Several groups, most of which are Bernie Sanders supporters, have called a national meeting in Washington, D.C., for September 8-10, for the purpose of discussing creating a new Progressive Party. The meeting will be at American University. The meeting is also called by Socialist Alternative. One of the speakers will be Rocky Anderson, who founded the Justice Party in late 2011 and was its presidential nominee in 2012.
The webpage for the meeting is convergence2017.org. Here is a Huffington Post article about the meeting, written by Gail McGowan Mellor, who supports the idea of a new party.
Excellent idea to bleed off Democrat votes. I hope they quickly succeed at 50-state ballot access.
Elephants love the idea —
DIVIDE and CONQUER —
for 1,000s if not 1,000,000s of years.
—
PR and AppV
I wish them luck when they run into the realities of ballot access that we Greens and the Libertarians have been fighting for decades. That will test whether they’re willing to go the long-haul.
We have a progressive party. It’s called the Green Party. The fact that the effort invested in this event is not spent reforming and strengthening the Greens suggests that the real intention is issue activism more than electoral success. This is getting so old.
Clay, I think you have a point, but also an image problem (or at least a unsure policy image) I know people who were attracted to the Greens because they value the environment, but ended up in conflict with their economic policies. People don’t realize from the name that along with all the environmental stuff they are also into socialism and other issue activism. I know it won’t happen but a name change to the Progressive-Green party would solve that and give a more on point message.
Gee – what happened to the Progressive Party- circa 1910-1940 ???
— other than being wiped out by the Great Depression socialist/communist Donkeys in 1929-1941.
some mini research —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1912)
note the later versions
Well seeing as how “Progressive” isn’t a political ideology this would be an awful name for a party. Just like the name of the Vermont party is an awful choice. What most people call “Progressive” or “Progressivism” is properly labeled “Egalitarianism”. Progressive simply means to move away from the status quo. Thus everybody but a conservative is a progressive…. including Libertarians.
Hmmm. Is Regressive moving away from the status quo ?
Any *Status Quo* [NO changes whatever] Party in any regime at any time in the last 6,000 plus years — other than the Donkeys in 2016 ?
The Democrats will do, by nook, hook, or crook, do everything at their disposal to deny such a proposed political party ballot access.
The Democrats may split , but so will the Republicans.
This looks like a group of people with a particular political position close to Sanders who have simply posted Sanders’ name on their web site many times. I’d be surprised if Bernie even acknowledged their existence.
This conference looks like an effort by Socialist Alternative to build on the Sanders campaign by creating a new united front. Socialist Alternative has supported the Green Party in the past but I guess they see the chance to create a new party more committed to a socialist vision than the Green Party. Likely as not, if they do create a new party, within a few months everyone who is not a member of Socialist Alternative will drop out. Socialist Alternative is a Trotskyist group affiliated with the Committee for a Workers International.
I hope this is exceeded and need put Electoral (Voting system) reform into their platform to allow them to win some seats.
You have the Democratic Party, the Green Party, and Working Families Party. There is no need for another progressive party.
Republicans, John, may disagree.
@Johnny Puffer And so, As disfranchised/disillusioned Leftists who left Democratic Party since the last election.
And Working Families Party has sometimes get Help either parties because of the system like this bad.
Green Party yea, Progressive Party in most Social/Fiscal issues but ever they succeed of winning Local seats almost throughout of nation, they start adopting few ideologies like Eco-socialism to help them afloat for ten to twenty more years.
It’s easier to make a new party “go viral” and rapidly explode than it is to grow an identical existing party to the same heights. They can make the new party seem as if it’s the “in” thing that everyone is doing, while that is provably not the case with the existing party. That’s why they repeat over and over again that 66% of the population already agrees with them. They’re cool and fresh while the Dems are corrupt and the Greens failed. They don’t care if the ideologies are almost identical and they don’t care if they destroy the Greens in the process.
@Aiden James
Progressive as an ideology is similar to the ideology of modern liberals on most issues, but they differ on tactics and priorities. Where modern liberals prioritize social freedom, but believe society should be voluntarily egalitarian, progressives prioritize egalitarianism and want the government to enforce it claiming social freedom for minorities as the justification. This most clearly shows up in the issue of free speech. Modern liberals are still in favor of it, they just believe that people ought to regulate themselves and that those who are offensive ought to be ostracized. Progressives want the government to require that people are not offensive, and so they favor things like hate speech laws, equal time laws (for those who are deemed acceptable), and restrictions on political expenditures.
How many variations of STATISM are there ???
IE everybody is a cog/tool of the top statists (or gets killed) —
see the Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Hirohito, Mao, etc., etc., etc. regimes of death, slavery, destruction.
ie old time rotted tyrant monarchs/oligarchs (aka kings/nobles) replaced by New Age tyrant monarchs/oligarchs — many in 3 piece suits.
So, what’s wrong with the Green Party?
I agree with those saying we already have the Green Party.