Here’s a followup from Gary, the Green Party guy who started this reader thread:
I find Jon’s objections less than convincing. His statement here is perplexing: “While I certainly understand the frustration of having to express one’s political views through only one of two choices…I don’t really see how increasing that number to three or four choices really improves on that.” If you’re dissatisfied with the election platforms of both Democrats and Republicans, denying them a vote and electing some other party is a clear and obvious improvement.
As for how many people out there support 100% of the Green Party platform, why not ask the same of Democrat and Republican voters? How many of you support 100% of their policies? Anyone who says yes probably hasn’t done much research, but I invite you to take the isidewith.com survey to see how you do.
This next reader, John, questions Gary’s leading premise—that the left’s priority is identity politics, not labor—and then criticizes voting for a third party:
I think it’s misguided to accuse Democratic politicians of opting for “identity politics” over jobs, wages and benefits for the poor and middle class. First of all, these are not mutually exclusive; they are equally important. Labeling it “identity politics” makes support for gay rights, civil rights for minorities, and equal rights for women seem shallow and “buzz-wordy”—mere campaign gimmicks. Let’s not forget that these are vitally important issues that Democrats for decades have fought hard for.
Secondly, who has fought harder for higher wages, workers’ rights, job training programs, job creation through infrastructure spending, social security, and health care benefits more than the Democrats? Have we forgotten that Republicans have worked diligently to cut wages, benefits and health care spending, while fighting against infrastructure spending and job training?
I get that many of us want Democrats to accomplish more, and that progress on economic issues has been a hard slog. But turning to the Green Party is hardly an answer. It’s just reacting exactly the way Karl Rove hopes we will; Republicans want nothing better than to have a faction of liberals go off on a quixotic Green Party crusade and hand Trump the election.
But this next reader, Joseph, makes a really good point how third parties should focus their firepower on state and local elections, not national ones:
This is an interesting thread, but I’m somewhat skeptical of what would happen if Jill Stein was actually elected. (I say this as a guy who voted for Ron Paul in 2008, so I’m sympathetic to third parties.) The Green Party has no governing power at any level of government, so it’s hard to imagine what a Stein administration could actually accomplish. If the Green Party wants to become a force, it would make more sense to get after local offices like the Tea Party did in the early 2010s. (I disagree with just about everything the Tea Party movement stands for, but that’s the model of electoral change that appears to be working.) [CB note: Molly this morning asks the question, “Is the Tea Party Responsible for Donald Trump?”] For all the talk about how the country is becoming more liberal, you’d never know it from looking at state houses, governors, school boards, etc.
Pat, on the other hand, points to an example where even a tiny representation by a third party can heavily influence national politics:
Since I vote in California, a winner-take-all state, voting for a minority party would be a waste of my vote. However, it is worth reflecting on Australia under the Labor Party (now unseated) where Labor had to hold a regular election, and the result was a split with both major parties having almost the same number of seats. But there were two Green Party candidates elected, as well as an independent, so they agreed to vote as a bloc. And in doing so, they terrified the Labor Government, since these three minority senators could force an election and probably see Labor dismissed.
I had never seen a government dominated by three radical elected individuals, and while I dislike the winner-take-all system, at least it prevents a few from dominating the many.
But why should voting locally and voting nationally for different parties be mutually exclusive? Andy in Kentucky doesn’t see it that way:
Does my Green vote matter? It does to me. I don’t care about the two-party system. I care about whether or not my beliefs and values are represented. Within my state, I can vote Green for president and then vote Republican or Democrat for other offices. I know who to vote for down ticket; I contact those running and pay attention to what they do and say.
Andy’s voting would infuriate this next reader, Doug:
It is incredibly disappointing that everyone doesn’t learn this in high school civics class, but we have a majoritarian, winner-take-all political system, not proportional representation. That means that third parties by their inherent nature split voters with the major party that is ideologically closer, while allowing the “further” more ideologically opposed camp to vote as a unanimous block. What happened with Gore and Nader wasn’t bad luck; it was the predictable outcome of the structure of our electoral system, in exactly the same way that running an establishment Republican third party candidate alongside Trump would guarantee Hillary’s election.
