Commenter Ben Alpers, who’s an excellent historian and good friend, writes:
I’m coming very late to this discussion and don’t have much to add (at this point at least) to the discussion of the Civil War (boring as it may seem, I share ari’s commitment to the current–and as always evolving–historical consensus on these issues, though I welcome an open discussion of alternate views).
But I did want to pick up on one comment by Rick B that raises an interesting side issue:
“The structure of our political system prevents any third party from being effective, so the choice is Republican and Democrat. The option is to choose the lesser of the two evils, and then try to take it over. That is what the religious right did with the Republicans, and now for the rest of us that is what will drive us to the Democratic Party.”
This comment struck me as fascinating for its apparent utter irrelevance. Ron Paul is running as a Republican. This conversation has nothing whatsoever to do with third party attempts.
And yet, I think this comment actually reaches the heart of what motivates a lot of Paul supporters…and the emptiness of the appeals of a lot of Paul detractors.
I’m unsympathetic to Ron Paul for a whole host of reasons, including the views highlighted in this post. But I am sympathetic to his supporters’ sense that the leading candidates of both major parties are militarists who are far too fond of executive power. The shame is that Ron Paul is virtually the only candidate so far to challenge these assumptions (Dennis Kucinich has, too, but seems to get no traction, even from progressive Democrats….why he doesn’t is, I think, an interesting topic for another day). Unfortunately, Paul challenges the neo-imperialist assumptions of the “mainstream” candidates from a place that I find unacceptable.
I mention Rick B’s little irrelevant excursus on third parties (whose role in US history is significantly more vital than he lets on, and whose exclusion has more to do with shallow, rather than deep, legal barriers erected by the major parties) because many Paul critics are less interested in (rightly) criticizing Paul than they are in building a case for progressives to, yet again, support a “lesser evil” party whose commit to war crimes such as torture should give progressive voters pause even if it falls somewhat short of the enthusiasm of most of the leading figures in the greater evil party.
That’s a very smart comment. And Ben’s point is worth considering for those of us who have been a bit flummoxed by the appeal of someone like Congressman Paul, who draws support from across the ideological spectrum. I’ve always believed that something like Ben wrote is true. But his comment is much more coherent and concise than my inchoate thoughts. So I thought I’d hoist it above the fold.
The Edge of the American West 
34 comments
December 26, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Jaffanator
Yippers! You did it again.
Paul is the modern incarnation of the calhounite/nazi alliance – an alliance that has plagued every generation since the Confederacy lost the war to truth and righteousness brought by Father Abraham’s grand army. Read about Abe, that you may learn to fear Ron.
December 26, 2007 at 3:34 pm
matt w
Unfair to Rick B! The bit about third parties wasn’t irrelevant; Rick’s own* point is that third parties themselves are irrelevant, because of our political system. What matters is the makeup of the party, and the Republicans have committed themselves to full-on imperialism** — which is distasteful to a lot of conservatives as well as to liberals. So Paul gains support from people who oppose the imperialism even though they don’t sign on with the rest of his nutty program. But on the whole the most important fact is that the Democrats are considerably less insane than the Republicans.
(And as for the “lesser evil,” I think Rick B has the right prescription there too; the thing for progressive voters to do isn’t to wring our hands about how the Democrats are unworthy of our support, it’s to take the party over.)
*Perhaps debatable — in Vermont we’ve chipped away at the two-party system a little.
**And, I might add, stupid imperialism — they’re not even good at it.
December 26, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Rick B
Matt, thanks. You said it better than I could have.
Ari, You misunderstand the Ron Paul phenomenon if you think he is running as a Republican. He has absolutely no hope of getting the nomination as a Republican, as his permanent poll status in the middle single digits makes clear. He is running in the Republican debates so as to get his Libertarian message to a population who totally ignored him when he previously ran for President on the Libertarian ticket.
I seriously doubt that he had any anticipation that the Internet could be used to raise funds the way he has done it. In fact, I don’t think that Dr. Paul had anything to do with raising that money. His acolytes/disciples/whatever did that on their own. There is a strange attraction between Libertarians and people who work in the computer industry. (Geeks of a feather?) The Press is so unsophisticated about computers that they are still trying to apply the old rules of the money primary to the Ron Paul phenomenon. But Dr. Paul is going nowhere inside the Republican Party.
If not for his ability to be such a contrast to the idiotic conventional wisdom of the other Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination, taken together with the surprising amount of money his followers have collected for him (and they have done so in an especially effective PR manner by doing it on specific days so taht the amounts have a lot more PR traction than they would if spread out over time) we STILL wouldn’t hear about the crackpot who has spent his career giving the House of Representatives public chastising speeches on how they violate the literal words of the Constitution.
I give him about a 50/50 chance that he will run on the Libertarian ticket. He has said he won’t, but he is age 71 and he will have both name recognition and money like he has never had before. And if he runs as a Libertarian he will take the Libertarian vote away from both the Republicans and the Democrats. But he will still end up as an asterisk in the general election vote totals, much as before.
But he won’t get Grover Norquist away from teh Republican Party where he has a lot more power than Dr. Paul will ever have because Grover works inside the Republican Party. Norquist and the religious right have a strong partial veto on who the Republicans run as candidates, which is why McCain has had so much trouble getting any traction in the run up to the real primaries.
So when you say that my comment was irrelevant because Dr. Paul is running as a Republican and not on a third Party ticket, I think you misread both him and his followers. Dr. Paul is just using the Republican Party for his own effort. Dr. Paul and his Libertarians are a third party movement with strong distaste for both major parties, much as the Green Party is. And they are going to once again demonstrate why ideologies have to take over one or the other of the two major political parties to have a real effect on American politics.
December 26, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Rick B
Sorry Ari. I should have directed that comment at Ben Alpers.
And Ben, I don’t discount the pressure third parties have put on the two major parties in the past. It is just that the Republican party has so totally gone off the rails in an authoritarian – corporatist – religious direction that I don’t think there is sufficient time left for any third party movement to effectively stop them.
