The case for a 3rd party:Unhitching our Wagons by Charles Sullivan

[laststeamtrain]

New Blood, New Visions, and a New Political Party.

When I rise it will be with the ranks, not from the ranks. - Eugene Debs, June 16, 1918

By Charles Sullivan

01/24/06 "ICH" -- -- Working class people, especially progressives, must come to understand that our interests are not being served by hitching our political wagons to either the Democratic or the Republican Party. The Republicrats represent a capitalist system that has given rise to class division, the unequal distribution of wealth, private ownership, and a system of wage slavery that does not serve democracy, but plutocracy. It condemns workers to being the property of their employers. Capitalism is the opposite of Democracy. We are only deceiving ourselves—falling into an old trap—by casting our votes in a system that not only excludes the majority of us, but also treats us with utter contempt.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info//article11659.htm

[boobooday]

1. Okay, start with a quote from Eugene Debs

And I'm there.

I'm all for it, and let the Democrats who still care about the values of working people join us.

I vote Democratic every time, but I am consistently disappointed by a party that will choose a Kerry over a Kucinich. I'm disappointed with a party whose candidate feels compelled to try to convince us that he is just as heartless, and somehow, (despite the apparent contradiction) just as religious as the Republican candidate.

I'm sick of a party whose strategy seems to be "let's be better Republicans than the Republicans."

Debs is a good place to start for some inspiration.

"As long as there is an underclass, I am of it . . . As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

[Selatius]

2. You'll likely not have a viable 3rd party in the US

The way the electoral system was set up prevents that. Our elections are built on "first-past-the-post" procedure. The winner takes all. As a result, a third party will simply splinter the vote, and you would get a repeat of 2000 with Al Gore and Nader or 1992 with Bush Sr. and Perot.

[eridani]

3. Show me a third party that has more than three PCOs in any state

--then I'll consider it.

[yurbud]

4. or get public financing and starve DLC democrats of funds

and take over the democratic party.


they have no base of voters and only exist as a creature of corporate interests. If they had to depend on a certain number of $5 donatios to qualify for public funding, they'd be lucky if they got cab fare.

California is likely to pass this.

See

http://www.caclean.org/