Nathan Newman wrote:
>There are plenty of good arguments for why
>the Democrats are not always great; the question is whether a third party
>strategy is viable under the present electoral system where no third party
>has been able to get a serious toehold since the Republicans emrged during
>the apocolypse leading up to the Civil War.
Third party *movements* at least, between the Civil War and WWII, have been responsible for a heck of a lot of change in law and policy, if not poll victories. You could argue that it wasn't running candidates per se that led to the change but the organizing, the unions, the red menace, etc. and I'd mostly agree, but running candidates seems to have bubbled up repeatedly as a strategy--the question is, was it a helpful one? Is it now?
One of the Labor Party's strategies is to run referenda and initiatives, and only to run candidates where and when there's enough union support & organizing on the ground to make candidates viable non-spoilers. Hey, it's different.
Jenny Brown co-chair, Alachua County Labor Party