In a time of grave crisis for our nation, it only took about six years for the nascent GOP to get a President elected. I wonder if third parties, or new parties, are best formed in the crucible of hard times. I mean, if everything is essentially okay with Americans, do you need a third party in good times?

And if these are the hard times a third party needs.

Well Well

Mr Richie is my own SOS. He is a good and decent man.

I am signed up but have a question. I have never attended a web seminar before. What do I need?

The strange architecture of the Constitution has resulted in a political enviroment where only two parties are viable.

To have a functioning multi-party system would require, at a bare minimum, doing away with the electoral college and the US Senate. Until that happens, you can forget about a third party doing anything but empowering the political party most ideologically distant from them.

Just sent you an e-mail.

I would love to have a two party system. This Republican and Republican-Lite system sure as hell isn’t working.

All you need is internet access and your preferred internet accessing device. Today or tomorrow you’ll get an email with a link to the webinar and Wednesday you will be sent a reminder. At the beginning of the webinar, Jane will go through the particulars of communicating via voice or typing your questions.

Use the ultra-democratic primaries, a neglected resource for progressives. Consult the history of the Non-Partisan League. There is nothing stopping anyone from creating a party within a party. It would be a party in everything but the name on the ballot, but so what? The Non-Partisan League got around that by identifying their candidates in other ways.

Both the New Party and the Labor Party initatives could have worked, if they had just recognized that you can have the functional equivalent of a political party without the name of the party on the ballot. In most states, the primaries are wide open to just about anyone.

Jeff Cox

OT: Whoohoo, I got my “card carrying professional left” card in the mail today. I’m officially a Firebagger.

In addition, our system of little or no choice in candidate and policy discourages political participation period, people give up, have given up and will continue to give up. And that has a spiraling down effect. Motivation for voting, even paying attention dissipates.

Well, what Teddy said about hard times.

I would assume the FDL Webinar will devote a serious amount of time to not just the alternatives, but to the available (and/or creatable) leverages to get from here to there.)

As for these hard times – I have suggested before that perhaps if a reasonable cohesive group of people traditionally known to vote for one party or the other (in this case, read “firepups” & “Democratic”) publicly and loudly declared a pox on that party, it might be just the push the larger base of the party – and a fair middling of concerned Independents – need to believe that that throwing in wouldn’t, “this” time, have on empowering the opposite party. Tipping points.

A serious look at the membership numbers, the (sympathetic) non-membership commenter numbers, and the general FDL-lurking public is in order.

FDL has, to some degree, the ear of the media and, as captured as they are, they do love them some “man bites dog” sensationalism. They could conceivably be used against their interests.

My recipe for a functioning democracy:

1. Public campaign financing with set limit
2. Term limits
3. No political parties. Parties only serve to create in-group, out-group dynamics. In some cases it pits people against each other that might otherwise agree on many issues.

Chances of this happening? Zero.

Actually, I have commented several times on this blog in favor of a 3rd, if not multiple, party/ies.
So I am really looking forward to reading more on this effort.
I have had the luxury of voting my conscience, the candidate I thought really best, for the past many elections even though in all practicality it was a friggin’ joke. Only because I live in a solid and safely Democratic state. If I lived in a swing state, I would have been forced to vote for the lesser of 2 evils and that really sucks. So far this century sucks and it is because the 2 party system is seen as “too big to fail”.

I think we used to have two parties with totally different philosphies. I am almost positive of that.

Now, we have 1 party that is “tax and spend” and another that is “spend an give tax breaks to the rich.” We have one party that can’t govern and one party that won’t.

I thought we had ALL agreed to start a third party by meeting at the Chick-fil-A on Thursday. They have great cole slaw.

That sounds exciting. “Professional left”. I think I will join too when I get my inheritance next month.

delete

I am sloooowly starting to notice *some* citizens awakening to the fact that our poltical system is up the creek, and that the paddles & lifeboats are only being handed out to the mega-wealthy. This is mainly due to more and more jobs being lost by middle class folks, who’ve worked hard all their lives… a by-product of business slowing down in general with a resulting drop in demand.

