While it is true that our system has a winner take all voting system, which means the candidate with the most votes wins irrespective of whether they have even 50% of the vote, and it is true that by voting 3rd party the candidate you least like might win, it doesn’t mean you are not having any effect. You can still use your third party vote to purify the major party of a corrupt candidates, which can make a difference in the long run. Also if enough people vote for the third party it can replace one of the two major parties which is what happened in the 1850’s with the republicans replacing the whigs. Third parties can also win. Look at Jessie Ventura.
It is true that you can agitate to change the voting system, but you must go through politicians that were successful with the old way to get something new. Not a likely prospect in my view.
It is true that you can technically run primary challenges, and get some changes, but if those are so easy to run, why hasn’t anyone run them on a mass scale, that I believe is needed to get reall changes? In reality there are tremendous structural barriers to runnng any kind of primary fight, otherwise people would do more than talk and threaten them. This talk of running primaries has been happening for ten years, and nobody in the final analysis does them.
The people who voted Nader in 2000 may not have helped but they didn’t hurt anything either. The war probably would have happened either way. Lieberman was Al Gore’s pick for vp. Martin Peretz was Al Gore’s mentor. Many dlcers like Gore voted for the Iraq war resolution including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards. Obama claimed he would have voted against the resolution, but Obama has claimed to be for, or against many things, that didn’t pan out in reality, because of his commitment to dlc policies. For instance, during the campaign, Obama claimed to be against mandates and excise taxes on cadillac plans. How did that work out in reality. He claimed to be against fisa but voted for it. He claimed to oppose corporate lobbying, and the revolving door, but hired a bunch of Goldman Sachs employees to serve him in his administration. He also claimed to be against the Iraq war, but never missed an opportunity to vote for war funding.
Nader voting changed nothing, in my view, but it did offer and opportunity to vote for someone who told the truth. I so wish I hadn’t bought the lesser evil bs and wasted my vote on Gore, than Kerry and now Obama. The democrats have mislead people for far too long. Obama proves Nader was completely correct, and those of us who sympathized with Nader literally wasted 8-9 years working our butts off for democrats who hate us, and think we are idiots.
While it is true that Lieberman is a leader of these bad dems, it is not true, that lessor dems like Coakley who take money from the insurance companies, and who support mandates bare no responsibility. By only targeting the big sharks, you let little sharks like her off the hook and they continue to vote for the wrong things. You partisans claim that not giving them a 60th seat will be permission to move to the right, but they are already moving to the right so it looks like the mere act of putting right leaning dems in office is permission enough. You claim we don’t vote for Coakley we wont’ have another shot at reform for a generation, yet we are suppose to believe you will come back and improve the bill later on? Come on! We aren’t self-defeating. We are beaten down by corruption! Beating us more won’t help!
reposted from my blog http://dameocrat.blogspot.com
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I mean I always defend him against rabidly partisan Democrats and people who are ignorant about third parties, but his run was a contributing factor (along with voter manipulation tactics, Gore’s campaign, Clinton’s presidency, the Supreme Court and other things) in Bush’s victory.
However, too many people took away the wrong lesson from 2000 that third parties are inherently bad or can only “spoil” things. There is a big advantage to having third parties. For one, you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s useful, as Bernie sanders can show us, to have progressives who aren’t accountable to the Democratic leadership. Also, people focus too much on third parties in the context of presidential races – the Green Party and other third parties pretty much only win local races and rarely they do win state level or statewide races.
And if you’re interested in this subject, you might be interested in the Vermont Progressive Party, the most successful third party in the nation. They’ve got about half a dozen elected state legislators, the mayor of Burlington, a few Burlington city council members, and some other local officials around the state. And their power is only growing.
the break up of the major parties. Look at the Tea Bagger Parties.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the Dems get slaughtered in 2010.
Will the Dems learn that half measures, compromise and sell outs dis-inspire the electorate? The pessimist in me bets the slaughter will not be enough for them to learn.
Will there be a primary challenge to Obama from the left? Probably not but we can still agitate for one.
The Repugs will be deciding between Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. Will Sarah win? Will she go Tea Bag third party if she loses? I expect she will be bought out to make room for Romney. The question is will the Repugs embrace the Tea Baggers to benefit or cost of the supposed adults like Obama.
What the sell-out-centrist don’t get is that their policies don’t excite and motivate votes and people are sick of voting for the lesser of evils. When the economy tanks further, anything could happen.