Third party dilemma - What to do when the "system" no longer works

[burythehatchet]

I don't know of a lot of liberals who would argue that the system is broken, possibly beyond repair. So what should a progressive, honest, committed leader do under these circumstances? I am speaking of people like Al Gore and Russ Feingold. I think both of these gentlemen have come to the realization that the two party system, in its current state, no longer functions. There is no opposition party. There are Reublicans and "Democrats in name only".

For the sake of discussion, lets not get into a Green bashing orgy.

Is it not time for a leading recognized guy like Gore to run outside of the Dem party?

What are the pros and cons?

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Con: Diebold ... I think we'll have to fix the system from the bottom

up instead of top down, which means it will take a lot longer to get something done but that's better than nothing. But I do agree that we desperately need election reform in this country.

[burythehatchet]

2. Ideally yes, you are correct

bu that is not going to happen. We will have to play according to the rules "they" have established, and we will have to beat them at their own game. The bottom line is money. I guess part of my question is whether there is enough grass roots disgust to fuel a third party run. I for one would committ all I could financially and in terms of time to such a cause.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. There's plenty of disgust to go around but I don't see beating them at

their own game unless you mean we have to rig the machines ourselves.

[burythehatchet]

4. No of course not.

By their gam I mean campaign finance rules.

[mike_c]

5. lots of us have already voted with our feet-- now we just need a leader...

...to create a viable alternative party. Even if it's within the two party framework, we need a committed liberal opposition party, and the democrats are not it, not right now. Some are there, but most could be moderate republicans without much more than a letter change.

[Cleita]

18. I'm against a separate party, but what if we got

a wing of the party, like the DLC, but we could be the Social Democratic Council or something like that, meaning we are very left, but still under the umbrella of the Democratic Party. Now the DLC has managed to corner a lot of power because many of our lefties became Greens. We need them back but with our own website, principles and candidates and issues that we back. I think there would be far more of us than of the DLC.

[mike_c]

22. sounds good to me....

I was a dem for 30 years-- I'd love to be one again.

[Untermonkey]

34. "we need a committed liberal opposition party"

Hear hear! That will be the first step to real change. As it stands now the line between the Dems and the Republicans is pretty darn blurry on too many issues.

[rwenos]

6. Con: It's Not the Right Time

Established politicians like Al Gore and Russ Feingold know that the Presidency involves a lot more than simply sitting in the Oval Office and signing executive orders. I grew up listening to my father, a high school government teacher and ardent New Dealer, say over and over, "We elect a Party, not a President." His remark was predicated on an understanding that the modern Executive Branch affects more Americans more directly than the Court or Congress -- nominally "co-equal" branches.

Since the rise of the regulatory state during the days of Woodrow Wilson, and particularly since the New Deal, the Executive Branch regulates virtually the entire economy, and many other areas of human life. Think of these agencies: INS, IRS, FAA, FEMA, SEC, FCC, FDA. How many things did you do today, that was not affected by one of these Executive agencies?

When a Democrat is elected, the NLRB has a majority of Democratic members. BLM is run by an administrator appointed by a Democrat. FEMA is run by a competent, non-drooling Democrat.

The stakes are ALWAYS bigger than simply the man/woman elected President. We elect an army of federal bureaucrats, not just a President.

For this reason, third party candidacies simply help the party opposite the party of origin of the third party candidate. And yes, Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the Presidency in 2000. How's THAT call looking about now?

[SongOfTheRayne]

7. maybe the fate of america lies in the hands of non-politicians.

no matter which parties rise and fall, there doesn't seem to be enough opposition- or enough representation of the people- in Washington. We need to show the government that the people demand change, so that Democrats as well as Republicans will be unable to ignore the need for reform. The protest marches that are coming up this weekend are a good start. If we all supported non-mainstream media then mainstream media would see that they were losing viewers/readers/listeners to progressive thought, and begin speaking the truth that we demand or face obscurity. Imagine a country in which the people had taken back the media...

[Cleita]

19. I totally agree with you and there is a precedent in the fifties

with the leadership of the counter-culture who were able to muster enough power and support to bring the politicians on board like McGovern. But it had started outside of the system with the grass roots.

[helderheid]

8. Get rid of the machines and join PDA

www.pdamerica.org

[CBHagman]

9. Con: You're ignoring history.

Exhibit A: The Bull Moose Party. Exhibit B: John Anderson in 1980. Exhibit C: Ralph Nader in 2000.

Con: I don't think it's possible to speak for Al Gore, Russ Feingold, or any other Dem you admire. Have they actually said they were going to jump ship?

Con: You can purity-test your candidates to death. If every group on DU, for example, had veto power over every winning Democratic candidate of the last 70-some-odd years, we'd never have countenanced Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, FDR, Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton.

Con: Self-identified liberals and progressives make up a relatively small percentage of the voting population. Until that changes, anyone who wins a seat in the House or Senate, or in executive branch offices, will need a coalition of moderates and progressives in order to be elected.

Con: The Democratic Party has long had a mixture of people focused on different issues and ideologies.

The only pro I can think of is the possibility of running a progressive with such amazingly broad appeal (to say nothing of charisma and public confidence) that party is no longer an issue and personality takes over. The type I'm thinking of is someone like Oprah Winfrey, who commands a great deal of attention and wields a fair amount of influence. But maybe even an Oprah type wouldn't do it.

Think long and hard about this. American voting patterns simply do not bode well for third party candidates.

On edit: I live in a fairly liberal area, and third party candidates can't even win local office here, for the most part.

If you really want to influence policy, you have to put candidates into offices where they can do some good, and you can't pick up your toys and go home every time someone departs from your stance on some issue. How many times have I seen people proclaim their adoration for Russ Feingold or Robert Byrd, and then seen an orgy of hostility to the same when they say something unexpected? Confess! You know you've seen it.

