Jerome Segal, Founder of Bread & Roses Party, Says Progressive Third Parties Should Not Run for President in 2020 in Swing States

Posted on by April 20, 2020

The Philadelphia Inquirer has this story, which is mostly about Professor Jerome Segal, founder of the Bread & Roses Party.  That party is on the ballot in Maryland, but nowhere else.  Segal expresses the opinion that the Green Party and parties with similar ideas should not run for president in 2020 in swing states.

There is considerable evidence that left parties do not hurt the Democratic Party, but none of it is mentioned in the story.  (1) political science research presented in “The Future of American Poilitics”, a 1950 book by Samuel Lubell, showed that Harry Truman would have lost to Thomas Dewey without the Progressive Party candidacy of Henry Wallace; (2) detailed poll analysis and election returns analysis from 2004 showed that Ralph Nader voters were more likely to vote for George W. Bush than John Kerry if Nader hadn’t been on the ballot; (3) the book “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely presents psychological experiments that show if three choices are available, and two of them are similar but one of the similar choices if clearly superior to the other, then that superior choice gains, versus the choice that is not similar; (4) the Communist Party in 1936 determined that they wanted Franklin Roosevelt to be re-elected and they facilitated that by running their own nominee, who used his attention in the public forum to encourage the defeat of the Republican nominee, Alf Landon.

Comments

Jerome Segal, Founder of Bread & Roses Party, Says Progressive Third Parties Should Not Run for President in 2020 in Swing States — 40 Comments

  1. ABOLISH THE SUPER-TIMEBOMB MINORITY RULE EC.

    UNIFORM DEFINITION OF ELECTOR-VOTER IN ALL OF THE USA.

    NONPARTISAN APPV – EXECS/JUDICS – PENDING CONDORCET.

    —-
    NO TIME FOR JUVENILES WITH 0.1 OR LESS SECOND ATTENTION SPANS.

    THE USA CONST. AND ALL 50 STATE CONSTS. ARE FILLED WITH ANTI-DEMOCRACY FATAL DEFECTS — ALL NOW SUPER-OBVIOUS.

    ANTI-DEMOCRACY MONARCHS/OLIGARCHS HAVE SET THE STAGE FOR USA CIVIL WAR II/III.
    —
    PR
    APPV
    TOTSOP

  2. So I take it they will not be paying the filing fee to get on the ballot in Colorado then. They should at least try for ballot access in Louisiana and Vermont.

  3. Louisiana isn’t as easy as you may think. Presidential electors have to live in each of 6 congressional districts, and be registered voters but not registered with any other party. They also have to sign a form in front of a notary about their willingness to be electors. Many people don’t know for sure or are wrong about whether or where they are registered and whether they are registered with a party, so if a party doesn’t already have supporters who want to be electors living in all those districts it has to find people to sign if front of a notary and likely also fill out a new registration to boot. Imagine trying to find those people during a lockdown in one of the states hit hardest by corona.

  5. Arkansas may be easier than Louisiana right now. It’s not on shutdown at least statewide, electors can be at large and so can 1000 valid sigs. The form is not hard to work with and there’s no need for notaries at any stage. Electors only have to be registered voters in the state regardless of party or district, same as voters.

    Tennessee will probably also end up being easier than Louisiana. The electors do have to be by district but don’t have to be from or outside any party. The 275 valid sigs can be from any state voter. As far as I remember no notaries at any stage.

    There may be some other states which will prove easier than Louisiana, perhaps Washington, Idaho and or Utah, but I am s lot less familiar with the details up there. Nj, ri and vt perhaps as well.

    Mississippi is another state which from my experience is easier than Louisiana. This is if you have to find both sigs and electors.

  7. Demo Rep, let’s suppose you are completely correct; all caps, lack of definition of terms, and lack of supporting arguments aren’t doing any favors to any of your causes. Do you imagine they do?

    Only because I asked on another article, I found out that your cryptic codes stand for proportional representation, approval voting and total separation of powers. I was guessing public relations, all purpose park vehicles and tested old true standard operating procedure. Apparently you expect people to print out your definitions from the rare articles where you explain what they stand for, thinking perhaps that the average reader of comments on any article here reads comments on all of them all the time. In reality that would be very different from typical web forum usage.

    You denigrate those who have not discovered what your codes mean as juveniles lacking attention, yet it’s you who lack the attention to explain your terms except on rare occasions much less make an argument for why your proposed solutions are the correct ones. You also lack the attention to follow up and answer the questions I posed to you later in that discussion. That’s unfortunate since I was looking forward to your answers.

