Tuesday, November 15, 2016

The party we need

A Blueprint for a New Party.

It's difficult to create a new political party, mostly because state election laws actively discourage such a task, and if some party manages to surmount the barriers to just getting on the ballot, the state legislators just raise them. And, because the barriers to entry are so high, any alternative party has to devote most of its energy and money not to policy and active organization, but just to get on the ballot.

However, Seth Ackerman believes that Citizens United is a blessing in disguise: it allows unlimited money to flow not just to the Democratic and Republican parties, but to any party, which makes financing new political parties financially viable. And Sanders showed tat quite a lot of money can be raised even without Wall Street and the Democratic 1%.

Ackerman talks about third parties' worries about being "spoilers" for the sympathetic wing of the traditional parties, the left and the socialists no longer have to worry about spoiling anything for anyone. If the neoliberal welfare-busting, mass-incarcerating globalizing Democratic bastards even had a progressive wing, which they don't, they've proven they cannot actually, you know, win an election. Not just for president; the Republicans control the House, Senate, and most of the state legislatures and governorships. Anyone who says that working within the Democratic party is the only way to get things done is delusional: The Democratic party can't get anything done. If y'all can completely reform the Democratic party, good on ya, but I've waited for 36 years for the party to get its shit together, and I've seen not just zero progress but substantial regress, both ideologically and strategically.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please pick a handle or moniker for your comment. It's much easier to address someone by a name or pseudonym than simply "hey you". I have the option of requiring a "hard" identity, but I don't want to turn that on... yet.

With few exceptions, I will not respond or reply to anonymous comments, and I may delete them. I keep a copy of all comments; if you want the text of your comment to repost with something vaguely resembling an identity, email me.

No spam, pr0n, commercial advertising, insanity, lies, repetition or off-topic comments. Creationists, Global Warming deniers, anti-vaxers, Randians, and Libertarians are automatically presumed to be idiots; Christians and Muslims might get the benefit of the doubt, if I'm in a good mood.

See the Debate Flowchart for some basic rules.

Sourced factual corrections are always published and acknowledged.

I will respond or not respond to comments as the mood takes me. See my latest comment policy for details. I am not a pseudonomous-American: my real name is Larry.

Comments may be moderated from time to time. When I do moderate comments, anonymous comments are far more likely to be rejected.

I've already answered some typical comments.

I have jqMath enabled for the blog. If you have a dollar sign (\$) in your comment, put a \\ in front of it: \\\$, unless you want to include a formula in your comment.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.