion is that opposition to the Grand Bargain has very logical origins and makes sense. Creeping sharia law I’m thinking does not have very logical origins and does not make sense. Why on earth are you playing false equivalence games at this point?? What you wanted happened. Be happy.
Like I said-self appointed commisar. Sad to see FDL become an
obot fan site .
Electoral politics will never be the answer… every major progressive movement in the history of this country started in the streets and that is where all future progressive change movements will start. The idea that if we only elected more benevolent who support liberal causes we will be saved is a pipe dream.
You became a member today? You must have been banned before.
Really. This commenter has some sort of other axe to grind, which apparently needs to be ground on you for some reason, even though you didn’t do one thing to deserve it.
Sounds to me like a previously banned jerk back to haunt.
You assume a lot of things,and then insinuate by lying.
I’ve been reading FDL for four years. Never posted before today.
So stop the insinuation,and accusations.
“Really. This commenter has some sort of other axe to grind, which apparently needs to be ground on you for some reason, even though you didn’t do one thing to deserve it.
Sounds to me like a previously banned jerk back to haunt.”
and…You assume a lot of things,and then insinuate by lying.
I’ve been reading FDL for four years. Never posted before today.
So stop the insinuation,and accusations.
I’m hep. I don’t know who this is and I’m not going to try to guess. The axe he or she is grinding may not even have anything to do with FDL. Either way, it’s not worth my time.
Yes, and the ad hominem attacks begin in 5,4,3,2,1,,,
hmmm,clique ?
Don’t flatter yourself.
Here we go again. The Greens are five people in a room, therefore they must be too lazy to run a real political party.
I’ve also noticed you enjoy jumpimg on first time posters.
Whats up with that ? Is there a rule I missed ?
One recalls that the Republicans donated about 100 times as much to the Kerry campaign as they did to Nader back in 2004.
Yes, the politically correct line is to go on crusades against climate change deniers while granting a free pass to politicians (such as your beloved President) who support the fossil fuel industry.
“Here we go again. The Greens are five people in a room, therefore they must be too lazy to run a real political party.”
I’m confused,the democrats are a political party ?
I was thinking more like fascist clique ?
Sigh. The trolls are getting less creative and the flame wars aren’t what they used to be. Come on folks, you’re more literate and passionate than that.
I don’t get it. Anyone you disagree with is a troll?
So none of Obama’s promises of a Grand Bargain are real? Good to know.
‘So none of Obama’s promises of a Grand Bargain are real? Good to know.”
mmmmmm,i think the grand bargin is an axe thats going to fall.
The Democrats, on the other hand, have no problems with adjusting policy to suit Republican donation.
Sarcasm, eh.
Remember:
“ITS NOT FASCISM WHEN THE DEMOCRATS DO IT.”
FORWARD!!!!!!!!!
Actually, no, that wasn’t the point — and if you’d bothered to read Stein’s web page you’d know that. The point was to boost the Green Party.
Could be it ends up in a stalemate. Can kicking has become an art
form. The system just grinds on-relentless.
I disagree with most of the folks on this thread at different times about different things. Just ask them. So no, I have to answer your question “Anyone I disagree with is a troll?” by saying “No.”
And precisely what is it that you do for the world that should command our respect?
Democrats pull all-nighters to avert the general climate of horror and panic when reports go out that someone actually voted Green. Their neoliberal God is NOT pleased, to say the least.
OK – I’ll give it a whirl:
Nihilists – Serving Revenge Pudding, Pretending It’s A Meal Since, Like, Forever.
Seriously, when people are serious, they do the actual hard work of coalition building around issues and pick folks who arise from those activities.
They don’t throw on their Judge Robes and spit on others who voted in a manner the Robes Brigade doesn’t like, are actually doing that actual work in a reform minded way.
I have less time for the threads because of exactly that. I want the money out of politics and am working with other programmers to expose in a meaningful manner what happened in the last election with the Election Industrial Complex via that new FCC resource for broadcasting spending, https://stations.fcc.gov/
It’s total grunt work, looking through all the invoice formats for one thing, trying to develop a standard to even put aggreated data IN, much less the challenges of scraping the data out of the various PDF formats they filed (pics or text PDFs.) But grind on we will till we can make some use out of it.
Such a use like real time tracking, telling WHO these people are as far as is knowable during the next cycles, as well as how much money is flowing.
Because that can be an actual weapon in what is a system that is all about power. It ain’t about sainthood, and it sure as shit ain’t bean bag.
But Saints Must Be Had and Revenge Pudding Must Be Eaten. And to those Sainted Pudding Eaters I say – boogah boogah boogah! Get a life.
“And precisely what is it that you do for the world that should command our respect?”