    Now, let’s suppose that at least some of the people reading aren’t juvenile or lacking in attention. Would you by any chance have enough attention to explain why you believe those are the correct solutions? If there’s an old article where you did that and told everyone to print out your answers I missed it.

  8. Demo Rep, there is already a thread to discuss the politico article. I’m sure you couldn’t have missed it, or thought others have missed it, but expect them to have stumbled across your once in a blue moon term glossary, did you?

  9. What is Charles and MANY others on this list doing to —

    END the ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymanders in USA politics,

    END having party hack exec/judic officers and

    END the many FATAL violations of separation of powers ???

    — other than being one more USELESS *style* critic among billions of folks on Mother Earth ???

    For newbees with ANY math skills —

    2019-2020 USA GOVT MINORITY RULE GERRYMANDER MATH, V.3, 5 FEB 2020
    ANTI-DEMOCRACY LOWLITES —
    A. 30.3 PERCENT OF THE VOTERS ELECTED 218 LOW D USA REPS OF 435 TOTAL IN 2018.
    B. 19.2 PERCENT OF THE VOTERS ELECTED 50 LOW R USA SENATORS OF 100 TOTAL IN 2014-2018.
    C. 25.7 PERCENT OF THE VOTERS ELECTED R PREZ TRUMP IN 2016 — 270 of 538 EC votes.

    ALL State legis houses and many local legis are mini-copies of the ANTI-Democracy USA H Reps.

    — about 30 pct minority rule — worse in top 2 primary areas – esp CA — with its many illegal invaders being counted in each Census.

    —
    For NON- useless *style* critics —

    PR and APPV — pending Condorcet
    TOTSOP

  10. What are you doing to end any of these things? I’ve asked whether or how you think your comments reach what audience and how they persuade them you are correct, much less to take action. Those questions have been ignored. I asked you why you think your solutions are correct and that was ignored as well.

    I’m not interested in neck measuring contests or distance throwing competition but I’ll assure you I have in fact worked to help stop gerrymandering. I disagree with you about party labels; the recent Wisconsin supreme court race shows that leaving party labels off the ballot does not actually make them truly Nonpartisan in reality. If you know how to keep partisan politics out of technically nonpartisan races please let us know.

    But ignoring any real or potential disagreements over issues – approval voting to take another example – even if you’re 100 percent correct about everything how are you helping if you don’t make yourself understood or make a case for your positions? It’s a question, not a criticism, just like my other questions.

    If I don’t do anything else except make you more effective at communicating and persuading readers, would that count as doing something? Obviously you put some time into your comments ; don’t you want that time used as effectively as possible? Or, do you think it already is?

  11. Your numbers for trump appear to be off on both popular and electoral votes. As I recall popular was well in the 40s and electoral 306 or so . Perhaps you are counting those who choose not to vote. I think it’s their right but maybe you think voting should be compulsory? Would any president have ever won if we count non votes as votes against?

    270 is the minimum for a win, not Trump’s actual total of electors. I suspect your congressional numbers are calculated including non votes…what do you propose doing about that, forcing people to vote against their wishes? If so, how would that make anything better?

    If you just mean making it easier to vote I agree, but I doubt it would change the numbers to the degree that winners would typically win even when counting Mon votes, including for president. Do you think it would?

  12. Dear Mr. Winger,

    Please share the link to the research that you say shows that most Ralph Nader voters in Florida would have voted for Bush not Gore, if Nader had not been on the ballot.

    Regardless of that study, I think it beyond belief that most Green Party voters in 2020 would vote for Trump over Biden if that was the only choice.

    Jerome Segal, Presidential Candidate
    Bread and Roses

  13. FOR NON- STYLE CRITICS —
    GERRYMANDER MATH

    3 DISTRICTS EXTREME EXAMPLE
    DIST PA PZ TOT
    1 51 49 100
    2 51 49 100
    3 0 100 100
    TOT 102 198 300
    PCT 34 56 100
    PA CONTROL – 34.0 PCT

    101 DISTRICTS STANDARD EXAMPLE
    DISTS PB PX TOT
    51 DISTS – EACH 55 45 100
    50 DISTS – EACH 30 70 100

    51 DISTS 2805 2295 5100
    50 DISTS 1500 3500 5000
    101 DISTS 4305 5795 10100

    PCTS 27.8 22.7 50.5
    PCTS 14.9 34.7 49.5
    PCTS 42.6 57.4 100.0
    PB CONTROL – 27.8 PCT

    RATIO PR — TOTAL VOTES / TOTAL MEMBERS = RATIO TO ELECT

    3 DISTS
    300/3 = 100 >>> PA 1, PZ 2

    101 DISTS
    10100/101 = 100 >>> PB 42, PX 58

  17. In the past I’ve seen Richard make two arguments about Florida 2000 which he hasn’t here. He can correct me if I am not remembering correctly.