December 26, 2007 at 4:32 pm
ari
Wait, I didn’t say that it was irrelevant. Ben did. And actually he noted that it seemed irrelevant but actually pointed to a deeper truth. I think you’ve either not read Ben very carefully — especially if you think it was me writing — or you’ve misread him. Either way, I think he was suggesting that your point was quite interesting and worthy of discussion, which is why it’s now a post of its own. In other words, nobody’s making you a strawman. But if having your comment pulled above the fold makes you unhappy, please say so.
December 26, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Bruce Miller
Thanks for taking on Ron Paul’s neo-Confederate pseudohistory on the Civil War in this and other posts. The Lost Cause version of the Civil War, which is really an ideological construct to justify the overthrow of Reconstruction and the imposition of segregation, actually does have a significant influence in promoting what Michelle Goldberg calls
“yahoo postmodernism”.
On the third party issue, this is where Paul’s comments about the Civil War and his expressed opposition to civil rights laws ought to be a screaming signal for liberals and Democrats. Yes, there are structural barriers to a third party in the US. But the biggest barrier is winner-take-all electoral districts. They create a very strong pressure for two-party general election competitions.
So, short of establishing a parliamentary system, people who seriously want a new party in the US have to look toward replacing one of the two current major parties. And under current conditions, doing that means concentrating on destroying one of the two current parties – and leaving the other in power for 10-20 years in the meantime.
People who want to replace the Democratic Party with another one that is more clearly pro-labor, anti-discrimination and more pragmatic and war-averse would do well to take a long, hard look at Paul’s far-right allegiances.
Ron Paul also does a poor job of articulating the case against the Iraq War and “imperial” foreign policy. He argued in at least one of the Republican debates that the Iraq War was bad because it was waged to enforce UN resolutions, a stock prowar argument that is false. But he’s signalling the New World Order paranoids that he’s against the evil United Nations. And he’s been explicit about opposing membership in the United Nations and nuclear nonproliferation treaties. Can anyone seriously expect to build a sensible, much less “progressive” foreign policy on that basis?
Paul’s foreign policy outlook is Old Right isolationist. He recently gave an interview to “Business Week”‘s Maria Bartolomo in which she asked him how he would respond as President to a hostile move by Iran. Paul responded that he would treat it like John Kennedy treated the Cuban Missile Crisis! Are liberals who say nice things about his antiwar position really listening to what the guy is saying?
In any case, his opposition to civil rights laws, combined with his neo-Confederate nudge-nudge wink-wink to the white supremacists is enough in itself to make me oppose him. Add in his hardline anti-labor position and his Old Right isolationist nationalism, and it just makes me shake my head in wonder how anyone who thinks of themselves as liberal or progressive would admire the guy.
December 26, 2007 at 5:50 pm
ari
Bruce, would you mind if I cut and paste your comment into the big discussion about Ron Paul? Thanks.
December 26, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Ben Alpers
Rick B and Bruce…sensible comments, both, though I disagree (in part) with each of you.
This is an almost classic discussion of how new ideologies enter the US political fray. And all three major models have been mentioned:
1) Take over an existing party. (Rick B)
2) Replace one of the two (Bruce Miller)
3) Work for a third party designed to operate alongside the major parties
I have no idea what Ron Paul’s hidden intentions are. But what he is openly doing (and what people who are supporting him are doing) is an attempt at method #1: taking over an existing party. Is this a foolhardy venture? Almost certainly. Do I think Ron Paul is a distasteful candidate on most issues other than war and executive power? You bet. But a criticism of the Ron Paul strategy (or at least this Ron Paul strategy) for transforming US politics should be a criticism of strategy #1 not strategy #3.
I happen to think that the odds on all of these models are very long, but that #3 is currently the most fruitful strategy, followed (in theory) by #1.
The objections to the effectiveness of #3 (third party efforts) are historical and structural. Third parties have achieved limited electoral success at various times in American history. In the last century and a quarter, Populist, Progressive, or Farmer-Labor governors, legislators, Congressmen, and Senators have all won election. But all of these efforts have been short-lived. Third parties tend to fuse with, or to be coopted by, a major party. Or they just fall away when they hit an electoral glass ceiling.
The structural objections often deny this very history, claiming that our electoral system makes third parties more or less impossible. However, there are serious structural issues to be raised. Some electoral reforms would have to be made to make third parties more viable, most notably a dramatic easing of undemocratic ballot access laws and the adoption of a system of single transferable voting. Both would happen at the state level and would require no federal Constitutional amendments whatsoever. Obviously the US isn’t a parliamentary system. But the quasi-official status that the Democrats and Republicans have created for themselves, through restrictive ballot access laws, tax-payer funded primary elections, and the like, is neither an explicit nor implicit part of our constitutional system. It’s an extra-constitutional accretion that can be legislatively eliminated. It’s a bug, not a feature.
Changing the U.S. into a multiparty democracy would take a lot of work. But it would certainly be easier than replacing one or another of the major parties. The last time this happened, in the 1850s, it was under extremely special circumstances….can everyone agree that the death of the Whigs was caused by slavery, or is there a neo-Confederate story that this, too, was about reasonable Constitutional disagreement?
As for transforming a major party, this does happen. But the elites in each party are extraordinarily entrenched at the moment. And there is less than no interest among active Democrats in transforming their party, as conversations like this always reveal. Instead, we get endless highminded explanations as to why change really is impossible, followed by careful (and usually reasonable) dissections of how awful the GOP is. And it is awful. But such discussions tend to pass over in silence what the Democratic Party has become. It’s perfectly reasonable to refuse to support a candidate who, in ari’s words is “even a little tolerant of slavery.” But why are so many so-called progressives willing to support a party that is more than a little tolerant of torture?
Both major parties as presently constituted are pretty awful. That doesn’t mean that they are identical. I am a firm believer that one often has to vote for lesser evils. But lesser-evilism is not a viable long-term political strategy.
December 27, 2007 at 12:28 am
abb1
But I am sympathetic to his supporters’ sense that the leading candidates of both major parties are militarists who are far too fond of executive power.
