[lbo-talk] inside/outside the DP strategies

[Rick Kisséll]

Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
> On 8/7/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>   
>> On Aug 7, 2007, at 10:26 AM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> but what do we make of the difference between dem behavior in the
>>> senate and
>>> dem behavior in the house?
>>>       
>> The Senate is a structurally reactionary body, by design.
>>
>>     
>>> i have to admit, what i'm really hearing in this discussion is that
>>> it's
>>> worth abandoning any third party and going partisan dem hardcore.
>>> which
>>> would really disappoint me -- and would be entirely too satisfying
>>> to a
>>> couple of my friends. :)
>>>       
>> No, I'm not for that at all, though I do think that 3rd party runs
>> for president are vain in every sense. You've got to start low and
>> build up. But the "not a dime's worth of difference" rhetoric isn't
>> accurate, and isn't credible to a huge number of people. There is a
>> dime's worth of difference, though maybe not a half dollar's.
>>     
>
>
> right. i don't disagree, at least not very significantly (a dime's worth of
> disagreement? :-), but the logic seems pretty inexorable, to me. when was
> the last time we saw a party build itself from the bottom up?  the
> local-state model certainly hasn;'t worked for the GP on the national level.
> they can't even get someone elected to the US congress.
>
> the people who seem to have had some success this way are the christian
> coalition, but (a) that's different, in that they were working within the
> GOP, and (b) it's not clear to me that they're not an exception in other
> ways, as well. shouldn't we all be running commies and socialists as Dem
> candidates at the state and local levels?
>
> j
Isn't the unpleasant reality that neither the inside the Democratic 
Party route (championed in various ways, to various degrees, by groups 
like DSA and the CP) nor the outside the Democratic Party route 
(advocated by groups like the Green, Socialist, and Socialist Workers' 
parties) have been very successful in recent decades?

Personally, I'm more of a third-party person. Here in Milwaukee, 
assuming an inverse relationship between the importance of the office 
and most voters' willingness to support independent or third-party 
candidates, we fielded a number of "Alternative Slates" of left 
candidates for the County Courthouse offices (Register of Deeds, County 
Clerk, etc.) With little money, organization, or name recognition, they 
got up to 15% of the countywide vote. In many counties, the weaker 
"major" party doesn't even run candidates for those offices, providing 
an opening for independent electoral politics.