This document is aimed at people who haven't yet heard about the NP. It explains the basic NP idea and strategy, and asks you to get on board.
We recognize that third parties in the U.S., because of the exceptional barriers thrown up by our "winner take all" electoral system, are usually marginal or short-lived. In this system, third parties are usually scoffed at as "wasted" votes, or as "spoilers." More often than not, third parties support candidates without any serious chance of winning, and risk splitting the very population they aim to unite (in our case, progressives) with perverse results. We believe, however, that we have a strategy that can reduce the barriers problem.
A different kind of third party: one that can win
In concept, the strategy may be thought of as a cross-between the "party within a party" approach favored by some Democratic Party activists and the "plague on both your houses" approach of conventional third parties. It favors independent politics, but only in circumstances where we have the credible capacity to succeed, and inter-party coalitions where we do not. In practice, the strategy is to start from positions of real strength; to build slowly but steadily from lower to higher levels of elective office; to combine electoral work throughout with non-electoral work; and, where we do not yet have the strength to elect candidates on our own, to use the tactic of "fusion," or the endorsement on our line of progressive candidates also running on the line of (almost always) the Democratic Party. Votes for such candidates on our line would count toward their election total, so we wouldn't be "spoiling" anything. And the votes would really count, in the sense of being votes for someone with a chance to win, thus removing the "wasted vote" problem.
Start local. Build for the long-term. Combine electoral work with non-electoral work. Don't waste people's votes. Don't be spoilers. Do it all while promoting a more openly democratic vision of how government in the United States should be run. The idea of the New Party is to develop a sensible electoral alternative to the major parties, defined as an alternative that will consistently improve things and that won't waste people's time.
All third parties face an initial hump of credibility. Most never get over it. But we think a disciplined and inventive pursuit of this mixed electoral strategy -- building from the bottom-up with our own candidates, while using fusion to declare our convictions and attract progressive votes in races where we cannot yet mount our own credible challengers -- can in fact get us over that hump, and thus succeed where other third party efforts have failed.
In outlining this idea we proceed in three steps. First we say something about our general motivations for undertaking the NP effort. Second, we say something more particular about the concept, program, and structure of the NP. Third, we ask if the effort is really feasible, a question that, we can tell you in advance, the involvement of people like yourself will decide.
And, looking beyond the existing progressive community, why not enter electoral politics directly? We believe that millions of Americans who share our progressive convictions are not now being reached by progressive groups. One reason is that they are simply so pressed with the pressures of work, or the competing demands of work and family, that they don't have time for much political action. In providing some structure for political activity, including the very low-cost activity of voting, a political party can help reach these people and make our real numbers known. It will be a visible symbol for a certain set of commitments, and will harness those commitments to a sort of political action -- voting -- that virtually everyone has the time to do. In a country where "politics" is usually identified with "electoral politics," not having some credible relation to the electoral system makes us marginal. Having an answer makes us strong.
On the one hand, it's apparent that the Democratic Party offers only a devil's bargain of alliance. While it remains the unhappy electoral home of most progressive forces in the U.S., it is dominated by business, or business-backed candidates, or upper middle class liberal elites searching for a candidate acceptable to business. Along with, and closely related to, its business-centeredness, the Democratic Party suffers from two problems that make it an unlikely vehicle for genuinely progressive aspirations. It is organizationally weak, in a way that makes it difficult to hold candidates accountable to campaign promises. And the actual management of the party -- reflected in the way it deploys its resources, develops its program, and selects its candidates -- does not reflect its voting base, which is grossly disorganized.In addition to lacking the interest, the party lacks the internal discipline and external capacity to develop and implement a progressive program.
Such a reading of the Democrats departs from conventional liberal wisdom on the subject. To read current political pundits, the Democratic Party paid close attention to people of ordinary means until it got derailed, sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, on "lifestyle questions" and race. We think this is preposterous. We think so not because questions of race or culture are not important or importantly divisive, but because the Democratic Party never was accountable to those "ordinary" Americans in any meaningful way. It never was popularly organized in a way that made its elites accountable to its mass base of working Americans (so far as we're concerned, everybody who needs to work). And it never was sufficiently powerful in disciplining its own candidates. And when the going got tough, it was never sufficiently rooted in the society to speak reliably for the interests of that base, or to enact the policies needed to advance them.
