Monday, May 11, 2020

Nina Turner, RoseAnn DeMoro, Others Call for New Third Party

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Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin. Could a third-party candidate do this?

by Thomas Neuburger

I'm thinking out loud these days, trying to crack the uncrackable nut, escape the inescapable trap laid for policy-minded voters, the one that says “It's a Republican or a neoliberal; there's no other viable choice. Pick one.”

More and more, people want to pick neither.


I don't have an solution yet, but I swear there has to be one. The present situation is unsustainable. If the country stays trapped for much longer between two terrible choices — in 2020 it's Trump or Biden; in 2016 it was Trump or Clinton; in 2012 it was Romney or Obama (who, if your memory stretches back that far, ran in 2008 saying “Yes We Can,” then switched on Day 1 to “Yeah, But No I Won't,” though we let ourselves pretend for quite some time we could convince him otherwise).

Barack Obama — Mr. “Let's Play 'Grand Bargain' With Your Social Security,” Mr. “Keystone Pipeline Will Make America Great,” Mr. “Desperate to Pass TPP Before I Retire to Richard Branson's Yacht” — the man who was never the person he campaigned as in 2008 — was just the most recent addition to a long line of servants of wealth pretending to be heirs of the FDR Party legacy.

It's been aptly said that “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party, and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat” (Gore Vidal); also that “Today's Democratic leaders would rather lose with Biden than win with Sanders” (lots of people, including yours truly; most recently here). And today, after the primary spectacles of 2016 and 2020, it seems that reforming the Democratic Party is as doomed an exercise as supporting a third-party candidate would be, a candidate who may never get on the ballot in all 50 states and, if so, would never be chosen by the bipartisan “debate commission” to appear on stage with the two “major” donor-approved choices.

How the Parties Captured the Debates

After the 1980 election, during which the League of Women Voters allowed independent John Anderson into the presidential debate, the two parties colluded to wrest control of the debates for themselves — successfully. Today's Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is jointly run by the Democratic and Republican Parties, not the League of Women Voters. Here's how that played out in 1992 and 1996 (emphasis mine):
In 1992, Reform Party candidate Ross Perot had a seven percent rating in the polls before the presidential debates. On election day, Perot had 19 percent of the vote, the largest-ever jump for a presidential candidate [source: PBS]. Proving himself a risk to the other candidates, the Dole and Clinton campaigns excluded him from the presidential debates through the CPD when he ran again in 1996. Perot later sued the major television networks for failing to grant him equal time, but since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) changed the provision in 1975, Perot lost his suits [source: FCC].

The fallout from Perot's exclusion from the debates illustrates one of the vital services the CPD provides the two major parties. It acts as a shield. Despite the Democrats and Republicans drafting memorandums of understanding and deciding who can participate, it's the CPD that publicly issues the decisions; so it's the CPD that accepts the public's ire. But since it isn't beholden to the public, the CPD has nothing to lose.
All of which just points out how impossible the two-branched solution to our quadrennial problem has proved to be. If a third-party won't work, and reforming the unreformable won't work, what's to be done?

(There is a third possibility, and a kind of hybrid fourth one, but I'm going to save those discussions for another time.)

Out of Frustration, A Tenth Third Party Raises its Head

Despite these obstacles, people are hungry for a way out, a way to silence the bipartisan blackmailers. On the left that frustration has led people like Nina Turner, former co-chair of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign; RoseAnn Demoro, former head of the Sanders-supporting National Nurses United; Nick Brana, a Sanders 2016 alum and former electoral manager with Our Revolution; actor John Cusack and many less notable others, to start to talk (well, tweet enthusiastically) about forming and supporting another American third party, one that will advance progressive policies, a party that progressive voters can finally control.




And they're not talking hypothetically. These folk are well and truly frustrated, and they're close to well and truly done with the modern, apparently unredeemable Democratic Party.

What to Make of This?

I said at the start I was thinking out loud. I see a deep hunger, much of it shared by the best lights behind the Sanders campaign, but I also see impediments.

Will a People's Party candidate fill a Sanders-size stadium? It depends on the candidate, but very likely no. That candidate would have to relight Sanders' improbable public fire, blaze with his surprising light.

Will a People's Party candidate reach the election debate stage? I fear the answer is never. Nor will there ever be cable campaign coverage, discussion in the corporate press, or live camera feeds of that candidate's peopled podium like there were of Donald Trump's empty one. That candidate will be silenced out of the public discussion, erased from the landscape of choices. Would even Sanders, had he run third party, become the Sanders that thousands flocked to hear? Likely not.

