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From time to time over the last few years there have been some of our fellow Progressives/Liberals who despair of the Democratic Party getting its act together and thus out of anger or frustration float the idea of abandoning the Democratic Party and forming a new one to the left of the Democrats. The Dog is not in favor of this, but he thinks he has not been very clear in why it is a bad idea. First off if you want to bail on the Democratic Party, don’t wait! You have a hell of a lot of work to do in order to get an agenda passed so why are you hanging around here? In the spirit of being helpful, the Dog would like to offer a bit of a run down in what it will take to get your new party up and running.
"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
Most of the issues the blogasphere focuses on are national level issues and this is where many of the folks the Dog sees floating the new party idea have the most heart burn. In order to influence national policy, you will need a party that is national level too. So while most of this organization takes place at the local or county level, to get to the changes desired there will need to be a roll up to a national party.
Getting Started:
So, lets get started! First off you will have to found your party. The laws on this are going to vary from State to State, but you will have to find enough people in at least one State to get things rolling. The best way to do this is to have a convention, as you will have to create the By Laws for everything your party will do internally. Will you Caucus or will you do Primaries? What officers do you need for your Party? You will have to have a Chairman, a Treasurer, a Secretary and a Vice Chair at the very least. Who is qualified to hold these offices? What are their responsibilities? How long are their terms office? Can they run again? How many times? Who gets to vote? How is the vote held? What does your party stand for? What are the rules for joining? What are the disciplinary methods? What is your platform right now?
These are all questions you will have to answer before you can really say you have launched your Party. They are not all of them, but they are good sample.
Candidate Recruitment:
So, now you have your shiny new Party! Congratulations! Now it is time to find some folks to run for office. This is going to be hard, as even established Party’s’ have trouble recruiting people to run. Since you are leaving the Democratic Party, you are not very likely to have any experienced folks to run. This is not a complete disaster, everyone who would serve has to have their first campaign, right?
What makes a good candidate? Well you want someone who is going to follow the party platform right? They will be someone who is more to the left of the Democrats as this is the primary reason to form this new party, right?
The Dog thinks there is going to be a real problem finding quality candidates, at least at first, since most of the time your new party is going to lose until it really gets established. It is really hard to find someone who is going to step up to get their ass kicked in an election, but there are true believers every where, so there should be a few who will take one for the team of this new Party.
Getting On the Ballot:
Now you have your candidates, you are ready to try to get in front of the people of your State and make the case about how electing them will be better than a Democrat! But there is going to be a real problem now. Getting on the ballot is really hard in many States. Here are a few facts you should keep in mind as you start your Party:
1) Some States require really high filing fees. The State of Florida requires fee of 7% of the annual salary of the office you are filing for. This means for a US Representative campaign the filing fee is upwards of $9,000. You will need these fees for every office you want to run for.
2) There are also the signature requirements to get on ballots. The State of Georgia has requirement of 5% of the population, not the registered voters for a third party to get on the ballot. As of the last census this makes the requirement for your new party to get on a State wide ballot (Representative, Senator, Governor, Sec State, AG, etc) upwards of 484,000 legal signatures. It is expensive and time consuming to gather signatures, so you better be ready.
3) One more from Florida – In addition to the high fee you will have to collect more than 196,000 signatures to get on the State wide ballot. If that does not seem to bad, you need to know the following fact: No third party candidate has ever completed a signature requirement over 135,000 anywhere in the US.
These are few of the worst examples, but even in places where the laws are more lenient there are fees and signature requirements which you will have to meet. It looks like you are going to need a lot of Staff to be successful.
Recruiting Staff:
What the Dog means by staff is the pro’s the folks who do the organizing work for a living and are the ones who keep your army of volunteers going in the right direction. These are the folks who have the specialized skills to keep the campaign on track (including the Candidate). To raise the money, to define the field strategy which not only targets the voters but gets them to the polls as well, they are the ones who keep track of every penny since rising or spending money improperly can send your candidate and Treasurer to jail.
This is going to be another really tough thing. The pros are all working with the existing party’s. The ones who are going to be simpatico with your goals are mostly going to be from the Democratic Party. There will be some who are feed up like you, but they still have to make a living, so they are not going to be real excited about running candidates against the party where they do most of their work.
Still there will be the young hot shots who will throw in with you, in order to prove something. Some of them may even be in the top tier of skill sets, but finding them in all the places you need them to be a national party is going to be hard. You are going to have pay well and be ready to grow a lot of your own.
Which brings us to fund raising.
