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

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.

I feel welcomed @4aPeoplesParty https://t.co/N9H4yqZLAV

— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) May 3, 2020

This is our bleak future in the Democratic Party. The political revolution that inspired millions in 2016 was born **explicitly** out of a rejection of big donors as its core principle.

We don’t have to resign ourselves to this. Another party is possible!https://t.co/GBq895DbOr https://t.co/aokEZRmPKr

— Nick Brana - #PeoplesParty (@nick_brana) May 5, 2020

We know the reality of what the neoliberal dems really did to the movement - Bernie was treated as the existential threat not trump or gop -they moved heaven & earth to stop a return of new deal politics - which is exactly what times demand -
Yes to 3rd party

— John Cusack (@johncusack) May 1, 2020

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.
  
 

Obama Should Have Played The Impotent Sea Snakes For The Notre Dame Graduates

And Maybe If The Graduating Class Was Capable Of Critical Thinking They Would Have Protested Something Else


I don't know who gave the commencement address at "my" graduation. One step ahead of the law, I had already left the country in the spring and was in the Atlas Mountains south of Marrakech on graduation day. I called a couple of college friends and none of them could remember who spoke; Taroundant, where I spent that week, was amazing. I still have a small white stone statue I watched someone carving and then got from him by exchanging some detritus from my old life.

A decade later I was back in America, living in San Francisco and playing punk rock on KUSF, the radio station owned by the University of San Francisco, not just a Catholic university-- a Jesuit one. The school's mission statement:

VISION:

The University of San Francisco will be internationally recognized as a premier Jesuit Catholic, urban University with a global perspective that educates leaders who will fashion a more humane and just world.

MISSION:

The core mission of the University is to promote learning in the Jesuit Catholic tradition. The University offers undergraduate, graduate and professional students the knowledge and skills needed to succeed as persons and professionals, and the values and sensitivity necessary to be men and women for others.

The University will distinguish itself as a diverse, socially responsible learning community of high quality scholarship and academic rigor sustained by a faith that does justice. The University will draw from the cultural, intellectual and economic resources of the San Francisco Bay Area and its location on the Pacific Rim to enrich and strengthen its educational programs.

I never took any classes there. I was the radio station's "professional advisor," or something like that. I didn't get paid. I just had a chance to play music I loved on the radio. Earlier I had been fired by KSJO for having the Sex Pistols live on the air-- the show is part of a bootleggish release, Big Tits Over America-- and then from KSAN for... gee, I don't remember. There were so many firing offenses every week that I can't even recall which one they finally got me on, months and months after every other free-form dj on the station had been cashiered by the new (corporate) regime. That was because I was on after midnight and none of the new bosses had ever heard my show so when they first told me I was fired I asked why and they didn't know so they actually let me stay until something outraging their sensibilities reached them.

But KUSF, the Jesuit station never bothered me. Well... almost never. I just couldn't resist playing a tape I had gotten in the mail from a band in Tampa called the Impotent Sea Snakes. A more accommodating dj would have just stuck to something less offensive, like "I Wanna Fuck Your Dad," but I only wanted to blast "Pope John Paul Can Suck My Dick," over the Catholic airwaves. Every time I played it I would get a note asking me to please not play it again, which, of course, encouraged me to play it again and again and again.

Have you watched any of the prissy little assholes being interviewed on CNN about how they don't want President Obama coming to their campus-- another Catholic school-- to give a commencement address because they disagree with his policies? My blood boils as I look at the ugly, distorted faces of future torturers, banksters, Klan sympathizers and Evan Bayh supporters. If they don't want a gay marriage they shouldn't have one. If they don't want an abortion, no one is forcing them. If they don't like stem cell research I hope they have the courage of their convictions to die a miserable and painful death from a combination of Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, a spinal chord injury and cancer.

And why not? They're so sure they're going to be playing harps in the heavenly clouds while the rest of us burn in hell, they should just leave us alone on earth and keep their ignorant, primitive superstitions, religionist quackery and Know Nothing prejudices to themselves.

If you want to protest something about Obama, how about something real? John Cusack wrote about A Hollow and Horrible Equivocation, the subject of which would have certainly caused protests at my college in the mid-60s. Personally I have very mixed feelings about the release of the pornographic torture photos because of my concern for the young men and women fighting overseas. I have a tendency to want the photos to be seen only by a jury debating whether Bush, Cheney and their co-conspirators should get life imprisonment or... something that better suits their crimes against humanity. On the other hand, I agree with everything Cusack says.

