One thing we can all agree on – nobody’s happy with Washington. Despite their massive gains in 2010, the Right thinks things still aren’t right, and the Left feels left out – particularly after seeing so many of their audacious hopes dashed since 2008.
As a result of all this disappointment, talk about third-parties is everywhere. Well, before voters do anything rash – as is if they haven’t been rash enough over the last three decades – it might be wise to take a few lessons from history.
• • •
At the turn of the last century, the Republican Party was close to evenly divided between Conservatives and Progressives. The Progressive wing of the party was led by Theodore Roosevelt, who had earned a reputation as a trust-buster and a tireless advocate for the common man.
When Roosevelt left office, he was replaced by his old friend William Taft, but the two became bitter enemies when Taft favored corporate interests. At the Republican convention of 1912, Taft out-maneuvered Roosevelt and won the Party’s nomination.
Roosevelt and other disaffected Republicans formed the Bull Moose Party. That Party’s platform would be unimaginable with today's Republicans. Here's a sampling of its planks:
- A National Health Service to include all existing government medical agencies
- Social insurance, to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled
- Limited injunctions in strikes
- Farm relief
- Workers' compensation for work-related injuries.
- An inheritance tax.
- A Constitutional amendment to allow a Federal income tax
- Women's suffrage
- Direct election of Senators
- Primary elections for state and federal nominations
• • •
When Lyndon Johnson signed Civil Rights legislation into law in the Sixties, he predicted that legislation would have catastrophic consequences for the Democratic Party. He was right; wholesale defections began immediately, especially in the South, where racists were already hard at work implementing the despicable Southern Strategy.
In 1968, millions of blue-collar Democrats voted for hardcore segregationist George Wallace and his American Independent Party (arguably the predecessor to today's Republican Party), throwing that election from Hubert Humphrey to Richard Nixon.
Wallace's third-party candidacy – and the Southern Strategy – played a huge role not only in the election of Nixon, but in the election of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
There is no question the third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election. Anyone on the Left care to argue America was better off with eight years of Bush the Lesser than with eight years of Gore?
• • •
As 2012 approaches, many on the Left are disappointed with Barack Obama. But the thought of a victory by any of the putative Republican candidates – Huckabee, Palin, Bachmann, Newt, Trump – is too awful to contemplate.
By the way, anyone who doesn’t take Trump’s candidacy seriously, should – he is at least as facile and uninformed as Reagan, though far more obnoxious. Reagan had much better hair, though.
At present, the only grown-ups on the Right, Pawlenty and Romney, don’t appear to have a chance to win the Republican nomination, not since that Party sold its soul to the Rabid Religious Right, not since it has been over-run by Teapartian Luddites.
For all their ignorance and bluster, Teapartians are right about one thing – there is a fierce struggle being waged for the very soul of America, a struggle unlike any since the Civil War. And right now, the Right is winning.
Will history repeat itself in 2012? Exactly a century later, will Democrats suffer from the same sort of infighting as Republicans in 1912? Will divided Democrats invent their own version of the Bull Moose Party? Not if they’re wise.
The sad fact is Barack Obama will have a hard enough time getting re-elected as it is, and the very thought of throwing the election to one of the Republican alternatives is – or ought to be – simply unthinkable.
Thus voters on the Left are left with only one viable alternative – to vote for Barack Obama.
©2011 Tom Cordle
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The smell of gunpowder was in the air.
How will we define and identify the first day this go around?
A Third Party this time will kill the American Experiment, we simply would not recover from having Paul "Larry the Stooge" Ryan call the shots of our future. Further, and I make a very impassioned point here, Obama is not what you lefties think, a sell-out, he is instead a plant, a chameleon, has them hook, line and sinker, behind enemy lines, while there was no Trump Conspiracy by his parents, instead, chance has given him knowledge those outside Oceania clearly have no means, ability, OR desire to understand ... so, you must instead watch, and learn, from the master ... a President who no one, no one, saw coming, except the BufnBlu ...
T- your work has been of truly outstanding quality of late, above even your own high standard.
My great hope right now is that the American people are finally waking up, taking a serious look around see what's going on in Wisconsin, Ohio and Tennessee to name just three states, and seeing that the Tea Party is a seriously terrible deal for them. And they are FINALLY getting angry enough to do something about it by mounting some effective opposition. Scott Walker's greatest contribution to the nation may have been making himself a visible and tangible target for the previously unfocused rage of the American left. We can be sure he didn't MEAN to do that, but let's not quibble about it and use it to our advantage. And Mmmmmaybe tell our president that it's okay to explore his more liberal tendencies, sometimes.
