Daily Kos
Nov 04, 2004
_Third Party Manifesto: How the Greens and Libertarians can save the
Democrats_
(http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/04/69580/-Third-Party-Manifesto-How-the-Greens-and-Libertarians-can-save-the-Democrats)
by _robla_ (http://www.dailykos.com/user/robla)
* The Democratic party has the opportunity to be the great party of
the radical center. The challenge is to come up with a structure to
harness the passions of the extremes, without being beholden to them. The
only
way to do that is to truly get behind _real electoral reform_
(http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Voting_systems#Ranked_ballot_systems) and
bust up
the two party system.
I've been voting since 1988, and this is the first general election in
which I voted for a Democrat for U.S. President. It's been a long road from my
upbringing to this point, playing political Goldilocks. I've come to the
realization that I am a centrist, and have little to complain about the
substance of the Democratic platform of the past few years. I don't think
that I'm alone. However, what's been driven home this election is that we're
not quite the majority. Truth be told, if we weren't aligned with many
non-centrist groups, we wouldn't be close to a majority.
The Republicans have hit upon a winning and time-tested combination: the
high-turnout fundamentalist Christian base combined with the ruling elite,
with a healthy dose of deregulation and lower taxes to make small business
owners feel like they're part of the club. This isn't much different than
the very successful formula of the Holy Roman Empire, and we shouldn't
underestimate it. The only difference is that the Holy Roman Empire didn't
need
the gun nuts to top off their 50%+1.
The problem that the Democrats have today is that we're left with the rest.
We can all find things wrong with the Republicans, but we can't agree on
which ones are the worst. The passion deficit in the Democratic party is
caused by the fact that we all have our pet issues, but they're different pet
issues, and any one candidate can't possibly represent them all well.
There's of course, plenty of passion outside the Republican party. Labor
unions are very passionate about good jobs with good benefits and good
working conditions here in the states. Environmentalists are very passionate
about maintaining the environment. Gays and lesbians are very passionate
about securing equal rights to the pursuit of happiness. Feminists are very
passionate about the right to choose whether to have an abortion. The list
goes on.
The Democrats have the opportunity to be the great party of the center.
The challenge is to come up with a structure to harness the passions of the
extremes, without being beholden to the extremes. The only way to do that
is to bust up the two party system.
This is where the Greens and Libertarians come in. They may be kooky. We
don't agree with them on many issues. But we all have one thing in common:
the status quo has got to go, and we're all very passionate about that.
Some of us may wish to one day get lucky, and see the Left rule the roost
the way the Right does. However, I think there's a lot of folks who are
scared for our democracy, and are really scared of what it means for the Right
to have this much power. It seems more than anyone should have.
A radical centrist who is willing to commit to busting up the two party
system through _real electoral reform_ (http://ww
w.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Voting_systems#Ranked_ballot_systems) can
potentially excite a lot of
passionate support from the most unlikely places. Libertarians in Texas,
Greens
in California and centrists in Ohio can all get excited about a single
candidate. Rather than exploiting our differences to shut out the minority,
let's exploit our differences to include them.
Note: _wegerje_ (http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/User:Wegerje) has
been _trying to stir up interest in this for a while_
(http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Third_Party_Project) . Though I'm a long
time electoral reform
advocate, I've been holding off beating the drum too loudly, hoping we
wouldn't have such drastic justification. However, now that we're buried in
lemons.....
Originally posted to _robla_ (http://www.dailykos.com/blog/robla/) on Thu
Nov 04, 2004 at 12:15 AM PST.
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