But it’s much more than that, Ben. The US political system is all fucked up and extremely dangerous. Try to describe the political events of the last 30 years – both foreign and domestic – and you’ll notice how insane the story sounds. Also note that 7 year into the Bush administration, with all the perceived backlash out there, the openly fascist presidential candidate (Giuliani) is quite popular and has a reasonable chance of winning.
I agree that getting rid of the two-party winner-takes-all system might help, but Ron Paul’s idea also seems reasonable: the feds simply have too much friggin power. 300 million people, 12 trillion dollar economy, incredible, colossal military – all is completely controlled by a total of about 600 people in Washington. 600 ordinary people being constantly lobbied (bribed and threatened) by various powerful interests.
Why don’t the liberals notice a huge problem here? What would be wrong with taking some – most, in fact – power from the feds and giving it to the states and local communities?
December 27, 2007 at 12:35 am
Ben Alpers
abb1,
I’m totally sympathetic to reworking the structures of power in this country in such a way that the federal government gets less of it. But simply devolving federal power to the states is not the answer.
Have you noticed who controls power at the state level? Our state legislatures are even more open to bribery and threats by moneyed interests than Congress is.
December 27, 2007 at 2:46 am
abb1
True, I understand exactly what you’re saying: race to the bottom, and so on. It’s a fair point. But the way things are now, it looks more and more like a better chance to take.
BTW, why is this site (comment thread pages) taking 100% of my cpu in firefox, is this typical or it’s something with my system?
December 27, 2007 at 3:52 am
Rick B
Ari,
I’ll admit freely that I read Ben’s comment, decided that in any discussion of either Ron Paul or his followers it is impossible to ignore the fact that Dr. Paul is a third-party candidate piggy-backing on the Republican Party debates to get his message out, and felt (and continue to feel) that to dismiss a recognition and discussion of Dr. Paul’s perpetual third-party status as “irrelevant” simply missed the point about what he represents.
Dr. Paul’s use of both the Republican Party mechanisms and the Libertarian Party mechanisms at different times is quite interesting. You are aware, I hope, that Dr. Paul previously ran for President in 1988 as the Libertarian standard bearer (431,750 votes (0.47%)) and has used his connections from that race to fund his congressional campaigns as a Republican. He still represents the Libertarians, and has picked up some really unusual other political outsiders (including members of right-wing militia groups and other extremists.) But he dresses up good, smiles well, addresses the Iraq war when no one else will, and his followers have manipulated the Press into believing that he is winning the money primary – or is at least competitive in it. He is still a third party candidate, a kook, and his ability to piggy-back on the Republican party debates in order to get his message out merely demonstrates how abysmally poor both the current condition of the Republican party and the politically reporting Press are.
Since both times Ben referred to my comment he described my focus on the third party aspect of the Paul movement as “irrelevant,” I really don’t see how I misread what he wrote. I still think that the third party aspects of Dr. Paul’s race are the central factor to understanding what is happening with him.
I’ll also admit to more interest in what Ben Wrote than in who wrote it, and when I glanced back up at the top to see who I should have been addressing, I picked the wrong name. I apologize to both of you if it bothers either of you. Rather like a recent criticism I read of Bob Herbert’s columns, I tend to focus on my idea rather than on my audience. That’s a flaw of mine, and I have a copy of that criticism of Herbert’s writing pasted to the side of my monitor for all the good it does me. But as flaws go, is it a “bug” or a “feature?” [Don’t answer that.]
But do I mind having my comment pulled above the fold in this august company? Of course not. I have been delighted with what I have seen written here and I’m very glad that Josh Marshall referred to this location.
I write in part to be read and in part because I learn more as I write than simply from the passive action of just reading. So I really do appreciate it when someone finds something I wrote interesting. Even “interesting but irrelevant to this conversation.” I am delighted to be read and noticed by people who seem to know what they are talking about.
December 27, 2007 at 4:48 am
Ben Alpers
I hope it’s clear that I didn’t mean to cause offense, Rick B. I do think that Paul’s third party past (and potential third party future) is, in various ways, important in assessing him. But I don’t think warnings about the dangers of supporting third parties are relevant to assessing Paul’s (admitedly longshot) race for the GOP nomination. Paul has run both inside and outside the GOP. He is currently running inside the GOP. Such a relationship to a major party is hardly unheard of in American history. Strom Thurmond, Bob LaFollette, Jr., and George Wallace have moved in and out of third parties. On the other hand, this pattern is hardly universal among those who’ve made third party runs. Ralph Nader, for example, pointedly refuses to join any political party and would never run as a Democrat (or obviously a Republican). So while I think Paul’s relationship to the Libertarian Party should be taken seriously, I think his relationship to the GOP should also be taken seriously.
At any rate, I’m afraid that some of my response to the way Rick B. handles the third party issue vis a vis Paul is the sense I get that he thinks that anyone who’d run on a third party line is, ipso facto, a kook. And while I agree with him about Paul’s kookiness I don’t agree with him at all about third parties.
December 27, 2007 at 7:30 am
Bruce Miller
Sure, Ari, that’s fine for you to cut-and-paste my comment.
December 27, 2007 at 9:20 am
Chuck G
This is a truly great history site. The discussions are well thought out and well stated. I wonder if there is a political historian that can do some research on modern political movements? The United States has had mulitple parties contesting for the presidency for as long as I can remember. However, relatively few have gained national prominence: Anderson, Perow, and Nader to name a few.
What role does state barriers to the ballot play? Who makes those rules and what are their effects on the election?
The real influence is money. We have the equiavelant of the National Baseball League in national politics. Teams like the Minnesota Twins can’t compete with the Braves and the Yankees; the Braves and the Yankees know they have a good deal, so they work together to keep the money from flowing to fringe groups. And, by raising the cost of an election, they have eliminated the ability of these lesser teams to compete in any given market.
What lobbiest is going to donate $1000 to The Libertarian National Committee, but they will give ten times that much to a minority congressioanl party. Without several tens of thousands of dollars, and ready access to more, who is going to buy air time in Chicago? New York? Las Angeles?
And people aren’t stupid in the aggregate: what truly signifacant number of people are going to vote for the Green Party until and unless they know the Democarats and the Republicans won’t be writing the laws?
