Time for a labor party to compete with "the bosses' twin parties"?

[Karmadillo]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=19&ItemID=8485

Here's an idea for those who are trying to revitalize the badly slumping labor movement: Create a Labor Party that would truly represent America's working people and truly challenge the Democratic and Republican parties.

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Democrats once did much for unions - enacting the laws that helped launch the modern labor movement in the 1930s, for instance, creating social insurance programs and otherwise greatly improving the lot of working people. Yet they've done relatively little over the past half-century, as the proportion of workers belonging to unions has plummeted from about 35 percent to about 12 percent.

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A government-administered national health insurance program is high among the priorities of Labor Party advocates. They also call for substantially increasing the minimum wage, for instance, shortening the standard workweek, raising the overtime pay rate, guaranteeing workers paid vacations and paid leaves to deal with urgent family matters and severance pay if they're laid off. They'd make it much easier for them to organize unions, strike and bargain, and give them a strong voice in the enforcement of job safety and health regulations.

Unions and their partners would run slates of candidates for city councils, state legislatures and Congress who would take "bold and unambiguous" positions on those and other issues independent of major party candidates and thus "present a clear picture of what politics would look like if it were conducted on behalf of the vast majority of Americans who work for a living."

more...

[laststeamtrain]

1. I absolutely agree!

Our legislature needs proportional representation. The two-party(really one-party.The MONEY party) winner-take-all thing we have has made it so I rarely get to vote for who I really want.
In order not to 'waste my vote' I end up voting for someone who's sold out before they even get to the big game. It's a sad state of affairs.
The way the Greens got any political power in Germany was through proportional representation in the legislature. I'd love to see it here.

[Dhalgren]

2. Sound like a good idea.

If the Democrats want to co-opt this new party, great, the Democrats need to be more actively pro-labor.

[endarkenment]

3. Institutionalized two party system precludes successful third parties.

The thing to do, as it has been for 100 years or more, is to take back control of the Democratic Party, and use its ballot slots and federal funding and tv-debate slots.

[durutti]

4. Doesn't work.

It's been tried time and time again. When the Debs Socialist Party split in three, two factions entered the Dems. One became a neoconservative clique. The other became completely ineffectual.

And let's not forget that the Socialist Party actually did elect people to Congress at one time.

The argument you present verges on tautology. Why can't we have a successful third party? Because it's a two-party system. Why is it a two party system? Because there's no successful third party.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Exactly. Time for a multi party system. I can have my burger

6000 different ways, but I only get two "viable" choices at the ballot box? Puh-LEASE!

http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm

[durutti]

5. The one problem we have to overcome:

The problem with progressive third parties in recent years has been the tendency for them to become "fusionist" formations -- essentially pressure groups for the Democrats. This what happened with the New Party, the Working Families Party, and the U.S. Labor Party. The Greens are apparently headed in this direction as well.

For any third party to be successful, there needs to be a way to overcome this tendency. The Socialist Party USA has done a good job of avoiding this misstep, but they hardly ever run candidates and are too internally divided.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Half the greens are headed that way.. the rest of us don't

want to join the big tent and get lost, but rather form coalitions.

[durutti]

9. Two points...

1. The fusionist faction wields a disproportionate amount of power. So while most Greens apparently don't want to go the fusionist route, they may not have much of a choice.

2. *Any* coalition with Democrats is doomed to failure. What's really needed, I think, is a coalition or merger of the various progressive third parties.

[iconoclastNYC]

8. I would support it

If they started it at the local level and then moved up and if they caucused with the democrats at the national level.

If I don't see bold leadership when the Democrats get back into power then I'm done supporting them. After being out of power for so long I expect to see real effort by the Democrats to use the power to undo the damage from Republican leadership.

We need a New Deal 2.0