Efforts at positive electoral change within the establishment parties have been doomed. As have changes from the left or right. What’s needed is a party to ensure peace, liberty and economic justice.
The 2024 “election” was a stage-managed disaster for the public and even worse for third parties.
Jill Stein reportedly got a meager 628,129 votes, or 0.4 percent. She only received 27,000 votes more than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who had dropped out of the race and backed Trump.
This was less than half of her already weak showing in 2016 with 1,449,370 votes and 1.1 percent. I’m not even going to tally up the other third party candidates, like Cornell West’s farcical performance or the results from the divided Libertarians.
There exists a radical, antiestablishment center, a plurality, if not an outright majority of the US public that is fed up with the establishment and seeks to end it, but has been constantly manipulated.
Obama promised hope and change and did the bidding of the establishment. What possible good he did deliver, for example regarding Cuba relations and the Iran deal, were easily reversed in the first Trump administration. The rest was mostly negative and/or optics.
Trump is putting together an administration of billionaires and imperialists. I suspect, but don’t know, that any antiestablishment posturing will be coopted, as it was in his first administration. Or, as with Obama, will be temporary.
Candidates within establishment parties, like Bernie Sanders, have taken massive resources and lost, delivering nothing to the voters; though they help deliver the voters to the eventual establishment candidates, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
So far, most attempts to have a third party have come from the left (Green etc.) or right (Pat Buchanan’s Reform Party, etc.). Some have come from some flavor of the center, like the Forward Party, but they have not manifested the most vibrant elements of the antiestablishment, or populist, center.
What is needed is a party that does so. A party that avoids the clichés and dog whistles of the “woke left” and “anti-woke right” while working with the best elements of the actual left and right.
A party that is for peace, for liberty. For an end to the double-dealing economic privilege that feeds economic inequality.
People from the authentic left and right should form the basis of a transpartisan political party.
One that would avoid the “spoiler” argument at its root by drawing from would be Republicans and would be Democrats.
The core of it would be:
- Pro Peace
- Pro civil liberties, pro First Amendment. (Many on “the left” proclaim they are pro free speech, but tried to squash it regarding the pandemic. Many on “the right” pretend they are pro free speech but attack it when it comes to Palestine. Both these positions need to be understood as repugnant.)
It should fully and prominently embrace issues associated with parts of the left wing:
- Absolute rights regardless of ethnicity, gender, religion or other traits or orientations.
- Universal healthcare.
- Tax the rich and confront corporate power and wealth, leading to a more economically equitable society.
- Preserve the environment.
It should fully and prominently embrace issues associated with parts of the right wing:
- Stopping the creation of potential pandemic pathogens
- Stop the Federal Reserve from dominating the economy for the benefit of Wall Street and other privileged interests.
- Stop collusion between Big Government and Big Tech.
- Absolute rights regardless of ethnicity, gender, religion or other traits or orientations, not an embrace of tokenism.
(Of course many thoughtful people associated with “the left” agree already with these above points and vice versa.)
The US should be a country that respects international law and democratic norms. Not an imperial and corporate tool for the benefit of the wealthy. Its public should view with pride its genuine accomplishments, such as the First Amendment. The basis for such a party has roots in organized groups in US history, from populist parties to the American Anti-Imperialist League as well as the work of countless US thinkers and artists including Frank Lloyd Wright.
Many issues have clear left-right agreement already. For example, an embrace of Main Street over Wall Street. And ending pro-corporate trade deals and ensuring decriminalization of drugs.
What is remarkable about such agreements is that they could clearly solve problems that the left and right disagree about and which the major media love to focus on as a source of constant contention, like immigration.
But if the root causes — like destabilizing wars and foreign interventions, drug policy and trade policy — are fixed, then issues like illegal immigration will melt away. Absent those three factors, you’re not going to have tons of people trying to get into the US.
Not everyone will agree with everything. But there is an antiestablishment center that needs to be the focus.
The road to such a political party may need to be to form a new political party if the Green Party, Libertarian Party or other existing party cannot manifest the clear opportunity to galvanize a plurality of the US public to: