Examines third-party options

...At present, Green parties exist in seventeen states but have ballot access in only five...

...Such familiar details have a devastating effect on prospects for any third party, even the well-financed one Perot launched this fall...

...It's a worthy endeavor, but one that avoids the harder question of how to persuade Americans to listen to left ideas and fresh social-democratic proposals...

...One NP activist recently argued the need to tell an "alternative story" of what ails the American economy and our civic culture, one that targets international corporate power instead of big government and the dependent poor...

...And, in their diversity, the cultural views of those who stay away from the polls would not gladden defenders of abortion rights or immigrants...

...Te second type of explanation points in a different direction—to the hollowing out of the major players themselves...

...When legal barriers don't suffice, there is always co-optation...

...But not since the 1890s has there been a national third party with any sustained appeal to voters...

...With the main exception of the pro-choice movement, grassroots rebels have, for the past quartercentury, been soldiers for the right...

...If we could discover the three people who disgraced our district by voting for La Follette,' declared one business class woman vehemently, 'we'd certainly make it hot for them!' In this case, Middletown (real name— Muncie, Indiana) was typical of the nation...

...the point, however, is to get us moving forward again...

...In practice, however, they emphasize economic issues like a much higher minimum wage and an end to corporate campaign-giving on which each of the fragments can agree...

...and to Bill Clinton's failure to address, much less do anything to alter, such conditions...

...The developing split between President Clinton's born-again centrism and the economic populist stance taken by House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and others in Congress could render the party incapable of projecting a unified message in the 1996 campaign...

...When the WINTER • 1996 • 25 American Questions NP's Dan Cantor refers to opinion polls that show that Americans favor more investment in education and cuts in military spending, he's singing an old tune...

...NP activists also lobby for a system of proportional representation to greatly improve their chance of escaping the lesser-evil syndrome that has bedeviled most alternative candidates in this century...

...No agreement exists, however, about what that destination should be or how to get there...

...But it is an elasticity that badly conceals an iron spine of self-interest...

...At a national conference the Green Network called in Washington, D.C...

...Radicals are good at interpreting the electoral shell game...

...All of them, at the start of their campaigns, benefited from an outpouring of grassroots enthusiasm and appeared certain to have a major effect on the outcome of the election...

...Right now, the NP seems most successful in helping cobble together municipal coalitions—as in a group called Progressive Milwaukee that has united public-sector unions, black ministers, and environmentalists behind some of the same citywide candidates...

...Fusion is a way, says NP Executive Director Dan Cantor, "to cast a protest vote that counts...

...In 1924, Robert La Follette received 16.6 percent of the popular vote...

...Campaigners for George McGovern in 1972 and against Ronald Reagan in the early eighties held out the same hope of a silent near-majority that would flock to a forthright message of economic democracy and multicultural tolerance...

...Unfortunately, this appears to be a utopian reach for the stars that is poorly equipped to get off the ground...

...As both cause and effect of this erosion, neither major party can boast a vibrant internal life or provide the essential ladder every aspiring politician must climb to higher office...

...They must accomplish the same kinds of tasks the old parties were so good at in their heyday: the knitting together of diverse constituency groups...

...Ronald Reagan's candidacy for president in 1976 convinced ardent rightists like Pat Buchanan to stop talking about a conservative third party, much as FDR's move to the left in the mid-thirties doused plans for a labor party...

...As long as Gingrichism seems the crest of a conservative future, only the most purist of right-wingers (like Howard Phillips) or those who view political power as nothing but an elite conspiracy will refuse to get on the GOP bandwagon...

...In 1924," Robert and Helen Lynd reported in their classic study, Middletown, "Mt was considered such `bad business' to vote for the third party [the Progressives, who ran Robert La Follette for president] that literally no one of the business group confessed publicly before or after the election to adherence to this ticket...

...q 26 • DISSENT...

...The Green Network is a lofty idea struggling to be a viable movement...

...The task demands a kind of perseverance and strategic acumen that are not abundantly evident among the kinds of people who are currently attracted to third parties, either on the left or the right...

...As Michael Huffington demonstrated in his primary race for the U.S...

