{news} 2010: Third party time?

[Tim McKee]

*OpEdNews*

Original Content at
http://www.opednews.com/articles/2010-Third-Party-Time-for-by-Howie-Hawkins-100101-972.html
------------------------------

*January 1, 2010*

*2010: Third Party Time for Progressives and Independents?*

*By Howie Hawkins*

December opened up with another escalation in Afghanistan. Then there was
the sabotage of binding carbon reductions in Copenhagen. On Christmas Eve,
there was the Insurance Company Entitlement Act masquerading as health care
reform.

By the end of the month a sharp debate had broken out in the progressive
media and blogosphere. The number of progressives airing their nagging
doubts about the wisdom of putting all their eggs in the basket of the
Democrats reached a critical mass.

It is not enough to say that Obama and the Democrats have betrayed
progressives, or that, as always, the path to change begins with grassroots
mobilization. A critical part of the solution is a progressive third party.
Without the political independence of progressives, both major parties
ignore progressives who are left holding their nose and voting for the
Democrats as the lesser evil.

All the doubts in the back of progressives' minds are coming into sharp
focus. The recycled Bushies and Clintonites appointed by the administration.
The trillions for war and Wall Street while unemployment, foreclosures, and
economic stagnation deepened. Single payer "off the table." Card check union
recognition abandoned. Complicity in Bush-era war crimes by refusing to
"look back" and prosecute. New crimes committed with the continuation of
extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, torture by proxy, targeted
assassinations, indefinite detention, habeas suspension, state secrets,
military commissions, and warrantless wiretapping. Tacit support for the
Honduran military coup. "Secret" wars in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. The
list goes on.

We shouldn't be surprised. History shows that for more than a century the
Democrats' role in the two-party system of corporate rule has been to
co-opt, absorb, weaken, and defeat movements for progressive change, as the
late Peter Miguel
Camejo<http://www.amazon.com/North-Star-Memoir-Peter-Camejo/dp/1931859922/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262302407&sr=1-1>laid
out in his 2004 Avocado
Declaration <http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/9238>. Right now, the
evidence for this corporate function of the Democratic Party is as stark as
it has ever been. The Democrats swept the election and the corporate agenda
swept the Congress.

Most progressives spent the 2000s working to put the Democrats back in
charge of Congress and the White House. They can't blame the Republicans
now. The Democrats have the power. Progressive Democrats got what they
wished for, but what do they have to show for it? It's a year later and
their mandate for change is fast eroding. Democratic politicians and
progressive leaders were merely cheerleaders who never made demands and
backed them up with action. The Democrats' corporate backers weren't so
naïve. They demanded and received their IOUs.

The Democrats are pursuing corporatist policies across the board, using big
government to subsidize big business in return for big campaign
contributions. It's just a rebranding as Democratic of Republican policies
of corporate welfare for the rich, which is supposed to "trickle down" as
jobs and income for working people, but never does. Even before the
election, it was the Democratic leadership in Congress, with Obama's
outspoken support, who pushed through the $700 billion TARP bailout for Wall
Street just days after it was at first defeated in the face of popular
outrage.

The Democrats are not only alienating voters on the Left, but also
independents in the Center. Polls now indicate that these independents are
swinging back to the Republicans as the lesser evil because their small
government rhetoric at least promises to cut taxes. Many voters realize they
are being ripped off by both major parties. They correctly understand that
Democratic power brokers don't look out for the little guys anymore than
Republicans do. If the Left doesn't offer a progressive alternative to the
Democratic corporate liberals, the Republican corporate conservatives will
be the only alternative that angry voters will have in 2010 to get back at
the party in power.

It could have been different. When the Democrats swept into power, they had
a mandate for bold progressive change. They could have enacted, with broad
Center-to-Left popular support, a Green New Deal to address the interrelated
crises of energy, climate, and economic depression. Instead of bailing out
the big banks and automakers, they could have nationalized them on the cheap
when they were insolvent. Public banks could have then restructured millions
of mortgages on affordable, long-term, fixed-rate terms for homeowners
facing foreclosure. The automakers could have been retrofitted to produce
electric cars, mass transit, wind turbines, and solar panels just as the
federal government had them make tanks, trucks, and airplanes for World War
II. With investments from public banks and federal infrastructure spending
guaranteeing a market for a green reconstruction of the nation's energy and
transportation systems, US manufacturing, jobs, and the whole economy could
have been renewed on a sustainable basis.

It could have been different. But what to do now?

Some progressives are rallying to the defense of the Democrats, defending
the indefensible as the lesser evil to Republican reaction. They want to
"save the Obama Presidency" no matter what he does. This approach will only
discredit the Left and demoralize its voters, who will sit out the 2010
elections in large numbers. It will also lose much of the independent
Center, which will swing back to the Republicans if only in disgust and
protest.

Other progressives say it's time to challenge conservative Democrats in the
primaries. But it was the progressive Democrats in office who never planted
their flag or refused to compromise any further while Obama and the
Democratic leadership in Congress made one concession after another to
Republicans and Blue Dogs on the stimulus bill, health care, labor law
reform, global warming, and the wars. Progressive Democratic politicians
went along with the concessions because they know, as well as conservative
Democrats know, that the Left has nowhere else to go with their votes.