The release of the photos was won by ACLU lawyers who have fought to bring to light the full extent of the brutality and torture that U.S. Army and intelligence services have perpetrated against human beings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and at CIA "black sites" around the world. Torture that was sanctioned and effectively legalized under the former administration, and that, if we are to be honest, most Americans knew-- or should have known-- was being carried out in our names.

Only now is the knowledge starting to give rise to the widespread outrage and calls for accountability that such crimes against humanity deserve. Growing numbers of citizens are demanding the independent investigation and prosecution of the members of the Bush administration responsible for the vitiation of fundamental legal principles like habeas corpus and the flagrant violation of both international and domestic laws against torture. The pundits, hacks and shills who dismiss these calls for investigation and prosecution-- integral to any serious definition of accountability-- disgrace themselves and their country.

The situation in which we now find ourselves is so bizarre, it's hard to fathom. New revelations continue to surface-- we learn that Vice President Cheney's office ordered and specified how a man was to be tortured, and mounting evidence suggests the United States tortured to extract false confessions that would justify preemptive war on Iraq. Yet a Democratic president leads a Democratic congress to whitewash institutionalized torture and in effect trash any conceivable notion of the rule of law, all in the name of "looking forward."

One more thing about "Catholic teaching," while supporting every travesty in the history of what horrors man could visit on his fellow men-- from torture and slavery to global imperialism and subjegation of women and the poor-- Catholic teaching should now be about learning, as Pope John Paul suggested, from its own mistakes so it stops committing them some day. These arrogant and over-wrought assholes should start over in kindergarten:



Obama didn't play the Impotent Sea Snakes for them. Instead, he made a gracious, memorable and challenging address that I'm sure the ones willing to listen will remember for their whole lives. Here's just a very few paragraphs:

Your class has come of age at a moment of great consequence for our nation and the world – a rare inflection point in history where the size and scope of the challenges before us require that we remake our world to renew its promise; that we align our deepest values and commitments to the demands of a new age. It is a privilege and a responsibility afforded to few generations – and a task that you are now called to fulfill.

This is the generation that must find a path back to prosperity and decide how we respond to a global economy that left millions behind even before this crisis hit – an economy where greed and short-term thinking were too often rewarded at the expense of fairness, and diligence, and an honest day’s work.

We must decide how to save God’s creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it. We must seek peace at a time when there are those who will stop at nothing to do us harm, and when weapons in the hands of a few can destroy the many. And we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity – diversity of thought, of culture, and of belief.

In short, we must find a way to live together as one human family.

It is this last challenge that I’d like to talk about today. For the major threats we face in the 21st century – whether it’s global recession or violent extremism; the spread of nuclear weapons or pandemic disease – do not discriminate. They do not recognize borders. They do not see color. They do not target specific ethnic groups.

Moreover, no one person, or religion, or nation can meet these challenges alone. Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history.

Unfortunately, finding that common ground – recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a “single garment of destiny” – is not easy. Part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man – our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin. We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice. And so, for all our technology and scientific advances, we see around the globe violence and want and strife that would seem sadly familiar to those in ancient times.

We know these things; and hopefully one of the benefits of the wonderful education you have received is that you have had time to consider these wrongs in the world, and grown determined, each in your own way, to right them. And yet, one of the vexing things for those of us interested in promoting greater understanding and cooperation among people is the discovery that even bringing together persons of good will, men and women of principle and purpose, can be difficult.

The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son’s or daughter’s hardships can be relieved.

The question, then, is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?

Nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion.

As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called The Audacity of Hope. A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an email from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that’s not what was preventing him from voting for me.

What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website – an entry that said I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, “I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”

Fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor’s letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn’t change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that – when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do – that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

That’s when we begin to say, “Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.

So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”

Understand – I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it – indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory – the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.

You Can Win A Free WAR, INC DVD-- And Support The Election Of What The GOP Calls "The Most Liberal Candidate In America"

The first time I saw John Cusack's brilliant film, War, Inc., I immediately thought it would be a powerful statement for Democratic candidates to use in their campaigns. A none-too-subtle, albeit uproariously funny, exposé on the corporatization of war-- the ultimate in war profiteering-- my hope was that candidates would see it as a tool to engage in a discussion of the tragedy of Iraq. I asked John if Blue America could offer a screening to any of our candidates and he was as enthusiastic as I was. Most of the candidates I approached liked the idea but thought it would work best if John came along. John has been filming in China and he wasn't available to shuttle between congressional districts but the candidate who showed the most enthusiasm, predictably, was the one who has spent years and years fighting war profiteering in real life, Florida's Alan Grayson.