Citizens are kinda-sort of waking up to the fact that Team USA is rapidly becoming a third world country and that “things” are just not miraculously going to turn around any time soon. Some are even beginning to cotton onto the fact that the Duopoly Party is just one party for the mega-wealthy and isn’t doing doodly for the middle or working classes.

So I think the time is coming around to be the right time to push for third parties. I’m all for it. What do we have to lose? Seriously? What?? If some Tea Partier somehow manages to get elected POTUS, really, so what? I see little difference between most of the Tea Partiers and Obama (I really don’t) and certainly Obama seems hell-bent on serving the Tea Party voters, rather than the progressive base. I think Obama’s made it abundantly clear that he loathes progressives and ain’t going to do one d*mn thing that we want, if he can at all avoid it.

I thoroughly agree to the need for additional parties. I feel the need to point out that while PR will break the duopoly, IRV will not. It still falls under Duverger’s Law, as it’s “anti-spoiler” effects work by ensuring no third party can win, which isn’t conducive to them having power. IRV appears to work, but only because it is implemented in countries with PR, which do allow for many parties. I’m sure Mr. Richie will disagree with what I’ve written, but it’s pretty much the standard take of the community.

Dunno about the cole slaw but as far as I know they are still huge supporters of various anti-gay groups. That makes their chicken poisonous imo.

I didn’t know that.
Applebee’s ??????

Until the 1960s, we had two big-tent parties and more emphasis on field organizing and GOTV activities by both parties. And each party moved quickly enough to co-opt and absorb any third party that appeared. The New Deal was a mechanism to co-opt the Social Party strength built by Eugene Debs.

In the aftermath of the Goldwater defeat, conservatives started advocating a parliamentary-style ideological party and started purging through primaries candidates who did not pass their ideological litmus test. Richard Nixon’s campaign created the first managed-media campaign (read Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President, a scandalous expose when it was written but now SOP. The Reagan campaign introduced party message discipline and wedge issues.

The Democratic Party has remained a big-tent party. Which makes it easy for different parts of that coalition to bolt, as centrist did when McGovern was the nominee.

What holds parties together is that it lowers the cost of campaigning for the candidates endorsed by the party. Except that as campaign costs have skyrocketed because of more an more intense media wars, candidates have created their own sources of funding independent of their identified party. Campaign finance costs mask the real issue: a greater reliance on media campaigns to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the opposing candidates. And the bonanza that that creates for the same media companies that are reporting the news about the campaigns.

What would empower a third party would be figuring out how to go around the media campaigns of the major parties and turn out voters in winning numbers at a cost that is orders of magnitude less than that of the current candidates. And to do that at a number of places at the same time. And to do that by ignoring the Presidential race and going for the races in the Congressional districts. BTW, the magic number to win a Congressional seat is 170,000 voters. In a national campaign there will be probably slightly fewer than 150 million voters in 2012. For that number of voters, for every billion dollars in campaign expenditures you are spending $6.66 a voter. What would it take to deliver a winning number of voters for an order of magnitude less than that cost — 67 cents a voter — or $115,000 or so for a Congressional district? What would it take to deliver a winning number of voters for two orders of magnitude less? What exactly would a movement have to do to keep that many people united despite the carpet bombing of advertising from the major parties?

Figure that out. Be able to register independent candidates who use that as a common strategy. You avoid all of the hassles of registering as a party. But you are going to have to screen candidates carefully so that they do not break ranks with the strategy. Once they win, then you can register a party.

Chick-fil-a is owned by a religious nut.

Absolutely our republic needs to escape the stranglehold that our two-sided, single-party system has on it. There are lots of suggestions and ideas that, in my experience, get tossed around pretty much every election (IRV, campaign finance reform, etc.) but it seems to me there is rarely any action taken (en masse)to achieve the suggested goals.

I think it might be just the right time for something more general than targeted efforts at, e.g. vote reform or campaign finance law; something more general than targeting progressives or liberals only. I’m thinking of a more general advertising campaign that promotes votes for any candidate “not Democrat and not Republican”. If more people are accustomed to voting outside rigid party lines, we might find more allies to build momentum for support for the reforms necessary to get alternate parties with real power elected.

I am not worried about the spoiler effect, because what is the difference between a Democratic administration’s Republican policies and the same policies implemented by a Republican administration? If we asked this last year, the answer might have been the Democrat wouldn’t start any new wars. Libya changed that calculation, so now… no difference!