Like I said I’ve been reading FDL for four years. The change I’ve
seen hasn’t been for the better. If you weren’t on the DEMO bandwagon
then you got slammed hard and ofter. Got tired of watching people
get slammed.
A noble try but I bet you can do better both in terms of literary form and the intensity of your revolutionary passion.
“But Saints Must Be Had and Revenge Pudding Must Be Eaten. And to those Sainted Pudding Eaters I say – boogah boogah boogah! Get a life.”
Unfreaking believable; can you get more juvenile ?
I’m waiting for TBogg to answer that question. I donate to a food bank every week, while promoting French Intensive method at a local garden. I don’t vote for neoliberal politicians, or eat meat, or create babies for an over-consumed world. It’s not a lot but it’s something. What does TBogg do that should command our respect?
As a matter of fact, it is possible for Kelly Canfield to get more juvenile.
Can you get more seriously indignant? Might take more than two sentences.
don’t put to fine a point on it……….
you might poke your eye out buckaroo……..
Given your general unflappability, TBogg should command some respect for getting you moderately pissed off. Doesn’t that take talent?
” Might take more than two sentences.”
nah,go ahead-have the last word-you know you want to.
tbogg seems like a fine fellow who loves his wife and daughter and basset hounds and writes a blog doing hatchet jobs on the right wing. It’s all fine. I simply do not comprehend however his complete and utter disdain for 3rd, 4th and 5th party voters. He seems to really hate them. It irritates me greatly. I can’t speak for him however though I am doing it now.
Why, TD, I’ve been relatively and downright sweet on this thread.
Should I bring out The Harsh? It’s laying over there, right where I can see it.
Much better.
” Doesn’t that take talent?”
Talent? I thought he had an obot labotomy…….
Rapier wit is preferable to the Harsh. As momma used to say, you can catch more flies with bullshit than with vinegar.
Presumably that is a removal of the left side of the brain, and thus all rational function. Is that your assertion?
BULLSHIT? yep,you be hip deep in the big muddy.
You like vinegar on your bullshit?
Oh well to each his own. Right buckaroo ?
“removal of the left side of the brain, ”
OUCH,did that hurt? Is that required to be an obot?
Go that extra mile -right buddy?
Three entire lines. Very good. And all caps.
You play along real good, pod’ner.
Scrambler seems to think at #174 that TBogg writes “hatchet jobs on the right wing,” but I only see cherry-picking. Liberals these days think it’s OK to be right-wing if you’ve got a (D) next to your name.
“You play along real good, pod’ner.”
silly,never play along,never just get along,but do go along
if you get the chance.
p.s. hope your head heals real soon from that lobotomy thing.
I was speaking in traditional terms from the democrat perspective. Right wing implies (R). So in traditional terms if a right winger has a (D) yeah that’s fine in the author’s case.
Dont’cha know cassiodorus that there are Democrats and Democrats but there can only be one kind of Republican or they’ll primary your ass. The Democrats are like feathers. Some are near the right wing joint, rightwing but not so extreme as to be at the tip. A very few are close to the left wing shoulder joint. And then there are the centrists, who are positioned right below the cloaca in the DLC area.
So we could say that TBogg was about as virtuous as, say, any of the 106,000 people who attended the Ohio State-Michigan game today. I’m good with that.
Your mind seems full of stereotypes and suppositions of what folks’s political positions are. And other than anger have not expressed where you stand. Interesting that.
In other words, there’s no real reference point with TBogg or those vast multitudes like him.
Meh, it’s just Tbogg being Tbogg. If he thinks something his candidate made as part of his platform are the exact same thing as the ranting of a random TEA party member who are we to disabuse him of his imaginary world where they are comparable.
You need to step away from the mic.
your suppositions are showing and it ain’t pretty.
Not one associated with all of them at one time. A “big tent” party as you surmised is very much like a team. Team jersey, team roster, team spirit, razzing the opposite team. Go home to different places.
Not really angry are you?
“where you stand.”
I’m standing right here……..
no wait now I’m sitting down…………..
that work for ya ?
I’ll have to do a bit of looking around to come up with some numbers for you.
I didn’t really think the issue had to do with whether or not you had anything against the Greens.
Nor does it really matter whether or not I like the Greens.
The issue that I care about (and which I thought was the focus) was: what will the democrats do if a progressive 3rd party starts getting large numbers of votes which would could otherwise have gone to the democrats?
My premise is that the democrats would be concerned about losing votes to a more progressive party, and shift to the Left. Your argument is (at least as I understand it) that the democrats would react to growing numbers of progressive voters by ignoring them and continuing their shift to the Right (even if losing these votes causes the dems to lose on a regular basis).
“Not really angry are you?”
NO.Just having some fun. No hard feelings.
Same here, buckaroo.
Have a good evening.