...to the way both major parties protect the interests of big business and wage class warfare on the poor and the unionized...

...That is one reason they took control of Congress in the 1994 election and are now competitive in a solid majority of congressional districts and in every state but the District of Columbia...

...Although the Democrats and Republicans still dominate the selection process for all federal and most state offices, party loyalty and identification have been declining since the early 1950s...

...Without a clear set of priorities and a way to attract more than the usual radical suspects, they will not get much farther...

...It seeks to group, under one spreading redwood, radical environmentalists and feminists, multicultural leftists, campaigners against the military budget, and that dwindling if hardy fraction of citizens who still call themselves "socialist...

...In the 1890s, to turn back the Popu22 • DISSENT American Questions list challenge, the major parties began acting, in a consistent and usually bipartisan way, to punish or seduce their would-be competitors...

...The universal right to housing, jobs, and health care snuggles up next to demands for "communitycontrolled law enforcement" and an expansion of affirmative action...

...The major parties are ideologically flexible, to be sure...

...As precedent, he cites New York state where, at different points in the fairly recent past, the American Labor, Liberal, and Conservative parties were able to exert a price for endorsing major-party candidates...

...To date, the NP has run or endorsed candidates in some 115 races—most on the city or county level—and won 77 of them...

...Petitions for ballot space had to be circulated within a rigid time period and receive a precise allotment of signatures (a minimum number from each county, for example...

...A third party would have to duplicate the GOP's feat quickly and do so, at least initially, with untested activists, sorely inadequate finances, and scant media attention...

...If people only had a "real choice," the dark night of reaction would soon give way to a progressive dawn...

...Meanwhile, opportunity resides in a discredited location...

...The trio shares a bundle of valid, if predictable, antipathies: to corporations that operate "mean and lean" and despoil the environment...

...Taxpayers party, led by veteran gadfly Howard Phillips, threatens to rally Christian conservatives if the 1996 GOP platform compromises on abortion...

...Tattered as it is, the Democratic label still echoes fond and widely shared memories of the New Deal and an interracial civil rights movement...

...But he carried only his own state of Wisconsin, and the Progressive party— a jerry-built coalition of unionists, small farmers, and left-wing reformers—collapsed soon after the election...

...This dismal outlook has done little to dampen third-party ardor...

...And unlike the Green Network and LPA, the New Party has thought creatively about how it might grow...

...The latter have been almost routine during the twentieth century: Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, La Follette in 1924, William Lemke in 1936, Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace in 1948, George Wallace in 1968, John Anderson in 1980, and Perot in 1992...

...But with a majority ofAmericans telling pollsters they would welcome another choice, the only question seems to be who can best meet the demand...

...But wary citizens are more likely to accept such an argument from movements that form around urgent issues— like health care and declining wages— than from a third party based in the remaining liberal enclaves...

...In his standard pitch, Cantor heralds no officeholders of the party's own and, when all politics is local, it is difficult to know whether fusion was a decisive factor in a particular victory...

...The organization will have a chance to prosper only if a renaissance of unionism occurs...

...Leftists can't adequately respond to the question, "What do the feds ever do for me...

...The Christian Coalition is the one group that has the clarity of purpose as well as the numbers and grassroots energy a new party requires...

...How can you organize a third political party when all parties seem old-fashioned, unprincipled, and powerless to change what ails the nation...

...But it also should give pragmatic leftists a chance to gain a hearing for a class-aware message and programs that could attract alienated constituencies...

...There is no evidence that nonvoters are eager to buck that current...

...Notwithstanding their cynicism toward the state, most Americans still support a higher minimum wage, universal and affordable health care, increased child-care credits, and a more progressive tax system...

...Based in an environment under siege, LPA lacks the ability to speak to Americans who don't share that niche...

...The main task is thus to distribute the message, not to change minds—except about the possibility of victory...

...Mazzochi and his comrades understand the need to build a class-based groundswell before running their own candidates for office...

...this past June, the one hundred or so delegates (representing some forty tiny organizations) issued a Common Ground Declaration that amounts to a dream list of the post-sixties left...

