Democracy

2016 Elections, Bernie Sanders, Democracy, Green Party, Hillary Clinton, National Politics, Socialism, Third Party June 16, 2015

After Bernie

What will happen to ‘political revolution’ if (when) Hillary wins the nomination? counterpunch by Scott McLarty June 15, 2015 The question needs to be asked. What will Bernie Sanders’ supporters do when “We need a political revolution”  inevitably turns into “We must vote for the lesser evil”? It seems like bad manners to bring up the likelihood that Mr. Sanders will lose to Hillary Clinton in the primaries, when so many progressive voters are waxing enthusiastic about his decision to run for the Democratic nomination. The fate of progressive Dem contenders like Jesse Jackson and Dennis Kucinich in previous election…

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Democracy, Green Party, National Politics, Third Party June 5, 2015

The Progressive Path: Bernie Sanders and How to Operate Off the Two-Party Trail

Gapers Block by Phil Huckelberry June 2, 2015 Did Bernie Sanders make the right decision? My question last year was not so much whether Vermont’s junior Senator would run for President, but rather, if he were to do so, how he would: as a Democrat, as a Green, or as an Independent. The fourth option, of course, was not to run at all. But that decision was likely already off the table. Eugene McCarthy once remarked that “It’s harder to stop running for president than it is to start.” Once Sanders was running, he wasn’t going to stop. He just…

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Democracy, Green Party, National Politics, New York, political corruption, Socialism, State Politics, Third Party May 27, 2015

How Bernie Sanders Points the Way for New York’s Outsider Candidates

New York Observer by Will Bredderman May 26, 2015 One afternoon in 1980, a gadfly candidate named Bernie Sanders and his roommate Richard Sugarman, an adjunct professor of religion at the University of Vermont, went to the Burlington city hall to look over the results from Mr. Sanders’ most recent election: his 1976 run for governor. It was a position he had sought before in 1972, in between two successive unsuccessful attempts at the U.S. Senate, each time running on the Liberty Union Party line and its broad socialist-pacifist platform. (“He said we needed fundamental change,” recalled perennial New York…

Democracy, Green Party, Labor, National Politics, Socialism, Third Party May 26, 2015

Bernie Sanders is no Eugene Debs

Socialist Worker May 26, 2015 by Howie Hawkins BERNIE SANDERS’ entry into the Democratic presidential primaries should be seen as his final decisive step away from the democratic socialism he professes to support. He will raise some progressive demands in the primaries and then endorse the corporate Democrat, Hillary Clinton. Nothing changes. Sanders is violating the first principle of socialist politics: class independence. The socialist movement learned that principle long ago when the business classes sold out the workers in the democratic revolutions of 1848 that swept across Europe and parts of Latin America. Drawing out the lesson from these…

campaign reform, Democracy, Green Party, National Politics, political corruption, Third Party May 21, 2015

The Lesser of Two Evils is Still Evil

CounterPunch by John Halle May 20, 2015 Notes on Spoiling For a decade and half, the spoiler factor has been a third rail of progressive politics. Some of those who have raised the issue are genuinely concerned with the prospect of a third party candidate enabling a far right victory. But others are Democratic Party hacks who, in Matt Taibbi’s phrase “would triangulate their own mothers” to maintain their lock on power. Spoiling for them is a bad faith exercise in maintaining electoral politics as a bipartisan gated community from which left, populist candidates are excluded. Fortunately, there are signs…