So perhaps that avenue is closed even as the desire to take it opens up. Yet the gaping maw of the hunger that drives that desire isn't going away soon, perhaps not even in our lifetimes. So what's the solution to our national political nightmare, the bear trap of blackmail — "Trump or the neoliberal" — we either ignore or succumb to every four years of our lives?

The way out isn't apparent … yet. But I guarantee there will be one. At some time something will break here so completely that even the broken Party of FDR can't pretend it can put things right again with its next pro-corporate offering.

I do hope, if we see that tragic day, the moment will be managed in an orderly electoral way. The alternative — a chaotic transition to a multi-headed, multiply led revolt — puts us back in the 1930s, and in most major countries of the world, that didn't go well at all.

We got lucky, got Roosevelt, who was allowed to be elected. Most nations got something less.
  
 

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15 Comments:

At 10:03 AM, Blogger bt1138 said...

I sympathize, but really this is terrible advice if you are interested in governing this country.

I wish the GOP would do this, form a 3rd party dedicated to home schooling and abortion & gun rights because the regular GOP isn't delivering what they want.

Democrats would sweep every election everywhere if they did.

 
At 10:16 AM, Anonymous Mark Centz said...

If a movement can't wrest control of a party from the ground up, how is it going to take charge of the government? A popular surge might get the White House, but that's an empty victory without support in Congress. It's got to be the Democrats, and we're already a good way there. No shortcuts are going to get us there.

 
At 11:12 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"It's got to be the Democrats, and we're already a good way there."

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Deluded.

Have you been paying attention to what pretends to be the Democratic Party since 2008?

Did you miss Obama telling Univision about how he was a "moderate 1985 Reagan Republican"?

Have you not seen just how completely the "Democrats" have cooperated with passing Trump's "stimulus" packages, giving him even more for the Pentagon than they asked for, re-authorizing the Patriot Act and maintaining the suppression of the Bill of Rights?

Of course you didn't! "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Go back to the Party which sent you and tell them you failed. Forget it. You aren't man enough.

 
At 11:45 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

As can be seen above, even those who might see it as Thomas and I do, are potted geraniums who still think that the democraps can be helpful when 40 years of history and their current nom and current committees prove is NEVER GONNA HAPPEN.

Charlie Browns, all of them, and the democrap party is Lucy holding the football.

dumbest fucking people in the history of earth.

"Will a People's Party candidate fill a Sanders-size stadium? It depends on the candidate, but very likely no. That candidate would have to relight Sanders' improbable public fire"

If it had been Bernie back in 2016, I think he would easily have pulled greater than perot did and MAYBE could have beat $hillbillary, though not trump. But trump won anyway, so all we'd have is an apoplectic democrap party and an energized progressive party with Bernie leading.

Sadly, Bernie is not who we/they all thought, which is why some of his former leading staffers are pondering how to catalyze this. Actually says as much about the REAL Bernie as it says about the ocean of pigshit democrap party (that Bernie puts above what he claims are his principles).

"Will a People's Party candidate reach the election debate stage? I fear the answer is never. Nor will there ever be cable campaign coverage, discussion in the corporate press, or live camera feeds of that candidate's peopled podium like there were of Donald Trump's empty one. That candidate will be silenced out of the public discussion, erased from the landscape of choices. Would even Sanders, had he run third party, become the Sanders that thousands flocked to hear? Likely not."

Again, clearly not now, after twice repudiating his principles and putting party ahead of everything else.

But had he done this from the 2016 democrap convention on, I'm thinking probably he could have done it.

There WERE 80 million who did not vote in '16. There are about 50 million newly minted eligibles since then (the net number might only be about 15 million, but the old ones who died are, based on polling, much dumber than the new ones). And progressive principles resonate especially well among the young.

And we know that more voters seemed to be effected by social media than the overt corporate version. AOC understands.

But Bernie utterly shat the opportunity in order to sheepdog for the ocean of pigshit party he is servile to.

Will AOC, who is old enough in 2024, insist on "being" a democrap (which is total repudiation of all the principles SHE claims to hold dear)? Or might she be so disgusted by then that she gives it a try? She has potential to make it happen.

But by 2024 it will surely be too late. trump, who will win in '20 no matter what the potted geraniums believe, will end all democratic vestiges rather than let an AOC party win. And the democraps will collaborate with him and the Nazis for the very same reason.

