Why 3rd parties can't win
Donald Trump and his supporters have stoked rumors that he may run as a third-party candidate for president in 2024 if he fails to win the Republican nomination. However, because of the way the Democratic and Republican Parties have rigged state election laws, this was an empty threat.
sore-loser laws in 28 states do indeed apply to presidential candidates and that if a candidate fails to win the Republican nomination, sore-loser laws will prevent access to the general election ballot in those states. This includes 20 states that Trump won in either 2016 or 2020 which total 225 electoral votes—more than 83% of the electoral votes needed for a majority.
Republicans like to talk about freedom. Democrats like to talk about democracy. Neither of them walk the walk.
For the first time since the 1940's New Yorkers will only have two choices for governor.
The paucity of options is largely due to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who championed changes in election law two years ago that made it far more difficult for third parties to get on the ballot. The changes to ballot access law tripled the number of voter signatures required for groups to get on the November ballot and forced political parties to qualify every two years instead of four. The steep climb to get on the ballot has prompted legal challenges, including one being heard this week in State Supreme Court in Albany, in a lawsuit filed by the Libertarian Party. The party’s nominee for governor, Larry Sharpe, argued that the rules are so tough that only the entrenched and connected can earn the right to appear on a ballot in New York.
Both parties have worked hard at keeping third parties off the ballot, and it's not just true for Blue States.
The Texas Republican Party sued to get 40 Libertarians kicked off the ballot in 2020 and sued again to get another 23 Libertarian candidates off the ballot in 2022.
However, it's the Democrats that have been the most hostile to democracy.
The Green Party already doesn't exist in nine states, and is not on the ballot in 19 states, but that's not enough.
In 2018 the Democrats managed to get the Greens kicked off the ballot in Montana. So the Democrats doubled-down in 2020 starting in Wisconsin.
A Democratic Party spokesperson filed a challenge against the Green Party petitions, claiming the change of address by Walker invalidated some of the petitions. The hearing on the challenge before the state Elections Commission had all the trappings of a kangaroo court. The attorney for the Democratic challenger huddled with the Democratic chair of the Elections Commission to restrict the testimony of Green Party attorneys.
The Democratic challenge was upheld by the Commission and the signatures on those petitions were invalidated — conveniently enough to keep the Greens off the ballot.
...
In Pennsylvania, the Democrats went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to remove Hawkins/Walker from the ballot. They were victorious on the flimsy technicality that the Greens did not submit signed filing papers in person but mailed them in.
You might be aware of the dirty tricks the Democratic Party in North Carolina has been using to get the Green Party off the ballot this year, but the Dems have been waging war on democracy for longer than that.
People are upset that the North Carolina Dems got copies of the Green Party petitions and went to signers and encouraged people to remove their signatures. But in fact that is exactly what the Dems did in 2020 to get the Green Party kicked off the ballot in Montana again!
So far the Libertarian Party has been most successful third party at surviving this onslaught, but they have their own self-inflicted problem. While Libertarians have long been in perfect agreement with the GOP on economic issues, they have at least separated themselves from the GOP on the culture war issues.
Libertarians have a long history of describing themselves as fiscal conservatives who are social liberals and arguing that the War on Drugs and the evangelical Christian Right have been terrible for the Republican Party and terrible for the conservative movement.
At least that was until recently. Now the Libertarian Party has become the MAGA wing of the GOP.
In July 28, 2017, Jeff Deist, the president of the Mises Institute, named for libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises, published a blog post arguing that “blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.” The phrase “blood and soil” already had an unmistakable fascist overtone—but it took on an even more gruesome connotation two weeks after the post during the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally of 2017, where an anti-racist protester was killed. The white supremacists who tried to dominate the streets of Charlottesville chanted “blood and soil.” Several of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally identified as libertarians. In the wake of that event, Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian Party, signed an open letter warning of the dangers of fascism. Arvin Vohra, vice chair of the Libertarian Party, wrote a post arguing that the “Mises Institute has been turned into a sales funnel for the White Nationalist branch of the Alt Right.” The ensuing arguments over “blood and soil” lead to the creation of a Mises Caucus, which aimed to overthrow the pragmatic Gary Johnson wing of the party and adopt the incendiary culture war politics of the hard right.
...
On May 29, at the Libertarian Party Convention in Reno, McArdle won the title of chair of the party’s national committee. This was a decisive victory for the Mises Caucus, which received the vote of 69 percent of delegates. The Mises Caucus is now the undisputed ruling faction of the party.