...And TR and Perot had a realistic chance for victory...

...Begun in the summer of 1990, Labor Party Advocates (LPA) represents the first attempt in more than half a century (not counting the Marxist sects) to provide wage earners with an independent political voice...

...For all its practical planning, the New Party shares a familiar and critical flaw with its utopian left cousins...

...The Republicans, although they have not convinced many Americans to believe in parties again, have to some degree revived these organizational crafts...

...Creators of an electoral alternative that hopes to endure must do more than skillfully navigate the legal obstacle course and put forth a political message both attractive to millions of voters and clearly different from that of standard-bearers from the major parties...

...The first focuses, like the anecdote from Middletown, on the renewable powers of the political ins...

...Defenders of the old electoral order like columnist William Safire condemn "irresponsible third-party patter...

...24 • DISSENT American Questions Looming over the whole enterprise, however, is the question of whetherAmerican wage earners, in any substantial numbers, can be persuaded to support a politics centered on the health and beneficence of the labor movement...

...But they have avoided drafting a platform for fear of enmeshing supporters in a thicket of dilemmas: defend manufacturing jobs or call for public job creation...

...Unfortunately, that notion ignores the dynamics of history, as well as the mood of nonvoters...

...What a difference one billionaire populist has made...

...The very thinness of the major parties, the waning of their traditional identity, leaves them open to partial capture by organized constituencies who know precisely what they WINTER • 1996 • 23 American Questions want and are willing to toil patiently and opportunistically to get it...

...The New Party's name is terribly bland but reasonably accurate...

...Government-printed secret ballots replaced the custom of individual parties distributing their own tickets as ballots—thus diluting the function of parties...

...Begun in 1992, the NP seeks to build a bridge out of the Democratic party for a range of progressive activists, yet recognizes how slow the passage will be...

...But will it catch on in an age when dash and celebrity reign in the public realm...

...And, for the present, theAFL-CIO's new leaders seem committed to the Democrats...

...This isn't the first time the recent American left reminds one, uncomfortably, of Talleyrand's remark about the Bourbons who "have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing...

...There are three notable efforts underway on the left to accomplish the exceedingly difficult: the Green Politics Network, Labor Party Advocates, and the New Party...

...But why would Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson give up their formidable clout in the GOP for such a willo'the-wisp...

...This quiet, sensible approach appeals to those with a temperament for what Irving Howe called the politics of "steady work...

...Meanwhile, on the left, several groups are vying to assemble a national network of activists capable of spearheading an alternative list of candidates...

...The LPA slogan— "The Bosses Have Two Parties, We Should Have at Least One" —began to seem more like a genuine cry of protest and less like a scrap of nostalgia...

...One of the hallmarks of postindustrial society has been the weakening of self-identifications based on workplace hierarchies...

...Many, in fact, express their apathy in the same antigovernment terms favored by the Gingrichs and Gramms—without, of course, expecting conservatives to solve their problems...

...The LPA's first national conference, scheduled for June, should begin resolving such questions...

...simply by promising to do more if we ever take power...

...One indication of where nonvoters stand is party registration under the Motor Voter bill that was passed in 1993...

...Journalists routinely gloss over the distinction between a third party and one or more serious independent candidates for president...

...More than 60 percent of Americans routinely split their tickets, and fewer than half of voters under 30 have a strong allegiance to either party...

...Historians and political scientists have offered two kinds of explanations for third-party futility...

...For Mr...

...An NP affiliate might run its own candidates for school board and city council while backing a liberal or moderate Democrat for Congress— but urging people to vote for her on the New Party line...

...These disheartened citizens—who are disproportionately nonwhite, wage-earning, and without a college education— would, the theory goes, flock to a third party that spoke to their needs...

...Perot, local politics is a local TV station," quips political scientist Theodore J. Lowi...

...In the best American tradition, the landscape proliferates with angry optimists who refuse to accept more of what the governmental and corporate elites have wrought...

...Half a decade later, only three small international unionsOCAW, the United Electrical Workers, and the Maintenance of Way Employees—and a scattering of citywide labor councils have signed on...

