An actual path for the formation of a viable, US Green Party

[downtown]

Now that elections have dominated the news for a while, with many folks (left and right) upset at the choices they have for American politics, I started thinking about actual ways a 3rd party could develop.

Most followers of US politics agree that the system, as currently constituted, cannot have a viable 3rd party run for national office. Most people also agree that a switch to say, proportional representation, is unlikely at best. The US Constitution has a near religious-quality to it, and massive changes are almost impossible to do.

Here is how I think an actual Green Party might start up. I picked the Greens because even though the Libertarians are technically the largest 3rd party movement, I think the Greens have a more favorable political climate to build from. I suppose it would be possible to use this playbook for a more conservative party, or a libertarian one.

THE PLAN:
1) The Green Party should not run candidates for President or Statewide office in any state. They do not have the money or organization to seriously compete, and it draws attention away from winnable races.

2) My theory is that Americans are hesitant to support 3rd parties because they do not believe they can win, *and* they do not trust them to govern. My plan would work to address both of those issues.

3) The Green Party should target 2-4 small races...ideally, a state representative seat covering part of a large city, although a city council seat in a mid sized city would also work. A legislative position would be superior, as it would be easier to demonstrate an actual political agenda. The ideal seat would be in a:
-HEAVILY Democratic area, but not one dominated by minority voters. I suspect that the cultural ties to the Democratic party would be too strong in say, the south side of Chicago. A seat with 50% or less minority voters, but a Cook score of like, D+25, would be perfect.
-A low turnout area. A 3rd party cannot win an election in a high turnout.
-An area close to a number of colleges
-a city with a reputation of machine politics

I think Chicago, NY, Philly and San Fransisco would be good places to start.

4) Hit up liberal organizations on campuses across the city, with the message that supporting a Green candidate in a local election will give a progressive voice in city issues without the influence of a machine. Worst case scenario, you push the Democratic candidate to the left. For urban voters, a strong advocate of public transportation, rehabilitation instead of prisons, and "greening' public services could be politically popular.

5) Spend all of that presidential money and energy on candidate recruitment, and focus on winning a low turnout race. You can win a Chicago Alderman race with less than 5,000 votes.

6) Winning a few local statehouse races will allow Green leaders to build a public profile, prove that the sky wont fall if Greens are given power, give voice to left-er political voices, and should help candidate recruitment and electioneering in other races.

7) After a series of successful elections, Greens will have legit candidates to run for higher offices.

tl;dr, is this reasonable? Should Greens try this plan, or is there a different path towards political legitimacy? How could you draw up a plan for the Constitution or Libertarian parties (without changing the constitution)?

 

[Tahuti]

Once the Green party becomes one of the major parties, they'll become like the Democrats are now over time. In other words, nothing happens. It works the same in every other country with elections.

 

[Dreadnought]

The toughest step would be six. The plateau between step five and six would be massive. If I had to guess, it would be very individually related; ie, a single charismatic member of the party gaining some attention.

 

[kochman]

To have a viable Green Party in the USA, you would need to dismantle one of the 2 major parties because, like it or not, our current system generally favors this...
And, you'd have to get the communists out (watermelons... green on the outside, red in the inside).

 

[warpus]

Once the Green party becomes one of the major parties, they'll become like the Democrats are now over time. In other words, nothing happens. It works the same in every other country with elections.

Well, not quite.. but.. in a country with a "first past the post" system, the situation will gravitate towards a 2 party system.

So you are kind of right.

 

[Mise]

I don't think the US needs a more left wing party, but rather just a more moderate party. If someone were to start a moderate party, I think it would have difficulty in gaining support, as traditional grass roots channels tend to be further to the left (or right) of the political mainstream.

This sounds like a good plan, though. I'd vote for a downtown party.

 

[Murky]

It would be cool to see the GOP disintegrate, then the current Democrats move to center-left then you develop a 3rd party like the Greens or something along those lines. Dump the losertarians for good out in left field with .01% of the national vote.