Another school of progressives says it is time to build protest movements
that can make the Democrats live up to their reform promises, citing how the
labor movement pushed through New Deal reforms in the 1930s. These
progressives forget that the impact of the labor movement was multiplied
tremendously by the election of many third party progressives as
Representatives, Senators, and Governors. By early 1935, Floyd Olson, the
Farmer-Labor Governor of Minnesota, Robert La Follette, Jr., the Progressive
Governor of Wisconsin, and Huey Long, the "Share Our Wealth" Democratic
Senator from Louisiana, were all potentially powerful populist third party
presidential candidates. Democratic National Committee polling found such an
electoral challenge might cost Franklin Roosevelt the election in 1936. This
third party electoral threat played a major role in instigating the more
progressive Second New Deal of 1935. As the Works Progress Administration,
the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act were enacted
that year, the third party movement subsided.

No doubt social movements and protest demonstrations are needed. But without
an independent progressive electoral alternative, the Democrats know they
can take the votes of progressive social movements for granted. Witness the
failure of the massive anti Iraq war demonstrations in early 2003 to move
the Democrats to take an antiwar stand. The Democrats voted funding for
Bush's war throughout three national election cycles because they knew the
peace movement would support them anyway.

What is missing is the political independence of progressives. Progressives
need to build independent social movements, not movements dependent on
electing and lobbying Democrats. And the independent social movements need
their own party to exercise their own independent power. With a powerful
party on the Left, the Democrats will no longer be able to take progressive
movements and votes for granted. The Left will be able to speak directly to
the people with its own voice, for its own program, on its own power,
without having their progressive demands mistranslated and watered down by
Democratic politicians who appeal to their Right while they count on their
captive voters on the Left.

A strong Left party would also win over many independents in the Center, the
largest bloc of voters. Polling shows these independents would prefer a
Green New Deal of public jobs, health care, and enterprise to the Democrats'
tribute payments to big business and the Republicans' domestic spending
cutbacks that will devastate public services and worsen the interrelated
crises of energy, climate, and economy.

It is time for progressives to face the reality of a two-party system of
corporate rule where competing coalitions of corporate investors in the
political process fundamentally agree on a bipartisan consensus for empire
abroad and anti-worker policies at home. Democrats and Republicans limit
their advertised competition mainly to liberal vs. conservative approaches
to cultural issues. The Democrats are more beholden to campaign
contributions from Big FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) than they are
to their voters. The main financial base of the Republicans is Big Fossil
(Coal, Oil, Gas), hence their anti-scientific denial of climate change. When
Big FIRE vs. Big Fossil dominates politics, the ordinary people get screwed.


The best way to fight the Right is to build an independent party of the
Left. The Right we have to fight is the corporatist bi-partisan consensus
for empire and exploitation. The corporate bosses have two parties. It is
time that working people built one of their own.

Yes, the American electoral system of winner takes all in single member
districts is stacked against third parties. But that system did not stop
progressive third parties from realigning the party systems in Mexico and
New Zealand to the point where they could institute more democratic
electoral systems based on proportional representation. Almost all of the
few remaining countries that don't have proportional representation have
still been able to create major third parties, notably Canada and the UK.
Because these countries have independent leftwing parties based on labor and
other progressive movements, they have won standards of workers' rights,
public services, social welfare, corporate regulation, environmental
protection, and defense-oriented militaries that are far more progressive
than US standards.

While the electoral system presents serious obstacles, the far bigger
obstacle in the US has been the unwavering commitment of the leaders of
labor, peace, and environmental organizations to the Democrats who
consistently betray their progressive goals. We can end these self-inflicted
defeats through independent political action. It is the grassroots
organizers and activists who will have to lead the break out. Most of the
leadership and staff of these organizations are too tied to Democratic
politicians and operatives through patronage, grants, jobs, and their social
class, status, and networks.

The Green Party has been organizing toward an independent progressive
alternative for years. The Greens have won hundreds of local elections
throughout the country in recent years, almost a third of those they enter.
Their percentage of votes in state and national legislative elections has
steadily climbed, often to double digits. These results indicate the
potential. But it will not be realized until a critical mass of progressive
organizers and activist break with the Democrats.

The Democratic Party has been the graveyard for every broad progressive
movement since the Populists more than a century ago. 2010 should be the
year when progressive movements finally break their dependence on the
corporate-sponsored Democrats and present their programs directly to the
voters through their own independent candidates and party.

Let's make the choice in 2010 between a Green New Deal and the corporatism
of the two old parties.

______________

Howie Hawkins is a Teamster who unloads trucks at UPS in Syracuse, New York
and the editor of *Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy
Debate*<http://www.amazon.com/Independent-Politics-Green-Strategy-Debate/dp/1931859302/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262302041&sr=8-10>.
He was the 2006 New York Green Party candidate for US Senate and is
exploring a run for the Green Party's nomination for Governor in 2010.

**
**




Author's Website: www.howiehawkins.org

Author's Bio: Howie Hawkins is a Teamster who unloads trucks at UPS in
Syracuse, New York. He has been an organizer in peace, justice, labor, and
the environmental movements since the late 1960s and was a co-founder of the
Green Party in the United States. His articles on politics, economics, and
environmental issues have appeared in Against the Current, Green Politics,
International Socialist Review, New Politics, Peace and Democracy News, Z
Magazine, and other publications. He is the editor of Independent Politics:
The Green Party Strategy Debate (Haymarket, 2006).

Back <javascript:back(1)>


-- 
*************************************************
Tim McKee -National Committee of the Green Party for the state of
Connecticut, New Britain,CT
(860)778-1304 Cell- best way to reach me
(860) 505-8454 (H)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/private/ctgp-news/attachments/20100108/d9ea099e/attachment.html>