Truthout has this article by Geoff Gilbert, saying the Bernie Sanders campaign has been so successful at raising money, the possibility exists that the Sanders campaign, or people who have been supporting the Sanders campaign, could realistically build a new major political party. The article does not express any opinion about whether this new party should attempt to have a presidential candidate in the November 2016 election, or whether it is only intended for future elections.
Bernie Sanders himself has said he will support the Democratic nominee for President, as he always has since 1984. But he could realistically campaign for and raise funds for candidates for Congress or state office of the Vermont Progressive Party, the Working Families Party, and the Justice Party, all of which have endorsed him. He could even back some candidates from the Green Party.
If a new progressive party develops, it could learn from Bernie Sanders, who has successfully been elected to Congress and Senate as an Independent, even as the bipartisans have maintained dominance in the contest for President.
How about the New Age Bernie COMMUNIST Party ???? — NABCOP
Super easy to be a COMMUNIST with the income and assets of the TAX SLAVES.
Gee – what’s new and different from the old Middle East monarchy regimes and the hoards of slaves they had circa 2000 B.C. ???
Demo Rep you are absolutely clueless about everything that you post here. Can you please just shut the fuck up already and stop spreading your blatant ignorance. It’s absolutely irritating and annoying to read.
I think this article is suggesting Sanders’ supporters, as a movement, could fund a new Left political party. Even without Sanders direct involvement.
Couldn’t they just donate to an existing left wing party, like the Green Party or the Working Families Party or the Socialist Workers Party or the Socialist Party, or something like that? Why reinvent the wheel?
My impression is that many of these people are casual voters who turn out only in presidential years, and then only for candidates they like. Here in New York, we have two Democratic primaries coming up in June (Congressional candidates) and September (legislative and local candidates), and I would guess that less than 3% of the Sanders voters will show up for either primary. They are not interested in down-ballot left-wing candidates (the vast majority doesn’t know who their member of Congress in the House is), just the presidential candidate. You can’t create either a left-wing or a right-wing third party (or a moderate one: see Americans Elect) without people committed to give time and effort, not just money.
The Sanders campaign, like others before it, is personality-based. He is 74 and this is his last presidential campaign. He is akin to candidates like Eugene V. Debs (who my grandparents and Sanders’ parents and many in our Brooklyn neighborhood worshipped; they used to listen to radio station WEVD), Norman Thomas, Henry Wallace, George Wallace, Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, John Anderson and Robert LaFollette. Except for the old-time Socialists, none of them really could sustain a movement, much less an ongoing political party that competes in elections below the presidential line.
Perhaps now Sanders supporters are realizing that he should have run for President as he always has run, as an independent, not a Democrat. He would still get their support, their adulation, their funding, but be able to run without a nomination fight he is currently losing, and barring some spectacular change, he will certainly lose.
Many Sanders supporters online say they will not vote at all if he is not the nominee, so clearly they are uninterested in any kind of new political party, much less trying to work hard for decades the way Green Party activists have struggled to do.
P.S. I just read the more than 30 posts about the Constitution Party nominating convention. Although I cannot follow the details, it seems an example of how small parties tend to fragment and end up arguing with each other, rendering them vulnerable to breakup and disappearance in the way that major parties (ones that have a chance to elect a President or more than one or two members of Congress) have not. Perhaps Ballot Access News can tell us which non-major party has the longest number of presidential elections in a row in which they have been able to compete even in half the states.
Due to the ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymanders in both houses of the USA Congress and ALL 50 State legislatures it is NO surprise that this is the New Age of DEMAGOGUES — esp. leftwing Sanders and rightwing Trump — very amazing it has taken until 2016 (with radio, TV and now the internet).
For clueless math morons –
1/2 or less votes x 1/2 gerrymander areas = 1/4 or less CONTROL
— also applies to the super timebomb Electoral College — i.e. win a bare majority of the E.C. votes with about 25 percent of the total votes in about 30 States (plus DC if a Donkey).