Let's take a case in point. In 2000, Ralph Nader ran for President as the nominee of a minor party, the Green Party. Yes, he was very well-known to voters for his consumer advocate work in the '60s and '70s, and in fact, because of that he had enormous credibility as well as fame. Many activists joined the Green Party that year, as I did, in order to volunteer for the Nader campaign. But it wasn't only Nader's fame, or even his credibility, that moved 2.8 million Americans to cast their votes for him. I think that most of them voted for him because he took strong, unambiguous stands on issues they cared about, and because he was so articulate on those issues. Above all, I think it was because he took stands that neither Al Gore nor George W. Bush would touch. He was not offering the same old D'-and-R' double-talk the voters were so sick of hearing. He truly represented what those 2.8 million voters wanted for their country. They were tired of voting against candidates and wanted to vote for somebody, for once! And they did, in spite of the immense hostility they might have been risking among friends and associates. These were not conformists looking for approval, but voters of conscience.
The Election of 2000 showed very clearly that there were hundreds of thousands of voters ready to support Single-Payer national health insurance, big cuts to wasteful "defense" spending, real support for labor (organized and unorganized), and other progressive initiatives--and they were ready to give up on the useless Democrats and Republicans in the process. That enormous potential is still there.
Other scenes from American history demonstrate that minor parties lose much more than they gain when they make deals with the two major parties. Trying to get cozy with the powerful invariably leads to the minor leaguers getting gobbled up and assimilated by the majors, or suffering major set-backs. The classic example of this is the Populist (or People's) Party, which between 1890 and 1894 went outside the two-party trap and elected several of their own members to Congress. One of their primary goals was to take on the most powerful industry of their times, the railroad industry, and prevent it from bankrupting farmers all over the South and the Midwest. The railroads typically jacked up rates right at harvest time, when farmers needed to get their produce to market. The result was that the railroads made a killing, and the farmers"got killed. Financially, that is. So, instead of waiting for corrupt elected officials to help them, the Populists decided to help themselves. They formed a party and started running their own candidates, and quickly elected a few. And they did it by taking strong stands to defend their own interests, not those of Wall Street bankers and railroad tycoons. Their 1892 national platform put it very bluntly: --the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people." They were calling for nationalization of a major industry, just as Kshama Sawant is doing today.
Such militant action developed a real following for the Populists, in terms of matters that directly bore on the lives of working people. There was nothing theoretical or academic about their activities--they wanted political power, and they were gaining it through their own efforts. But then, in 1896, the Populists made the disastrous decision to cooperate with one of the major parties. They endorsed the Democrat, William Jennings Bryan, for President, perhaps hoping thereby to take a short-cut to power. When Bryan shocked everybody by losing the election, the Populists were left high and dry. They never recaptured their momentum of the early 1890s, and they more or less disappeared in the following decade.
Small parties start out at a disadvantage--with much less money, less visibility, and less traditional voter loyalty than the major parties. But those problems only get worse for a small party when they forget why they got into politics in the first place--that is, to challenge the big parties. Making common cause with the major parties does not strengthen the minor parties. Quite the contrary, it causes a small party to start fading into the background instead of standing out and getting noticed. Voters won't bother voting for a small party--whether it's Green or Libertarian or Socialist--if it looks like those small parties are collaborating with the majors. What would be the point? Why go for a small-time, copycat version of some ghastly Democrat or Republican when you can have the real thing?
We were very lucky to have Chris Hedges on the same panel, sounding many of these same themes, although coming at the problem from a different angle. Hedges emphasizes non-violent civil disobedience. In fact, that tactic is his essential proposed solution. Preceding Sawant, he presented his argument for independence from the corporate state itself, arguing that relying on the Democratic Party in the struggle for environmental sanity would be like "pouring energy down a black hole." I don't think I've ever heard him make his case so cogently and so convincingly.
After the presentations of the five panelists, moderator Brian Lehrer noted (delicately) that some "harsh words" had been spoken, quoting Hedges' call for "overthrowing" our "corporate masters." Lehrer was facing up to the obvious differences between Sawant and Hedges, on the one side, and the other three panelists on the other. The overall spirit of solidarity on climate change prevailed, but not without some disagreement about what to do about it.
Naomi Klein is one of the best journalists we've got. She has done a great job of documenting the runaway train that right-wingers have packed themselves into on the issue of climate change. The thesis of her new book is that the climate change deniers are so recklessly dedicated to their "magic of the market" ideology that they can't move toward sensible public-sector regulation on climate, even when they know it's necessary. They know that if they give an inch to the recommendations of many climate scientists, their whole anti-regulatory project will fall to pieces. I'm sure she understands that corporate Democrats are almost as big a problem in this context as corporate Republicans are. But generally speaking, her analysis seems to give us a fairly accurate picture of who stands in the way of positive action on climate change and why. The only trouble is that she doesn't seem to suggest any particular plan of action, as Sawant and Hedges do.
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