I can tell you that if any Republican/Tea Party asshat has the consumate gall to ask for my vote after trying to take away women's access to health care and contraception, I'll spit right in their eyes. I know which president gave us a health care bill after a century of Republican opposition. Even if the result is less than I'd hoped for, I'm pragmatic enough to feel ANY step in that direction is necessary and beneficial.
AND I know which party is busting it's gut trying to take that small advance away from us.
Too bad for Republicans that my opinion of American capitalism as currently practiced has reached a life time low. If it's "Socialist medicine " to take better care of ordinary people, bring it on!
It is possible you could get a third party, as they seem to happen at long distances over time, like when things get stuck in a rut, and then they don't usually win, but they do matter a lot, because the reason they lose is that their ideas get incorporated by the other parties.
The funny thing is Taft ended up being too trust-busty, as Sarah might say, and when Roosevelt ran as a Progressive, he did so with JP Morgan's support, among others. They preferred regulation over being broken up. This caused a rift among the Progressives.
Wilson won because he satisfied Progressive aims anyway...at least that's how I remember it.
I still think Obama needs a primary challenge. He needs a change-his-tune tuneup.
We need to first change to a proportional system of vote counting/apportionment. The Westminster System is clearly and has always been used as a means of minimizing the potency of unpopular, marginalized views.
European continentals knew this from 1789 onward and this is why the COntinent prefers Proportional Representation, with safeguards.
New Zealand is the first Anglo-Saxon Westminster/FRTP/WTA system that switched to proportional, and they have seen a MASSIVE SURGE IN POLITICAL PARTIES PARTICIPATING, IDEAS PROLIFERATING and voter-participation as well.
Big business, though, hates it and wants to abolish it and go back to the old system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
A Dem I used to support (yes, there are a few) went third-party last election cycle. I told him giving him money was slightly better than burning it, but not by much.
I would rather the face of the American collapse be a Republican than a Democrat. The fall will be harder with a Republican, but either way we will fall. We need to rip off the bandaid quick so the pain is short lived. Obama has eviscerated the left and moved the party even further to the right. If a Repug wins, then maybe the left will mobilize and eventually get a candidate who will fight for the people.
Of course this won't happen until the electoral system is changed. Money, the root of all evil, has corrupted the system to the core. We have a system of legalized bribery and the spoils go to the highest bidders.
History is a great resource. Interpretation is everything. I think voting for Obama in 2012 will likely be the lesser of two evils. And, of course, that is precisely the problem. But as I’ve said repeatedly, Obama is not the main problem. In fact, he has proven himself thoroughly immaterial except when selling out principles. Otherwise he is little more than a place-holder at best.
I do have a quibble about what you have presented here, though. T. Roosevelt did not “bolt the Republican Party”, the Republican Party abandoned Roosevelt. That seems an important distinction. Another point that I think is important is this from Biography of TR:
“In November the Republicans for the first and only time in history came in third in both the popular and electoral vote for President. TR came in second, and because of the split in the normal Republican vote, Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected.”
http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/bullmoose.htm
The way I interpret that piece of historical data is that the problem was less that a third-party candidate ran than that the Party in question abandoned the principles supported by its majority base. This is the history that is already repeating itself; you and I are abandoned by the Dems. We don’t need to ask if it will be repeated like you ask.
When a Party does that, why does it exist? Why would its past supporters continue to support it?
So, what I take from this is that keeping someone in office who is a Democrat in name only is top priority and that the principles he is elected to uphold don’t matter.
It’s interesting when one looks back through history at just how many third-party candidates have run for president, and then compare that to how many posed any kind of threat. The only threat they ever pose is when both major parties are total failures.
So, sure, vote for Obama or whomever the Dems put on the block for us. As you say, we sure as hell don’t want any of the Republican loonies in the White House (although we may get that anyway).
A third-party is less important than finding a way to remove more of the incumbent Blue Dogs. The key will be to replace senators and house members who have sold out virtually every reason someone would vote for Democrats in the first place. If a Dem congress had sent Obama some truly progressive legislation, don’t we think he would sign it into law? But what have they sent him? And where was his leadership in these matters? He had none; he was “busy” being a place-holder except when he went public with selling out.
