- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
Time to break free of traditional political ideological labeling and divisions. Time to abandon old, divisive sociopolitical labels like “liberal” and “conservative”.
A new political party based on a vastly, commonly held virtures lends itself to embrace over 66% of Americans, and it clearly embraces progressive principled thinking. In the most ideal American sense of unity, a political party should not be able to be defined or placed as “to the left” or “to the right” of where the Democratic or Republican parties currently are. Just let it exist organically based on present-day principled thinking. The American Progressive Majority.
Originally Posted By u/Atlanticbboy At 2025-03-23 04:38:18 AM | Source
I appreciate and agree with the sentiment, but I think a call to form an entirely new political party demonstrates a naivety with regards to how the American political system works. It’s just not going to happen. A third party will NEVER displace one of the two major parties without massive changes to the electoral system that would likely require a Constitutional Amendment.
Our system and political culture is just not structured to allow for 3rd parties. What’s more, the 2 major parties have ingrained themselves into the system so much that they have MASSIVE institutional advantages over a 3rd party.
This will never be a successful effort. I think a better goal would be to co-opt and take over the Democratic Party, booting out all the Vichy collaborationists like Schumer, Jefferies, Newsom, Adams, Pelosi, etc, and remaking the party.
With a new 3rd party, best case scenario is it has 0 impact. If it does get any votes, it’ll just divide the anti-fascist vote with the Democrats (and any other 3rd parties) making it even more difficult to win.
“Democracy will just never work, the king won’t allow it”
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying play the game to win. Don’t start with a losing strategy.
What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t lose sight of the big things that need to change in order to work with compromises. Take gerrymandering for example, or better yet the whole Electoral College concept. That is one of those things that will require massive changes including to the constitution. So what? Everyone know it’s an obsolete oppressive fucked up system, and that it has no reason to exist today except for the fact that it benefits those who have the power to change it. Isn’t proper representation in government a big part of American identity? Are you going to fight for it, and be the beacon of freedom for the rest of the world you always want to be?
The voting for any third party is bad because it “steals” votes from the “real” parties argument just ensures that this two-party system never changes. As long as every American keeps repeating this, it will be true.
Time has passed since 1789. The world is slightly different from then. The Constitution has already changed to keep up with it - and there’s no reason it shouldn’t again.
Again, you’re missing the point. I’m not debating the overall end goal. I’m talking about the strategy to achieve it.
Just saying “the Electoral College is bad, so let’s get rid of it” is fine, but it’s not a strategy to make it happen. That’s a goal. What is the strategy to make it happen?
Likewise, just listing off a set of popular policies and saying “let’s make a new party” isn’t a strategy to actually achieving those goals. I’m not saying that voting for a 3rd party is bad because it “steals” votes from a major party. I’m saying it’s bad because it’s an effectual strategy to achieving the goal of enacting the policies in OP’s post.
You’re absolutely right that the 2 party system sucks and that the Democrats are awful. But, again, that’s not a strategy to achieve your goals. Like it or not, but none of us will ever break the 2-party system by forming a new party or complaining about how bad it is.
If you compare, say, the Democratic Party of the 1920s to the Democratic Party of the 1960s, they’re drastically different, almost diametrically opposed to each other on nearly every policy. Likewise if you compare the GOP of the 1950s to the GOP of the 1980s. Or the Democratic Party of the 1970s to the Democratic Party of the 200s. Or the GOP of the 2000s to the GOP today. How did those changes happen?
In every single instance it happened not by a new 3rd party forming or outside agitators pushing the parties. It happened because a fringe element of the party enacted an organized push in the primaries to co-opt the party, won a convincing general election victory, then strongarmed the rest of the party into ideological compliance. That’s how parties change in the US, not by being supplanted by a new party. You want a real, left-wing progressive party? Get behind a massive push to primary key Democratic leadership (I call them the Vichy caucus), win a general election, then strongarm the party into compliance.
I’m not missing your point, we just have different perspectives. I’m just an outsider, I’m not talking about strategies to get there - which I guess is my fault for not noticing what community this was posted in :)
Call me an idealist if you want, but to me the sentence “none of us will ever break the 2-party system by forming a new party” just honestly doesn’t make any sense. How else are you going to do it? It might be “none of you” in the sense of regular Joes, but “fringe elements” have been transforming history since forever. I’m just saying, don’t stop dreaming, start from the future you want, then be realistic and make compromises on the way there. Don’t be fooled into thinking systems are immutable and eternal :)
The system isn’t immutable, it just has protected itself very well from any third party breaking the system as it is. We will get a third party, or more, and end things like first past the post and Citizens United much faster by taking over the Dems than by trying to get a third party to have plurality support. It’s simply unrealistic to keep bashing our heads on a wall that is more likely to continue to cement the system against us, instead of changing the system in an achievable way.
