Until the U.S. adopts proportional representation, the Greens are counterproductive.

[backscatter712]

(OK, so I decided to turn a comment into its own thread.)

Sorry, but it's the truth. Yes, the two-party system created by single-member districts and winner-takes-all elections sucks, but until the rules of the game are changed, Greens are shooting themselves, and all progressives, Democratic or Green, in the foot.

They'd do better by joining interest groups like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, HCAN, ActBlue, MoveOn.org, hundreds of other perfectly good, progressive interest groups, and influencing the system, and the Democratic Party that way. They'd do better joining the Democrats, jumping in the primaries, and getting progressive candidates on the tickets and into Congress instead of DINOs. That's what I do. I support the above interest groups, and even give them money when I've got some to spare. I support primary challengers like Saltonstall, Halter, Romanoff, Sestak. With the current rules of the game, that's how you play to win.

Third parties do very little except acting as spoilers, usually making it more likely for the GOP to win. It's the same reason why as a Democrat, I'm greatly in favor of the teabaggers splitting off from the Republican party and running candidates under the Tea Party banner - that actually helps us! :evilgrin:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Until the Democrats start appealing to them they'll continue to lose votes to the Greens.

As you say, the system sucks. Some of us will continue to oppose the system by limiting our participation in it.

[backscatter712]

3. And when you do that, you'll always be on the outside looking in.

You will not win elections sitting out or voting Green. You will not get progressive policies enacted sitting out or voting Green. You will gain exactly zero power to change things when you sit out or vote Green.

You want to change things? It's primary season. Push the Dems left from within!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Push them from within? How?

Politicians seek votes. If they think it more "productive" to seek moderate votes they'll go after them by moving right. If the left gives them their votes as the "lesser of two evils" they have no incentive to move left.

As for me, I vote issues, not party or politician. I can see no reason to vote for people I fundamentally disagree with on certain issues because they're "not as bad". Nor do I find it "productive" to participate in a fixed system when there is an alternative.

I'll eagerly vote for a Democratic candidate if he/she is the most progressive, anti-war, candidate on the ballot. If he/she fails to earn my vote, he/she doesn't get it.

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789.

"Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man." Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1795.

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." John Quincy Adams

[backscatter712]

14. Did you not read my OP?

I told you how - primary challenges and grassroots interest groups. They work. Primary the DINOs and you shift the Democratic Party leftwards. Join interest groups, get groups like MoveOn.org and ActBlue supporting real progressives, and you're putting pressure on our Congresscritters to behave themselves.

Third parties do not do this.

[metapunditedgy]

20. Pressure moves politicians leftward... until they get elected. Then corporate money

moves them back rightward again.

Saying things like "give us your vote (which we will take for granted) or sit out in the cold" is really rude. Can you give me a list of politicians who officially endorse that view?

[ShortnFiery]

29. It goes both ways: If you don't accommodate the Greens and Liberals ...

the Democrats who are presently corporate and right-wing will NOT win either. :evilgrin:

Time to really be The Big Tent by incorporating LABOR and SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES?

[LWolf]

22. +1 nt

[Echo In Light]

26. +1000

[ClassWarrior]

2. It's sad but true. I don't know why third parties don't invest more of their energies into...

...creating a Parliamentary system in the U.S. -- a system which would give them some real power.

Hell, I'd join the effort to make it happen!

NGU.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. To see Sestak used as an example of progressive is incredible

[backscatter712]

13. He did succeed in getting Arlen Specter to impersonate a progressive!

Seriously. Arlen fucking Specter! He was supporting the public option and going super-pro-union, because he had Sestak nipping at his heels.

This proves that primary challenges work, and we need more of them.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. A agree that primary challengers are a good thing...but Joe Sestak?

[ShadowLiberal]

6. In some states allowing politicians to run under multiple parties 3rd parties are more powerful

There's several states, New York and Minnesota for sure I know, that allow candidates to register for the ballot under multiple parties. In states allowing this 3rd parties tend to have more power since their party name is like an endorsement, such as in New York when the Conservative Party was unsatisfied in NY-23 with the moderate GOP pick so they ran ultra conservative Hoffman. I believe Rudy won the Liberal party's endorsement when running for mayor of NYC to.

In Minnesota I think most democrats have it written next to their name that they also belong to the labor party, and the farmer party (at least I know Al Franken did).

[nickinSTL]

7. the Dems turning further and further right

and ignoring progressive issues is counterproductive, IMO.

They do not own anyone's vote, and must earn it.

The Dems are taking liberals/progressives for granted and trying to move to the right to gain more support - and it may well backfire on them. That's not the fault of the Greens, Dems have no one but themselves to blame.

[Zenlitened]

8. Agreed.

Although, the case can be made that moving the party rightward, by splintering away the left, is exactly the plan.

[nickinSTL]

18. that thought had occurred to me

when I wear my tinfoil - I wonder whether the rightward push is an attempt by Dems to claim the middle while benefiting from the Repubs race to the extremist right and cutting off the left, to marginalize all other parties and become THE party in the country.

Probably not too likely, but...

:tinfoilhat:

[OHdem10]

9. Just a thought--First, in theory you are right. However, over the

years, many Democrats have become Greens in utter frustration.

I can remember 2000, 2004 when Dems pulled out and went to
the Green Party. Frustration with the rightward lean of Democratic
Party. At that point, they preferred to believe in something.

To be honest, there is not much room for change in the
Democratic Party. The Conservatives rule.

[ixion]

10. splitting off from the DLC is not counter-productive

I would like to see other ideologies entered into the debate other than the two status-quo same-ol garbage.

[backscatter712]

11. Explain to me how that strategy gets you enough votes and elected officials to get things done.

Oh, wait, it doesn't.