 

[downtown]

Well, not quite.. but.. in a country with a "first past the post" system, the situation will gravitate towards a 2 party system.

So you are kind of right.

This is probably true, but we have lots of places in teh US where we only have one de facto party. Creating political competition in those markets may lead to competition in others.

The toughest step would be six. The plateau between step five and six would be massive. If I had to guess, it would be very individually related; ie, a single charismatic member of the party gaining some attention.

Yeah, I think that would be the hardest step, but certainly not impossible (winning say, a US senate seat is impossible). A statehouse race that isn't projected to be politically important may not even have a single paid staffer. An underfunded challenger with ten really good volunteers could steal a low turnout race on pure shoe leather and hustle.

 

[kochman]

It would be cool to see the GOP disintegrate, then the current Democrats move to center-left then you develop a 3rd party like the Greens or something along those lines. Dump the losertarians for good out in left field with .01% of the national vote.

You realize this is a total pipe dream, right?

 

[Tarquelne]

tl;dr, is this reasonable? Should Greens try this plan, or is there a different path towards political legitimacy? How could you draw up a plan for the Constitution or Libertarian parties (without changing the constitution)?

At the state and national level I think taking over the Democratic party - at least to the extent that it decently represents the "Green" position - is far more workable.

Trying to swing primaries could be a good way to go about this. Not necessarily with their own candidate, but by throwing some collective green weight behind the best mainstream candidate or as ostentatiously as possible failing to vote in a primary if neither candidate has good Green credentials.

And in both the primary and outside the primary set up a Green PAC to concentrate and channel the money so that it's very clear who the Greens are supporting and how much that support means.

At the local level, OTOH, I think you can get away with actual Green candidates so wherever you don't have to worry too much about a split vote putting a Republican in office instead. A special case, really, of what you said about low turnout elections. Either per capita or by absolute numbers anything "low turnout" would be a good target to demonstrate the power of the Green machine.

 

[downtown]

I don't think the US needs a more left wing party, but rather just a more moderate party. If someone were to start a moderate party, I think it would have difficulty in gaining support, as traditional grass roots channels tend to be further to the left (or right) of the political mainstream.

This sounds like a good plan, though. I'd vote for a downtown party.

I actually agree...and if this plan came to fruition, I think the Democratic Party could eventually morph into a more centrist party. The problem with starting a moderate party wholesale is that there isn't a ready made, geographically centered demographic for them to target. It isn't hard to find a few zipcodes with a TON of democrats. Where are you going to find a ton of moderates or technocrats? People don't tend to get as excited about centrism, and it's hard to win races when you don't have money, or fire.

Independents have won big elections based on centrist messages (we've elected Indie Govs), but its hard to build a party around them.

 

[Mise]

Hmm, yeah, I guess the benefit of a prominent left wing party is that it would push the Democrats to the centre, where national elections are won.

 

[Virote_Considon]

I think the problem is that such a party would only be regionally viable - exporting its success out of the region would be a major problem. I would think that such parties have formed before and even had moderate regional success, it's just getting that success out of the region they started where they'd fall.

Another potential pitfall I see is that the initial successes in otherwise uncontested seats
could give them less of a solid reputation than it first appears - they might look like a protest vote in an unimportant (hence: normally no real contest) seat, the kind of place that doesn't have contest because it doesn't really matter who's in charge anyway.

To have a viable Green Party in the USA, you would need to dismantle one of the 2 major parties because, like it or not, our current system generally favors this...

If you read the OP instead of just responding to the title, you will see that this problem is the primary problem which is addressed.

 

[asbestos]

What's the risk of a 3rd party splitting the democratic vote?

 

[civver_764]

If the democrats aren't already centrists it's because they're to the right, not to the left.

 

[kochman]

If you read the OP instead of just responding to the title, you will see that this problem is the primary problem which is addressed.