AOC, Bernie, and a great number of the young Dems are ready to take over the party. There is broad support to kick out the appeasement supporters and change the party to start making changes. The harder we try to gain third party support right now, the more entrenched the current establishment gets. We’ve seen this happen for decades. The support for ending the two party system and things like Citizens United is bipartisan, but mostly Democrat voters, meaning Republicans will change more and more rules and make the system more and more unfair. We don’t have the generations it will take to bring third party support to where it would need to be. That’s generations of Republican power subverting the system. We need to change it now.
I don’t think systems are immutable. That’s exactly my point. They are, but you have to have a strategy that can actually accomplish it. Systems aren’t changed by people just dreaming of a better one. They’re changed by motivated people executing a successful strategy.
I think we have the opposite going on here - the conservatives are breaking the system in such a way, that it must change. This is the big chance for a 3rd party to destroy the old guard, simply because the old guard is being incredibly dumb and greedy with their own overhaul.
It is simply a question of who can offer the better future. The wealthy dudes who are going to kill grandma by taking away her medicine and money, or the nice lady who wants granny to live a long and decent life?
I would argue it isn’t a losing strategy at all though.
If people start campaigning and supporting a third-party right now, there’s actually a shot to win some house seats and local elections next year. That would also be the best time to try, since Repubs have majority of every branch anyways.
After winning local, then they can think senate. Remember that capitalism was only controlled in the 1950s because it feared communism. If you do not pose any threat (even if it is an empty one), they simply will not listen.
No, there isn’t. We’re heading into a midterm where a lot of the typically disengaged public will be afraid and in strong opposition to the incumbent party. That’s going to draw a lot of people towards the Democrats, and there will be a strong “Blue no matter who” push to convince people to vote strategically. The Democratic establishment will be fighting even harder against any third parties they might see as spoilers than they will be against the GOP.
You’re right that the upcoming midterms present a great opportunity, but it’s not in a third party. It’s in a primary push. Rather than talking about a 3rd party that has almost no chance at materializing and even less chance at winning, all our effort should be put towards convincing people they need to show up in the primaries and vote for the most anti-establishment, most left-wing Democratic primary candidates they can.
That’s where the real opportunity lies. Primaries get such an incredibly small voter turnout that a relative handful of voters can swing primaries. Then, once a real leftist progressive wins the primary, the whole force of anti-fascist electoral politics will be behind them in the general. It’ll be easy to paint any Republican as a fascist, which will make it easy to frame any Democrat as a rational choice, regardless how far left they may be. When that progressive is the ONLY alternative to GOP fascists on the ballot, they’ll have a much easier time of winning.
Get people who don’t normally vote and who hate Democratic leadership/establishment to vote in the primaries. Run progressives in the primaries. Take over the party. That’s the only way this could work.
I think this is a “walk and chew gum” situation. We can do both.
For the sake of transparency, I am not a Dem. But I do find it beyond criminal that Dems (even if it’s grassroots) has not whipped up an organization to both threaten a third-party AND primary Dems.
This also gives Dems diversification in strategy. The opposition will now have to counter two potential threats while protecting home-court. It really makes too much sense.
But unfortunately Dems are allergic to winning. This is not even to shit on you (you are probably not a Dem whip), but just an observation I’ve had. It’s always 0 or 100, and highly telegraphed strategy. No precision, no timing, no urgency - just losers.
I think trying to both primary Vichy Democrats and run a 3rd party bid at the same time would be enormously counter-productive.
I mean, this but unironically. What happens when your elected representatives are stripped of their political authority? What point is there in going through the motions of a vote when an appointee or a lifetime judge can overrule it? How much power do democracies have in a society that’s been privatized and commodities to the Nth degree?
Yep. If you try to play by the rules, you’ll end up finding out you can do nothing at all.
It’s difficult, not impossible.
I actually did an in-depth analysis of this over here in lemmy.world/c/progressivepolitics.
TL;DR version:
It would take roughly 1.1 million signatures to get on the ballot in every single state. That’s just .05% of registered voters.
It would require building a local infrastructure to support state ballot access, but it’s doable. There’s a void in state and local politics that progressive candidates can fill, and if there’s a unified party organization backing them, there’s a real opportunity to take the ground the the democrats have surrendered.
Is it naïveté, anymore, if we keep having to reiterate this fundamental facet of our political structure going on 3 decades, now?
Naïveté or willful ignorance. Either way, a new 3rd party won’t accomplish anything useful.
Entirely agreed.