My suggestion: increase the number of House seats by 100%, re-draw the districts, and soon you will have viable chance at third parties and third party coalitions.
csg
December 27, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Rick B
Ben,
No offense taken, although I was a little frustrated that I had not properly communicated what I meant to say. Unfortunately that is not nearly as rare as an experience for me that I wish it were.
My focus was on Ron Paul and the Libertarians, not on all third parties. Ron Paul is not a person who has ever had a significant effect on national politics, and I seriously doubt that will change in this election. I was simply surprised that anyone took him even mildly seriously, but it seems that he has made himself the political vessel for a lot of people who look at American national politics and say “A pox on all your houses.”
Paul is trying to do what Anderson, Perot and Nadar all did – present a different message to the voting public on the national level. I think that Anderson, Perot, Nadar and George Wallace all had messages to deliver that would resonate with national audiences. Dr. Paul does not. The Libertarians have never given any indication that – on the national level – they will ever be a serious movement.
Dr. Paul did get his message out by piggy-backing on the Republican nomination process. The Republican Party is so utterly inadequate and the Press was so impressed by what traditionally meant something (the money primary) that he has gotten an inordinate amount of press consideration. But the Libertarian message of total free enterprise, let everyone be as racists as they personally want, and create an economic paradise by tying the dollar back to gold – that message is not going to resonate with most of the disaffected crowd that are building his numbers.
[Besides, I don’t think that making the dollar freely convertible into gold will work. Now, making it freely convertible into tortoise shells, that might have a better chance.]
So from what I can see, third parties (at the national level, anyway) operate primarily to make a statement that neither of the major parties is making. But the third party is not going to gain control of the government so that it can appoint people to make administrative decisions. Anyone who wants to do that has to work inside one of the two major parties. Grover Norquist is a Libertarian who understands that. So were, for that matter, Sen. Phil Gramm and Rep. Dick Armey. Neither of those two Libertarian economists ever stood up and lectured the other members of their respective houses of Congress how they were violating the Constitution as Ron Paul does regularly. Ron Paul finally realized that to maintain he House seat he had to request “earmarks,” so he does. But then he (ineffectively) votes against the bills to which the earmarks are attached when they come up for a final vote because they violate the Constitution as he reads it.
December 27, 2007 at 3:14 pm
matt w
It’s perfectly reasonable to refuse to support a candidate who, in ari’s words is “even a little tolerant of slavery.” But why are so many so-called progressives willing to support a party that is more than a little tolerant of torture?
Ben, I’ve been stewing over this for a while, and I feel kind of dirty saying this. But slavery and torture aren’t comparable. Slavery was an all-encompassing system in half the country that completely defined the lives of millions of people. Torture is always and everywhere wrong; but it’s not all-encompassing in the U.S. like that. I think that’s why it makes sense to support — but to try to improve! — a party whose record on torture is much worse than it ought to be, against a party that has given itself over entirely to the forces of torture torture and more torture.
And I feel compelled to make this comment because you’re defending the idea that progressives should support a third party designed to operate alongside the major parties, because lesser-evilism is not a long-term political strategy. Well, a few progressives already supported that third party, and because they couldn’t bring themselves to support a not entirely satisfactory Democratic Party,* we got a Republican government that gave us torture torture and more torture. How was that a viable political strategy, long-term or short-term?
And anyway, why do you say that discussions like this always reveal that active Democrats aren’t interested in transforming our party? Where are you getting that in this discussion?
*Of course there were other contributing factors, but it is a plain and simple fact that Nader’s run was one of the causes of Bush’s inauguration. Sorry if I sound snippy here, but I’ve argued with people who deny even this, and I think that’s absolutely Orwellian.
December 27, 2007 at 3:19 pm
matt w
I should’ve acknowledged in there that you’ve said that you’re not the kind of Green who fails to vote against Republicans in Presidential elections (sorry, I can’t find the post so can’t reproduce exactly what’s said). So I’m not blaming you. But, I’m just not seeing the argument that (3) is a more fruitful strategy for progressives than (1) in the current climate, especially because I’m not seeing the argument that (3) won’t be disastrous in the short term; and long-term strategies have to be short-term sometime.
December 27, 2007 at 3:26 pm
ari
Matt: I, too, have been thinking about how to respond to Ben all day. And I’ve got nothing better than where you end up: not supporting one of the Democrats will likely lead to true horror. So I’ll offer my full-throated support even when I have misgivings. Does this make me uncomfortable? Yes, very. But I don’t see much choice right now. The idea that things have to get worse before they get better — the line I got from my Naderite friends in 2000 — just won’t work for me at this point. (Truth be told, it didn’t then, either). And, I’m almost certain, it also doesn’t work for Ben. I won’t speak for him, of course, but he made a comment on another post that seemed to indicate as much.
December 27, 2007 at 4:09 pm
matt w
he made a comment on another post that seemed to indicate as much.
Yeah, that’s the one I was talking about — and I found it! For some reason Yahoo! found it when Google didn’t:
“Any of the three leading Democrats would be clearly better than whomever the GOP nominates (I’m a Green….but I’m not that sort of Green).”
So, we’re all in agreement on that issue, I just get twitchy around the subject. And I’m honestly concerned about how to get things better — I don’t see how anything other than internal reform of the Dems can work. But I’m no historian; study of third parties past may help show us a different way forward.
December 27, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Ben Alpers
A few more thoughts about all this.
First, I think we can all agree that there are no easy or obvious answers here. Our disagreements, such as they are, reflect the real complexity of the problems our nation and the world face.
Second, we can chew gum and walk at the same time. It is perfectly possible to vote for a lesser evil candidate while spending one’s time and money working for longer-term solutions instead of simply further investing in lesser evils. Those long term solutions might take the form of third party work, or of non-electoral politics, or of something else entirely.