I'm not disagreeing with you - the two-party system sucks, but people have been forming third parties for nearly two centuries in the U.S. and getting exactly nowhere. In fact, worse than nowhere, because of the third-party spoiler effect. You can put your fingers in your ears and shout "LALALALALALALALA!!!!" all you want, but the "Naderization" effect is real. Was it the only thing that brought down Gore in 2000? No, as Dennis Kucinich said, Gore's loss was death by a thousand cuts, but Ralph Nader was one of the cuts.

Going third-party or sitting out gets us further, not closer to enacting progressive change. That's a fact.

[ixion]

23. Explain to me how supporting the status quo gets anything done

because it doesn't, as far as I can see.

[backscatter712]

24. Where did I say "support the status quo"?

I said that if you're wanting to make changes (and I do, you may not think it, but I also like progressive ideas,) you have to understand how the system works, so you can take actions that are effective.

And my assertion is that if you want to get things done, you need to do things like primarying DINOs (what, you think I like DLC shills like Blanche Lincoln? I gave money to her opponent!) and practicing interest group politics instead of wasting your time with third parties or throwing your vote away by sitting out.

[Ozymanithrax]

12. Proportional Representation would require a major rewriting the the constitution...

and, most likely, a constitutional convention. Until that time, the party in power will be a coalition of interest groups. How would you propose we change the system?

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bluenorthwest]

16. Counter productive to who? To what issues?

Look, when any party is lead by people who don't even think I should have equal rights, that which is productive for them might not be for me, you see? If they do not advance my issues, and in fact hinder them all and sell them out with their craven inability to stand up and hold their ground, what is it to me if any action is productive to them? It is like asking me to care about Brad Pitt's dinner menu or something, it is not connected to me, I do not care either way.
Productive to Tim Kaine is not productive to me. He is against human rights for gay people, because he's a drooling bigot who blames God for his own neurosis.
It is time to start seeing to things for me and my family. If that is not 'productive' for the DLC too bad for them. I do not care. They oppose my basic rights.

[AnOhioan]

19. One word...bullshit

[4lbs]

21. California's had multiple parties for a long time in state politics. Yet nearly all the races are

won by either Democrats or Republicans.

In California, we have the Green, American Independent, Libertarian, and Peace and Freedom parties.

I can't recall the last time any one of them won anything in the state, much less nationally. We usually have 90% of the vote going either Democratic or Republican, with the remaining 10% Other spread among those above.

The Green Party and Peace and Freedom parties' platforms in CA are almost identical, so they should really merge, and make a larger party.

[MadHound]

25. Let me tell you the story of another third party, the Socialist Party

During his first term in office, the Socialist party was truly making some noise and gaining headway. Not enough that they could win the Presidency, but enough that they could split the vote on the left and throw the election to the 'Pugs. FDR saw this, and rather than pursue the modern day tactics of brow beating, or moving to the right, FDR actually went left. He picked out a couple of planks from the Socialist party platform and made them his own. Good thing too, otherwise he could have very well lost his re-election bid and we wouldn't have either Social Security or Unemployment Insurance, those two Socialist party planks that have now become the bulwark of the Democratic party

You don't like people breaking off to the left and voting Green? Well then, give them something that they can honestly vote for. Despite the overheated Democratic rhetoric, Green party members aren't "purists" or such. Most are former Dems, and very pragmatic. If you throw them a major bone, they will come out and vote for you. The Dems had the perfect opportunity to do this with HCR. If they had included a strong public option, they could have pulled in a lot of Green voters. Instead they pissed them off by offering the public up to the tender mercies of the insurance industry on a mandated silver platter.

This is a big tent party, and as such the leadership has to give everybody, right, left and center, a stake in supporting it. That simply can't be the often repeated drumbeat of "lesser of two evils" or fear of the 'Pugs. There have to be solid, substantial benefits. For the last thirty five years, the left has watched as the rest of the members of this big tent have gotten those solid, substantial rewards. We have also watched in horror as our party has moved to the right, and become ever more corporatist. So the question becomes, "What's in it for us? Why should we support a party that not only doesn't support us, but is becoming ever more like the 'Pugs?"

If you want to shut down the Greens, if you want to win, then you need to start giving those of us on the left something to vote for. Something real and substantial, things like ending these illegal, immoral wars, or publicly financed election campaigns, or revitalizing unions instead of continuing the assault on them. You do that, and you don't have to worry about the Greens. You don't do that, and the Democratic party is going to continue to hemorrhage votes off to the left as the left becomes disgusted and leaves the party. This has already been going on for twenty plus years now, expect it to get worse unless the party changes quickly.

[Selatius]

30. +1,000,000. I just wanted to add that we should primary corporate Democrats. Drive them out by vote.

[ShortnFiery]

33. Well Written Analysis.

Thanks for putting my perspectives into words ... and an excellent commentary at that. :hi:

[Zoeisright]

27. Exactly. In Minnesota, we have that fuckwad Pawlenty because of the third party.

Split the liberal vote, and in walks that little piece of shit. The 35W bridge collapse happened because of the third party in Minnesota.

[ShortnFiery]

31. Yes, but as long as you FIGHT against people whose values overlap yours, these nutty right wing

dip-shits will remain in power. The FAULT lies with failing to reach-out and "combine forces."

[TransitJohn]

28. LOL. Join Greenpeace and influence the Democratic Party?

:rofl: :crazy: :silly: :dunce:

[ShortnFiery]

32. IGNORE the Greens and continue to lose elections.

:nuke:

[Umbral]

34. Anything that helps prevent my vote from being taken for granted is a good thing. A Damn Good Thing!