I suspect that there were multiple motivations from within the group of people who voted Green. Some may have done it to deprive the Democratic party of their votes in hopes that Democrats might take it as a message and realign to the left and some may have legitimately done it because they thought Stein was the best candidate and they wish to elevate the Green Party and its platform. Some even for an amalgam of those two reasons.
While you’re here:
What resources? The Green Party doesn’t really have resources, not when compared with the two Goliath parties. The Presidential runs are an attempt to build the party to the point where it has resources.
It might work in California if you could get past the “top two” scheme imposed upon California ballots in 2010. In California, the primary has all kinds of candidates, without partisan distinction; the November election has the “top two” vote-getters in the primary election. The only ballot line immune from “top two” is the Presidential ballot line.
So for a Congressional candidate in, say, San Francisco (the only place in CA where the Greens have any strength), the Green would have to come out as either first or second in total votes in the primary, running against Democrats, Republicans, and who knows what.
You see the problem.
” what will the democrats do if a progressive 3rd party starts getting large numbers of votes which would could otherwise have gone to the democrats?”
The talk of changing the Dems makes me think of old school tactics.
The Socialist Workers Party tactic- bore from within. How well did that
work? Far Left purged from the Unions and Dem party. DSA was tolerated.
Anyone remember Michael Harrington ?
Not really my argument. My argument is that since we live in this two major parties system, where everybody else is cut out and apathy means that the vast, vast majority of voters see it as a two party paradigm, any loss by one major party necessarily means a win by the other major party. So, large numbers of votes for a Progressive Party always equals a win by Republicans. Democrats see that and take exactly the wrong message. Instead of getting that people are voting against Democrats, they think they are voting for Republicans and they shift right. Because they live in a bubble and that’s what the people inside that bubble tell them. That isn’t to say I’m against electing Progressives, I’m all for it! And I vote only Green locally. If there is no Green, then I’ll vote Democratic. When the right candidate comes along and its worth the almost certainty of putting up with four years minimum of a McCain or a Romney, in order to make a splash, then I’ll vote, GOTV, even work phones for that candidate. Happily and proudly. Until then, punishing one major party in this country always means rewarding the other and while Republicans know when they are being voted against, Democrats never see it that way. Republicans think they need to be more wingnutty while Democrats…think they need to be more wingnutty.
As metamars pointed out there is a great deal of concern because the reality is that a small portion of the population can tip races.
My message to the Democrats is if you don’t want me to vote for a “spoiler” candidate then earn my vote. Being the non Republican isn’t enough and I refuse to drag you across the finish line if a vote for you is in conflict with my belief system, my own self interest, or the against the interest of those I care about.
You’ll hear over and over how Nader cost Gore the election. I posit the opposite. Gore cost Gore the election. It isn’t the electorate’s responsibility to pull a candidate across the finish line. It’s a candidate and leader’s responsibility to appeal to the electorate. This whole entire shift the responsibilty away from leadership and allow them to blame everyone but themselves for losing is ridiculous.
“My argument is that since we live in this two major parties system, where everybody else is cut out and apathy means that the vast, vast majority of voters see it as a two party paradigm, any loss by one major party necessarily means a win by the other major party.”
In other words-”you can’t get there from here…”
Does that the dems are the only way to go ?
If thats so……help me jeeebus.
If that’s what you took from that comment then I can’t help you. You don’t want to discuss but to argue. No thanks.
The Kochs conceived of the Tea Party in the 1980s, at about the same time as they donated to the then new Democratic Leadership Council.
The Republicans have always had more third Party competition than the Democrats, including the Libertarian Party. They just don’t whine about it anywhere near as much.
BTW, “third Party” is a misnomer. The Republican and Democratic Parties combined comprise about 1.15 parties and there are quite a few other political parties besides Democratic and Republican.
Reading comprehension ?
Nothing to be got then very slim takings.
But then possibly your pearls of wisdom are beyond my
comprehension. I bow before your all powefull intelect.
Then since when does regurgitation pass for intelect ?
Yes I see the problem. The practical problem is building the base. The practical problem ahead of that is understanding how large you base needs to be to prevail and win an office. And that requires a ramp up in practical political smarts on how to proceed. Among a larger number of folks.
I would not presume that San Francisco is where their greatest concentration within a the geography of an elective office is. I would do as I said — look at where the votes that they got actually came from.
I agree that the current top two voting system in California is problematic for other than the dominant parties or the duopoly. However, there might be an office in New Jersey’s legislature or even Virginia’s legislature where a Green candidate can win or give the other parties a scare.
The same principles apply to the wide variety of socialists as well.
I still say a 21% showing in 2008 by a Green was a great effort. I’ll also be very surprised if the same party infrastructure that allowed Pryor a pass in 2008 will allow a primary for 2014.