Funding the Party:
This is another trouble spot for a new party. This is doubly true for a new party on the Left. There are lots of left leaning groups who will support your platform goals, once you get them established. After all you want to be more than left of center in this new party. But the thing is they will want to support a party and candidates who are going to get elected and will be able to do something with their support. The Trial Lawyers and the Labor Movement have to able to show their members something for their efforts.
Your new party is going to have unknown candidates, inexperienced staff and a hard time getting on the ballot, so there is going to be hell of a hard sell to get them to throw some ducats your way. It seems likely you are going to be really short of dough. Maybe you should look elsewhere.
Getting a billionaire or two to really back you might get this new party off the ground pretty good. The downside of this route is billionaires, even more than interest groups are going to want a lot of say in what they give money too. They are used to pulling the strings with their funding, so this has it’s problems too.
There are always your party members, though! They will support you in some level or other. However, it takes a hell of a lot of small donors to get to the millions you are going to need to raise. The other issue is the Democratic party is going to be asking many of them for these dollars too.
Being National:
Let’s assume you get this all together in one State and have some good success (the Dog is willing to be an optimist as much as the next hound), now the challenge is going national. Let’s look at some numbers.
There are 3,140 Counties in the United States. In order to be a national party which elects national office holders you will have to have County and State level elected officials. To do this you have to have County Party’s. Lets assume you don’t have to have a party in every county in the nation to be a national party. Let’s call it 80%, no, let’s call it 70% of the counties.
That means you will have to go though the above processes 2,198 times before you will get there. That is a hell of a lot of work. How long would that take?
Well, let’s look at a party which has been working on doing this very act for a while, the Libertarian Party. They Libertarians where founded in 1971. They have been around for the last 38 years. They have founded State Party’s in all fifty states and have 250,000 registered voters.
In their 38 years as a party they have elected no national office holders. They have elected no Governors, no State Senators. They have had 12 State Representative victories, but currently the do not have any holding office.
The Libertarian Party is a example of a good success story for third parties. If we combine the total votes for State House races received by the Libertarians in 200, 2004 and 2006 it tops one million, which is more than double the number received by all other minor parties combined. This is what a successful third party looks like after nearly four decades of existence.
Summary:
So, here is the way it looks to the Dog. Even if you do every thing right, even if the Dog is completely underestimating the desire and size of the group who wants to split way from the Democratic Party and found a new one, the ROI is really bad.
It looks like a hell of a lot of work, for a hell of a lot years, and at the end of that time you will not have gained enough prominence to work on the issues which you find critical today.
But let’s take the wildly optimistic point of view, shall we? Lets assume you bust your asses for only a decade, and in that time you are successful beyond belief. You have tapped the zeitgeist. The is a significant portion of the American Electorate who is buying what you are selling and you elect say, 15 to 20 Representatives, two Governors and some State Reps. Now you have voice at the table. The problem is, you will have to ally yourself with the very party you split away from in disgust to get anything close to your agenda moved. Yes, you might be able to hold up legislation, but you will never get to write it. Your party will never hold Committee Chairs and you will still have to justify your compromises with your base, who left the Democratic Party because of its compromises.
All in all that does not seem like a winning plan for moving the nation to the Left, does it? However there is another way. It still requires a lot of work over a lot of time, but it has a far better chance of succeeding. Get into the Democratic Party structure yourself. You don’t like our candidate recruitment, well get on the group that does and make your case. You think we need to be harder lined with keeping discipline? Well that happens not at the national level but at the State level. If your ideas are better, then go where you can prove it, get involved where you can have a decent chance at making a difference. Don’t kid yourself that you will be able to jump the leadership right away. You might if you bring in a lot of new Democrats, who think like you, but even then you are going to have to spend some time paying your dues, this is true in any organization, even one you might want to start from scratch. Party politics takes a lot of hard work, so be ready.
But if you do get in there, work hard and rise in the Party, then you will have what you were trying for with a new Party without having to start from scratch. You will not have the problems of becoming national, you will not have the staffing or fund raising problems for your candidates, you will not have the issue of never getting on Committees or Chairs. You will be able to affect change.
One last thing, it is never going to go all your way no matter what. If you are going to be part of the governance of a democracy, you are going to wind up with compromises you don’t like. You are going to have allies in your party who don’t follow through with their promises. You are going to have differences inside the party as to what the goals are and they all get decided by compromise, every single time. All you can really hope for is to get a few things you want. To do that you have to have most of the party structure behind you, no matter what party you are part of. This is why it is so critical for those who are to the left of most of the Democratic Party to get off their asses and get into the structure! If there really are enough of us to form a new party, there are more than enough to take over the existing party.
