@Bollox Ref I'm so glad we have Walz as governor. I can't imagine how bad off we'd be with Pawlenty or some other republican asshole as governor. Other states should look to us and see what we're doing because it's fucking working.

I'd vote for Minnesota to join Canada for universal health care and a semblance of sanity.

@Bollox Ref

Than the rest of ‘murica. Maybe we can join them.

I'd vote for Minnesota to join Canada for universal health care and a semblance of sanity.

@Cassiodorus in 2016. The fraudulent election results showed them at 1% despite us having a massive influx of voters after demexit.

A third party will only work if you are willing to destroy the voting machines in their warehouses.

is an established party, having been in the United States since 1990. There was an initial split in national organization between the GPUSA and the ASGP, two competing national organizations, which was "resolved" at a convention in Carbondale Illinois with the formation of the GPUS in 2001. There was a splinter group from the GPUSA, based in St. Louis, that refused the decision of the Carbondale convention -- they no longer have any credible claim to party status with the FEC.

The Green Party took a big hit when the group that ran the national convention in Milwaukee in 2004 refused to put Ralph Nader on the national ballot, choosing instead to put David Cobb on the ballot out of a wish to avoid disturbing John Kerry's Presidential bid. Cobb was a lawyer from Texas who became a lawyer from Humboldt County, California. He later became Jill Stein's campaign manager. This 2004 decision cost the Green Party ballot status in a fair number of states.

The Green Party's main problem as a party, these days, is that it has streamlined itself as an eternally minor party. None of its Presidential primaries are binding; they're all beauty contests, with the final decision resting in the hands of whomever shows up at the national convention, as manipulated by the party organizers. In other words, said decision rests in the hands of whomever has money to burn to go to wherever the convention is, in order to pick someone who is basically there to preserve the Party's ballot-status claims. This year it's July in Detroit.

The criticisms of the Green Party that it needs to stop running Presidential candidates are unfounded, though. The Green Party needs to run Presidential candidates each cycle to maintain ballot status in a number of states. The Green Party is only strong in California; ballot status in the other states is continually up for grabs.

The Green Party recently endorsed ecosocialism. This is a good thing. We need a national conversation about what ecosocialism might be. I may be a Green again, if I have nowhere else to go.

@The Voice In the Wilderness

America has a fun way of expressing outright the tendencies that other countries consider too frightful to state in public. So, for instance, in that most American of documents, the Confederate Constitution:

3) The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

There it is, folks, "negro slavery," an expedient in the age before mechanized cotton harvesting, written into a founding document as an Eternal Principle. It was eternal enough for the South to sacrifice 490,000-plus lives and a few decades of economic prosperity just so they could boast about it for a couple of years with a Constitution of their own.

Here in America we like our principles eternal, thank you very much. "The economy," for instance, is something we're supposed to die for. So when we get those hundred-thousand-plus deaths because we couldn't create a decent COVID-19 policy, we can console ourselves that at least it was a sacred cause. And with tears in our eyes, we can proclaim solemnly that "at least she/ he died so the ruling elites could look good as they crushed our civil liberties and left us destitute."

I'd like to see a political party in opposition to all that. Let's call it the George Carlin party. It can take its inspiration from this routine:

DSA seems to be focused on capturing the (D) Party. IMHO, it will be the other way around.
If a brand new party was started I prefer "Progressive Party" and choose the Bull Moose as symbol, resurrecting TR's independent bid. It has a good fqace to the general public. "People's Party" frankly sounds too Communist. I know there are people here who like Communism, but it is overwhelmingly rejected by the American people. "American Party" might be good too, evoking the rebuilding of American industry and infrastructure.
Frankly, a lot of the bad-mouthing of the USA here will not go down well with the public.
I, myself, have chosen to view it as slipshod referral to the Washington elite, particular Neoliberal/Neocon policies, and/or Imperialism.
That was a good point upstream about needing a Presidential candidate to have ballot access, but although a POTUS candidate is needed, the emphasis should be on Congress. Even a good sized minority is a bloc that must be negotiated with. Compromise instead of purity. Be a "big tent". Just not so big that principles get lost.

Most US Third Parties were focused on single issues. That only wins the votes of purists. You neeed to be practical and widen the appeal.

@ovals49 @ovals49
who said "Libertarians are republicans who want to smoke dope and get layed."
Maybe there's even a place for them in an increasingly racist and religious Republican Party.

EDIT: "not even"

The People’s Party looks a bit like a Democratic Party cutout.

Attract stellar independents and pull progressive organizations and influencers out of the Democratic Party into a party that truly supports them.

A true and viable people’s party needs to draw from D’s, I’s and R’s. We need a third party that is neither Left or Right, but simply one that serves the essential basic needs of actual people rather than billionaires and corporate “virtual people”. Joining the disaffected and neglected, both left and right adds up to a win-win for both. Otherwise we’ll simply have Pedigreed Sheepdoogs for the next hundred years.

All we need to start with is counteracting decades of identity politics divisive issues and building on our common interests.

@ovals49 The problem with such a formulation is that the Right currently in power, in fact in power for the past forty years, does not really give two hoots about the "essential basic needs of actual people." Ruling doctrine today dictates that ordinary people are to be sacrificed upon the altar of the "free market," and the Right has claimed that ground since Nixon and Kissinger destroyed democracy in Chile and since Reagan and Abrams destroyed the Nicaraguan economy.

Perhaps the "Left" today does not care about the "essential basic needs of actual people," either, but that's another issue.

The People’s Party looks a bit like a Democratic Party cutout.

Attract stellar independents and pull progressive organizations and influencers out of the Democratic Party into a party that truly supports them.

A true and viable people’s party needs to draw from D’s, I’s and R’s. We need a third party that is neither Left or Right, but simply one that serves the essential basic needs of actual people rather than billionaires and corporate “virtual people”. Joining the disaffected and neglected, both left and right adds up to a win-win for both. Otherwise we’ll simply have Pedigreed Sheepdoogs for the next hundred years.

All we need to start with is counteracting decades of identity politics divisive issues and building on our common interests.