I don’t live in Arkansas but if I did I’d be reaching out and putting up feelers to see what the climate was there.
I think when people say “third party” they mean a third major party. One that gets federal matching funds and invited to debates. It’s all about the money though. H Ross Perot bought his “Reform” party into the system but he couldn’t sustain it by himself and apparently he was a crappy fundraiser.
Are they really so stupid that they can’t tell the difference between Green-votes and republican-votes?
Having democrats push the republican agenda is worse because ultimately the Left may get the blame for those policies. Many of the uninformed voters may think that Obama is fairly liberal. They’ve heard about how he is a “socialist” and heard about his “big stimulus package” which didn’t seem to do a whole lot of good. Bush has been out of office for a while and it may start to seem like the liberals have had their chance, and that they can’t do any better than the conservatives. Of course, the truth is that the stimulus was too small, and we still have the Bush tax cuts, and the bank bail outs, and the corporate de-regulation. Obama gives the conservatives a gift they could never have had on their own: we get the continuation of Right-Wing policies covered by the illusion that a progressive alternative is being tried.
“where a Green candidate can win or give the other parties a scare.”
Thats it. What did Bob Marley say- they be a big tree-I and I have
a small axe. (paraphresed)
Let the dems be that big tree.
Green in Virginia is a little problematic because some of the Greens here have a real libertarian bent. They’d be cool to work with on issues like the Patriot Act but the progressives would have to make major inroads to convince people here on things like a universal education system or health care.
It’s not impossible mind you but I don’t see Virginia going Green in a progressive way for a little while because I suspect there’d be infighting.
Great article @Phoenix Woman! And I appreciate the pragmatic responses of @TarHeelDem and @textynn. Coming in late to this discussion but here’s my two cents’ worth.
If anyone is interested in Chad Peace’s more recent activities, he is a founder of a website and news platform for independent voters called the Independent Voters Network (IVN): http://ivn.us/voters/Chad_Peace/profile/ — he works for a political consulting firm that targets independent voters: http://independentvotercontact.com/team/ and there is overlap among the firm’s staff and IVN’s editorial team.
Full disclosure: I am a participant in the IVN network of bloggers: http://ivn.us/voters/liberalartsdude/. Until I read Phoenix Woman’s article this morning I had no idea Peace was a founder of the original TEA Party.
Regarding advancing progressive politics via a third party, I am very surprised much of the online conversation revolves around the Greens and what they do/don’t do. If progressives are looking for a more viable and successful model for third party organizing, the Vermont Progressive Party and their state-level succcess for the past 30 years gets surprisingly very little attention. Here’s a link to an interview I conducted in 2011 which provided a glimpse to their strategy and grassroots operations.
Regarding approval voting among political reforms to break the monopoly of the Republican-Democrat duopoly, there are two organizations which are strong proponents of it in different ways: FairVote and the Free and Equal Elections Foundation.
There are organizations out there who have been hard at work on these types of reforms for many years and who often do their work with little fanfare or attention. FairVote has done an admirable job working on campaigns to implement Approval/Instant Runoff Voting on the local level nationwide the past few years. Free and Equal is best known most recently as the organization behind the third party debates televised in RT and Al Jazeera featuring Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, Virgil Goode and Rocky Anderson.
The Independent Voters Network is a bold experiment in building a media outlet for news, perspectives and political discussion outside of the two major parties. IVN is closely linked to and is a proponent of the Top Two electoral reform movement — which is opposed by FairVote, Free and Equal and many advocates of third parties. In my opinion, independent voters and tapping into the widespread voter dissatisfaction and disgruntlement with the two party system — trying to harness that dynamic into electoral victories — is the next big frontier in American politics. IVN and Chad Peace have their pulse in that area as does Free and Equal and FairVote. If you oppose the duopoly of the two major parties and want to see successful activism and organizations in action along those lines I recommend checking these ones out.
I don’t know if it’s a matter of stupidity or insular living. Remember that their sage old people are the likes of Rahm Emanuel, Bob Shrum and Lanny Davis. To these guys, politics is a game and they pick their side like most people pick sports teams. That is slowly changing though. I was attacked, attacked and attacked again on this very blog for pointing out that Obama was an establishment party Democrats and no Progressive back in 2006 – 2008. To such an extent that I left here for a long time. But just because I pointed out the axiomatic truth that Obama is orders of magnitude better than Romney, I got attacked this year too. And by many of those who attacked me as anti Obama four short years ago. I have remained absolutely consistent in my view of Obama: he is a party line, establishment, insider who is about as “Progressive” as his former chief of staff. Period. I have many, many complaints about Obama and have voiced them over and over but I think one of the reasons I don’t hate Obama as viscerally and thoroughly as do some here, I never fooled myself into believing he was anything but what he is.