Want to elect someone with a Green platform? You have two options: One, a constitutional amendment to change our system to proportional representation. Then you will have more, smaller parties and can vote for one more closely matching the details of your preferences. Maybe it will get enough votes to join a coalition government. But guess what, even when it does, politics is always about compromise. Take a look at the experience of the Green party in Germany.
Or, more realistically, compete and win in the primary process of one of the two major parties. Bernie wasn’t even a registered Democrat and came remarkably close to doing so. He and Trump offer pretty compelling evidence that the system is open if you can get enough popular support behind you.
But as Bernie also shows, it isn’t enough to have fervent support; you still need to win majorities; that is the operative principle of democracy. If you can’t win a majority of those most ideologically sympathetic to your positions, why should anyone believe you’re going to do better among those more opposed?
Ultimately, the name of the game isn’t even about winning elections; it is moving the ideological center. The right wing (falsely labelled “conservatives”) have since 1980 had 30 years of success at this, such that Nixon and even Reagan would never be nominated in today’s Republican party.
But that demographic and ideological wave has long since crested and is quite obviously receding, and it is entirely possible that the Bernie-vs-Hillary primary may be the template for many elections to come, with Republicans an angry and increasingly irrelevant sideshow.
One more reader, S. Olson in Maine, warns against a third party preference:
You want something better than the Democrats? I sympathize, but voting for a third party is likely to help the Republicans win. As long as we have first-past-the-post voting, a third party increases the chances that one’s least preferred candidate will win. It would be far more effective to work within the Democratic party, as Bernie did.
Nader helped elect Bush; Perot helped elect Clinton. In 2010, in Maine, an independent split the Democratic vote, with the result that the the Tea-Party candidate, LePage, won with 38% of the vote.
Anyone thinking about voting Green should study the 2000 election and think about the fact that Gore only needed a few more votes to win Florida, and thus, the election. Instead, we got Bush, the financial crisis and a decade of war in the Middle East. Think long and hard about that before voting Green and handing the presidency to Trump.
Several readers are agreeing with reader Gary, who made a pitch for the Green Party by arguing that the two major political parties are grossly inadequate, especially when it comes to the working class and organized labor. Here’s James with a quick nod:
Even though I’m gay, I have come to feel identity politics have become camouflage for the Democratic party’s sellout of the poor, organized labor, and the middle class. So yes, cover the Greens and other real left-oriented movements.
Another reader, Oliver, wants to “voice my strong agreement with Gary’s words”—and does so with many bulleted points:
The Democratic Party’s driving concern in 2016 is identity politics. This is unfortunate given how dire Americans’ bread-and-butter suffering has become since the Great Recession. For those who claim the party can and must do both, history shows that the two inevitably undermine one other. Either we come together as workers or we move apart as identity groups.
Both Sanders and Trump have at least recognized the problem, but both candidates are flawed in the ways described by Gary and in some additional ones as well. With Trump, for instance, there’s a basic credibility gap as well as a philosophical problem. He has said many things which suggest he cares about regular Americans, but whether he means them or not is anyone’s guess.
Hillary Clinton is at this point completely unacceptable on bread-and-butter issues. She presided over the approach to government that led us to this point, all the while taking rich folks’ money for professional and personal gain.
The conflation of opposition to immigration and racism is wrong, unfair, and tragic given that American citizens need assistance now more than ever. For those who still believe illegal immigration is harmless or that free trade benefits U.S. workers, I struggle to see how they justify these positions other than by admitting that they are more concerned with the welfare of foreign workers than U.S. workers. That’s a defensible position, for sure, but not one on which you can win any kind of office in the United States.
For all these reasons—and in addition the reality that there is currently no party in America which takes bread-and-butter issues seriously—you should consider covering the Green Party more. I’m not sure if the Green Party is the way to go, but Gary’s premise that you should be looking to represent more serious voices in this area is 100% spot-on.
Jon, on the other hand, is much more sure than Oliver that the Green Party isn’t the way to go:
While I certainly understand the frustration of having to express one’s political views through only one of two choices [Democrats or Republicans], especially when those views are nuanced and well considered, I don’t really see how increasing that number to three or four choices really improves on that when there are hundreds of very important and very controversial issues that voters vote on. This may lead some to suggest direct democracy. But both this and the evergreen messianism of the third party in American politics simply fetishize process over results. Let me explain.