...A political transformation in a democratic country is almost always preceded by popular insurgencies that make change seem plausible and then pressure office-holders to favor reform...

...Some Green activists plan to run a presidential ticket in 1996, seeing such a move as essential to gain media coverage for their cause...

...Would-be insurgents on the left may be too quick to write off the Democratic party...

...As Ralph Reed and his troops have mobilized within the GOP, left activists and intellectuals could work within the other major party to develop and gather strength for a politics of class justice, racial tolerance, and cultural decency...

...Encouraged by the mass media, unions, to many Americans, seem not merely punchless but old-fashioned, the creatures of a disappearing blue-collar world...

...In order to get listed on some state ballots, a third party had to capture a high number of votes on its very first attempt...

...Led by Tony Mazzocchi, a former top official of the Oil, Chemical, andAtomic Workers union (OCAW), the organization was designed to grow slowly, picking up endorsements from local unions before stalwarts ever go before television cameras to "speak for labor...

...As Green Politics organizer Linda Martin asserts, "Every time the man opens his mouth, he alienates another constituency...

...Over the years, Democrats and Republicans changed state election laws to make it quite difficult and expensive to mount a serious thirdparty campaign...

...There's confusion, however, about how to turn what is now an internal union phenomenon into something grander...

...At present„much of the alternative action takes place on the left...

...Cut ties with the Democrats or become a more cohesive and militant faction within a major party in crisis...

...Yet, as often happens in American politics, this ostensible break with tradition is being oversold...

...But rank-and-file sympathy increased around the country after the Clinton administration aggressively promoted NAFTA and GATT and made clear its lack of interest in the fate of unions...

...Since consensus was their goal, conference delegates spent nearly all their time trying to reach it...

...All believe they have a natural base among millions of nonvoters, what Cantor calls "the big hole in the American electorate...

...Promote a guaranteed annual income for all or simply push for higher wages for the already employed...

...Meanwhile, the party only contests races it has a chance to win...

...Senate in 1994, a clever media campaign and a personal fortune can overwhelm opponents who have worked their way through a party's ranks Strike the fancy of Larry King or Rush Limbaugh or any sizeable chunk of the mass media, and you can virtually ignore the party regulars—a vanishing breed, in any case...

...As I write (in mid-November), no fewer than four men of national prominence (Jesse Jackson, Bill Bradley, Lowell Weicker, and Perot again) are considering independent campaigns for president...

...In 1996, this makes more sense than hankering after a third party whose odds for success are long...

...Outside the domain of generally hopeless sects (Marxist, right-to-life, LaRoucheite, and so on), the last alternative vehicle to run candidates across the country in more than one election was the People's party, a full century ago...

...Under the 1974 Federal Election CampaignAct, trumpeted as a post-Watergate "reform" measure, major party candidates receive matching funds during their races, but alternative party hopefuls don't get their 5 percent until the campaign ends...

...One group of third-party hopefuls on the left does grasp the need to get beyond older models, whether trotted out by grandiose post-sixties radicals or the union faithful...

...There are as many new Republicans as Democrats...

...Does he really believe these groups, mainly minorities and other traditional Democratic Party faithful, have nowhere else to go...

...the discipline to draw sharp, repetitive distinctions between your virtues and the vices of the competitor...

...Its organizers, who claim a membership of six thousand, ambitiously vow to represent every interest on the fragmented left—to be, in the words of Sandy Pope and Joel Rogers, "a racially diverse, feminist, reform-minded, green and unapologetically pro-working-people and pro-consumer party...

...The two-party lock on power and legitimate political discourse was secure and remained so—with the partial exception of George Wallace's run in 1968—until Ross Perot's remarkable campaign in 1992...

...And they've never stopped...

...And even the Populists declined rapidly after they endorsed a Democrat, William Jennings Bryan, for president in 1896...

...so, in 1996, Dan Cantor is sure he'll vote for Bill Clinton...

...the grooming of credible candidates for office at all levels...

...A band of left unionists is taking a more sober approach...

...Its strategy is to build up from strong local chapters that keep their electoral options open...

...On the right, a U.S...