"Taking the Libertarian Party out as a competitive force will help consolidate the right-wing vote around the Republican Party."
- Jeet Heer
The party establishment has sensed it's weakness and now is looking to give the coup de grâce to the upstarts.
It seems fitting that this killing blow will be delivered by the leadership of the progressive wing of the party.
A pack of progressive candidates have crashed this year’s Democratic primaries, hoping to unseat incumbents and push the party to the left. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the fifth-ranking Democrat in the House, has other plans. Jeffries and two of his House Democrat allies on Wednesday rolled out the first slate of endorsements from Team Blue PAC, a political action committee intended to protect incumbents from intraparty attacks.
A PAC to protect incumbents during primaries is always controversial, but this one has compromised ethics far beyond that.
The lawmakers united in an effort to provide resources to the increasing number of House Democrats who face primary challenges — in particular, from the left. That circumstance faces the five incumbents who received endorsements on Wednesday: Reps. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.), and Dina Titus (D-Nev.). Davis and Maloney face opponents backed by Justice Democrats; Brown faces a rematch from Bernie Sanders ally Nina Turner, who had the support of the left-wing group during a special election to fill the seat last year...
he insists the PAC’s efforts are not strictly a matter of ideology: Maloney is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, just like he is. Its purpose, Jeffries says, is to protect incumbents’ records from “being distorted” by “the hard-left.” He uses the term to separate himself from his detractors, who see actions like these endorsements as evidence he’s not on their side. “Why are members of the hard-left targeting progressive members of Congress, and then trying to act as though they’re engaging in some ideological contest against the rest of us?” Jeffries says. (It’s worth noting, of course, that Team Blue PAC isn’t defending any incumbents from challenges from the right.)
Once again the Dems have proven that they would rather lose to the right, than win with the left. The only difference this time is that the Progressive Caucus is proving it.
This is clearly entrenched corruption protecting itself from left-wing reform efforts, but just in case this was clear enough to see just follow the money.
There’s also the matter of corporate campaign funding, which all of the Team Blue PAC-endorsed candidates accept. The PAC itself is primarily financed through corporate PAC money, and I asked Jeffries whether that fact proves his detractors’ point.
Comments
Be sure to vote for the right money party.
You wouldn't want to elect the other money party, would you?
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
We all lose
in this miserable excuse for a "Democracy". Voting does nothing as it rigged for the house. Who want's to take them on and get killed? Like John? They keep the middle class complacent me included as who in the hell 'wants the Spanish inquisition'. What battle? There is none. People let them rip as long as they don't mess with their life styles. "Living in the heart of the country".
Don’t forget super delegates
Your candidate might get 80% of the votes, but super delegates can negate that if they have given their delegate to someone else. Bernie won big in Virginia, IIRC, but Hillary got to notch the win because of them. And then there are those back rooms filled with smoke…. Plus all the dark money that rich people can throw to their candidates. But go ahead and keep voting in this rigged system if that floats your boat.
Also remember that Joe Lieberman ran 3rd party and won, but then lots of democrat big wigs threw their support behind him and lo and behold he was re-elected.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
when Lieberman lost...
Bill Clinton went on TV and chuckled "what's wrong with TWO Democrats running?" He thought it was funny. When India Walton won the Buffalo Dem primary and the DC Dems then backed a write-in campaign to beat her, Jim Clyburn said to her supporters "you can't win every time".
Well, Bill, I was happy to vote for Jill Stein in 2016 because what's wrong with TWO women running? And Jim, nice work on keeping the House.
Of course both illustrate how rigged it is. I know some hate Dems more than Repubs because Dems pretend to be leftish but it's easily seen through. Forget the pretense, look at the reality and be disgusted at both parties equally.
Yep absolutely this
We have seen the same play over and over where when democrats are in power the republicans can mysteriously block their agenda, but when it’s republicans who are in power the democrats are helpless to stop theirs. Now that democrats hold the senate and presidency and republicans only the house, republicans are in charge again and democrats are helpless to stop them. Cuts to social security and Medicare you say? Let’s see if democrats stop them.
I’m sorry that it took me so long to see Clinton for what he really was…a very bad president that attacked the working class and the poor. Welfare reform and NAFTA couldn’t get passed during Bush 1 term because of the dem base, but as usual the base stopped caring about them when democrats were in power.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Exactly
Ever notice the dems just sort of stroll along putting the campaign promises off 'till later? Because, you know there's more pressing issues (fill in blank). But when they lose one branch in an election then NOWS the time to help out the little people....but well, the republicans won't let them, it's all DOA.
