Preconditions for third party politics

This is my first blog posting, though I realize now that I’ve been posting blogs inside my head since before there was an Internet, let alone a Web 2.0. So here I am, adding my disembodied voice to the multitudes here in cyberspace. My intention: to share some thoughts and ideas about politics, culture, consciousness and whatever comes to mind. I’d like to consider myself passionate, but not strident. Civil but not a pushover. And deeply aware of not having a monopoly on good ideas, the truth or any other such hifalutin’ grandiosity.

I’d sure like to consider myself these things, but my behavior during the course of this experiment will go a ways longer toward showing how accurate any of these “considerations” really are. That’s the reality we all live in – that slippage between who we’d like to be and where we’re really at. The better we acknowledge the slippage, the better chance we have of actually putting in the work it takes to even come close to embodying our most passionately held significations about ourselves. Anyway, blogs are for talking about stuff, so let's go.

I’d like to talk about third-party politics in the wake of the election of Barack Obama. Specifically, I want to address the issue of third-party candidates (It should be noted here that I do not mean presidential candidates, as third parties have not even come close at this point in time to gaining enough mass interest to make their presidential candidates part of widespread political discourse), their supporters and the relative viability of political platforms that lay outside our age-old two-party discourse.

To get to this exploration within some kind of context, we could easily get into a whole discussion about the history of third parties, particularly the farmers/peoples’ movement that erupted at the end of the 19th century and its impact on citizen consciousness and government policy, but what I’d like to do is start with a bit about the presidential election in 2000. To anyone who’s been inclined to pay attention to the general mood/outlook of the electorate since Watergate (and this can be a difficult thing to get a handle on, since the country is so large and diverse an we live our lives within limited circles), it’s been pretty evident that people have been feeling a level of dissatisfaction with both parties that makes it possible for third parties to have an impact on our day-to-day politics. This was apparent even in 1992, when Ross Perot made a huge dent (in a one-off fashion) as an insurgent candidate. Had he not been present to embody voter dissatisfaction, Clinton may very well not have won the election.

The 2000 election represented a major opportunity for a third party to gain more widespread acceptance of its ideas. There were several things happening at once at that time:

• A significant amount of people were severely disappointed by the Clinton admin, blow jobs notwithstanding – no systemic problems the country faces were honestly addressed during his tenure, especially for working people
• Tabloid-style 24-hr news cycles trivialized or ignored serious issues, leading many voters to seek info outside of official channels via the rapidly developing Internet (Indymedia for one)
• The shutdown of WTO talks in Seattle 1999 as a result of street actions taken by grassroots groups and individual citizens helped bring back the belief that citizens could have real influence on the national and international stage
• Al Gore ran a tepid, advisor-influenced campaign that failed to inspire the people. He underperformed against an easy mark in GWB.
• The overwhelming influence of money in politics became so impossible to ignore that the actual differences between the two parties seemed less apparent to many voters/citizens
• Ralph Nader, although he didn’t receive all that many votes, electrified disaffected audiences in huge rallies around the country and garnered a certain amount of attention for the Green Party, which actually had in many respects a persuasive, thought-provoking platform in need of greater development and attention. This was, I think, a significant achievement.

Despite the debacle of the 2000 election decision - and I would love a lawyer to weigh in here and explain to me whether or not the Supreme Court actually has the legal right to overrule the decision of a state Supreme Court – the energy of the Nader campaign opened the door for the Green Party to make a huge leap in acceptance and interest (over time) by a wide variety of citizens. Unfortunately, the subsequent moves by the Green Party showed that they either didn’t see, weren’t able or didn’t know how to capitalize on their opportunity.
I have a real interest in seeing the growth of a third party within a larger peoples’ movement in this country. And it strikes me that, as the debate rages over whether or not Barack Obama will be a true change agent (on which I won’t elaborate, as journalists, scholars and bloggers have been covering this territory plenty starting before the election), a third party with some kind of juice among the electorate, not to mention actual representation in at the very least state and town government, would be instrumental in enlarging mainstream policy debate and pushing an Obama administration (and possibly more importantly, members of Congress) towards more systemic solutions for what ails this country, this people, this continent and this planet. Just imagine if the Green Party had really enacted a strategy to build the party, its ideas and its constituency from the ground up over the past 8 years and what that collective power would bring to bear RIGHT NOW both politically and culturally. Hmmm…..

Now, in my next post I’m going to try and get a discussion going about how a third party could make a good start on building itself up and also get into some observations about the 60s and how we can learn from that massive period of change in relation to the building of cultural/political movements.

Thanks so much for listening, if you’re out there.

Best,
Rufus Xevious