In light of the numbers I posted
above, for a third-party challenge to finally work, in my opinion, the following conditions would have to obtain:
- The present-day Republicans and right-wing ideology must wither away, and while it's clearly started, we're nowhere close to that. (Pop. vote: 50-50, again.)
- A real third-party challenge must be associated with a powerful coalition of social movements that wins over, among other elements, organized labor and the intellectual progesso-sphere (good luck on the latter; the former's actually possible).
- It must begin aiming for elections in 2015 and 2016 and beyond today, and promote a consistent message with unity in the movement around this message.
- It must find a way to attract a billion dollars paradoxically devoted to getting money out of politics. Sorry to say that.
- The challenge must make the elements of the electoral and the campaign system into its primary "Day 1" issue, i.e. money out of politics, public campaign finance, easy ballot access, media access, proporational representation (or IRV, the only option in the US that is currently constitutional).
- It must aim for breakthrough by breaking heavily into a statehouse, before the federal level.
Even if you were to remove all the other obstacles - money out, media access in, full participation in debates, a population actually educated about history and the issues, an end to seniority and random assignment of committee chairmanships - the winner-take-all system still makes it almost impossible to contemplate. This is fundamental and constitutional. There is no representative government. You don't vote for representatives. You vote for winners and there is only one winner per position. It's an atomized system. Why should any of these Congress bozos look outside their own district and state? Except to raise money that is, but again even if that were removed, winner-take-all almost always means there will be two parties. They will orient to an imaginary center ideology and false exaggeration of limited differences. They will be able to force-enlist or ignore everyone else as they compete for the vote of a tiny number of Mr. and Mrs. Clueless in Ohio.
I really have to wonder if an internal challenge to the New Democrat dominance of the Democratic party isn't the right way to go. We make fun of McGovern, but he got the nomination and won almost 40% of the vote at a time of objectively worse conditions in the populace for what he had to offer than today.
It's also such a joke. There shouldn't be a president, or a deformed, dysfunctional democracy dictated by the ideas and compromises of 55 dead men in 1787, but damn if you can move that without producing something worse. ("After 100 billion dollars were spent to influence the Constitutional Convention of 2017, the Senate was replaced by the College of Corporations. Proposals to allow individuals to sell their votes for cash to bidders on an unregulated exchange were rejected, and a strict minimum price of $1000 per full ballot per election was set and indexed to inflation, providing a sense of fair value as well as a powerful economic stimulus." - Nick's Future History.)
So lately I have to conclude change in this country is likeliest to come through the eventual loss of the empire and rejection of US-led neoliberalism sparking crisis here, and in the meantime "do the least harm" is the best we can hope for. For those of you who believe in the doctrine of "it has to get worse to get better," it must be admitted that Bush came closer to prompting a permanent break with the allies and client states than anyone else ever managed.
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PS - Can I make one man-type comment that may be construed as sexist but is actually the animal in me talking?