 
At 12:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

A third party? You mean a second party and even with that choice the Republite/Repubright would still be the majority of votes in the US. The problem is inherent not in the choices people are given, but in the positions people are forced to vote on being crowded into one office/person. The presidency is the problem as we have been systematically convinced to be a population of orphans in need of a daddy figure. As John Lennon said we choose "A daddy from the dog-pound of daddies". If we want a democracy we need to get rid of our need for a presidency. There are no heroes here.

 
At 12:55 PM, Blogger Cugel said...

Oh, for God's sake! Nobody needs a new Party. The chances of a new party accomplishing anything other than playing a counter-productive spoiler role is ZERO.

The entire system of laws FORCES a 2-party system. You would literally have to take power in enough states to completely re-write the election laws of each state to make a third party viable. And the people who want that sort of thing are a tiny fraction of the electorate. It will literally never happen.

A takeover of the Democratic party is much easier. You would think its the opposite, but it's not. It's almost impossible for a third party to even get on the ballot in all 50 states, and voters are so conditioned to vote for 1 of the 2 main parties, that no third party will ever have a chance.

All that would happen would be a split vote in which a Leftist party would get maybe 20% of the vote, the Fascist party would get 45% and the leftover Democratic party would get 35%. Result: Permanent fascist rule. Take a look at Israel. How do you think Netanyahu keeps out of prison?

You don't need a new party. You need to take over the Democratic party just the way the fascists have taken over the Republican party and threw out the Eisenhower/Nixon/Ford "moderate" Republicans.

Of course the party isn't going to like that, but so what?

 
At 2:58 PM, Anonymous NonnyO said...

If 2016 and 2020 have taught us anything in the court of law or in the court of public opinion that has fixed two primary seasons, we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that corporate political parties cannot be changed from within. They must be squashed like bugs and beaten out of existence. We currently have a corporate, warmongering Uni-Party with the left (Demopublican) and right (Republicrat) branches, and the status quo DINOs are happy to lose to, and cooperate with whatever the Repubs allow them to have (in exchange for "campaign contributions" aka bribes)... or the DINOs allow rich donors like the Clintons to seek office in exchange for paying the DNC's debts (per the memo giving HRC control of the DNC through the 2016 primary signed in Aug 2015). The uneducated voters who haven't a clue about anything are happy to vote "against Schoshulizm" (a word they can't even pronounce correctly, let alone define, and against their own best interests in the US) because they've been brainwashed to believe the South American "socialism" the US politicians and the CIA say they are fighting against to set up puppet governments are "evil to the core" (altho even those countries pay for their citizens' medical care).

With a reasonably youngish political leader adopting and promoting ALL of Bernie's political platform on the ISSUES people care about, a third party just might succeed. I would have said AOC before her recent more compromising rhetoric about the DINO leaders and idiotic statements like 'we may need to compromise and pass a public option before we get to Medicare for All.' [No, no, no, no, no!!! Rip corporate ACA and Medicare Part D band aids off - and immediately apply healing compresses to soothe the entire organism of Medicare for All that will work to help ALL people with ALL medical and prescription needs.] If AOC went back to her original firebrand self... she could stand a chance at being a good leader, but she'd have to disown Nancy Pelosi and her ilk.

At the moment (barring unforeseen complications), I'd favor the political leaderless People's Party that Nick Brana started - originally with the idea in mind that Bernie could become the leader, IIRC, since the political platform is designed with Bernie's positions on issues in mind. A political leader wouldn't have to supplant an existing leader or candidate (e.g., Green Party, DSA, etc).
https://peoplesparty.org/
Bernie Sanders' political platform is still valid, even if he has strayed from his original path which was so clearly defined in 2016.

In any case, the DNC and RNC need to be tossed on the political scrap heap of history and new political parties need to be started that will definitively be centered on caring for the people of this nation, with a healthy environment to raise families, perhaps even have a garden plot to grow our own fresh veggies - unencumbered by corporations, big money interests, and warmongers.

 
At 4:00 PM, Anonymous NonnyO said...

This is about a combination of Our Revolution LA and the People's Party:

Bernie's "Our Revolution" Votes To DemExit & Start 3rd Party! [Jimmy Dore, May 11, 2020]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAnM91OreSA

 
At 4:01 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cugel, a reform of the democraps has proved for 40 years to be ... impossible.

That a second party is problematic... I understand completely.

But here's the real problem, that Thomas and everyone above fails to comprehend:

the voters in this shithole are FUCKING MORONS! Even if a second party ... or a reform of the democraps looks like it's going to happen... will only be transitory... or mythical... like the "hope" for "change" was... or the "yes we can" nonsense was.

BECAUSE VOTERS ARE TOO FUCKING STUPID AND EVIL TO KEEP ANYTHING USEFUL GOING!!!