The tea baggers gained ground by putting new people in congress, and by doing that they have gotten the attention of their Party leaders. Whether the tea baggers continue to garner strength or not remains to be seen, but they have shown that inroads can be made this way.
In the end, I understand your position, but there is a bigger picture than just Obama.
Anyway, the bigwigs said they would rather lose a single election, and control the machine for future battles and manage the administration of one enemy, then have TR win the primary and convention and lose control over their entire baby.
Very interesting. Of course, they controlled Woodrow Wilson to a degree, too. And Wilson pulled an Obama by bringing-in his FAR LEFT adversary, William Jennings Bryan, as Secretary of State. Bryan was practically a socialist and this allowed Wilson to control him. "Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in"
Also worth noting, the Bull Moose Party had a ready-made base of progressive voters, thanks in large part to the efforts of Bob LaFollette of Wisconsin, who was not at all happy with TR for stealing his thunder.
LaFollete himself ran on the Progressive ticket in 1924 and won 17% o f the popular vote. Hard to imagine the present day R Party in Wisconsin having descended -- literally and figuratively from that proud, progressive Republican tradition.
Most Americans today have no idea the Republican Party was once more progressive than the Democratic Party, which up until the 60's was saddled with the burden of placating Southern Democrats, who for the most part were Democrats in name only.
You write, “Most Americans today have no idea the Republican Party was once more progressive than the Democratic Party …”
Somehow, the idea that the labels, Democrat and Republican, really don’t have much significance eludes too many people. They’ll go into the voting booth and just vote for anyone with a ‘D’ next to their name without knowing what that person actually represents.
It's enough to drive the most fervent lefties and righties to drink.
The biggest not-funny joke is the corruption of the word "conservative". As I've said many times, neither Hobbes or Adam Smith would recognize today's conservatives. "Conserve" has no place in their ideology or their policy -- that's why I call them "consumuatives".
Interesting, indeed. When Henry Ford doubled prevailing wages at his auto plants, he was labeled a traitor to his class by the robber barons of his day. But he understood what today's capitalists apparently don't -- the first requirement of a consumer society is consumers.
Ford put it a bit more simply in his reply to the robber barons: "Who the hell do you think is going to buy my cars?"
The time is past at which the usefulness of both terms, liberal and conservative, has essentially become null.
Many don't seem to recognize that the terms are relative to current realities at a given time, not to some "eternal truth".
Rated
Oh, you must be wrong -- kidnapping is a capital crime in the US. Politicians wouldn't dare hold people hostage.
Yesterday's Reactionary is now a "moderate" Republican, and thanks to Republican word-merchandizing, even moderate Democrats are now considered Anarchists.
Sorry, but you're dead wrong, and that attitude is one of the primary reasons we're in this fix. That assertion is just one more false equivalency, and a very weak one at that.
You can bet your ass the other side thinks it makes a difference -- which is reason enough all by itself to say it makes a difference for everyone -- or ought to. That the other side believes it makes a difference is certainly reason enough for disenchanted voters on the Left to get off their sorry asses -- but they probably won't.
Obama and whichever outrage Republicans finally throw-up will NOT be Tweedledee and Tweedledum. No matter how similar policies may turn out to be, there will be SIGNIFICANT differences.
Presidential appointments are a most obvious area. Anybody want to argue the tragedy of Katrina wasn't compounded by the appointment of Mike Brown as head of FEMA?Anybody want to argue the financial meltdown wasn't made much worse by the appointment of Chris Cox to head the SEC?
Another obvious difference is the Justice Department. Need I remind you of the nine ADA's Rove had fired for not being aggressive enough prosecuting Democrats and too aggressive -- by Rove's dim lights -- in prosecuting Republicans?
No doubt it makes a huge difference who appoints judges. It was thanks to Bush Sr appointees on the SC that Bush Jr was dumped on America. Anybody want to argue America would be in the same place after eight years of Al Gore as it was after eight disastrous years under Junior Bush?
And I don't just mean Katrina or the War in Iraq or the Great Recesssion -- tho any one of those is certainly reason enough to acknowledge the difference. Remember, it was thanks to Junior's SC appointees that we are left with the travesty of Citizens United.
Is anyone foolish enough to believe that America would be in the same place in 2016 after four years under a President Palin or a President Trump, as we would be with four more years of Obama? That's just a foolish argument.
And it's not just the President -- anybody foolish enough to argue that life for ordinary Americans won't be made worse with John Boehner as Speaker rather than Nancy Pelosi?