Third, as far as presidential politics are concerned, a large majority of Americans live in the thirty-plus states whose electoral votes are not in play. Voters in these states shouldn’t waste their votes on lesser-evil candidates at all. Voters in, e.g., Texas or California or Wyoming should vote for the candidate who they believe would make the best president, whether or not that candidate is in a major party. In this regard, I find myself in a very difficult position, as Oklahoma, a solidly red state, has the worst ballot access laws in the country. It is nearly impossible for independent and third party candidates to make it on the ballot. And we are not allowed to write-in votes. Every four years, I thus need to seriously consider leaving my presidential ballot blank, especially since the more votes that are cast for president, the harder it is for independent and third-party candidates to get on the ballot during the next election cycle. (Of course this comment would no longer apply if we adopt the National Popular Vote, which is actually the simplest to achieve of many necessary electoral reforms to move our electoral system out of the late eighteenth century.)
On slavery vs. torture: I, too, do not think torture is as bad as slavery. But that’s not really much of a defense of torture or those who countenance it. If you want to make a case that it’s morally acceptable to support a party that has a “big tent” attitude toward torture and other war crimes, by all means make the case. But simply noting that it’s not as bad as slavery doesn’t get you there. Nor does the fact that the other party is worse on torture do the trick. Incidentally, what have progressive Democrats in this discussion done to make their party less amenable to torture and its advocates?
On Nader in 2000: among the other factors in Gore’s defeat were…a terrible handling of the post election by the Gore camp; Gore’s failure to seriously contest NH (which could have won him the presidency); the Lieberman choice; butterfly ballots; David McReynolds Socialist Party candidacy (which also got more votes than the difference between Bush and Gore in Florida); Gore’s utterly ineffectual campaign; the SCOTUS decision in Bush v Gore; etc. etc. Did Nader’s candidacy affect the outcome? Of course. What would the race have looked like without Nader running at all? Who the hell knows. The campaign would have looked entirely different. The scenario in which Ralph Nader and his ballot lines magically disappear the day before the election (which is usually what people mean when they ask what things would have looked like without Nader) is clearly unrealistic. One way or another, if you adopt a system of single transferable voting (such as Instant Runoff Voting or IRV) the spoiler effect would be permanently eliminated. IRV has been in the Green Party platform for years. If the Democrats are so scared of spoilage, why don’t they get behind it too? The answer is that the ability to scare people away from even considering voting for a third party candidate is far more convenient than such an insurance policy against the unlikely event that a third party candidate will cost them an election. At any rate, if you’re worried about spoiling, donate generously to the Center for Voting and Democracy and help this country get a twenty-first century voting system.
Finally, matt w asks an excellent question:
And anyway, why do you say that discussions like this always reveal that active Democrats aren’t interested in transforming our party? Where are you getting that in this discussion?
I’m getting that from the fact that nobody has made any suggestions as to how to transform the Democratic Party. Everyone–so far as I can tell–is supporting one of the “mainstream” Democrats who are terrible on, e.g., issues of war and peace and executive power.
Taking the larger view, there is simply no effort whatsoever within the Democratic Party to ideologically transform it. Where is the equivalent of the Goldwater movement in 1964, the McCarthy campaign in ’68, the McGovern campaign in ’72, the Reagan campaign in ’76, or the Jackson campaign in ’84? It simply doesn’t exist, nor has anything like it existed since at least Jackson’s 1988 run (which itself did a lot more to accommodate itself to the Democratic mainstream than his 1984 effort had). I’m sure most progressive Democrats would be delighted if, magically, their pumpkin of a party turned into a (suitably fuel-efficient) coach. But they seem utterly unwilling to invest any political capital in the effort, which would necessarily involve the kind of direct, critical confrontation with the leading figures in their party that the movements I mention above featured.
It’s 1:30 in the morning here, so I’m heading to bed…
December 27, 2007 at 5:14 pm
ari
Everything you say about Gore’s
victoryloss is right, Ben. And I blogged about a few of those issues when I did an On This Day in History for Gore’s concession. But none of the points you raise would have mattered had Nader not received nearly 100,000 votes in Florida. So I think it’s fair to say that we do know what the race would have looked like without a Nader candidacy: Al Gore, president of the United States. That’s a burden that Nader himself seems to have no trouble bearing. Nader voters, though, especially in Florida, might not sleep as easily. Voting Green where there’s no contest is one thing, as you say, but doing so in a battleground state is quite another.December 27, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Rick B
Ben, don’t include Texas in that group.
The Democratic Party here is making a comeback. Dallas County elected a full slate of Democrats in 2006, and because of straight party tickets, that included all the Judges also. The elected an Hispanic Lesbian as sheriff. A Republican state legislator switched to become a Democrat last Summer, and a Democrat just won a special election is a district designed to elect Republicans last week. The Republican County Party leaders in the Congressional District that Tom DeLay used to represent all resigned a couple of months ago because they couldn’t deal with the crazies in their own party, and since the County Secretary resigned, there is no one legally allowed to request that the State Party replace them. And there is no noticeable third party here, barring an occasional Libertarian.
This is not a time for anyone to be voting for a third party here. The religious right still has a stranglehold on who the Republicans can nominate as candidates. The Greens are not as popular in this state as the Libertarians, and I still blame Nadar and the Greens for Bush in 2000. [forget the arguments – I’ve heard them all, and don’t buy Nadar’s pro-fascist 2000 campaign. Remember “It has to get a lot worse before it starts getting better.”?]
And what will we Democrats do to improve our party? That starts with primary campaigns against the incumbent Democrats who are out of line. It worked in the Republican party for Norquist.
Also, you seem to think the national party is the same as the state parties. It’s not. The changes will start in the states, not at the national level. And it is starting in the states.
December 27, 2007 at 6:56 pm
matt w
I’m getting that from the fact that nobody has made any suggestions as to how to transform the Democratic Party.
This is kind of a burdensome request, isn’t it? If I knew how to transform the Democratic Party I’d be a politician, not a philosopher. The best I can do is “Support and praise primary candidates who are doing the right thing” — pretty much what Rick B said. (How about that Dodd? Go Dodd!)