The Dog is going to end as he started, by saying the following: If you don’t like the Democratic Party enough to stay and try to make it better, then Go! Get out there and form you new political Party. You have a ton of work to do, and staying around and arguing with those of us who are going to stay does nothing to get to the day when you can affect the course of the nation.
However, if you are really ready to do all that work, why not take the best shot and make the Democratic Party a party you can be proud to be part of the leadership of?
The floor is yours.
25 Comments
I get why there is a lot of anger in on the Progressive/Liberal side of things. I feel it myself on some issue, but why not use that anger where it can make a difference, inside the party?
I’m all for third parties, but we need to change the way we do elections first.
Our current system is stacked for two parties, no more.
You think instant runoff would make it any easier for a third party to get to the level they would need to affect national change? I don’t see it that way.
It is a question of scale. You have to be enough of the electorate nation wide to get the offices that make national policy. There is a real chicken and egg problem with candidates, as the ones with the skills to win are not likely to go to new party and a new party needs good candidates to be credible.
I just don’t see how instant run off, which I don’t hate, will address that well enough.
Don’t get me wrong, your analysis was right on. To build a party you need huge resources, and often the ROI isn’t worth it.
However, the deck in America is stacked against third parties. Our first-past-the-post system basically guarantees you’ll always have two competing parties. It’s built into the system.
So, if you’re going to spend your time building a party, you should only do it in a system where you’ve got at least some chance of success. Right now, ours isn’t. But something like IRV voting can change that. Or better yet, range voting.
Of course, these changes would take a long time to get through, before you would even build your party. But it’s starting at the local level at least.
The people who founded the Republican Party in 1854 were undoubtedly
provided with similar assessments, Dog. They wisely rejected those assessments, took their best shot at creating a new party, and only 6 years later, they won control of Congress and the White House.
No one is saying founding a new Progressive Party would be easy. A new party can’t be competitive with the major parties unless it has a leader with national status. A Progressive Party would need someone like Howard Dean to provide leadership and attract progressive House and Senate Democrats into the party.
The Republican Party was able to gain power so quickly because of Lincoln’s leadership and the sectional crisis over slavery and states rights. If the banking system collapses and takes the economy down with it, this country will be in a crisis just as dire, and the two major parties will be discredited, providing a new Progressive Party with the opportunity to attain widepsread support and national status.
IMO, events will be the biggest determining factor in whether a new party can gain traction. If economic conditions keep getting worse for average Americans, contempt for politics as usual in D.C. will intensify and this country will go either hard left or hard right. Despite all the corporate media propaganda about the “far left”, I think a majority of Americans would support progressive policies rather than right wing policies if economic and political conditions continue to deteriorate.
The political establishment is refusing to address the fundamental causes of this deterioration. The banking system is still hanging by a thread, and if the Fed is audited the shit is going to hit the fan.
I’ve supported Democrats for 40 years, Dog. I’ve heard the arguments you’re making many times. You’re not saying anything new.
We keep supporting Democrats but they never come through for us in any meaningful way. You’re telling us to stay the course, you’re telling us to keep doing the same thing over and over again, even though we never get different results.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results has been defined as insanity, and that definition is valid.
But what have you done inside the party? If you don’t like how it is is, then change it. But don’t kid yourself you will get traction based on the need for a disaster. If a meteor falls from the sky and I catch it without getting hurt, then I might become famous. But it is not very damned likely so I am not going to spend any time working towards it. If I want to be famous, then I need to do the work.
If you want a better national Party who is progressive, then don’t start from scratch, make it out of the existing Party.
But hey, I could be wrong, it is not very likely but it happens. Go! Prove me wrong, you have a template up above, it is not everything you need, but it is a start. I would get to work because you are going to have to have a party in place before the disaster you are counting on for a jump start. That is lot to do in a few months.
Dog,
I’ve already said “a Progressive Party would need someone like Howard Dean to provide leadership and attract progressive House and Senate Democrats into the party.” No one is talking about starting it from scratch.
Furthermore, I’m not “counting on a disaster”. The disaster is already here, the systemic flaws in the banking system have not been fixed, they’re still there, ticking away like time bombs.
Your meteor analogy makes no sense at all, it’s incoherent gibberish. The next time you feel the urge to share a meteor analogy with us, do yourself and your readers a favor and wait until the urge passes.
Golly to have my stuff called gibberish by you means, almost nothing at all to me.
Now, as for Doc. Dean, well he is not going to lead a new party. Give up on that. You seem to predicate all your gains on things which will not come to pass, which makes your argument for a new party that much weaker.