Yup
Just like when Pelosi sent McConnell 400 bills that she knew wouldn’t pass because they went into his graveyard file, but once democrats got the senate back she forgot all about them. But boy did McConnell raise the ire of the shitlibs who then forgot all about those great bills. How many times has this game been played too?
Both Biden and Obama promised to pass abortion rights if they got in power and both immediately said that it wasn’t their priority. Just like that $2,000 Biden promised us only to reduce it by $600.
I will send $2,000 IF the 2 senators win their seats. Period. There was no qualifying this with minus what Trump already sent y’all. But shitlibs came out in droves and defended him. As they usually do.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
yeah man
yeah it seems like the Democratic establishment HATES a democratic democracy, and the Republicans based on actions, must hate the republic! These are the choices!?!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Again, The Question:
What. Are we. To do?
This is UNACCEPTABLE.
I was raised to be a FREE CITIZEN of a democratic-republic, nothing less!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Nah.
The US has always been an oligarchy. Until 1861 the southern 50-60 percent of the US was a prison camp, and the world's primary circuit of capital stretched from the southern cotton plantations through the northern industrial and marine complex to the clothing factories of central England. Later capitalism was an appropriation of the "frontier" (i.e. "prosperity" by stealing land from native peoples, and then later through corporate imperialism) to enrich robber barons. Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons and Kees van der Pijl's The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class tell that history.
For the past century and a half America has been ruled by two parties: the Democrats, representing old money, and the Republicans, representing new money. The exception to this pattern is in the stretch of country from Texas to South Carolina after 1968, where the Republicans also represented old money. And, like I said sarcastically in the comment above, be sure to vote for one money party because you wouldn't want to elect the other one.
The appropriation of Karl Marx by the 20th-century experts in coup d'etat turned out to be of minimal consequence. Marx's genius, and that of his intellectual posterity, was in being able explain how, under capitalism, "democracy" was mere class rule (which is to say, oligarchy). The economic end of it was explained in volume 1 of Capital, and the political end shows up in works like The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
The knock on dictatorship has been that, to keep dictatorship going, the entire society has to be reorganized to enact the will of the dictator and to defend him against contenders. George Orwell thought this was to be accomplished through perpetual warfare, which is why 1984 was written. (And then, of course, there's the problem of the personality of the dictator.) Oligarchy avoids many of the perils of dictatorship, insofar as the common people need merely to be perpetually fooled (which is what capitalism is for) and the oligarchs need merely to make arrangements with other oligarchs so as to hold onto a portion of power. (This is ultimately what the Federalist Papers are about.)
Of course, if the oligarchs cannot agree, what you get is stuff like today's Ukraine.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
You're entirely missing the point
That was never the "social contract" I was offered, nor how I was raised to view as acceptable treatment of myself or others. The same goes for millions upon millions, which is why we are angry.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Were you offered a social contract?
Here's a thought. Sign up to teach a "basics" course at your local community college. On the off-chance you are actually hired to teach the course (the market for teachers having produced gobs of teachers and very few paying positions), ask your students -- day one of week one -- this question: "what's a social contract?"
Maybe if you repeated the experiment a dozen or so times you might get two or three credible responses. The "social contract" discussion might have held anyone's attention back in the Golden Age of Capitalism, in which the hopes of the world's youth were pinned on the continuation of that age. Today, the point of knowledge is money, and, lacking marketable knowledge, the hopes of the youth are -- at best -- pinned upon the idea that their parents will eventually die and they will inherit the proceeds from the sale of their parents' real estate holdings. So, yeah, nobody knows what a social contract is. Why should they care?
As for politics, in America politics is for old people. The idea that the social contract mattered to everyone was -- also -- predicted upon same said Golden Age of Capitalism. I remember it -- I was born in 1961. The universities were expanding and the Baby Boom was in full swing. I'm sure Clark Kerr, the universities' primary advocate of that era, wanted all of the nice college froshes of his time to know what the social contract was.
At any rate, in the vastly prior age in which the social contract also mattered, the social contract was a contract between the capitalists -- uniformly white, male, and property-holding -- and their sovereigns. If you were non-male, you were there to produce babies, and if you were non-white, well, isn't that really what John Locke was about? See, this is why the remaining scholars of today are terrified by the originalism that is the reigning philosophy of today's Supreme Court. What was originally there did not paint a pretty picture.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
You confuse me.
Sometimes, you seem pretty on the nose; other times, you seem like someone I disagree with, but in a reasonable way; then there are the times, frankly, you sound more than anything else like one of the (as you call them) "Nice Liberals With Big Egos" who fall in the 'Howard Zinn at his worst' mold and just gripe from the ivory tower.