We vote, in theory, to get outcomes. It’s a way of resolving conflicting ideas about laws and policies. In this primary season we have heard an endless amount of talk about a rigged system, or how this process or that is unfair or undemocratic without any discussion at all about what the outcome should be. Don’t we want good candidates? Have the McGovern Rules produced better candidates and better presidents than the “smoke filled rooms” did? The almost theological assumption in all of this is that the fairest process—whatever that is—will produce the best candidates (defined either as the most able to further your agenda or as most successful overall). What’s the evidence for that? There is none.
Similarly, empowering the Green Party is mostly about process. How many people out there genuinely support 100% of their platform? Don’t tell me that if they were on a level playing field that suddenly the majority of the people would support everything they do? I doubt even most liberals would vote Green if they saw it on its own terms and instead of merely as a “more left wing” party. The Green Party is anti-science and supports what amounts to eco-faith healing to be paid for by socialized medicine, is anti-vax [CB note: That claim seems dubious*], and basically calls for the dismantling of the U.S. economy. Yet we’re to believe there is a wide constituency here that the rigged system is preventing from unleashing?
By comparison, Bernie Sanders’ proposals are within the mainstream of European politics, if not American. Even in Europe there is virtually nowhere that has enacted a substantial portion of the Greens’ platform.
Barring major amendments to our Constitutional system, having more than two parties winning electoral votes would simply render presidential elections meaningless and throw them to Congress, where the vote is by state delegation not population, which will almost always favor Republicans. And even in Congress, the evidence from countries with many parties is that coalitions are unstable and often impotent.
So, are pro-Greens willing to create a permanent Republican presidency coupled with a Congress incapable of moving a single bill simply to have a “fair” electoral process? Bless their little hearts. They are so radical they are willing to do anything except be patient and wait for change to come incrementally.
This next reader, Sandeep, is sympathetic to Gary’s argument but, like Jon, is very doubtful that the Green Party is the way to go, especially given its dissonance with California’s Green Party when it comes to immigration:
My great fear, as a Democrat, is that we will wind up with a party where the elites can invoke social issues relating to identity politics come election time to produce a victorious presidential mandate that allows them to push pro-corporate policies that undermine their own electorate. And that they will be able to get away with this again and again because there’s only two choices in our democracy, which means they will always be able to point a finger at the Trumps of the world to justify themselves as the lesser evil.
But the Green Party has always seemed a bit dissonant to me, like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing. I live in California, and right now the state Green Party’s platform supports open borders with Mexico. When Jill Stein ran for President in 2012, she supported border passes for all of Mexico and Canada. [CB note: The national Green Party’s plank on immigration still calls for “permanent border passes to all citizens of Mexico and Canada whose identity can be traced and verified.”] I share reader Gary’s concern that illegal immigration guts the working class (and quite frankly the anger of the Trump base is understandable when you consider that the coast-based liberal elites have mocked their concerns for years with memes like “Dey took er jerbs!”). But you get different sources insisting that the Green Party has a sensible stance on immigration and others claiming the Green Party is alright with everyone in Mexico moving into the States if they want to.
Want to join the debate? Drop us an email. * Update from Jon, responding to my parenthetical doubting his claim that the Green Party is anti-vaccination (since I couldn’t find any good examples online):
That’s fair enough, and some of it boils down to how much you want to hold them to their international associations and the lower levels of those associations. Does using the same name as the parties in other countries mean anything or not? They are apparently at least savvy enough to not make this explicit, but they are verifiably pro-homeopathy and so I ask what’s the difference between drinking herbal tea to cure a disease and avoiding vaccines? Not much.
The best I could come up with is an article that cites a Green Party Councilor in the UK (kind of like a county supervisor in England). So, fair enough that’s not an explicit plank of the U.S. party, but to ask taxpayers to fund homeopathy is probably on the whole worse than just being against vaccination since the latter can sometimes be made unnecessary due to herd immunity, but no one who is diagnosed with cancer is going to go into remission because they are drinking some magic potion.
