{"id":1856,"date":"2020-03-24T22:10:42","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T21:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=1856"},"modified":"2020-03-24T22:10:42","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T21:10:42","slug":"does-america-need-a-socialist-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/does-america-need-a-socialist-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Does America need a socialist party?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the aftermath of the disappointing results for the Sanders campaign in the primaries following Nevada, supporters of the self-described \u201cdemocratic socialist\u201d Senator from Vermont have been discussing what happens next.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nSanders chooses to leave the race, he has already announced \u2013 many\nmonths ago \u2013 that he will endorse and campaign for any candidate\nchosen by the Democratic Party. Most of his supporters will follow\nSanders\u2019 lead, as they did in 2016 when he endorsed Clinton. \nSanders has made clear that the top priority must be to defeat Trump,\nand if that means campaigning for the tired and uninspiring Joe\nBiden, so be it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nfor a small minority of Sanders supporters, as in 2016, other options\ntempt \u2013 including not voting or voting for a fringe political\nparty. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fringe\npolitical parties in the US, especially on the left, exist \u2013 but\nthey are both rare and very small. Even in 2016, when Hillary\nClinton\u2019s popularity among American leftists was at its lowest, her\nmain rival to the left, Dr Jill Stein of the Green Party, received\njust over 1% of the vote \u2013 and no votes in the Electoral College,\nwhich chooses the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nyear, no one expects the Greens to do any better. A socialist, Howie\nHawkins, is running in the Green primaries and currently has a lead\nin the delegate count. But to give an example of the gap between\nGreens and Democrats, Hawkins won the California Green primary with\njust 3,556 votes. In the Democratic primary in the same state the\nwinner was Bernie Sanders with 1,548,025\nvotes. For every voter in that state who voted for a Green, 435\nchose to back the socialist running as a Democrat. Third party\npolitics remain as unpopular as ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why\nwould that be the case? Why is there no movement to create a party\n(or parties) to the left of the Democrats? And why are the most\nimportant and successful socialist politicians in the US \u2013\nincluding Alexandria\nOcasio-Cortez \u2013 remaining in the Democratic Party?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some\nof the explanation is rooted in the difference between 2016 and this\nyear. There is no evidence that the leadership of the Democratic\nParty is working to undermine Sanders in the way that they did four\nyears ago. That\u2019s due in part to the successful effort by the\nSanders campaign after 2016 to reform the party. While\nit did not get everything it wanted, it got a lot \u2013 including new\nrules to reduce the influence of \u201csuper-delegates\u201d at the\nconvention<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nSanders has succeeded in pushing other Democratic politicians to the\nleft, most notably Elizabeth Warren. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nEven\nif many Sanders supporters decided that in the long run they wanted\nto leave the Democratic party rather than take it over, they would\nneed to understand that the history of the last century does not give\ncause for optimism<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nGreens ran six presidential campaigns\nfrom 1996, and never got more votes than with Ralph Nader as their\ncandidate in 2000. He won just 2.7% of the popular vote, and no\nelectoral votes. And before Nader, the last relatively large third\nparty effort on the Left was the 1948 Progressive Party campaign of\nformer US vice president Henry Wallace, who won even fewer votes than\nNader. It has been more than a century since the Socialist Party was\nable to win 6% of the vote under the charismatic Eugene V. Debs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare many reasons why third parties don\u2019t succeed in America. \nBallot access is a problem \u2013 which is why Ralph Nader, who was not\nactive in the Greens chose to work with them so people could vote for\nhim in all states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s\nalso the widespread belief among workers, including union members,\nthat the Democratic Party is somehow their party \u2013 a party which\nthey fund to the tune of millions of dollars every election, and for\nwhose candidates they mobilise and campaign. Despite decades of\ncampaigning on the left for unions to withdraw their support from the\nDemocrats, there is no evidence that there is any interest in doing\nso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those reasons, and based on a century of experience, as the American Left contemplates its future post-2020, it is very unlikely that the option of a socialist or labour party will get any traction at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This article appeared in the current issue of Solidarity.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the aftermath of the disappointing results for the Sanders campaign in the primaries following Nevada, supporters of the self-described \u201cdemocratic socialist\u201d Senator from Vermont have been discussing what happens next. If Sanders chooses to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1858,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856\/revisions\/1858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}