And I don’t think you’ve been much better about your preferred approach — how are you going to work for a third party that works alongside the existing two-party system? Most of your answers have been basically “Hope for better ballot access laws,” but hope is not a plan as they say. And you haven’t said anything about how your third party is going to do good rather than harm. So, I could with equal justice say that your silence on this issue reveals that Greens have less than no interest in actually making a positive contribution to the political climate instead of helping to elect Republicans. But it wouldn’t be just, because it’s not fair to expect you to produce a detailed political program. Just as it isn’t fair for you to expect me to produce one, and to draw unflattering conclusions when I don’t.
which would necessarily involve the kind of direct, critical confrontation with the leading figures in their party that the movements I mention above featured.
Yes, there is no hint of an effort to confront leading figures in the party, for instance by running a primary candidate against a former VP nominee and driving him out of the party.
If you want to make a case that it’s morally acceptable to support a party that has a “big tent” attitude toward torture and other war crimes, by all means make the case. But simply noting that it’s not as bad as slavery doesn’t get you there. Nor does the fact that the other party is worse on torture do the trick.
Well, I’m not a historian here, so I may trip up. But let’s say that leading Democrats wanted to limit the scope of torture to what was already occurring. They weren’t planning to outlaw torture completely, at least not any time soon, but they were taking a strong position that there would be no agencies that weren’t currently torturing would be allowed start torturing. And they fervently hoped that, given these safe harbors from torture, the agencies that were now torturing would be forced to give it up. Not necessarily right away, though, if they were willing to let non-torturous interrogations proceed in other agencies.
OK, I think the position I’ve just described is actually to the right of that of most leading Democrats. (The bill to extend the Army Field Manual to CIA interrogations goes beyond what I’ve described.) So I assume you’d find that to be totally morally unacceptable, and that you couldn’t support the Democrats under those circumstances. But doesn’t that mean that you would’ve found it impossible to support the Republicans in 1860?
And, again, I don’t think you’re justified in being self-righteous about this. (And if I I sound a little snippy, you just kinda suggested that I might want to mount “a defense of torture” when I specifically said that it was “always and everywhere wrong.” I’m not so much angry as a little bit hurt. Also, my computer keeps hanging up.) You’re proud to disassociate yourself from the Dems, who are too tolerant of torture; but how is your third party going to help?
Voters in, e.g., Texas or California or Wyoming should vote for the candidate who they believe would make the best president, whether or not that candidate is in a major party.
Well, of the three leading vote-getters in the 2000 election, one has since done an incredible amount of evil; one has since been one of the most effective advocates for progressive causes, particularly the environment and a sane foreign policy; one has since done jack. The third one was the third-party candidate.
December 27, 2007 at 7:12 pm
ari
Yikes. Note to self: don’t make Matt angry. Matt smash. I kid, of course, and agree with much of what you’ve said. I know few progressive Dems who aren’t appalled by torture and who don’t want to see the major candidates take a strong stand against such immoral acts. But getting from there to a third party is the leap I’m not sure I understand. And so far at least, Ben hasn’t convinced me. While he tries, I’ll keep doing useless things like calling Senator Feinstein’s office to complain after the Mukasey vote, carping at the Obama regional field director (I think — or maybe it was the milkman) after the senator absented himself for the Kyl-Lieberman vote, and generally fretting about Hillary’s foreign policy team. Again, is this enough? Nope. But it’s what I’ve got for now.
December 28, 2007 at 12:16 am
Ben Alpers
none of the points you raise would have mattered had Nader not received nearly 100,000 votes in Florida. So I think it’s fair to say that we do know what the race would have looked like without a Nader candidacy: Al Gore, president of the United States.
No, Ari. That’s what would have happened had Ralph Nader and his ballot line magically disappeared the day before the election. Nader’s candidacy had an impact on the entire campaign. The whole presidential campaign would have looked very different had he not run.
As for Matt W. and transforming the Democratic Party….
You don’t transform parties by running a single primary challenger against a sitting senator. In fact, the fate of the Lamont candidacy suggests one of the many reasons that such a strategy is inadequate in this case. Lieberman decided to run against the Democratic nominee. Key leading national Democrats backed Lieberman. The Senate Democratic leadership let him keep his seniority. And Holy Joe won in November.
You do transform parties by doing things like running presidential candidates who fundamentally challenge the views of leading members of parties, or coordinating efforts to take over local and state party committees and, eventually, national party committees. This is no great secret and involves no complicated political philosophy. The new right’s long march through the institutions of the GOP is the great modern example of such strategies working. Democratic doves tried something like it in the late ’60s and early ’70s and then fell back in line.
So what am I doing to change things outside the Democratic Party? I’m supporting efforts like National Popular Vote and the Center for Voting and Democracy that are coordinated attempts to amend our electoral laws. I’m involved in a variety of “single-issue” groups. And I’ve done my time serving on a variety of local, state, and national Green Party committees (though I’m not doing that now, in part because of my sense of how that effort is currently going…or maybe it’s just burnout).
On torture and the Democrats…I didn’t mean to suggest that you were mounting a defense of torture…or that you should have to. I meant to suggest that saying torture is less bad than slavery is not much of an argument in favor of party that condones it. You are mounting a defense of a party one quarter of whose Senate caucus voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act last year, and whose leadership of both houses of Congress for the last year has done less than nothing to hold the Bush administration accountable for its use of torture and its other war crimes.
I suppose my mid-19th century comparison (since we’re doing that) would be to the Whigs and slavery. The Democratic Party today as a party has no position on torture. It includes both those who favor it and those who oppose it. Those who favor it pay no price within the party for their advocacy for torture. And just as I think leaving the Whigs was the right response to the situation in the 1850s, I believe that leaving the Democratic Party is the right thing to do now, even as one might have to continue to vote for (anti-torture) Democratic candidates in many cases.
The issue, incidentally, is not making torture illegal. The US is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture. Torture is already illegal in the United States. This makes it fundamentally unlike slavery in the 1850s. The issue is what does one do about the violations of US and international law by this administration and its Congressional enablers (in both major parties). The position of the Democratic Party’s leadership in Congress is to do nothing.
There are, of course, Democrats who disagree with this view and support the impeachment of Cheney and Bush and oppose bills that give the cover of law to war crimes. One of them, Dennis Kucinich, is running for president. Do you support his candidacy? Doing so would seem a pretty obvious step if one were a Democrat who prioritized transforming the party on these issues.
(A note on tone: I really don’t want this to become a flame war. I suspect Matt W, Rick B, and ari don’t, either. Let me stress that however vigorous my disagreement here, it’s meant respectfully.)
December 28, 2007 at 5:10 am
ari
Flame wars are dull. And there’s not even a small part of me that wants that kind of fight, as I think the tone and content of my comments make clear.
But I don’t mind a good argument. So, let me ask you this, Ben: are you able to relate for me how Nader’s candidacy substantively changed the way Gore ran in the 2000 race? Or Bush, for that matter? And, if possible, don’t nibble around the margins. Because 100,000 votes in Florida cut to the core of the thing, right?
I ask because I have no recollection of either candidate shaping their message or actions in any significant way to account for Nader’s role in the race. And so while I knew that my comment above had a counterfactual component, an annoying whiff of the unknowable, I stand by the substance: to the best of my ability to judge, and I’d be curious to hear what others say, the impact that Nader had in 2000 was most obviously felt on election day, when his supporters cost Gore the presidency. And, in the process, cost the nation and the world far more than that.
That’s a serious thing to say, I know, but actions have consequences. And voting is both a right and a responsbility. We need to use the franchise with care. Which isn’t to say, of course, that people shouldn’t vote for whom they please. But I do wonder if after-the-fact rationalizations for a Nader vote in 2000 don’t provide cover for others who might make what I think would be similar mistakes in the future. Nader’s candidacy begat President Bush, plain and simple. Worse still, that was Nader’s intent. His strategy made that very clear. He said so himself at the time. His unwillingness, even at the elventh hour, when everyone with a brain knew how close (well, maybe not exactly how close) the election was going to be, to rethink said strategy should never be forgotten. Or forgiven, in my view.
All of that said, I have no lasting animus toward repentant Nader voters, even for those who worked on his campaign, as they could not have known what would come next. And, as I think you know, I have the greatest respect for your activism, Ben, and I believe that the nation would be better off if others shared your passion for and knowledge of the political process. And for and of history. Still and all, the history of the 2000 election doesn’t seem much in doubt to me. Suggesting otherwise feels disingenuous. As you say, all of the above is offered with respect.
December 28, 2007 at 6:38 am
matt w
Key leading national Democrats backed Lieberman.
Which ones backed him in the general, though? Key figures backed him in the primary, but that’s not what you’re talking about. When I argue with Greens at another board, they always bring up people who supported Lieberman in the primary but Lamont in the general, so I’m a little wary of these assertions.
The Senate Democratic leadership let [Lieberman] keep his seniority.
Which they had little choice about — if they strip him of his seniority, he caucuses with Republicans, and they retain the majority.
But anyway, let’s stipulate that you’re right about all this. I agree that leading Democratic Party figures have been much softer on Lieberman than I’d like. We’re talking about an insurgency to transform the party, aren’t we? You wouldn’t expect it to instantly garner the support of key national figures. Lamont’s candidacy was supposed to be a shot across the bow — nobody expected a complete political neophyte to win that primary. He lost the general mostly because he is a neophyte who ran a crap general campaign (and Republicans knew to throw their support behind Lieberman), but Lamont already got farther than you’d expect an insurgent candidate to get.
You do transform parties by doing things like running presidential candidates who fundamentally challenge the views of leading members of parties, or coordinating efforts to take over local and state party committees and, eventually, national party committees.
But hasn’t the nascent gate-crashing movement done exactly that? Howard Dean challenged the reigning pro-war consensus in 2004 and then took over the national party committee. I don’t know how quickly these processes usually go, but if the accepted time span is Goldwater-to-Reagan, I think we’re ahead of schedule. This isn’t necessarily entirely the insurgent movement I’d like, but I think it’s there.
The comparison to the Whigs is pointed, I think. And I think the difference is that, because torture isn’t an all-encompassing system like slavery, there isn’t the sort of mass movement that would make a third party effective like the Party Of Lincoln was. And I agree that there should be such a movement — but I think the prospects for success for such a movement are greater if they work to take over the Democrats rather than work from the outside.
There are, of course, Democrats who disagree with this view and support the impeachment of Cheney and Bush and oppose bills that give the cover of law to war crimes. One of them, Dennis Kucinich, is running for president. Do you support his candidacy?
No I don’t, because I think Kucinich would be a terrible president. I don’t want someone who will insist that if he can’t get everything his way (even if it’s my way too!) he doesn’t want anything at all. And his vote against S-CHIP indicates that that’s the kind of politician Kucinich is. As I mentioned above, I do support Dodd (in a too-bad-he-won’t-win kind of way), who not only supports the rule of law, but has actually managed to get a little bit done to that effect — he’s responsible for pulling the telco bill. (And this is the sort of thing that really frustrates me about the Dems — why was this even an issue?)
But I think the fundamental disagreement here is about the role third parties actually play in our process. I’m with Ari on the role of Nader in 2000, and I’d add that Nader really ran against Gore. He did his best to argue that Gore was no different from Bush. (Maybe this helped Gore by swinging center-right voters toward him… but I doubt it.) And he deliberately campaigned in swing states, which hurt his alleged goal of getting the Greens to the 5% ballot access threshold.
If we can’t agree on the effects that past political strategies have actually had, then we won’t be able to agree on the effects that future strategies will have; so we won’t agree a way forward. So — and this is all offered with respect, again — how could a third party help?
December 28, 2007 at 7:02 am
Ben Alpers
Nader’s candidacy begat President Bush, plain and simple. Worse still, that was Nader’s intent. His strategy made that very clear. He said so himself at the time. His unwillingness, even at the elventh hour, when everyone with a brain knew how close (well, maybe not exactly how close) the election was going to be, to rethink said strategy should never be forgotten. Or forgiven, in my view.
I still don’t think it’s “plain and simple.” Nader’s presence in the campaign did change Gore’s behavior. For example, Nader clearly effected which states Gore campaigned in (e.g. Gore’s late swing into Wisconsin would likely not have taken place without Nader). My guess is that Nader’s presence effected Gore’s message, too. But when I said that Nader had an effect on the campaign, I was referring not simply to the behavior of the major candidates, but to the press coverage and the shape of the electorate, and to many intangible factors as well. Nader energized voters who may not have otherwise voted at all.