The point is that you have to pick your forest or multiple ones. Trying to take down the big sequoia with a pen-knife hasn’t been to helpful either for policy or party-building for third parties. There are probably some local tree farms or state forests where one can be more effective and build the strength in maybe a decade (or less judging from the Whig to Republican rise) you can take on that sequoia.
To my mind, Virginia and New Jersey in 2013 would be worth a look at capturing at least one legislative seat.
One coalition. Take one seat in the legislature. If it’s in a “red” district, all the better. Agree on what fundamental “Green” values are in Virginia and get to work. I suspect the number of voters to convince is somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 for an assembly seat.
Thanks for the reply, I think about it while I do my biking (which it is time for me to do now). Catch ya later.
“The point is that you have to pick your forest or multiple ones.”
I spent time in the IWW years ago. For the most part they rejected
politics. Now, I think they may have been right,or I’m just tired
and cynical. I’ve seen the sectarian,fractional,factional,infighting.
Worth it ? Don’t know anymore.
Enjoy your ride. I did! :)
The teabaggers were not aiming at making Democrats more liberal, but at making Republicans more conservative. If the Teabaggers were very successful, they ultimately may have made the Democrats more conservative as well, but I don’t know if they had that in mind.
The Teabaggers were not a party separate from Republicans, but a movement within the Republican Party. So, it’s not really comparable with a party that is separate from the Republican Party, like Libertarians.
I’m hep. Sorry I was unclear. What I meant by that is what a lot of people around this site and others were talking about in 2010: punishing the Democrats, especially for Obama’s caving over and over. The Teabaggers didn’t get their candidates in by turning out, they won because the left didn’t turn out. It goes back to what I’ve been saying: Punishing one major party in our system always means rewarding the other. You’re talking exactly the same lesson from 2010 the Democrats did. You are saying that people voted for the baggers, rather than against the Democrats and I don’t think the evidence supports that conclusion. At least that’s not how I interpret it. People didn’t want the fire breathing right wing loons as much as they wanted an alternative to the ineffective, milktoast, worthless ass Dems. They elected that alternative.
Le Petite bourgeoisie; interpretation of the democrats.
Forget one party vs the other. Condem yet continue to embrace.
Farce then tragedy. Endless interpretation. Remember anyone that
disagrees must be a first time poster that was banned! Quick to
the ramparts defend the sacred dems.
I don’t run vanity campaigns that cause the purity folks to annoy everyone who has a life with tales of their purity.
That’s got to be worth something.
By the way, shouldn’t you guys be out party building or finding the Next Great White Hobbyist Hope? 2016 is just around the corner and 7/10th’s of 1% of the electorate might very well be within grasp…
Oh no. I broke the 6 Person Never Say Die, We’ll Get Them Next Time echo chamber.
Just call yourself the Wile E. Coyote Party and be done with it…
In other words, nothing.
Oh yeah, and five people in a room managed to “annoy everyone.” Tell it to the victims of the jobs crisis.
Stalinist little thug to the core.
smear,ad hominem attack,denigration,degrading.
Smear tactics right out of the FASCIST play book.
Hell tboggy you look a lot like an agent provocateur,just sow the
dissension and discontent.COINTELPRO much tboggy ?
As a general rule I’m automatically writing off anything that refers to third parties as “spoilers” (as if Democrats and Republicans have some sort of “natural” right to be the two legitimate choices). I understand the thrust of Margaret’s argument but, that being said, it’s logical conclusion is really what should drive us away from doing what she does. The realization that the system boxes you into a zero sum choice between two options that are not adequate is precisely why you should not vote for either of the major parties – by voting for one or them, you are putting your stamp of approval personally on “the way things are”. The people with the most authentic moral claim to dissent are actually those that refuse that false choice as inadequate. The discussion prompted by the post has been, contrary to what some may think, pretty good and fruitful in my opinion.
Either way, the main thing I wanted to say was that I can’t believe how far down this thread’s conversation has gotten and no one has mentioned Kshama Sawant yet. A public policy pro running openly as a socialist in Seattle got 28% of the vote this cycle for a Washington state legislative seat. There’s definitely room to grow in some of these places where the third party left wing vote is mostly coming from, if one organization can get left inclined and persuadables behind one candidate.
While electoral politics in bourgeois democracy can only take you so far, on the electoral front what we need is an American SYRIZA, a coalition of the left like has united in Greece under one banner. And more candidates like Sawant in more places running under one flag. Sawant is already saying the next step is to run a whole slate of socialist/left candidates for Seattle city council in the next elections. This is something that can be built on.
I think there is a lot of room to grow left. Part of the reason our side rarely wins the debate is we don’t even get invited to the debates to begin with.
