Can you elaborate on that argument? IIRC there are several examples in Europe to show that minor green parties can grow into a significant political force. What makes it impossible for the US Greens to follow the same course?
The fact that until you reach 5%, you don't get access to equal public funding is a big one. Also see below: coming in second-best is the same as losing completely in our system. That's the biggest. You get the same benefit from winning 6% of the vote as from winning 35% of the vote: you both lose to the big fish.
And you get the alternate joy of seeing someone utterly counter to your interests elected for four years.
When you're a fringe party, you don't compromise because there's nothing to be gained from doing so. You probably get a lot of your votes from people who feel strongly about one particular issue.
When you're a fringe party that has no chance whatsoever of being elected, you don't compromise because you apparently feel your principles are more important than actual incremental small gains that might beneficially affect real peoples' lives.
I also don't think you grasp how hostile the situation on the ground truly is to third parties. The defining point is that second best gets you absolutely nothing. And if a third party draws away people who are angry and energetic enough to vote for a party, it increases the chances of that party losing.
If you stand to gain something by coming in second place, then the situation changes; supporting a third party is much less of a high-risk element. And unless I'm wrong, that's the situation in the countries where the third parties rose to prominence.
You're talking as if the Republicans weren't that bad until 2000, when Buchanan fed them some extremists. I think that's a little over-generous; they may have gotten worse, but they were plenty bad enough to start with... Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and the rest of the current gang of bastards - weren't most of them deeply entrenched in the Republican party machine long before 2000?
I wish it were that simple. I don't have the space here to give a history of the Republican party, but here's a quick precis: the majority of the South, before LBJ's Civil Rights actions, were Democratic. The segregationists jumped parties after desegregation in 1968 or so. So while Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. were knocking around in Ford's administration, the R party (I speak also of the people registered as R's who vote, not just the people at the top, BTW, and that's important) was undergoing a bit of a redefinition of itself. That didn't really manifest until the 1980's, when the Rs in the Senate and House finally shook free of their old New Deal Democratic allegiances.
From 1980 to 1992, the Rs shifted further and further to the right. In the early 90's, talk radio emerged as a meme transmitter; Rush Limbaugh, Michael Weiner, and Dr. Laura began taking the ideas of the extemists on the far right (the fringe that was attracted to Buchanan's party) and tranmitting them into the everyday. The Media Is Overwhelmingly Liberal. Health Insurance Is A Privilege, Not A Right. Feminazis Are Destroying Our Society. Klintoon Is A Nazi OMG! This made a difference in the base of the Republican Party; it took the concepts that were dear to the heart of the Patriot movement and Buchanan's isolationists and normalized them. In short, it made the R party a welcoming environment for the real nutjobs when in 1996 they fled from the specter of a black woman as VP candidate.
The Republican Party has changed fundamentally over the last 40 years, but the change has accelerated remarkably over the last eight. The point to come away with here is that, by accepting extremist concepts and shifting towards their positions, the Rs absorbed the angry, loud, vocal, voting nutjobs. And they're playing to those extemists, to keep them from splitting off.
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zvi
Re: Afterthought
Date: 2004-03-06 13:01 (UTC)The fact that until you reach 5%, you don't get access to equal public funding is a big one. Also see below: coming in second-best is the same as losing completely in our system. That's the biggest. You get the same benefit from winning 6% of the vote as from winning 35% of the vote: you both lose to the big fish.
And you get the alternate joy of seeing someone utterly counter to your interests elected for four years.
When you're a fringe party, you don't compromise because there's nothing to be gained from doing so. You probably get a lot of your votes from people who feel strongly about one particular issue.
When you're a fringe party that has no chance whatsoever of being elected, you don't compromise because you apparently feel your principles are more important than actual incremental small gains that might beneficially affect real peoples' lives.
I also don't think you grasp how hostile the situation on the ground truly is to third parties. The defining point is that second best gets you absolutely nothing. And if a third party draws away people who are angry and energetic enough to vote for a party, it increases the chances of that party losing.
If you stand to gain something by coming in second place, then the situation changes; supporting a third party is much less of a high-risk element. And unless I'm wrong, that's the situation in the countries where the third parties rose to prominence.
You're talking as if the Republicans weren't that bad until 2000, when Buchanan fed them some extremists. I think that's a little over-generous; they may have gotten worse, but they were plenty bad enough to start with... Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and the rest of the current gang of bastards - weren't most of them deeply entrenched in the Republican party machine long before 2000?
I wish it were that simple. I don't have the space here to give a history of the Republican party, but here's a quick precis: the majority of the South, before LBJ's Civil Rights actions, were Democratic. The segregationists jumped parties after desegregation in 1968 or so. So while Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. were knocking around in Ford's administration, the R party (I speak also of the people registered as R's who vote, not just the people at the top, BTW, and that's important) was undergoing a bit of a redefinition of itself. That didn't really manifest until the 1980's, when the Rs in the Senate and House finally shook free of their old New Deal Democratic allegiances.
From 1980 to 1992, the Rs shifted further and further to the right. In the early 90's, talk radio emerged as a meme transmitter; Rush Limbaugh, Michael Weiner, and Dr. Laura began taking the ideas of the extemists on the far right (the fringe that was attracted to Buchanan's party) and tranmitting them into the everyday. The Media Is Overwhelmingly Liberal. Health Insurance Is A Privilege, Not A Right. Feminazis Are Destroying Our Society. Klintoon Is A Nazi OMG! This made a difference in the base of the Republican Party; it took the concepts that were dear to the heart of the Patriot movement and Buchanan's isolationists and normalized them. In short, it made the R party a welcoming environment for the real nutjobs when in 1996 they fled from the specter of a black woman as VP candidate.
The Republican Party has changed fundamentally over the last 40 years, but the change has accelerated remarkably over the last eight. The point to come away with here is that, by accepting extremist concepts and shifting towards their positions, the Rs absorbed the angry, loud, vocal, voting nutjobs. And they're playing to those extemists, to keep them from splitting off.
(continued)