In Changing the Powers That Be: How the Left Can Stop Losing and Win, G. William Domhoff argues that any third party is doomed before it is started because of the way the way the American electoral system is structured. He advocates working within the Democratic Party as “egalitarian Democrats who believe in planning through the market, strategic non-violence, and religious freedom for all, including those who are nonrelgious.” Egalitarians are:

Not “spoilers” for the Democrats, but fellow Democrats, albeit of a different stripe

Not against the market per se, and hence not socialists or communists

Not advocates of violent tactics or armed struggle, and hence not pro-violence anarchists or revolutionaries

Not opposed to religion as an institution of meaning and community, but simply fierce opponents of political intrusions carried out in the name of specific religions

Domhoff acknowledges that “the corporate-conservative coalition and the Republican Party are clear opponents of this program, and they will do everything in their power to discredit it.”

Is this scenario viable? Does it work? Domhoff wrote his book in 2003 and I think that the events of the last 6 years have mostly proven him wrong, because the Democrats clearly are not listening to ordinary Americans. The Republican Party has been seized by the right-wing authoritarians and the right wing fringe lunatics, driving any remaining moderate or liberal Republicans away. If the Democrats had been listening, and they had made some changes, many who attended the Tea Party rallies would not have been there. The audiences for the right-wing populists, funded by corporate America, would not be as large.

Make no mistake about it: a slumbering beast has been awakened by the events of last fall. We are just beginning to see the social repercussions that will flow from those momentous events. There is increasing interest in a third party that will provide some competition to the duopoly that rules American politics.

I’m reading a very interesting book, Gangs of America: the rise of corporate power and the disabling of democracy, by Ted Nace. In it, the author traces the rise of corporations and shows how, in Colonial America, corporations were hated and feared. By the post-Civil War period, though, corporations were well on their way to dominating the American economy. That domination was achieved in large part by changing the rules of the electoral game.

Before 1900, there were many political parties and there was something called the “fusion system”, where candidates appeared on the ballot as nominees of every party that endorsed them. Thus, if you were a member of party A, you could vote for the same candidate as a member of party N, if both parties endorsed the same candidate. It sounds foreign to us today, since we have grown up with the duopoly, but I think it is an idea whose time has arrived. Certainly, those who support the Working Families Party agree. Those who don’t, including David Horowitz, fulminate against it, which is as good a sign as any that the party is having an impact on political discourse. David Horowitz, in case you didn’t know, is a former leftist who switched sides and is now firmly in the neo-conservative camp.

I will share more about this phenomenon as I learn more. Stay tuned!