Sam Smith - The practice of candidates appearing on two
different party tickets - known as fusion politics - was so successful
for democracy that by 1907 it was banned in 18 states. In 1996 the
Supreme Court ruled that preventing fusion politics did not violated the
First Amendment. Today only eight states allow it. But there is still a
way in which thirds can exercise more influence in elections -
particularly national ones - than they do at present.
I
write as someone who has helped to start two parties - the DC
Statehood Party and the national Green Party. I have become increasingly
discouraged by the inability of third parties to exercise positive
influence on national politics. Particularly the Green Party, where
running a candidate for president resulted in winning 1.1% of the 2016
vote, less than half than the 2.7% it got in 2000. One of the major
results has been statistically false claims that the Greens were
responsible for the loss of Democratic candidates - including Al Gore,
who in fact fell far more in polls during the election campaign then
what Nader was able to produce.
The results in
national contests for the House and Senate have been even worse for the
Greens - consistently less than one percent.
So why do
the Greens insist on running people for these national positions? After
all, their political story at the local and state level is strikingly
different. In the past ten years 456 Greens have been elected to local
and state offices. And it is in states and towns where real change is
launched and grown into something powerful.
I fear part
of the problem is that Greens, like many American citizens, see
politics more as a religion in which they express their own virtue than
as a pragmatic way to aid the causes they support. They are not choosing
a saint, but the best battlefield on which to continues their efforts.
If
the polling so far is correct, this election is at best going to be
quite close and the Greens could once more come in for blames as a
result.
But there is an alternative worth trying: In
races in which the Democrats and Republicans seem close, offer the
Democrats to not run a candidate and to endorse theirs in return for a
number of policy agreements. In some cases, it would be easy. Here in
Maine, for example, our liberal speaker of the House Sarah Gideon could
use Green help in defeating Susan Collins.
By the
standards of today's Green Party, such a move would be seen as
despicable by many of its members, but it would, in fact, lend power to
the Greens where they don't have it today.
From the
start, the Greens have done their best at the local and state level,
helping well to change the politics and the thinking in places like
Maine. But they have done extremely poorly in national races and should
at least considered creating a modified fusion politics that could
demonstrate considerably more power.