No, the argument that there is no difference between parties is so silly, it shouldn't even need refuting. But alas, once again, I have had to even here on OS.
Well, I hope -- audaciously -- that it is so, but having lived thru 2004, and will no longer misunderestimate the ignorance of the electorate
I share your frustration. As I suggested to Belle, tho, strikes me that the choice is between bad and even worse than you can imagine. And if so, well, there's really no choice is there?
We need a new Constitutional Convention
No, die with the sword in your hand. Vote for the third party, if it's left enough. If you merely support the least toxic conservative, the spectrum will move fluidly and continuously rightward, just as your canoe turns in one direction till you you paddle in the other. Voting conservative nurtures conservatism - isn't that obvious? It's sad that the contrarian strategy won't bear fruit in your own lifetime, but you must heave a sigh and make a start. Don't you have children?
And there are other things you can do apart from voting. Don't make the mistake of supposing that your predicament is rescuable by voting: it isn't, and it isn't so by design - you do not live in a democracy, nobody does.
Collect sympathetic friends and talk to them, speculate, imagine. That sort of thing will worry the hell out of the gangsters in charge, more than votes ever could.
I'm afraid a new Constitutional Convention would be a VERY bad idea. At the moment, Liberals are being out-thought and outfought at every turn. That new Constitution would make Christianity our national religion, would outlaw abortion and gay marriage, would require gun ownership, and would severely limit speech and assembly.
Keep in mind, there's no group of politicians on the scene the functional equivalent of the Founders. And keep in mind, for all their brilliance, the Founders institutionalized slavery in the Constitution -- regardless of what Michelle Bachmann believes, which by the way says a lot about the quality of education at Oral Roberts University Law School.
Sad to say, the Founders are responsible for our present system which gives undue influence to states with small populations in the South and West, the very States whose citizens and politicians bitch most about the present system.
So, no, there's simply no way a new CC would work to the advantage of thinking people. Secession would be a much better idea.
Did you read this post?
Ayn Rand is the fountainhead of the "greed is good" school of economics. Former Fed head Alan Greenspan literally worshipped at her feet. I call her acolytes Aynal Retentive.
Once upon a time, she was viewed as an antidote to Communism; now anyone with half a brain views her rightly as an antidote to common sense and common decency. Her books provide an excuse for selfishness under the guise of "enlightened self-interest", but clearly there is nothing enlightened in the meat-ax approach to the social safety net advocated by Ryan and others.
Much of what passes for intellectualism on the Right is based on the very thin gruel of "justifiable" greed that permeates her third-rate romance novels. She's an even more shallow thinker than she is a writer. Her crap appeals to college sophomores who think themselves superior and never grow out of their egotistical delusions. Ryan and Gingrich is a prime example of the type.
Ayn Rand is the fountainhead of the "greed is good" school of economics. Former Fed head Alan Greenspan literally worshipped at her feet. I call her acolytes Aynal Retentive.
Once upon a time, she was viewed as an antidote to Communism; now anyone with half a brain views her rightly as an antidote to common sense and common decency. Her books provide an excuse for selfishness under the guise of "enlightened self-interest", but clearly there is nothing enlightened in the meat-ax approach to the social safety net advocated by Ryan and others.
Much of what passes for intellectualism on the Right is based on the very thin gruel of "justifiable" greed that permeates her third-rate romance novels. She's an even more shallow thinker than she is a writer. Her crap appeals to college sophomores who think themselves superior and never grow out of their egotistical delusions. Ryan and Gingrich are prime examples of the type.
You can speech write for whoever win?
Noone with a sane Mind would hop in?
`
I use to try to comprehend the politico.
I'd ask all them this` How much wood`
would a woodchuck `Upchuck Listening?
`
I can no longer stomach. It's ill-bizarre.
If they could al jest burp. Burp on a `Q.
Wear plastic carnation on Black lapels?
huh?
Sport Evaporated Canned Milk on Ya lip.
If You can read/listen to politicos I vote.
I vote that Ya/help we creations think.
We seem to be lured into zombie land.
Politicos need a black bag pediatrician.
We people need guidance and wisdom.
If you sneak a cheeseburger? Who care.
I vote sanity. It's a individual salvation.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, but as for me and political office, couldn't happen. I couldn't get nominated or elected even if I ran unopposed. And if I did, I wouldn't last a week in Washington -- I'd be caned or shot.
I confess I'd be interested in a job as a speechwriter -- until my boss said "We can't say that -- it's too close to the truth" at which point, I'd be back here tilting at windmills.