You assume we are not going to change things, all the changes that have happened up to now not withstanding. Because of this you think there is a chance of a third party. Fine, but I am telling you it is nonsense. You want to wallow in doom and gloom and make airy pronouncements about what you think needs to happen, no skin off my noes. However if you really want a new party you will have to put in a hell of a lot of work and organize a hell of a lot of people. Frankly I don’t see it happening. The structural issues I outline above are not going to change any time soon. If you don’t have a method for addressing them then you idea of new party is going nowhere.
You know, I want to be clear Rusty. I think your heart is in the right place, I really do. I just find your solutions impractical and over the top. It is I think, a difference in methods between us and not goals.
Rusty, how would you finance a viable third party — one that wouldn’t just peel off votes from the Democrats, but be capable of winning elections? Got a couple billion in your back pocket?
Better to push for true campaign finance reform. Make the campaigns less expensive and then candidates aren’t forced to sell their souls to get elected or re-elected.
A few basic thoughts:
1) Saul Alinsky himself once said that he was fighting for 10% of what he really wanted. But he got a lot done, a little at a time, doing that.
2) The root problems here are that a) campaigns cost too much money and b) the media (which is run by, owned by, or cowed by Republicans) likes it that way as most of the money goes to radio and TV ads. Take away the money and the GOP/Media Complex’s thumbs from the scales and then our democracy can once again be worthy of the name.
You didn’t even mention Get Media Access.
I live in California’s 10th and we are having an election for our congressperson Sept. 1. Fourteen people are running for the office but only 11 of them were included in televised media debates, a slate of Democrats, followed by the Republicans.
The reporter for the paper that refused to cover Dianne Feinstein’s race for US Senate said all the third party candidates would all make it to the final ballot so there is no need to include them in the debate.
I thought that was extremely wrong of her. It would not have been any harder for them to run three panels instead of the two. I think third parties should class action sue the paper and the reporter for discriminating against ‘third party’ ideas.
This paper is shaping the political choices to keep third party people and ideas off the table, resulting in heinous policy and illegal invasions. That is a lawsuit with damages. We can take it to small claims court and ask for remediation.
Exactly.
Remember back when Warren Buffett and Bill Gates made this big show of donating $32 billion or some such to charity? They would have been better served to use it to found and fund a new political party and buy up cable and radio networks to promote it.
“why not take the best shot and make the Democratic Party a party you can be proud to be part of the leadership of?”
Short answer, I tried. I thought I was going to get myself killed.
You need to look into the inner workings of the drug war, it completely dominates the politics of the big import states. On the east coast and Texas each state’s trade is controlled by a single party, but here in California it is both.
That competition over illegal drug markets, in my opinion, is what afforded the tiny bit of political breathing room we had to get medical marijuana off the ground. People out of the movement have no idea what a monumental accomplishment that was.
Building on success, most people are smart enough to realize the drug war is a colossal failure, both parties cling to it.
It is corrupt. If you try, like I did, to work on it inside their system, first you are shunned, then you are sneered at, then scary things start happening. If you are persistent the scary things become seriously threatening. Do I need to go on?
It is not that starting a third party will be easy, it is just necessary.
It dose not matter if we change the Democratic Party from the inside or start a third party, the house (USA) is on fire and is burning down. With 40% of our annual budget going towards the military and healthcare costs, an aging population, stagnant wages and income levels and higher unemployment levels, due to global competition, and a useless, open-ended war, we will dissolve. Without an internal or external intervention, we are going to end up like the USSR.
“But hey, I could be wrong, it is not very likely but it happens”; dog, you are joking, right? Is that snark or what?
A point not being written about is the existence of third parties’ already, such a Working Families in New York or the idea that these parties could work together to have influence as contrasted to the monolithic example of the current two party system. Of course there are the issues like Arkansas wanting to decertify the Green Party because their presidential candidate didn’t get 3 per cent in the last election(despite the Green Party having elected someone to the Arkansas legislature).
Bottomline is the whole election system is corrupted and that’s why there are orgs like this and this and legislation to minimize the effect of money.
Take the money out the equation and Rahm has no legs and I suspect a different Obama expressed.
No snark. There is no effective third party any where in the US. No third party in any significant way affects the policy of our nation nor our laws. There are no party’s that elect Reps or Senators or even Governors. With this fact it seems pretty obvious if you are going to bust your ass to form a truly national third party, then why not use that same level of work to transform the Democratic party?
The Working Families Party in New York might be an exception, but it’s certainly not national.
So you’re of the opinion that it is unlikely that you can be mistaken; congratulations on your prescience.