[hvn_nbr_2]

12. Ignoring only part of history. You also ignore history. Exhibit A1...

John C. Fremont, Republican, 1856, third party candidate
followed by
A. Lincoln, Republican, 1860, still third party.

The question is, are the Dems today as obsolete and impotent as the Whigs in 1860?

[CBHagman]

32. One third-party candidate in over 200 years...

...and elected in a time where the country was even more disastrously roiled by divisions does not a pattern of third-party success make.

[AndyTiedye]

10. Biggest Con: All Republicans All the Time

Splitting the opposition to the regime would eliminate any possiblity of removing them from power.
The Democratic Party isn't much of an opposition party, but it's all we've got.

It takes a whole generation to build up an opposition party from scratch, and another generation for it to become strong enough to challenge the ruling party.

We haven't got that long. The rest of the world will nuke us first. :nuke:

[rwenos]

11. The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend

nt

[proud patriot]

13. I faced this dilemma 5 years ago

I made a choice to work from within the Democratic party
"to be the change I wished to see"

I feel this is the most productive way to help
the world and the Future generations that come
after me .

[burythehatchet]

14. Did you ever dream that the party would descend to

the level we have witnessed over the last 48 hours.

[mod mom]

17. You mean when they don't have the spine to stand up against illegal

actions? Yes, unfortunately from the vantage point of a Kerry foot soldier in Franklin County Ohio after election day. I felt abandoned and ashamed that my party that I touted so ardently through the campaign failed to stand up, as they promised, to make sure every vote was counted. The war, the patriotic act, the election, alito, censure-it's like they are trying to alienate their base. I don't ever think they will motivate their base to GOTV like was done in 2004. "We Can Do Better" rings as hollow words now. It is very difficult to motivate people to go door to door canvassing and phone banking. Without addressing the issue of corrupt elections, I'm afraid GOTV will be for naught.

[stevietheman]

15. Baseball bats for democracy

I think a stronger message than talk about a third party candidate for 2008 would be a message designed for 2006: All voting machines without auditable paper trails should be DESTROYED. With baseball bats. By citizens.

[readmoreoften]

21. Batter Up: Million Batter March

Baseball Bats. This is a good idea. We need an image that shows we need business. A peaceful protest with 100,000 dressed in black carrying "symbolic" baseball bats (after all, baseball is as american as apple pie) to "symbolically" smash the electronic voting machines.

Or smash whatever. Of course we won't HARM ANYTHING. Just a peace protest. With bats. Peaceful, but menacing.

A bunch of sarcastic hippies protesting with puppets is nice, but sarcasm is very 1999 in my humble opinion. It's 2006. I'm not disgruntled. I'm at my wits end. Sarcasm isn't enough.

We need a new look. A militant look. An all-American baseball bat look.

[stevietheman]

23. That's pretty much my idea.

It's basically all about the threat to do it. To get the issue of unverifiable electronic ballots more into the mainstream news.

We could hold demonstrations with fake voting machines, perhaps old computer monitors, where a bunch of people (wearing goggles of course) take their own L'ville Sluggers to the voting machine.

And part of the message is that we all "intend" to do the same on Election Day, 2006 if the machines aren't made verifiable.

We would pretend to be very serious about it, but behind the scenes, we would encourage people to only pretend they are going to do it, but don't actually do it.

[readmoreoften]

25. That would be a good activity at the end of the march.

But on the way, let's have 100,000 Americans with bats marching down the street. I think they'll get the point.

[stevietheman]

26. I like it. I like it a LOT. Maybe we should start a separate thread...

in the Activists HQ? We could see if the idea takes root (or gets trashed). I think it's worth at least having a full discussion about.

[readmoreoften]

28. Let's have a separate thread in GD, then the activist HQ

I'll put it on my sparkly new DU blog as well!

[stevietheman]

29. Sounds good... I just started working on my journal as well.

If you want to start the post, I'll chime in with a reply. Or, do you want me to start it. Either way is good by me.

[readmoreoften]

31. it's up Steve. /nt

[burythehatchet]

35. I've always been a great contact hitter

lots of extra base hits in the gaps.:)

[SongOfTheRayne]

36. niiiiiiiiiiiiice......

I can hear the angry mobs already.....and damn if that's not better than what we have now.

[stevietheman]

37. At some point, there has to be some kind of "enough is enough!" n/t

n/t

[Cleita]

16. I think runoff voting would help solve a lot of the problems.

Of course we have to solve the voting fraud problem first.

[mtice]

20. The problem is...

... that a front-loaded primary system heavily based on fund-raising prowess results in the nomination of candidates who are already sold out to moneyed interests before you ever get to pull a lever in the general election - and before 75% of us even get to pull a lever in a *primary* election. Explain to me why the Democratic stronghold of California has no say in who the Presidential nominee is, for no reason other than the date of its primaries!

[magellan]

24. Yes, it was never supposed to be this way

Government by the wealthy, for the wealthy is destroying us from the inside out.

Welcome, mtice.

[The2ndWheel]

27. Maybe not

But it was bound to happen(or continue, if you want to look at the long thread of history, and the "discovery", foundation, and rise of America as just another in the long line of empires).

[The2ndWheel]

30. Start a new system

Then that new one will die, and we'll need another new one. That cycle will go on for centuries, until we all figure out that no matter what system we choose, it's esentially the same system, just with a different shampoo. But by then, we'll all have killed each other, or become so engulfed by the system that the effort won't be worth it.

[harpo]

33. get busy...it all starts at the local/precinct levels

replace those who do not do what they should...1 by 1