Alan would have loved to have put Cusack's celebrity to work for him as well as anyone, but he immediately understood the value of War, Inc as a powerful organizing tool. He took the screener, rented a movie theater in Orlando's Fashion Square Mall and held two standing room only "teach-ins"-- basically opportunities to see the otherwise unreleased movie followed by discussions of the war and of the corporatization of government functions. Cusack on Meet the Bloggers last week:



This morning Alan explained why War, Inc is such an important movie and why he was so happy to use it in his campaign:

A political campaign is all about mobilizing the support of people who feel the same way that you do. You can do it with a speech, a symbol, a policy statement, an ad, and now... a movie.
 
Because I've fought war profiteers for years now, I recognize that the war effort in Iraq has been mangled by corrupt government contractors who care only about making a buck. I can say that to people myself, but John Cusack has done something better than that-- he has shown it to people, in his movie War, Inc. It is the "Catch 22" of the 21st Century, showing how thoroughly perverted war becomes when it is "privatized."
 
John graciously allowed us to show this film in a movie theatre in Orlando, as part of our race for Congress. And it was a major event. Certainly, no one in Central Florida had ever had a campaign event like this before. It was promoted and reviewed by our daily newspaper, and in other media.  We packed the house. We raised money for the campaign. And most importantly, we brought together and mobilized people who are, shall we say, not too happy about the war in Iraq, and want to do something about it.
 
Political campaigns are constantly changing. Howard Dean introduced political campaigning to the Internet. Barack Obama showed how to fund a national campaign through small donations, without PAC money. And now John Cusack has shown how a film, a creative work of art, can be a means of recruitment, fundraising, solidarity, entertainment and learning in a campaign. Thank you, John.

Last week the movie was released as a DVD and DownWithTyranny has a dozen to give away to the first 12 donors who make a contribution of at least $30 to Alan Grayson's campaign at the Blue America ActBlue page.

LIVE BLOGGING WITH JOHN CUSACK AT C&L THIS AFTERNOON

A few weeks ago I mentioned how I had gone to see John Cusack's incredible new film, War, Inc.. John Amato and I persuaded John Cusack to join us over at Crooks and Liars for a live chat a little closer to the official release date. And today's the day. This week the film will start rolling out in the Toronto area and then in New York City. So at 3pm (PT) John is bringing two of his co-writers with him, Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser, and they'll be talking about the movie and answering questions for an hour or so.

The movie is hilarious but you never lose sight of an objective at least as important as entertainment: stark and compelling Truth. I'd say Cusack, who says he was inspired by Naomi Klein's 2004 article in Harper's Baghdad Year Zero, had Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 retirement speech in the back of his head, the one where the Supreme Allied Commander-turned-President points out that "We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations." Eisenhower goes on to issue a warning that has become his most memorable utterance as president:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-- economic, political, even spiritual-- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

John Cusack and his colleagues have taken Eisenhower's warning and updated it into a chilling movie set in the not too distant future, at a time when, unfortunately, no one remembers what Ike said or why. A couple of days after I watched the film, Cusack explained why he worked so hard to make this movie, not just as an actor and a writer but also as a producer, the guy who has to raise the money.

I'm deeply troubled about the radical transformation in this country. We filmed it in Bulgaria and we were about to do it for a relatively small budget. Everyone was into it because people know that corporate "ethics" of the new militarized "defense" economy are just hollowing out what it means to be a nation state. All the things that we equate with the core functions of government, from disaster relief, armies, interrogations, jails, border patrol, all these types of things are all for-profit businesses that are kind of a part of the government, but not really. They have no accountability. That's some scary stuff. Erik Prince from Blackwater said 'I want to do to the military what FedEx did to the post office. He didn't mean it as a joke.

The government's role is to basically create the ultimate environment for corporate profit, hollowing out the core of government and just giving it to these companies. They preach about free markets but it's really a protectionist market. They're all socialists and Keynesians on the way down... when the bills come in. It's not just Boeing and Bechtel, Parsons, Lockheed-Martin, Carlyle Group-- not just the gang always hanging around the Greed Zone and locked into the State Department. On Wall Street these cowboys go crazy and the government bails them out and then the bailout isn't big enough and they want it upped. In the meantime if you lost your housing due to the scam... well, that's the "free market." There's a hypocritical way they put out two sets of rules, one for the corporate aristocracy and then one for the rest of us who have to live and die by a "free market" that's not even free... The level of greed and hypocrisy and avarice is beyond anything you can imagine.

That was a lot to think about and to juxtapose with his film. But he wasn't done. He had a polemic from Arundhati Roy he wanted to recite for me. I settled back and got another layer of understanding about what drove him to make War, Inc.

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness-- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they're selling-- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.