“why not use that same level of work to transform the Democratic party?” ; because it is rotten to the core and ‘working within’ does NOTHING to address the corrupted system that extends from the ground up when it comes to elections. Why do you suppose there are no Democrats calling for the abolition of machines that obviously don’t provide the public with the proper oversight of their votes? PDA’s charter is to work within and without and so far they have been very ineffective ‘working within’.
But more importantly history shows that it is by the establishment of third parties that the ‘majors’ change their ways. Such effect is well documented. And,BTW, there are already ‘Progressive Party(ies) in Vermont and Washington State.
Also consider that if enough candidates from differing third parties that have common perspectives(e.g. both libertarians, ‘true’ conservatives’,and progressives all are/were against the thievery being passed off as ‘bailouts’, ’stabilization of the financial system’,etc.) such wouldn’t pass.
And what you really seem to be arguing against is hard work for other than the Democratic Party; Guess you don’t think much of Sara Robinson’s writings on Fascism or Jane’s praise of Moyers analysis.
Once an apple starts to rot, you can’t do anything to restore the fullness of ‘good-ness’
I totally reject the idea that a system run by humans can’t be changed by humans. This idea of scrap it and start over is inherently wasteful and, to my mind, a little bit of wishful thinking. It is more work to get a new party off the ground than it is to fix the existing one.
Both are going to be hard work. It just to those who are really frustrated and don’t understand their actual power and potential in the current system that seem to see starting fresh as better option. It really is not. It is the longer path to relevance, if you succeed. All the while the issues and power structures and problems which people are spun up about are not going to be addressed. That is the other side of this that we should be talking about. The most likely path to timely addressing of our problems is through the existing system, as flawed as it is.
Hey Dog – saw this on the rec list at the Great Orange; congrats!
Thanks! I was kind of stunned. I did not think it would be that popular.
“Once an apple starts to rot, you can’t do anything to restore the fullness of ‘good-ness’”
True, but how much like a piece of fruit is a political party? I agree with moyers, that we ned to elect reps willing to change election finance law. That is a movement that has some signifigant support already, and really is the main problem with the democratic party.I beleive we need torecruit leaders locally, in all 50 states, wo are true progressives. They will be the future national leaders.DFA is working very hard toward that end, and the Democratic party made some progess at the local level while Dean was chairman. It paid off in two election cycles and got some real progressives elected to congress. Look into how many of the progressive dems “standing up for” the PO were DFAlist candidates. The national party wasted no time in abandoning that effort since dean left, but the more active we progressives are in the party the more influence we will have.The Rahms cant continue to lord thier narrow, corporate and self interested ways over us if we outnumber them and are active. We have already managed to shift the debate back toward the middle ground from the right, and that wasnt supposed to happen.
“I totally reject the idea that a system run by humans can’t be changed by humans.”; I never suggested or implied such.
What I do say is that what you call ’starting from scratch’ isn’t necessary, There ALREADY ARE third parties for those disaffected by the major parties to participate in and work for.
“The most likely path to timely addressing of our problems is through the existing system, as flawed as it is.”; well, if the ‘existing’ system worked we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, the healthcare debate(if a real debate were to occur) would have already been over, and I can go on and on.
Dog, just look at how the Presidential ‘debates’ are run and managed; the ‘existing’ system deprives the public of exposure and real debate AND both the Dem and Repub parties are deadset against any change.
Solerso,“Once an apple starts to rot, you can’t do anything to restore the fullness of ‘good-ness” is a metaphor, not an analogy, therefore the comparison is valid. As towards “Look into how many of the progressive dems “standing up for” the PO were DFAlist candidates.”, look at how many of those progressive Dem’s fought against the FISA bill, etc.
Dog, just look at the Senate and ask yourself who has really spoken for the public; just one Senator,Sanders(an independent), from Vermont(which HAS a Progessive Party). Feingold is a very good Senator BUT he does temper himself to the Democratic Party needs. And look at how Kucinich is marginalized.
The REAL bottomline is that Congress is composed -and has been- mostly by those who simply want to hold their positions while lining up lucrative deals after they leave office. Add to that the willingness on Congress’s part to abdicate their Constitutional responsibilities and acceptance of ceding such power to the Executive branch and well, I just can’t buy into your argument for continued support and efforts expended in supporting the corruption that has poisioned the well of representative democracy.
But I will defend your right to speak your perspectives and not have such censored in any manner.
i used to be in favor of a third party, actually 4 or 5 parties, but i’ve decided that i like the idea of getting more independents into govt [a la bernie sanders, not members of an ‘independent party’].