Thanks for the tip!
I did, by the way... I was agreeing... sorry if that wasn't obvious.

 

[Leonel]

What's the risk of a 3rd party splitting the democratic vote?

I would imagine about the same as splitting the Republican vote. Politics is far too diverse to be limited into only two parties. I have views that fall into conservative AND liberal areas and I believe this is true for at least 90% of the population. Why do you think there's so much value on "independent voters"?

 

[downtown]

At the state and national level I think taking over the Democratic party - at least to the extent that it decently represents the "Green" position - is far more workable.

Trying to swing primaries could be a good way to go about this. Not necessarily with their own candidate, but by throwing some collective green weight behind the best mainstream candidate or as ostentatiously as possible failing to vote in a primary if neither candidate has good Green credentials.

And in both the primary and outside the primary set up a Green PAC to concentrate and channel the money so that it's very clear who the Greens are supporting and how much that support means.

That's also possible, and that's pretty similar to what the Tea Party has done. My concern is that without a previous record of electoral success, a Green PAC wouldn't be able to raise enough money to really matter in a primary race.

I think the problem is that such a party would only be regionally viable - exporting its success out of the region would be a major problem. I would think that such parties have formed before and even had moderate regional success, it's just getting that success out of the region they started where they'd fall.

Yeah, that would be the first problem I think...moving the Green Party message out from uncontested Democratic Urban areas to places with lower population density. My hope would be that once very progressive (or environmentally inclined) activists see that the Democratic monopoly could be broken, they might try to start more viable Green organizations in smaller cities or college towns (Boulder, CA? Madison, WI? Ithaca NY?).

Will it ever win elections in Mississippi? No, but it's not like Democrats do anymore either.

Another potential pitfall I see is that the initial successes in otherwise uncontested seats
could give them less of a solid reputation than it first appears - they might look like a protest vote in an unimportant (hence: normally no real contest) seat, the kind of place that doesn't have contest because it doesn't really matter who's in charge anyway.

That's another fair critique. It will be very important that Green leaders distinguish themselves once they actually win elections, so they can be taken seriously in their own right.

What's the risk of a 3rd party splitting the democratic vote?

In the scenario that I laid out, virtually done. Republicans don't typically even run candidates in many of those smaller races, and if they did, the number of Republicans would be so small that the risk of accidentally electing one would be very tiny.

 

[duckstab]

Most followers of US politics agree that the system, as currently constituted, cannot have a viable 3rd party run for national office. Most people also agree that a switch to say, proportional representation, is unlikely at best. The US Constitution has a near religious-quality to it, and massive changes are almost impossible to do.

I'm not a lawyer, but it's been claimed that since Article I, Section 4 gives Congress power to regulate House elections, we wouldn't need a Constitutional amendment to have Representatives elected proportionally from multimember districts. But it's hard to conceive of how you'd even muster support for such legislation when there's no benefit to the two existing major parties or the special interests they serve.

THE PLAN:

...

Other than that, I think the plan would work in one of two ways. It might establish the legitimacy of the Greens for holding statewide and national office. But based on past U.S. 3rd party history, it's more likely that the Democrats would realize that they were in danger of losing a significant number of what had been reliable Democratic voters, and at some point embrace the Green platform. That's pretty much what happened with the Progressives, isn't it?

I'd be interested to understand how nationally viable 3rd parties have managed to arise in other parties with winner-take-all systems. I'm thinking specifically of the Liberal Democrats in the U.K.

 

[Murky]

The GOP's denial of anthropogenic global warming, among other things, could hasten its demise. The Democrats seeming embrace of continuing with fossil fuels could alienate the environmentalist who care deeply about protecting the future. Most environmentalist on the right-wing aren't going to side with the Democrats or Libertarians (who hate protecting the environment more than the GOP) so then there you have the bases for a Green Party. It could be backed by the growing renewable energy industry for financing.