For example, the complaints about socialism being unfair on their face sound logical until you point out to people that the system we have right now rewards the people at the head of companies for failure with millions while telling someone who worked hard for 17 years that his employment was worth 6 months of unemployment that politicians will bitch, moan and whine about him getting. People seem to understand THAT system seems pretty darn unfair too.
In 2008 the great and wonderful reformers of the Democratic Party couldn’t even get their Establishment Party to mount a primary challenge against a guy who has a progressive score of 6. It’s the same year that the Democratic Party spit all over them and supported Independant Joe Lieberman over the Democratic primary winner Ned Lamont. There’s a reason Rahm Emmanuel called you and people like you “f’in retards.”
I’d rather be part of the Wil E Coyote Party then the Glutton for Punishment coalition.
Oops my bad that was the 2006 and 2008 cycle- I believe the era that was going to herald in “progressive change.”
If anyone is using Acme products I’m pretty convinced it’s the coalition that keeps doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Meep Meep.
You’re disturbing TBogg’s moment of righteous wrath for having been grievously wronged on a national political scale by, well, by five people in a room…
The pubs have the same disdain for libertarians as dems have for progressives ,the only difference is the dems feel progs owe them something ,as if the left are their wayward and misguided kin .I don’t like dems in any way shape or form ,and I’m good with them feeling the same,and the above comments confirm this is the case .
We all love Jane, who is an exemplar of progressivism ,and that is the only reason for our convergence on this blog .The difference between the neoliberal left and the socialist left is irreconcilable .Hating corporate globalization ,believing in national sovereignty ,and advocating all cultural issues be rooted in class struggle are not amenable to your lesser-evil politics .So work for multicultural tokenism , trickle-down proposals for socioeconomic justice ,and a world of interdependent markets in which transnational monopolies use austerity ,systemic fraud and privatization to impoverish us all as we are harmonized into competing at slave wage extraction .
Most of you don’t even know what structural adjustment is ,and if you do ,take me on and defend it Being in the corporate tank or being out of it is a clear choice .Please disabuse me of more old reactionaries telling us how to build a movement/party when you have zero control over your political destiny .Jill can’t win ? We’ll soon what wins Obama has in store for you .Keep hope alive ,change is coming.so lean forward and impress us with some power politics .That’s how we losers can learn ,not two-bit advice .
What an adorably pretentious new commenter! “Stalinist”! “COINTELLPRO!”, “Le Petite bourgeoisie!”.
If this were a dorm room full of freshmen, you’d be the belle of the ball.
But, alas, it is not. How very sad for you.
Thanks for the link on Kshama Sawant, @one_outer! I checked it out immediately grabbed by the description of an openly Socialist candidate gaining victory with 28% of the vote. I checked out the news section in Sawant’s website and came upon this pretty good analysis on electoral prospects for Left activism post 2012.
QUOTE: District and city races are where the action is at, or should be at, while presidential races are (almost) hopeless fights and should be de-prioritized for the time being, given the left’s meager resources and national unpopularity. The best way to get ready to fight for and win 5% of the vote national vote for a left candidate in 2016 and 2020 is to win some local or state races. Concentrating our attack where the enemy is strongest and where we are weakest is stupidity, a recipe for more decades marked b y failure, frustration, and powerlessness. Local races require a lot less money to win, and the danger of billionaires emptying their bank accounts into super PACs to defeat us is far lower than it is when governorships, Senate seats, and the presidency are up for grabs.
If we win office at any level, we will be in a position to begin reversing neoliberalism, using Republican-style obstructionist tactics against Republican attacks, and begin undoing the anti-democratic practices of the American electoral system. This is essentially how Hugo Chavez built massive popular support for smashing and grabbing (or “redistributing”) the wealth and power of Venezuela’s 1% to the 99% over the past decade one step at a time.
Socialist Alternative’s call for Occupy candidates to run in local races is a big step in the right direction.UNQUOTE
This is a pretty good argument for leftists and progressives tired of being shat on by duopoly/lesser evil politics to check out how Sawant did it and also how a locally-based strategy for electoral politics such as the Vermont Progressive Party has been doing it for the past 30 years can be scaled and duplicated in other states.
Following up on the comments on Kshama Sawant (Socialist Alternative candidate in Washington’s 43rd legislative district), I wanted to point out that one of the reasons she got nearly 28% of the vote against a cosmetically liberal establishment Democrat — the Speaker of the state House, no less — was because no Republican was in the race and there was no fear of her being a spoiler. Which brings us to ranked-choice voting.
No legislature run by the Republican/Democratic duopoly is going to change the first-past-the-post voting system that all but guarantees their continued duopoly. But in states with a citizen initiative process, the legislature can be bypassed. Unlimited private money and advertising now poisons initiative campaigns every bit as much as candidate races, but they are still probably the best route to get the ball rolling on ranked-choice.
