I appreciate your comments, but don't understand some of them. The LP banned cross-endorsement and fusion politics, to the scorn of some activists. (And here I thank Josh Mason on this list for jogging me on the Working Families Party and New Party.) Since most LP unionists were registered Democrats (some being precinct leaders, etc), they worked on union-endorsed campaigns as unionists, not LPrs. But some of us used this to get educated on the local electoral process, to support union campaigns, and recruit some unionists into a new party of labor that was independent of all other parties. It had to be done in a cool, unobtrusive, patient way. Some of us paid keen attention to proportional representation and its offshoot, instant runoff voting. Some LP activists worked in coalitions of Greens, Democrats, labor bureaucrats, and even Reform Party reps (aided by the Center for Voting Democracy) to get IRV passed into law. In New Mexico, we got an IRV constitutional amendment passed by the state Senate in 1999, only to be blocked in the House.
Then Nader appeared in 2000 and drew away some of the better LP activists around the country. Mazzocchi's keynote at Nader's Green coronation in Denver really pissed off organized labor, including his own union, and the LP became more and more stereotyped as another example of third party spoilation of Democrats. But you're right, the winner-take-all system is a tough, though not impossible, nut to crack. Some folks assert that the electoral issue caused the LP to decline. It was a contributing factor, but I think more important were issues of organizational structure, inept organizing, some prejudice against the business-union institution by progressives, confusion on tactics and strategy at the lower levels, and other factors that are not easy to articulate and measure. Perhaps it can be proverbially summed up as the lack of resources for a social movement-oriented working class party. Just wasn't the money to hire staff, rent space, etc that might have allowed the LP experiment to inch along.
Was glad to read on this list from Jenny Brown of the Alachua County Labor Party (Florida) that they're about to hire staff to work on the LP's Just Health Care campaign. A major step. Popular parts of the LP 16 Points (health care, labor law, and higher education) are organizing focal points today. Well and good. I reckon this is what can work today to bring an independent labor party to the attention of workers in and out of unions. The 1998-type LP is in mild comatose today, but I wouldn't be surprised that our past and present practices plus the objective shit comin down will combine later into a revival.
Bob
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