Third parties
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Let’s talk about third parties. Our role model should be Senator Bernie Sanders. He ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont as a socialist and won. Since I am pig ignorant about Vermont politics, I have no insight into his original election; but the rest of his career is clear enough. He was a good mayor. The people of Burlington liked him, and Burlington is the largest city in Vermont. When the congressional seat came open (Vermont only has one, which is one more than DC, but never mind that) Sanders declared and the Democrats endorsed him. He was a good Congressman and low and behold, when the Senate seat came open the Sanders declared and
the Democrats endorsed and he won. He is very popular in Vermont. I wonder why.
So instead of thinking about Congress or Senate, we should think about city council, clerk of the court, state legislature, and so forth. Are there credible third party candidates we should be supporting? We have to beware of vanity candidates. Too many Green candidates are Republican fronts. (DC is an exception, I don’t know if we can elect David Schwartzman, but the politics of this city make a Statehood/Green candidate within the realm of practical politics.)
So, does anyone know of any third party candidate worthy of a little link love?
Let’s think about next year, Virginia and New Jersey will be holding their elections for the state legislature, any decent third party candidates? There will also be local elections across the country next year, let’s think about them.
Ralph Reed took over the Republican party by understanding that School Board serves as the farm team for higher office, and School Board elections are low turnout elections. They are the sort of elections that can be swung by a relatively small by highly energized group. Well, if righties can do that, why not lefties? I can assure you that if Senators and Congressman start seeing Bernie Sanders types winning local elections it will get their attention in a hurry. From little acorns mighty oak trees grow.
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Regarding the Ralph Reed example...
It doesn't cost a lot of money to run for school board, but it does take a modest core of several volunteers and a hundred or two unpaid person-hours from people in addition to the candidate to pull off every one of those little undertakings.
Ralph Reed and his people were able to utilize corporate funding, and to tap into an existing network of right wing churches to get the foot soldiers and some of the candidates for all those school board elections, let's not forget.
The organizing seed money paid for message coordination, trainings for candidates and operatives, and similar stuff.
"The left," however you define it, does not have access to that kind of organizing seed money, and has no analogous and ready-made network of ideologically driven folks to tap into for foot soldiers and school board candidates.
Also Ralph's people didn't run as third part candidates. There are enormous barriers codified into law against getting on the ballot as a third party candidate, firey hoops like bonds to post, huge numbers of signatures to post and similar stuff.
Not to say it can't be done or shouldn't be tried, but there are significant barriers that the right did not have to face.
Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com
Organizing Seed Money
It won't work for third parties, but Emily's List does provide training and other support to state and local candidates. All they have to be is pro-choice, democratic women, which means they don't have to be incredibly progressive, but some are and there's no reason why we couldn't take advantage of their resources to promote some progressive women. In fact, I'm sure they'd like that because it would make the women more viable. It won't work for men or, as I said, third parties, but it is one means of getting more progressives in the pipeline. Here's a link on the program to develop state and local politicians.
It might be fun to try this ourselves via a PB 2.0 project
$500 would mean a lot in a school district -- though dare I saw that zoning boards are also important.
It would be a tiny little rifleshot, but we might learn something, it would be a good story, and we might have fun.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
that would be way cool
we'd have to do some heavy-duty vetting, to make sure they're truly progressives, and i'd prefer my money go to independents. we definitely need more people like bernie sanders.
lefties
All the points you make about Reed are valid, which is why I wish I knew more about Sanders first race for mayor, for that is clearly the model.
As for traning, it might be possible to use the resources of the Wellstone project for such a purpose.
Lefties don't have anything like fundamentalist churches to tap into. In fact, the lack of basic precinct captian skills is one of the things that is killing the left in this country. To my way of thinking it is even a greater problem than lack of funding.
Again, that points to why it is necessary to go local, way local. If you had a lefty candidate with his/her own network, be it teachers, environmental group, or even garden club, anything that provides a network of 30-40 volunteers, that could easily be enough in a low turnout election. That is why looking at the federal level makes no sense for third parties, unless you had someone that was both independently wealthy and politically skilled.
Vermont is unusual
Vermont is a very small place. It is also remarkably honest. My brother, a Vermonter, tells the story of the Republican candidates for the US Senate a few years ago. According to him, there was a guy from out of state who owned a summer house in Vermont and changed his residence shortly before he entered the race. His well funded campaign was making some headway until he came to the debate. Each candidate got to ask the others questions. The second place candidate (I understand he was a farmer) made the case that out-of-stater didn't know much about Vermont by limiting his questions to how to pronounce various Vermont town names, which he spelled. It proved the carpetbagger's undoing. When the Republican party nominated the farmer, his acceptance speach was short. He accepted and then said, vote for Leahey, I know I will.
I remember hearing about that election
It seems to me that Leahey said something about thinking he would have to run against someone with bottomless pockets and woundup running against someone with holes in his pockets.
I went to school in Vermont, it certainly has a unique political culture, but that does not mean we can't win third party victories elsewhere, you just need the right combination of circumstances.