The homeopathy thing still seems like a small part of the Green Party’s platform; here’s an exchange with Jill Stein on the issue from four years ago, and Stein—a physician, it should be noted—agreed with the moderator that “the Green Party platform here takes an admittedly simple position on a complex issue, and should be improved.”
Reader Gary wants to see The Atlantic “expand its political coverage to include the election platform of The Green Party.” I asked him to make the case for that third party and here’s his considered reply:
From the media coverage I’ve seen, it’s quite clear that the Democrat and Republican approaches are unsatisfactory. The leadership of the two establishment parties have confused the success of American corporations with the success of the American population, despite many reports of individual Americans having little savings. As long as the share price of corporate America’s stock goes up, the economy is doing fine, ergo American citizens are doing fine, despite the fact that few of them own stock. Plus, the U.S. Equity market can be bought into by the affluent worldwide. Global investors are the real beneficiaries of American economic policy, not the mainstream of the American population.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have both noticed the problems of ordinary Americans, but in my view they each represent a political dead end. Sanders wants to spend money he can’t raise and Trump wants a time machine to get back to the way things used to be.
Political dialogue between the two parties is poisoned.
Recently 60 Minutes aired a story revealing that congressmen spend up to four hours a day on the phone fundraising for their party’s Super PAC. The Republican interviewed said his fundraising goal was $18k a day. (The Democrats provided no figure.) Apparently all of this money goes to political advertising convincing voters the other party is some kind of demonic entity. They’re both right. Imagine that money actually being spent on something useful. When Hillary Clinton insists on staying the course and proceeding as usual, continuing this waste is what she’s talking about.
I thought labor was the political left’s major concern, but that’s not the case if we’re talking about today’s media coverage. The left’s priority is identity politics, whereas property rights is the priority of their opponents. Nobody gives a fuck about labor.
That’s too bad, because recent technological innovations have not been labor saving devices; they’re ways to monitor, control and manage human activities. Scientific management aims to increase productivity and profitability. That means fewer laborers, and those who remain are micromanaged to produce more for less for longer. The future that current technology promises is not freedom.
If you’re reading The Atlantic, I’m sure you’ve seen the story about The National Academy of Science releasing statistics reporting the death rates for middle-aged whites has risen sharply over the past 15 years. [CB: Coverage from Olga here and here.] This applies only to those who went no further than high school; their college educated peers are doing fine. The causes of death in many cases were reported to be things people take to self medicate for pain. This is no mystery. The uneducated are more likely to settle in manual labor jobs; there’s a drive in every workplace for increased productivity, continuous production, and shorter lead times; adopting new technologies in the workplace is an added cost.
What does this mean? New and increasing production targets, erratic shift work, lower wages, and fewer benefits. Workers can’t afford to miss work if injured. Their salary can’t support even a modest lifestyle while more is being constantly demanded from them. It’s easy to fall into debt and almost impossible to extricate yourself from it, meanwhile the cost of property and real estate is skyrocketing. All life’s necessities are getting more expensive. Is it really any surprise those who are being worked to death are dropping dead and those who benefit from their exploitation are doing great?
Luckily, Donald Trump has a plan to benefit the American worker: cancel labor and environmental regulations. Yes, because America would be a lot better off with the kind of environmental catastrophes China lives with.
Trump is right about one thing that the electorate has grasped: illegal immigration is a labor issue. If you’re against immigration for undermining labor conditions, pundits insist you’re a racist. I fully support everyone’s right not to live in a shit hole, but it is possible to improve the quality of life in foreign countries to a standard they find in America and to do so without invading them. Making the adoption of Occupational Health and Safety Act and Regulations and an Environmental Protection Act international law with strict enforcement a requirement for free trade agreements might do quite a lot to raise quality of life globally. It would also go some distance to make Free Trade Fair Trade.
Real change won’t come from an old system. I ask readers of The Atlantic to consider a genuine vision for the future. Consider The Green Party in 2016.
If you agree and want to elaborate on the case for Jill Stein—the Green Party candidate for president, featured in the above clip—email hello@theatlantic.com. Also drop us a line if you’d like to push back on the Green platform or reader Gary in particular.
