On the evening of September 5, the New York Working Families Party nominated Barack Obama for President. The party had done the same in 2008. The New York Working Families Party is the only state unit of the Working Families Party that has ever placed a presidential nominee on the ballot.
The Working Families Party seems to be following in the tradition of the Liberal Party and the American Labor Party. It has become a “Democratic Party” for people who wouldn’t be caught dead voting for the candidates of the Democratic Party.
No word on the Independence Party I suppose. What is MacKay up to?
Gerard – maybe some in the Working Families Party want to be seen as successor to the American Labor Party, but WFP has little independence from the Democratic Party, intervenes in Democrat primaries, and sells its services (printing, PR, voter registration, petitioning) to Democrat politicians.
WFP exists as a line for left-wing Democrats to show how far to the left they are while voting for the Democrat candidates. Unlike the ALP, it rarely backs Republican candidates, and rarely runs its own candidates.
Expected – and disappointing – considering either Rocky Anderson or Jill Stein would more align with the supposed principles of the WFP more closely than Obama does. Since Rocky Anderson won’t be on the NY ballot except as a certified write-in seems the WFP missed an opportunity for actually giving NY voters greater options by giving the nomination to him – but I agree with Gene above as to what WFP’s standard operating procedures are.
The Working Families Party, Independence Party of NY, and Conservative Party are nothing more than sham organizations propping up the two-party system.
@#4 Steven,
I’m not sure the Green Party nominee would be allowed to accept the nomination of another party, since the New York Green Party — unlike the Conservative, Independence, Working Families, Liberal, American Labor, Right to Life, Civil Service-Fusion, Conservation, etc., parties present and past — refuses to cross-endorse.
I grew up with the NYS cross-endorsement system and think it is the best way for third parties under our present winner-take-all system. It’s the closest we can get to the kind of coalition government that junior parties like the current Liberal Democrats in Britain and Free Democrats in Germany can join.
I do remember in Brooklyn (Kings County) in the 1970s, for a number of judicial offices, the Conservative and Liberal parties put together a reform slate to oppose the Democratic/Republican boss-controlled slate that usually won. I also worked for Mayor Lindsay in 1969, and after he lost the Republican primary, the Liberal line provided him with a way to get reelected. (And he swept in 4 Liberal Party city council members, so the Liberals displaced the Republicans as the official minority party — with a minority leader and other benefits — for four years.
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