    1. Nader caused a good number of people to register to vote or decide to vote who otherwise would not have. But, as the election was widely known to be close at the end, many of them ended up voting for Gore.

    2. A fair number of Arab voters who usually vote Republican or don’t vote voted for Nader for ethnic reasons.

    The second isn’t particularly relevant to 2020, but the first one could be.

  18. With all due respect Mr. Segal, as a Green I would sooner not vote at all than vote for either ruling party candidate. Are folks like you going to *force* me to vote if my only two choices for President were Democrat or Republican? You are making some rather sweeping and often incorrect assumptions about a party that you are not even a member of, and are helping both ruling parties further destroy any remnant of free and fair democratic elections in this country. You’re the one who should stand down.

  19. It sounds like an opportunity for the Libertarians to collect protest votes, if their candidate is clever enough.

  20. The Trump 270 of 306 of 538 ECV were in 28 States and MECD2.

    Other Trump votes were NOT needed — in the added 2 States (36 ECV) and all loser 20 States/DC.

    2020 Elephants will try an exact minority rule math repeat — in EC and USA Senate.

    ECV popular math / minority rule ROT goes back to 1832.

    Small states LOVE the FATAL ROT.

    Democracy States should all secede – and defend REAL Democracy the very hard way – as in WW I and WW II against minority rule tyrant regimes.

  21. Take me down to Andy’s Liberty City
    Where the spics are gone and the Whites are plenty.
    Oh the Libertarian Zone!

    Take me down to Andy’s Liberty City
    Where Spanish is banned and Dixie flags fly freely.
    Oh the Libertarian Zone!

  22. Andy’s Liberty City sounds dandy and pretty.

    I, for one, welcome our new Aryan overlords.

  23. Dear Richard Winger,

    I took a quick look at the study you called my attention to. It had this sentence:

    “The results above, showing that Nader centers of strength were mostly in places that were pro-Bush (relative to other places in that state), suggest that most Nader voters leaned more to Bush than to Kerry.”

    This use of “suggests” seems quite a leap. Assuming the data is correct in showing that Nader was stronger in pro-Bush areas, it doesn’t follow that those Nader voters would have voted Bush if they only had a Bush-Kerry choice. Perhaps in those Bush-strong areas, there was among Democrats more anti-Kerry sentiment than elsewhere so Kerry rather than a first choice for many of those Democrats was a second choice, Nader being the first.

    As i said earlier, regardless of Bush-Kerry and Bush-Gore, it simply is inconceivable that most people who will vote Green in swing states in 2020, would prefer Trump to Biden. No doubt some would not vote at all, but many many others feel a strong need to vote against Trump, and if the only way to do that in swing states is by voting Biden, they will do so.

    We can’t predict how the actually numbers will go, but I can’t for the life of me understand why someone with the value orientation of the Green Party, could be indifferent to the prospect of Trump winning, or willing to take the chance of helping make that occur. Frankly, it seems nutty.

    best,

    Jerome Segal

  24. Dear Dr. Segal, the stronger evidence was not in my BAN article. During October 2004, the nation’s two leading polling companies arranged that if a respondent said he was for Nader, he or she was asked extra questions. A slight majority of the Nader voters said that if they didn’t or couldn’t vote for Nader, they would vote for Bush. This news was on the front page of the Washington Post. I tried to find the story but I couldn’t, but I have a very clear memory of it, and I even mentioned it in some article I wrote, but now I can’t remember which one.

    You are a highly ideological person, and so you assume that others think the way you do. But political science research has long shown that many voters are not ideological. They have strong emotions, sometimes about parties. There are many voters in this country who are “left”, but who strongly dislike the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party makes more enemies for itself when it tries to suppress voter choice, which it has done in the presidential elections of 1936, 1940, 1948, 1976, 1980, and 2004. By contrast, the Republican Party did not do that until 2008, when it tried to keep the Libertarian presidential nominee off the ballot in Pennsylvania.

  26. Dear Richard Winger,

    I’d love to see that study on the second choice of Green voters in 2004, if you can locate it.

    What I suggest is that The Green Party make it a necessary condition of running in the swing states, that polling shows a similar result for 2020: That a majority of potential Green Party voters say that “if given only a Trump-Biden choice they will vote for Trump.”