Yes I did. My inability to spot irony is legendary, but you say:
"Thus voters on the Left are left with only one viable alternative – to vote for Barack Obama."
You mean, you don't mean that?
No irony intended. The purpose of my post was to point out that Third-Party movements -- however well-intended -- have not been successful in the last 100 years, and that they in fact almost always work to the opposite of the aims of their constituencies.
Thus, the Bull-Moose Party, was the beginning of the end of the Progressive movement in the Republican Party. Thus, the American Independent Party, led to the election of Richard Nixon, and thus to trampling of the rights of blue-collar union workers who made up a large portion of the constituency of the AIP. Thus the candidacy of Ralph Nader led to the election of GWB, and ... well, the rest goes without saying.
And thus, if Progressives/Liberals want to see their cause set back at least a generation or two, they should vote for a third-party candidate, thus assuring the election of Trump/Palin/Huckabee/Bachmann/Gingrich or whichever piece of shit floats to the top of the Republican sewer.
I'm going to assume from your avatar choice you are an admirer of Count Vronsky, the rather despicable cad from Tolstoy. If so, I must say that's a revealing choice, indicative of some who views "human relationships as a matter of pleasure rather than a moral issue."
No irony intended. The purpose of my post was to point out that Third-Party movements -- however well-intended -- have not been successful in the last 100 years, and that they in fact almost always work to the opposite of the aims of their constituencies.
Thus, the Bull-Moose Party, was the beginning of the end of the Progressive movement in the Republican Party. Thus, the American Independent Party, led to the election of Richard Nixon, and thus to trampling of the rights of blue-collar union workers who made up a large portion of the constituency of the AIP. Thus the candidacy of Ralph Nader led to the election of GWB, and ... well, the rest goes without saying.
And thus, if Progressives/Liberals want to see their cause set back at least a generation or two, they should vote for a third-party candidate, thus assuring the election of Trump/Palin/Huckabee/Bachmann/Gingrich or whichever piece of shit floats to the top of the Republican sewer.
I'm going to assume from your avatar choice you are an admirer of Count Vronsky, the rather despicable cad from Tolstoy. If so, I must say that's a revealing choice, indicative of someone who views "human relationships as a matter of pleasure rather than a moral issue."
This nation is in a heck of a fix, with our choices not being what's needed to set it on the right track. Obama, like the previous Dem POTUS, is little more than what used to be tagged a Republican, but he's the only choice we have given the field he's likely to face. Dismal, yet true.
In the event the modern GOP wins in 2012, and especially if current poster boy Paul Ryan were to be that winner, I could go ahead and make funeral arrangements. Their plans for Medicare would, in effect, leave me without coverage, without medical treatment, without even my regular medications. I wouldn't live to see the next election...which is sad to say when you're not yet 50.
As the country slides further over the precipice, it's good to see some like Mr. Cordle are still digging and clawing to slow that demise.
Thank your for the compliment; I confess such kind words help to keep me raging against the dark night.
I find it tragically humorous that Paul Ryan is simply confirming the charge made by Alan Grayson about the Republican Healthcare Plan: "Don't get sick, but if you do, die quickly."
Personally, I am deeply disappointed in Obama. I realize the deck was stacked against him, but it isn't his failure to win the fights, it's his apparent failure to even fight the fights that troubles me, particularly when the man raised the hopes of so many so high.
As I said before, the truest measure of him so far is the replacing of "the fierce urgency of now" with "winning the future". It's as if he's given up on the present.
All that said, I will have no choice but to vote him and even argue for him in the face of the any of his likely opponents. My great hope now is that the Conservatives are so divided they will run a third-party candidate, AND that the Liberals have better sense than to even consider such a thing.
Attn Ralph Nader: Sit down and shut up.
Ouch! But not entirely untrue. No, it's because at school/university we read a lot of the Russians. My pal decided that he was Levin and I was Vronksy because I always seemed to have more fun, where he was morally upright and ascetic. My oh-so-moral old pal is now a CEO with links to the CIA and the mafia, it being those links that probably got him there. To mix novels, Levin turned out to be Strelnikov. Vronsky is still Vronsky, I'm happy to say.
"My oh-so-moral old pal is now a CEO with links to the CIA and the mafia, it being those links that probably got him there."
Don't be too hard on your old friend -- money most often triumphs over morals. Count Vronsky would surely agree with that sad truth.