How is what you're saying useful?
Surely you know the reality you speak of is not the only one? It's certainly not the one with a future; I'm talking about the one that does. That kind of 'political monotheism'* was one of the biggest red flags to alienate me from DailyKos.
RE the continued relevance of "the social contract" concept: I have heard it invoked. True enough, the most prominent occasion of such that comes to mind was from an idiot, and for the wrong reasons, but the upside of that is that if she was bringing it up, and at least with adequate demonstration of knowing what it means, that does make the case stronger for its continuing to penetrate even down the hoi palloi.
---
'*' = It has long been a hobby-horse of mine that imperialist monotheism has always been one of the most underrecognized scourges upon the world, and the habit of Marxists in particular to dismiss the influence of religious ideology upon the world as so much interchangeable frippery a HUGE error - no doubt William Barr and Mike Pence start strutting around with huge, divinely-sanctioned, 3-hour boners any time they hear outlets like The Atlantic claim that "religion suddenly doesn't matter in America anymore"!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Okay
Let's start with this:
The critique of the nice liberals with the big egos was focused upon one, and only one, thing. It was this: that "the Left" was going to save us from Trump by voting for Biden. Nothing I have said been anywhere in the realm of "nice liberal with big ego."
First off, we need to retire the notion that we live in a democracy. This diary goes a long way toward that goal. Politics has been reduced to voting, and voting reduced toward "lesser of two evils" voting. As a result, things have getting worse at all levels for quite some time, but now it's at a rapidly accelerating rate, and so time to go back and to open up politics again.
Secondly, we need to redeem knowledge from its heat-death in the utopia of money. The headline of a recent issue of the New Yorker magazine was: "The End of the English Major." As the article explains, it's a lot more than the English major that is dying in today's universities. It's the history major, the sociology major, the "do something other than kiss the feet of the capitalists" majors, all of them. To understate it broadly, the social fabric is not going to be preserved by an army of college graduates with degrees in Medical Billing and Coding, yet this is nonetheless what said social fabric is getting.
The complaint about the social contract was maybe something appropriate to pitch to the public four decades ago with Reagan. We are at the point now of having to build a new civilization in anticipation of the collapse of this one, and we aren't really doing anything toward that goal but waiting for the collapse to happen. Maybe you can come up with a meaning for "social contract" that won't become some sort of empty promise by the oligarchs we didn't choose to feed and house us while we live our lives like the characters Stan and Charmaine in "The Heart Goes Last." I don't know; it doesn't seem likely when we are as prostrate as we are. We need to start working for a society not ruled by an oligarchy, and the quickest way to get such a society will be through institutions of what was once called "dual power."
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Your last 3 paragraphs
pretty much says it all. We are in a perverse situation. Most of the wealth is concentrated in a small number of entities. They do not have to spend much of it to purchase whatever they want. Politicians, Twitter, Hawaii...whatever. I always thought one way to slow them down was to stop purchasing their shit whenever possible. Buy used, keep the clunker going on forever, live cheap. Deny them the opportunity to make a profit by dropping out.
But that is the lifestyle that is now being imposed on us. They don't need money circulating to stay wealthy. They already possess most of it. That just makes us surplus mouths to feed, a burden. Voting for the lesser of two evils is the best we're going to get because it's still a requirement of an election. Once they do away with that, we're on our own.
Well, here we are
The problem is that all the labels have been switched. This is America the corporation. We all work for and shop at the company store. Freedom is a limited choice menu for us hourly and low salary 99%. The big question used to be "what are we going to do about it?", today it's what can, will, they allow us to do about it.
NO. The question is the same as it ever was.
— Jean-Paul Sartre
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
If, a big if
IF Bernie Sanders did anything, it was make it clear to millions of people how the system is rigged, and how rigged the system is. He did it twice, it should be clear to all. Tulsi Gabbard helped show as well, and reinforced the message loud and clear. 'NO outsiders allowed' in the Democratic version of democracy.
I see Citizens United, dark money, PACS, and corporations being people as being hurdles that must be cleared to actually fix anything. As all that evil owns the media and damn near controls the message. It was their loss of control as evidenced by the most hated woman in America losing to the biggest clown, that has them flipping out trying to regain that control and their former glory now.
The forecast is not that bright.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Hi dystopian
Bernie's voice is still loud and clear to me, despite the ways he has been compromised, and also fails in ways.
I take solace in whatever brightness we're afforded.