    We seem to be in agreement on the importance of the question: How will Green participation in swing states affect the outcome of Trump v Biden. Your suggestion that this question not be answered by projecting ones own psychology is a good one. I’m sure if The Green Party would agree to making swing state participation contingent on the results of such a poll — it could easily be funded. Indeed, I’d try to raise money for it myself.

    So: I challenge them to agree to that condition !!!

    best,

    Jerome Segal

  28. The only way to get ranked choice voting is for Greens to stick to their guns and get on the ballot in all states, to the best of their ability. That principle of stubbornness is why Maine now has ranked choice voting. Twice, Paul LePage, a Republican who was very similar to President Trump, won the Maine governorship because the opposition to him in the general election was split between the Democrat and a strong independent. That is what it takes to make the change to RCV. The majority has to suffer. The suffering then generates the steam to get RCV. I am grateful to Eliot Cutler who persisted in running for Governor in 2014, notwithstanding what had happened in 2010.

  29. Richard

    I think you may be referring to the study mentioned in your November 1, 2004 print issue near the bottom under “Nader may not be hurting Kerry “

  30. Thanks, Paul, you’re right. It was in the Nov. 1 2004 print issue, “Nader May not be hurting Kerry”. The Washington Post story was on Oct. 22, 2004.

  31. Simple Prez actual math — NOT pollster machinations —

    Winner-top loser = Diff —- esp if Diff/Total votes = less than 5 percent

    Other A / Diff as pct

    Other B / Diff as pct

    Other C / Diff as pct

    How many of the Other X pcts were OVER 100 pct ???

    1992 Perot, 2000 Nader, 2004 Nader, 2016 LP, 2016 Green, etc. ???

    —-
    NONPARTISAN AppV — for ALL exec/judic offices — pending Condorcet.

  33. Approval voting has been an unmitigated mess since it was passed for L.P. internal elections in 2014. I voted for it and regretted it ever since later that same convention. Making elections technically nonpartisan does not solve the issue of them being de facto partisan, as anyone who follows local and judicial races and governance knows.

    Polls are actually still pretty good, especially on aggregate. For example they correctly predicted the popular vote margin in the 2016 presidential election. There was not enough polling in what turned out to be the battleground states and the difference was too small for polling margin of error in addition to the impact of late breaking events which happened too close to election day to truly account for in polls.

    I have limited experience conducting polls, but I helped conduct one at the 2010 L.P. national convention. It wasn’t a scientific random sample, and some people distrusted our blog and or myself, especially since I was wearing an antiwar.com sticker which some people took as a dig at Wayne A. Root, a candidate for chair that year. Some people wanted our ballots after the debate and we were out. Nevertheless the poll turned out to be highly accurate.

    All the available pre and post poll data show that far from being junk polls are still very good indicators, and the phenomenon of people lying to pollsters, while it exists, isn’t nearly as bad as some think.

    “Spoiler math” on the other hand relies on the ridiculous assumptions that in the absence of their preferred candidate everyone who voted for him or her would have voted for the second place finisher. In reality as the reason article I linked above shows most Stein voters would have stayed home, and a significant percent would have voted for Trump or, if they could, another alt party or independent candidate. It’s even more unrealistic to assume all of Johnson’s votes would have gone to Clinton. Nor would they have all gone to Trump; like Stein voters most would have stayed home or left president blank and the rest would have been more or less evenly split.

    It’s simply false to presume that other candidates contesting battleground states is why Trump won. Or Bush or Clinton for that matter.

  34. Additionally let’s suppose spoiler math really was accurate even though in fact it isn’t. If, say, Greens skip battleground states they reduce their leverage. When they do that, that means Democrats only have incentives to move marginally in the direction of Republicans to capture voters in the middle. Over time that means the policies Greens enter elections to push are less likely to become law.

    That holds true for any party. Entering elections they are unlikely to win gives them leverage to make larger parties pay attention to their issues so as to win voters who are on the margin between the larger and smaller parties.

    If smaller parties give up that leverage, why bother running at all? It just shows you don’t really mean it.

  35. Approval = education step to Condorcet

    — due to the low low low low low math education about 3 or more choices math.

  36. Well, they have been educational in libertarian convention elections. They educated me approval voting isn’t so great in reality.

  40. Three more points.

    Jerome, like Dems, whines about Green spoilers EVEN AS HE RUNS AS A VANITY CANDIDATE.

    Second, he does this whining like Dems, though Republicans never (AFAIK, at least) have the same amount of whining about Libertarianians.

    Finally, Jerome, you don’t “own my vote” any more than Dems do.

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