Me too! Yay for us!

The first past the post system is not in the consitution

I’m with you on this. I don’t think a third party candidate could win (but oh God I hope I’m wrong) but at this point I will not be scared into voting for Osterity by some voodoo antics by the Dems.

Far better than writing in disparate names on a ballot, or staying home from the polls or even worse, voting for Osterity, a third party candidate with very clear platform objectives will make sure that our message is not misunderstood.

Let’s run someone who will campaign on Medicare for All, campaign finance reform, taxing the beejesus out of the hedge fund managers, WPA style jobs programs…………you tell us what comes next.

I think we would be astounded at the number of people who started following our candidate’s banner.

Of course, I just had a beer on a totally empty stomach, so you may want to disregard my ranting :)

I think it will be impossible to have a third party in this country. SCOTUS made sure by having unlimited political contributions declared legal. So the only solution is to have publicly financed elections, but that is a constitutional option. You have to have a runaround the Supremes. Otherwise the new party will have to build a structure, and it actually means doing something for the voters, which is what we used to have, neighborhood offices. They no longer exist, since the greedy have co-opted both parties. That is why they wanted primaries, because you need huge money to participate, which means that donors can dictate the terms. The donors had to politicians into ass kissing beggars. Actually, I think that primaries have killed our democratic system, by taking power away from the local level and concentrating it at the national level. Parties today exist in name only. There is a disconnect from the voter. When was the last time you needed something and were helped by one of the parties? People like Ryan are running away from voters, people who elected him. He fears the voter. His only source of power are his political donors. Today the politicians are only responsive to donors, the voter has lost his power.

The Republicans were a coalition of previous existing parties: free soilers, know-nothings, and Whigs. They were not a faction, but a reorganization of an existing bloc. We don’t have that conjuncture today.

More important than a third party is an internet that cannot be shut down or filtered by the government.

Home and neighborhood wifi mesh internet.

When they turn the AI drone fleet on us, we’ll be sitting ducks; without telecommunications, there will be no way to organize a fight back.

Humanity spent most of history under despotic systems; liberal society is but a grain of sand in the hour glass.

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Mods please take down elvert@30, this clown is trolling around the site dropping commercial advertising after making a pretext of commenting on a particular thread. See elvert@3 in this thread.

See also this comment: http://elections.firedoglake.com/2011/09/12/tim-pawlenty-endorses-mitt-romney/#comment-19201

See also this comment: http://elections.firedoglake.com/2011/09/12/tim-pawlenty-endorses-mitt-romney/#comment-19199

clown has been a member for only one day and has posted only this sort of spam in all comments

This is a very important issue. I’m not a FDL member, but I’ve been a lurker at the site for a long time (from about the time I got my dkos ID, which is in the low four digits).

I’d like to address several misconceptions:

1.oldgold@3: The senate will never be proportional, so you will probably never see someone from a smaller party there. However, with a good election reform (more on that later) smaller parties can still have an important influence on elections, even if they don’t win. And with other bodies being more diverse, regional parties would exist, so there would be more than two parties of senators.

The electoral college is only an obstacle if you look at it that way. Using same “interstate compact” trick of the National Popular Vote movement, you could fix the electoral college to use almost any voting system you wished… except for IRV.

2. anoctopus@17: You are right. If two-party domination is the problem, IRV is not the solution. In Australia, they’ve used IRV for over a century. How many third-party winners in their congressional house that uses IRV? In the last 600 votes, there’s been 1 third party winner.

There are absolutely better voting systems out there that would fix the problem, starting with Approval Voting. (Or Condorcet, or Majority Judgment, or Range Voting, or my favorite, SODA Voting: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/SODA)

Unfortunately, Rob Richie has picked his solution – IRV – and he’s totally hostile to talking about better options. (I’m not kidding about the hostility; he’s even set up a false-flag attack site at rangevoting.com) I think that this webinar is a good idea and that it’s worthwhile to learn about the problems. For those who can attend, I recommend mentioning other systems, but trying not to derail the discussion, because it’s just sad when people like Richie start to focus on tearing down other options instead of being the forward-looking reformers they could be.