Consider the state of organized labor, the Democrats' most reliable organized constituency over the past 50 years. While unions were once more powerful within it than they are today, the Democratic Party never was a "labor" party in any meaningful programmatic or organizational sense. Of course, there were (and are) strongly pro-labor Democrats. But the party was never seriously interested in improving the conditions of labor's own organization, or in working to implement those broad features of post-war welfare states -- generic social entitlements, industrial policies, support for very broad worker education and training, support for the worker representation and information necessary to workers having an important say in the organization of work in private firms -- that made up the program of European social democratic parties.
What is true of labor is true of other progressive movements. Working with the Democrats gets you more than working with the Republicans. No question about it. But any progressive movement that allies solely with this party, whose activists work only within this party, does so at peril to its identity and strength.
If working inside the Democratic Party is a problem, however, working outside it, at least in electoral arenas, is no bargain either. The history of third party efforts in the U.S. is pretty grim. More than a thousand third parties have been formed since the emergence of the modern American party system in the 1860s. Only 12 have even captured more than 6 percent of the national vote; none has ever done that in consecutive elections. Third parties have often been influential in "sending a signal" to the major parties. Particularly in the late 19th century, some enjoyed a significant share of electoral success, at least at the regional level. But none has enjoyed enduring success.
Thus, working strictly inside the Democratic Party seems hopeless, and working strictly outside seems hopeless too.
In face of this dilemma, debate among progressives waffles back and forth between "moderate" and "radical" views of the proper relation to the Democrats. Moderates argue that the Democrats are the only (electoral) game in town, and that the best we can do is to try to extract concessions from them. This, moderates argue, is best done through threats of abstention. If the Democrats don't do what we like, we won't vote at all. The problem with this view is that abstention threats are seldom enforced, and are in any case weak punishment. The Democrats can live with progressive voters dropping out of the system; they simply shift further to the right.
Radicals argue that both mainstream parties are useless, observe that real power comes from mobilizing outside the electoral system, and recommend only doing extra-electoral mobilization and organizing. While correct on the need for non-electoral mobilization, we think this view underestimates the actual need for some connection to conventional politics. In brief, unless progressives take up some relation to the electoral process, it will be hard for them to maximize their influence on policy, and hard for others to take them seriously as political actors.
First, we wish to stay in the electoral process, but expand the range of options available to progressive voters. Instead of a simple choice of voting Democratic or abstaining, we wish to develop a credible threat to run our candidates, and the ability to cross-endorse Democratic (or other) candidates on our own ballot line. In certain local areas, we believe, credible independent NP candidacies can be mounted very soon. Building from the bottom up, they can eventually provide a base for more ambitious efforts. In the near term, however, particularly for higher level offices, exercise of the fusion option can be very helpful.
Let's say a good and viable Democrat is running against a terrible Republican for a in a visible and important race in which we don't yet have the capacity to compete. In that situation, cross-endorsement of the Democrat on the NP ballot would be recommended. Instead of asking progressive voters to support someone who cannot win (in effect, to sacrifice prudence to principle), we would simply be asking them to support their favored candidate on a progressive party line. Such a vote might be thought of as a protest vote that counts. It would demonstrate the real dimensions of the progressive vote, without forcing progressive voters to jump off a cliff. At the same time, it would help bootstrap support for our own independent candidates who would more likely be running for lower level offices, at least in the near term.
Fusion also permits us to say to our progressive Democratic friends (and we do have Democratic friends!) that the NP is an effort that they should endorse, not fear. The reason is that good Democrats will be strengthened by our existence. Agood Democrat is a social democrat. This kind of Democrat will likely be endorsed by the NP, strengthening his or her bargaining position against, and likelihood of being nominated over, the "yellow dogs" of that party.
In essence then, our electoral strategy is to develop a credible threat of exit from the Democratic Party -- to develop, starting at the local level, our own candidacies and capacities for independent action -- but to be attentive to the need and desirability, in particular cases and races, of fusing with the Democrats. Think of this as an institutionalized "inside/outside" strategy with a practical intent. We mean it when we say both that we want to build a progressive electoral presence and wedon't want to waste people's time or vote.
