--Rejection of the notion that voters must vote for candidates judged by polls or media commentators to be the most winnable, which reduces voting in elections to the level of betting on a horse race.
Organizers of the voters' revolt should remember that the villains are not the voters of any party, but the two-party hierarchy and the corporate paymasters, media, and debate sponsors who've used their influence to limit the range of allowable candidates and ideas.
Alternative parties are interested in the direction of our nation in the coming decades, unlike the Titanic parties, which can't see beyond their own rivalry. Democratic and Republican politicians are primarily worried about whether the pendulum will swing in their direction in the next election. A voters' revolt isn't only about the next election, it's about future generations and a hope that the rest of the 21st century won't be limited to two-party politics.
In most of today's media, the basic premises of corporate power and military aggression that underlie Democratic and Republican policy are seldom questioned. It's taken for granted that for-profit insurance companies must control health care and pad medical costs, that the US has a right to wage 'preventive war' against countries with which we're at peace (a doctrine that Eisenhower deplored and associated with Hitler), that government in a democracy exists to serve big business interests rather than the needs of the people, that consumption-driven industrial civilization can expand without limit in this century of global climate change. An alternative party movement will push dissenting ideas that question these premises into the public forum.
As James K. Galbraith said in his speech, "[W]e are heading now into a very dark time, so let's face it with eyes open. And if we must, let's seek leadership that shares our values, fights for our principles, and deserves our trust."
It'll take a few more election cycles before Greens and other alternative parties can achieve major party status nationally, but we must start now, by rejecting the two-party paradigm, by recognizing that the Democratic Party holds no future for progressives, and by laying the groundwork for a transformation of the US political landscape that's based on multiparty democracy.
Such a transformation will open a wide space for the Green vision of an America that acts according to principles of human rights and freedoms, economic fairness for everyone, peace, and the health of our planet.
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