Before you fix a party or put parties to sleep for good or put a new party up front, you first have to make the potted plants in this shithole a lot smarter.

And that means the media must go away and Russia must go away and the corporations must go away and the money must go away... because the voters will do as they are told until THEY ARE FUCKING DEAD!

 
At 4:35 PM, Anonymous Mark Centz said...

Well Anonymous, I was going to discuss this a bit more like reasonable people until I read your last comment. If you feel that way about your fellow citizens, what's your solution? Dictatorship of the who? The Bernies? What's an authoritarian doing commenting on a site named Down with Tyranny? Or is that part of what 'being a man' means to you? Or is it "bro"?

As far as my 'a good way there' goes, I'm old- did my first canvas for LBJ in '64, watched in horror the convention in ''68 and the inspiring yet disastrous '72 affair. Really unhappy about having to vote for an evangelical in '76. And I'm white, my life wasn't under the pressure of Jim Crow. The Democratic Party, as imperfect as it certainly is today, is more progressive than at any time in my life, and the new progressive leaders are young. Good things. That your sorry self to Free Republic, you'll feel at home there.

 
At 5:15 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've been here longer than you, Party hack. Maybe you should hie back from whence you came. The Kos hive doesn't function well without a large quorum.

 
At 5:28 PM, Anonymous Mark Centz said...

Still waiting on an answer for your solution, authoritarian. Things don't just happen because people type in caps to make their case.

 
At 5:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mark, I'm not quite as old as you, but I'm close. You're just plain wrong about the party. VOTERS may be mostly progressive and possibly moreso than any time since viet nam, but the party is not. the party is more corrupt, neoliberal and fascist than the republicans were when W was coronated by the Nazi court and SDOC.

The problem with the lefty voters is not what they want or need, it's that they are perfectly willing to vote for 'worse than the republicans of W's era' just because they aren't the Nazis of today.

If you can tell me that biden is NOT, by far, the worst candidate the democraps have ever puked up with a straight face, we're done here. If you cannot... what the fuck are you even talking about?

 
At 6:52 PM, Anonymous Mark Centz said...

"The problem with the lefty voters is not what they want or need, it's that they are perfectly willing to vote for 'worse than the republicans of W's era' just because they aren't the Nazis of today."
And yet here we are, and that's the choice. I'll take the non-Nazi today, and start working for a better choice in 2022 to replace my business friendly Democratic senators. The time for better choices for the White House next year is quite regrettably in the past. We need far better choices than we've gotten, we can agree on that. I don't know that Biden is worse than Clinton, either of them, a case can be made but someone else can do that. The worst Democrat is still better than any active Republican, go ahead and type caps at me if that works for you, fine. But you might think about working to convince voters that they're doing it wrong and they can and should do better. Start your own faction.

 
At 1:09 PM, Anonymous Chairman Ralph said...

I feel your pain, and share your frustration, though we may have to pursue a two-pronged path for the moment -- trying to continue the takeover, at least for the short run, since building a third party is a long-term project. I don't think it's impossible, but it's going to take some serious thinking about how we get to that point.

The question I have is, are folks ready for the grunt work that's required? I've seen this cycle happen over and over in the past -- folks get mad, but don't stay mad, leaving their anger to dissipate in the wind. Then we find ourselves where we started, of reinventing the wheel for the umpteenth time.

A lot of the problems also stem from how our system is structured, as you correctly point out. The hijacking of the debates is only one aspect of the problem.

I think we're going to have to raise hell for some structural reforms, such as ranked voting. I like it, because it takes the "spoiler" issue out of the equation. A big part of this Democratic primary came down to The Fear Factor -- if people hadn't felt the mental pressure to calibrating their votes in light of Trump, you might well have seen a different race.

I think we're also going to work on building up our own media platforms -- look at what happened to the constant barrage of negative messaging that Bernie (and for that matter, people like him) faced from the mainstream media. Biden, in contrast, coasted on oodles of free media that largely passed up the opportunity to examine his deficits, which are well-documented, and considerable. But I think that constant drumbeat, like it or not, had an impact.

Perception definitely paces reality, as your piece also correctly points out. Without a clear foothold for alternatives, people feel pressured to go with the winner -- or anyone who looks like a winner -- what they call the "bandwagon effect."

Again, it's something that folks don't think about until the roof caves in, like with the current pandemic, which exposes our employment-linked health care system for what it is -- an historical accident whose time has essentially passed.

But either way, there's much work to be done, whether we continue to pursue a Democratic Party takeover, or opt to go our own way.

 

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