The Third-Party Delusion and the Need for a Mass Movement for Progressive Change

[Joanne98]

By Dave Lindorff

I can’t count how many people have bombarded me with criticisms, usually laced with insults and often obscenities, when I have written articles calling for pressure on Democratic politicians to do the right thing, whether that is impeaching the last president and vice president for war crimes or in the case of our new president, standing and fighting for a people’s bailout, instead of a Wall Street bailout.

The common refrain I hear is that the Democrats and Republicans are the same, and that we need a third party. Another common refrain is that “all you suckers” who voted for Obama are to blame. We should have voted for Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader, they say.

Now I have nothing against McKinney and Nader. That ticket would make for a wonderful administration, I agree. But I also have to point out that there is zero chance of these two people being elected in my lifetime (I’m 59 and pretty healthy) or theirs.

Third parties have not played a significant role in American politics since the 1930s and earlier, when the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs (and Norman Thomas to a lesser extent) managed to make a significant dent in the political equation, though even it had no shot at winning. And that was back in a time when there were millions of immigrants from Europe who had socialist ideas in their blood, and when American workers were not afraid of the idea either.

Today, there is no mass base for a socialist party. Valiant efforts by some labor leaders like the late Ray Mazzochi to forge a Labor Party failed abysmally. The Green Party is a well-meaning but hopelessly internally fragmented group of people that has for years failed to appeal to any mass base and doesn’t appear to have a clue of how to accomplish that.

I don’t fault third parties for their failure to rise to a position of political relevance. The system of winner-take-all elections is structured against them. But calls to change that system so that third parties might have a chance bump up against the reality that the two parties that have a duopoly on power have no interest in changing the rules of the game to make it easier to bump them off. It simply ain’t gonna happen.

This brings me to my main point, which is that all this formalistic arguing about the virtues of supporting a third party is an infantile diversion. Valuable energy is being wasted on trying to organize little parties which, because they are doomed to insignificance, end up being riven by petty internal power struggles (it has always been the case that the most bitter struggles for power occur in organizations with the least power and significance).

The truth is that enormous progressive change has been wrought in the US, within the two-party system, not by third parties coming to power, but by mass movements that have forced the more liberal of the two parties—the Democrats—to grudgingly do the right thing. It was a mass movement of workers that forced Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Party to establish the Social Security Program, and to pass labor laws making it easier for workers to organize. It was a mass movement that led to passage of the Civil Rights Act and that ended Jim Crow. It was a mass movement that helped bring an end to the US War in Indochina. It was a mass movement that led to the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid and other elements of the Johnson War on Poverty.

Continued>>
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Third-Party-Delusion-a-by-Dave-Lindorff-090209-864.html

[Two Americas]

1. I agree with Lindorff

Too much third party activity is based on "giving people a choice" and then we are off on discussions about changing the electoral process to give minority parties proportional representation.

Nothing will take the place of building powerful independent organizations to pressure the parties, no matter how many of them we have.

"Personal choice" is a right wing libertarian idea - the "progressive" version of Reagan bootstrap individualism - and will always work against effective political action.

If there were strong independent left wing organizations, there would be no Nader or Green party campaigns or candidates. So long as we are trapped in the "personal choice" thinking, and the associated hero worship and party loyalty ideas, there will be a demand for third parties since there are no existing alternatives. In that way, Nader and the Greens perform a valuable and important function for the time being.

Another thing that we should not forget is that we should not let the possible be the enemy of the effective. Candidacies should not be judged solely upon their likelihood of electoral success, especially since big money interests determine that for us. The Kucinich campaigns, for example, are valuable for reasons that have nothing to do with the likelihood of Kucinich winning.

Politics are not sports playoffs. Who wins elections is but one small part of the political process, and more of an effect than a cause. The goal is not to accurately pick and then cheer for winners.

If we want to cut to the chase and pick the winners, and then stay passive and silent and obedient - other that cheering them on - we may as well just poll the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country and let them pick our leaders for us. may as well ignore politics altogether as far as that goes, and just watch the sports playoffs and get our emotional needs to identify with winners satisfied there.

[yurbud]

2. what if one of the two parties collapses?