(As a practical matter, ranked-choice requires computerized tallying, which gives rise to paranoia about hacked vote counts. These concerns can be addressed with technical measures, such as paper mark-sense ballots, open-source software, software/hardware audits before, at random during, and after counts, cross-checked serial or parallel vote counts on two sets of machines from different manufacturers running independently written software, and the like.)
One more thing about Kshama Sawant. She was running for a seat in the state House, and yet her platform gratuitously included “nationalization” of Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks, when the state legislature obviously has no power to do any such thing. And this is in a company state where Microsoft is the reigning 800-pound gorilla and a company town where Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen and Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos are the reigning heavyweights. Imagine how much of the vote she would have gotten if she and her Socialist Alternative comrades had thought a little more tactically. She got my vote, but based on comments I read in the local press, that one platform plank scared off a lot more potential voters than it won over.
Thanks for starting to cross-post diaries, here. Please keep it up.
Oh, yeah. Any diary that starts out “Fighting the Duopoly” is likely to get a Recommend, from me.
You’ve been warned!
:-)
Excellent point, though I personally wouldn’t have used the phrase “all but guarantees”.
Is the change you have bought an improvement?
While I’m no great fan of partisanship or political parties, Top 2 is freaking terrible compared to ranked-choice voting. Top 2, together with gerrymandering, are tactics to keep the duopoly in power and dis-empower independent parties.
What we want is mixed member proportional representation where voters can make their preferences known about both parties and representatives. Voters can select both the party that best represents them and the representative they want.
The “moderation” the Top 2 supposedly promotes is simply the status quo–the domination of corporate elites.
If people see that the duopoly is muzzling electoral reform, then they will change their opinions about the duopoly. Specifically, the Democrats would not be seen as the party of the people if it was known how dedicated they are to squelching democracy and proportional representation.
So this is a very important issue for progressive 3rd parties because it helps build a good contrast between the Dems and us. Hopefully, electoral reform will become a big issue on the left-wing of the Dem party.
The big problem standing in our way is ignorance. People who haven’t traveled abroad don’t know there are alternative electoral systems that aren’t quite as dysfunctional as ours.
And in all that time you haven’t bothered your lazy arse to make any sort of contribution to this community. And somehow you feel this entitles you to respect .
mfi
I’m glad that I inspired a discussion rather than just more hippy/sellout insult-lobbing. And your diary continues the discussion.
Like all other things that are comparatively cash-poor, third parties seem to have their best rates of success at the local levels, and in areas that are already fairly liberal. (One of the ironies behind calling Minnesota a “battleground state” at the national level of politics is that the main reason that the Republicans would have a shot at taking the state is precisely because there are a lot of lefty third parties in the state. To be fair, there is also a strong genuine indie movement that’s led by disaffected Republicans like Arne Carlson, but a lot of folks who might otherwise vote Democratic — the Tim Penny types — are drawn to the indies as well.)
That’s exactly it.
As I keep trying to explain to people, what’s now called the “Tea Party” is nothing more than the religious-right crowd and other conservative Republicans hijacking a brand known for its reputation (earned or not) of independence before it could fully coalesce into a nationally-potent genuine third party, hollowing it out and removing all of that which actually made it independent, and then disguising themselves by donning the “independent” skin of the dead movement.
Google, “handle,” or pseudonym.
I have no idea who Tarheel Dem is but I know he got arrested in Chicago protesting NATO. I know his positions, because I can click on his name and see past comments and diaries. Why can’t I do that with you?
Your teachers at Obama4theelites School were supposed to explain this to you. It’s a dead give away when when you comment 54 times in a thread with less than 250 comments.
Thanks for marginally improving FDL’s traffic numbers.
I’m sure others are now inspired to speak right up now, dear.
Hey Phoenix Woman,I hope you understand that most Greens and libs and pro-fascists of the puritanical right don’t give a fuck about how promoting our visions shakes up the neoliberal duopoly .As a Green I would be glad to collapse either kleptocratic wing of this right wing agenda that has moved us into ever-hardening fascism .Your defeats are wins for the less than genuine .Our power is the power to spoil and this time there will be no Nader-like defense .Your hatred and scapegoating will be someone’s anti- establishment gory .
Even Michael Moore had the good grace to not implore Third Parties to get out and vote for Obama .I’m sure he is younger and more ,ah ,in touch ,than you,but I hope you realize this dairy served no purpose other than confirming the mutual contempt that exists between OWS and the neoliberal duopoly .
When are you going to start winning so the rest of the kleptocratic part of the neoliberal duopoly collapses? (This is a serious question, not an attempted put-down. I also ask when are the Democrats going to start winning in Mississippi?)