Given the extraordinary closeness of Florida, one should of course conclude that if everything else had been exactly the same, out of those 100,000 voters would have come enough votes to put Gore over the top. But in a race without Nader, everything else would not have been exactly the same. Who knows what kind of butterfly effects Nader’s absence would have created?
All of this is not at all to clear Nader of responsibility. The election in Florida was so close than any number of factors changing–including, but not limited to Nader–would likely have pushed it in the opposite direction (e.g. had Nader run exactly as he did, but the Palm Beach County ballot had been designed differently, Gore would have won).
But most critically, Nader did affirmatively try to “spoil” Gore’s candidacy. Ari is entirely correct about Nader’s intent.
This certainly wasn’t the intent of the Green Party as such, which Nader kept at arm’s length throughout the campaign. And though one can certainly cherry pick Nader quotes that indicated this intent over the course of the campaign, I actually think that Nader obscured this fact for much of the summer and fall.
But in the closing days and weeks of the campaign, Nader focused his efforts on battleground states. I think this indicated, as much as anything, what his actual strategy was. And I think it was deeply unfortunate.
Four years later, I was an uncommitted delegate to the 2004 Green Party presidential nominating convention. And my position going into that convention was Anyone But Nader. There were a lot of reasons for my taking this position, but one of them was the foolhardiness of Nader’s spoiler strategy. Nader has never had any interest in building a third party (he refuses to even join any party). And he opposes Instant Runoff Voting, a key Green Party plank that would permanently eliminate the spoiler problem. I came to feel that Nader truly believes that he can buy influence by costing Democrats elections.
I wouldn’t have knowingly signed onto such a strategy in 2000, but it was at least possible at the time that Nader was correct, and that Democrats would try to get Nader and his voters back into the fold if he cost them an election. We now know that Nader’s showing in 2000 had precisely the opposite effect. It provided a convenient scapegoats for Democrats. And it still raises fears among progressive independents and Democrats who might otherwise be moved to challenge the powers that be in the Democratic Party. Nader’s strategy was (and is) worse than a crime, it was a blunder.
In 2004, the GP did the right thing and nominated David Cobb, who promised to run what he called a Smart States strategy, acknowledging the desires of voters in battleground states to get rid of Bush and focusing the GP presidential campaign on solidly blue and red states. Incidentally, it was thanks to Cobb that the Ohio results were investigated, as Kerry refused to question them. Unfortunately the Cobb candidacy split the GP in two. Naderites in the party (organized by Nader’s 2004 running mate Peter Camejo) refused to accept the decision of the convention. Cobb was denied his own party’s line in one state (Vermont), and Naderites published a series of conspiratorial libels of Cobb in CounterPunch and other similar outlets. I fear that the Camejo forces now have the upper hand and that the party is going to move in the opposite direction this coming year. But we’ve spent so much energy battling each other over the last four years that whatever we do will almost certainly be irrelevant.
At any rate, the general point here is that, to the extent that Nader bears some responsibility for Bush’s selection in 2000, that responsibility flows not from the sheer fact of his third party candidacy, but from the particular strategy that he took. As I’ve already said, I utterly reject such an approach to running third party presidential campaigns.
December 28, 2007 at 7:05 am
ari
Ben, check your work e-mail.
December 29, 2007 at 7:37 am
Roy E Pearson
Ben
“But I am sympathetic to his supporters’ sense that the leading candidates of both major parties are militarists who are far too fond of executive power. ”
Thank you for putting consisely one of the major attractions of Paul. Only three of the candidates for President are of that mold, and I include Richardson.
I am a bleeding heart liberal. My conservative streak is totally personal. There are no Liberal Candidates anymore. The Liberal message has been watered down to some lukewarm mush that is thrown out once the election is won and the standard Corporate policies are followed.
I hope Ron Paul does run as a Third Party Candidate, He takes as much from the Democrats as the Republicans in votes and the message that we do have a choice is important. But I do want to point out that Ron Paul did not become a Republican just to run for president. He has been in the House as a Republican for some time.
Last, how to reform the Democrat Party. Probably not possible. The Democratic Party died on the streets of Chicago in 1968. It has had no winning insider Presidential Candidate since then, and the party is this frankenstein creature of made of attempts to keep the corpse living. (Carter and Clinton were both outside the mainstream of the party, and part of their ability to win the Presidency came from them being out of that mainstream.)
The creation of the Republican Party is the last model we have. The Whig Party had been dead for quite a while and several splinter groups joined and became a viable party because the other main party (Democrat) was split.
One reason that I am attracted to Paul is that sometimes the only way to get rid of a mess is to just toss everything in the air and start over.
The begining of reforming the Democrat Party or begining a New Party is to get rid of the vestages of power in the old. We need to start breaking up the Federal Goverment, not to the highest bidder as Bush did, but returning power back to the local people and encouraging them to take responsibility for their own lives.
That is what I am tryin to teach everyone that I know. We did not become the country we did because we waited for some Church or some King to tell us to or give us permission to. Yet we have voluntarily allowed the Federal Government to usurp more from us than did King George.
We are all locked in a seemingly democratic yet very comfortable prison.
“Ah, how the world still lives a cage” Maude in “Harold and Maude”.
December 29, 2007 at 7:49 am
ari
Eric, as it happens, has written this book on how we “bec[a]me the country we did.” You might want to check it out and see what you think.
December 29, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Roy E Pearson
I will look at it. I am sure that there are many stories about how we “became the country we did.” History is complex because it involves all the people and all their stories, but as I am sure you agree there are general trends.
One of those trends is the willingness to not only be, but to hunger mightly to be independant and free. I am not sure that we are still that country. We have too much. We know too little. We are manipulated like puppets on a string. We no longer believe that we are the source of power, but that the “Government” is. We believe we are powerless.
We are not, unless we allow ourselves to be.
January 7, 2008 at 12:01 pm
ari
More on Ron Paul: http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-ron-paul-condemns-1964-civil-rights.html