Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin. Could a third-party candidate do this?by Thomas NeuburgerI'm thinking out loud these days, trying to crack the uncrackable nut, escape the inescapable trap laid for policy-minded voters, the one that says “It's a Republican or a neoliberal; there's no other viable choice. Pick one.”More and more, people want to pick neither. I don't have an solution yet, but I swear there has to be one. The present situation is unsustainable. If the country stays trapped for much longer between two terrible choices — in 2020 it's Trump or Biden; in 2016 it was Trump or Clinton; in 2012 it was Romney or Obama (who, if your memory stretches back that far, ran in 2008 saying “Yes We Can,” then switched on Day 1 to “Yeah, But No I Won't,” though we let ourselves pretend for quite some time we could convince him otherwise). Barack Obama — Mr. “Let's Play 'Grand Bargain' With Your Social Security,” Mr. “Keystone Pipeline Will Make America Great,” Mr. “Desperate to Pass TPP Before I Retire to Richard Branson's Yacht” — the man who was never the person he campaigned as in 2008 — was just the most recent addition to a long line of servants of wealth pretending to be heirs of the FDR Party legacy. It's been aptly said that “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party, and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat” (Gore Vidal); also that “Today's Democratic leaders would rather lose with Biden than win with Sanders” (lots of people, including yours truly; most recently here). And today, after the primary spectacles of 2016 and 2020, it seems that reforming the Democratic Party is as doomed an exercise as supporting a third-party candidate would be, a candidate who may never get on the ballot in all 50 states and, if so, would never be chosen by the bipartisan “debate commission” to appear on stage with the two “major” donor-approved choices. How the Parties Captured the Debates After the 1980 election, during which the League of Women Voters allowed independent John Anderson into the presidential debate, the two parties colluded to wrest control of the debates for themselves — successfully. Today's Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is jointly run by the Democratic and Republican Parties, not the League of Women Voters. Here's how that played out in 1992 and 1996 (emphasis mine):
In 1992, Reform Party candidate Ross Perot had a seven percent rating in the polls before the presidential debates. On election day, Perot had 19 percent of the vote, the largest-ever jump for a presidential candidate [source: PBS]. Proving himself a risk to the other candidates, the Dole and Clinton campaigns excluded him from the presidential debates through the CPD when he ran again in 1996. Perot later sued the major television networks for failing to grant him equal time, but since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) changed the provision in 1975, Perot lost his suits [source: FCC].The fallout from Perot's exclusion from the debates illustrates one of the vital services the CPD provides the two major parties. It acts as a shield. Despite the Democrats and Republicans drafting memorandums of understanding and deciding who can participate, it's the CPD that publicly issues the decisions; so it's the CPD that accepts the public's ire. But since it isn't beholden to the public, the CPD has nothing to lose.
All of which just points out how impossible the two-branched solution to our quadrennial problem has proved to be. If a third-party won't work, and reforming the unreformable won't work, what's to be done?(There is a third possibility, and a kind of hybrid fourth one, but I'm going to save those discussions for another time.)Out of Frustration, A Tenth Third Party Raises its HeadDespite these obstacles, people are hungry for a way out, a way to silence the bipartisan blackmailers. On the left that frustration has led people like Nina Turner, former co-chair of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign; RoseAnn Demoro, former head of the Sanders-supporting National Nurses United; Nick Brana, a Sanders 2016 alum and former electoral manager with Our Revolution; actor John Cusack and many less notable others, to start to talk (well, tweet enthusiastically) about forming and supporting another American third party, one that will advance progressive policies, a party that progressive voters can finally control.
I feel welcomed @4aPeoplesParty https://t.co/N9H4yqZLAV— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) May 3, 2020
This is our bleak future in the Democratic Party. The political revolution that inspired millions in 2016 was born **explicitly** out of a rejection of big donors as its core principle.We don’t have to resign ourselves to this. Another party is possible!https://t.co/GBq895DbOr https://t.co/aokEZRmPKr— Nick Brana - #PeoplesParty (@nick_brana) May 5, 2020
We know the reality of what the neoliberal dems really did to the movement - Bernie was treated as the existential threat not trump or gop -they moved heaven & earth to stop a return of new deal politics - which is exactly what times demand - Yes to 3rd party— John Cusack (@johncusack) May 1, 2020
And they're not talking hypothetically. These folk are well and truly frustrated, and they're close to well and truly done with the modern, apparently unredeemable Democratic Party. What to Make of This?I said at the start I was thinking out loud. I see a deep hunger, much of it shared by the best lights behind the Sanders campaign, but I also see impediments. Will a People's Party candidate fill a Sanders-size stadium? It depends on the candidate, but very likely no. That candidate would have to relight Sanders' improbable public fire, blaze with his surprising light.Will a People's Party candidate reach the election debate stage? I fear the answer is never. Nor will there ever be cable campaign coverage, discussion in the corporate press, or live camera feeds of that candidate's peopled podium like there were of Donald Trump's empty one. That candidate will be silenced out of the public discussion, erased from the landscape of choices. Would even Sanders, had he run third party, become the Sanders that thousands flocked to hear? Likely not.So perhaps that avenue is closed even as the desire to take it opens up. Yet the gaping maw of the hunger that drives that desire isn't going away soon, perhaps not even in our lifetimes. So what's the solution to our national political nightmare, the bear trap of blackmail — "Trump or the neoliberal" — we either ignore or succumb to every four years of our lives? The way out isn't apparent … yet. But I guarantee there will be one. At some time something will break here so completely that even the broken Party of FDR can't pretend it can put things right again with its next pro-corporate offering.I do hope, if we see that tragic day, the moment will be managed in an orderly electoral way. The alternative — a chaotic transition to a multi-headed, multiply led revolt — puts us back in the 1930s, and in most major countries of the world, that didn't go well at all.We got lucky, got Roosevelt, who was allowed to be elected. Most nations got something less.