Spoiling is not winning. It finally does not do in either half of the duopoly. It strengthens it. There are 60 million some people who voted Democratic and slightly less who voted for the Republicans. That’s roughly a third of the total population of the US. Do you not think that at some point on your way to winning that you might need their support? How exactly are you going to go about getting that support? Especially since you will have to wean a significant number away from habitually voting by party labels.
In general, people do realize this at some level. Even my neighbors. Some of them like it that way. Others are just apathetic about it. A few express dissatisfaction but despair of the system being broken.
Democrats have not been seen as the party of the people for a generation. They are just the other brand of politician to most folks.
Electoral reform is a big isue of the left-wing of the Dem party. How do I know? There are repeated diaries in the Rec list on Daily Kos? So the issue has gone beyond the the left wing a bit. What motivates these discussions is the grip that a corrupt establishment has on many local Democratic organizations. Which is why Greens are continually told to go chalk up some local victories.
The big problem is that most Americans don’t have the means to travel abroad and when they do they are not particularly interested in comparative politics. Also, the structure of the US constitutional system is dramatically different from most European systems, even the Parliamentary system of the UK. In Europe there is more integration of local and national politics.
To my mind there are several things that must be done to open up US politics. The first is to change the political culture so that political discourse is not the result of successful marketing but sucessful politics. Some of the discussions about “slow democracy” or “deep democracy” get at what I mean by non-marketing politics. Occupy Wall Street is the most active coordinated movement pursuing change in the political culture.
The second is de-privileging the election laws so that the laws themselves don’t pick winners and losers. Those include ballot access issues, cost of candidate vetting by voters (today that is the marketing expenses of campaign spending), gerrymandering of representative districts, inclusion of minorities so as to provide representation of minority interests, disconnection from corporate and institutional donors and lobbyists.
The third is constitutional amendment to restore power to human persons and strip it from corporate persons and to eliminate the silly equivalence as money as speech.
The fourth is transparency of the actions of public officials, starting with ending the common practice of local government “executive sessions”. And moving up through transparency of executive, legislative, and judicial decision-making in all levels of government.
Beginning locally, Greens can leverage these issues to unseat existing entrenched members of the duopoly without getting into the divisive ideological battlegrounds that divide the 99%. Put some wins on the board, and you no longer are (unfairly) stereotyped as “spoilers”.
I agree with all your reform suggestions. The only issue I’m skeptical about is campaign finance reform (I worry about corrupt parties financing themselves into perpetuity on the public dole as is the case in European nations). I’d prefer for the cable networks to be turned over to people’s cooperatives and broadcast information directly to the people. Though I agree there will have to be some kind of campaign finance laws, I just don’t want anything too Orwellian.
I looked at the tags for electoral reform at Kos and found some good stuff, but they didn’t have many recs or comments.
http://www.dailykos.com/news/electoral%20reform
I’m not an expert on Kos but from what I can tell it’s controlled opposition. Lots of well meaning people whose energy is devoted to electing mostly corporate Dems and preserving the status quo. It’s unlikely that the majority of Kos posters are knowledgeable about electoral reform, much less have an opinion on it one way or the other. Basically the site breeds partisanship rather than principle or patriotism, so that when Dems scheme to keep Greens off the ballot, most of the Kos readership is supportive.
Certainly I agree that Greens and other parties should try to win all the local seats they possibly can (who wouldn’t?). However, political branding is important, even in local races. Local tactics would be alot easier if there was a broader base and more widespread recognition of the principles the Greens stand for. All these ideologically related left parties ought to unite under one banner and pool their resources to target specific races.
Ultimately I disagree with the “Green” strategy as an effective means of taking on the duopoly….in my view the Greens are a middle-class vanguard party, not a mass democratic party. In most nations where Greens exist they are a small minority party—I can’t think of any example where the Greens attained a plurality or majority in any race larger than for a city mayor. In other words, the other Green Parties worldwide have been successful because of proportional representation.
To overcome first past the post, the Greens should be looking to fuse or merge with other parties to create a larger base. Unite into a larger “Labor” or “Justice” or “Progressive” or “Populist” party. Unite all the various third parties (who aren’t controlled opposition or right-wing ideologues) into one tent.
Basically there are 2 viable strategies open to the people—infiltrate the Dems and/or spoil/force them into adopting our ideas OR build a broad-based 3rd party to topple the Duopoly. There is nothing wrong with targeting local races where the base is progressive enough to elect a Green. The larger goal should be getting rid of all corrupt duopoly represenatives, and that will take a larger populist movement.
However we get there, it will take sacrifice, time and effort. Progressives will have to cultivate the sort of individual and civic virtue that makes our ideas more attractive to the people around us.