Second, and more briefly, but no less important, the NP would supplement this electoral strategy with a non-electoral one: a substantial effort at education and mobilization outside electoral arenas. This will take many different forms: publicizing the NP's own program; training activists; mounting issues campaigns on topics of general public concern (e.g., the peace dividend, toxics, or health care); building grassroots policy agendas; intervening in and showing solidarity with progressives in particular battles; generating policy research; and developing speakers bureaus, participatory workshops, summer schools, house meetings, alternative media, and other means of building popular discussion. One problem we have with the Democrats is that they really don't have much base anymore in the daily life of people, or in the membership and other organizations that give a party social rootedness. They don't really try to educate and empower their voting base to the point where their popular base can control them. The NP aims to be different, and lively, and that implies this sort of non-electoral work day in and day out.
From these relatively abstract commitments would come a series of specific programmatic commitments -- on taxes, social and military policy, racial and gender justice, even the design and administration of public programs -- which would combine an emphasis on worker empowerment, equity, and democratic control of capital, with explicit attention to environmental, peace, feminist, and racial concerns. The NP would seek to further a new public philosophy -- practical as well as principled -- to advance democratic aims in a pluralist society and internationalized economy.
We don't want to have a founding convention until we have the representatives and diversity -- across all sorts of lines of issue, race, sex, and more -- that we wish the mature organization to claim. In the meantime, we're going with a simple interim governance structure, consistent with the above, that has a national Executive Council making policy decisions. All states where NP organizing is going on enjoy equal representation on this Council. State representatives are chosen out of state and local organizing projects. Day-to-day responsibility for operation of the NP rests with the New Party National Committee, Inc. Line responsibility is exercised by two national organizers, operating out of the national office, who are also on the Council.
On the electoral side, most states restrict the ability to cross-endorse nominees of a different party. But these state restrictions appear highly vulnerable to challenge --through litigation, or state or local referenda or initiatives. As we challenge them in these ways (we are doing so already), moreover, there is much work that can be done under existing rules, especially at the local level. In a lot of states, for example, the most important first step is to establish a presence in one or two major cities. Very often, these local elections are non-partisan. As such, they don't pose any significant barrier to third party activity. Building from pockets of strength, it's also possible to make local changes in laws that are not yet possible on a statewide level. In a city or county, for example, it's often possible to change the rules on fusion, or campaign finance, or voter registration in ways that would be favorable to us. But finally, even where such electoral reform seems hopeless, we still have the power to mount our own candidates. We just generally haven't tried to do so in any systematic way.
On the non-electoral side, the only real barrier is our own conception of what progressive activity entails. We think, for reasons indicated above, that some coordinating, long-term, programmatic organization would be especially useful right now. Most longtime activists that we know are tired of short term coalitions andnarrow issues. They don't want to join yet another "group." But they would like to be part of something larger and more structured, such as a party. And they confront electoral questions constantly in their work, have probed the limits of "insider" strategies with the Democrats, and are looking to link their non-electoral work to a more coherent electoral strategy -- if only to help that non-electoral work itself.
So far, we've gotten a very open reception to this idea from a wide range of people. To be sure, those now working on the NP are not as diverse as the population we aim to serve. Since our aspirations to racial equality and gender justice are real, we will indeed not be "founding" ourselves with an authorizing convention until we reach that point of diversity. This said, we have talked to at least some people in virtually all the constituencies and categories of self-understanding that define the American left (all the different permutations and combinations of class, race, sex, orientation, issue, and organization), and found a very wide range of people seriously interested in pursuing the idea. Maybe as important, we've talked to a lot of unorganized individuals who would never define themselves as "left" or "progressive" or "in the movement," and have found that they too wish to move forward on it.
Who knows what to make of this response? The proof is in the organizing. We'll see how many people we can sign up in the next year, and how the initial chapter building goes. As we begin that, however, we admit to optimism. There is something in the air right now in American politics that favors this sort of effort. People are pretty fed up with business as usual, and with the mainstream parties whose principal goal seems to be to organize the defeat of democracy and common sense.
A critical mass of activists appears ready to try to organize something new. And a large number of ordinary citizens, tired of having their convictions distorted, ignored,or simply broken by the machinery of American public life, seem ready to join them.
New Party
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