NOTE: This only at this current stage, applies to federal level elections(barring a very strong Green party or progressive independent downballot candiate). I noticed how the Bernie Sanders campaign has spurred Berniecrats like him to run for office. As a result, my belief is that in downballot initiatives, they should support Berniecrats running for office against establishiment democrats, establishiment Republicans, and alt-rightists. However, progressives should vote for Stein on the federal level and from there, work to ensure that states allow for more alternatives on local elections.
The 2016 election is shaping up to be easily the most unpopular election in American history. Both Trump and Clinton net unavailability ratings on a massive scale. Both candidates are viewed to be not only unlikable, but also untrustworthy. Under these conditions, it is time to consider the importance of third parties and how they may prevent American democracy from being dominated by "the candiate" the populace hate the least and the rule of "voting the lesser evil" to prevent the greater evil from emerging.
Some say that it is impossible for third parties to make a dent on America, that all they would do is split the vote and allow the greater evil to win. While some may argue that from a right-wing libertarian or moderate prespective, building a third party has a good chance of bearing fruit this election, it seems to be harder to justify progressives building the Green Party in the wake of Gary Johnson's growing chances electoral success that Jill Stein and the Green Party does not seem to share. This blog entry will discuss some of the reasons to vote Third Party, framing it in the context of the Green Party's struggle for electoral breakthroughs. It ultimately argues that in an election with the most derided candidates, 2016 offers the best opportunity to start building an alternative to the two party system.
1. Progressives Don't Really Like Hillary: The biggest reason that it is important for a third party to gain predominance is that progressives do not really like Hillary. Even many of her supporters or people who would tolerate her more than Trump do so with clenched teeth. For instance, Bernie Sanders supporter and pro-BLM activist Shaun King says that he would support Hillary as president, citing Trump as "too dangerous" to be allowed in the Oval Office. This is despite himself having a strong degree of respect for Stein and Johnson. However he himself has posted on his facebook that Hillary's history of corruption makes her hard to support, linking to an article detailing how Bill Clinton accepted $18 million in payments from a prominent for-profit education company, despite the fact that Hillary Clinton, has made criticism of such firms a cornerstone one of her key education proposals. He has also criticized the Tim Kaine nomination pick as alienating progressives, and stated that Hillary's email scandal made him wish Bernie was an viable choice.
Shaun King is not the only progressive supporting Clinton as "the lesser of two evils" to voice disagreement with much of her policies. On August 1, pop-culture feminist Anita Sarkeesian, who rarely talks about politics, linked to an article on transformativespaces.org about why women shouldn't look up to Clinton as a role model. The article ripped Hillary apart for her hawkishness and her actions in Honduras. The article's point being that women should find better role models because Hillary has "brought misery and death" to other women and people of color with her hawkishiness. While one can argue that Anita's worldviews have no bearings here given that she is Canadian the fact that a pop-culture feminist who had been persecuted by gaming exceptionalism ant the alt-right for her beliefs chose to speak against Hillary shows a significant lack of trust by progressives and feminists over Hillary's hawkishiness and lack of commitment to progressive causes.
Overall it is clear that many progressives do not feel Hillary is actually a worthy choice, with those supporting her less out of their consciousnesses and more out of a desire to prevent the alt-right from taking power. Belief that Hillary has failed to "earn votes" but is simply catering to an elite or to her own status pervades discussion amoung the question of whether to vote Hillary to stop Trump. Therefore, with so many progressives themselves having significant problems against Hillary and a desire to vote for issues relevant to them, what are they waiting for in helping to build a third party in 2016 and ensure future elections where they do not have to vote for a hawkish neoliberal with a record of corruption just to block the alt-right's neo-fascism?
2. Voting for a Third Party helps them become stronger on a national level and participate in local elections:
Some people such as Dan Savage argue that supporting a third party is a total fantasy because of the fact that they can't win this election. Their argument is that Third Parties focus too much on federal elections over local elections. Thus, how can Jill Stein make a difference without a strong ground game?
However, what this neglects is that a strong showing at the federal level is needed for a chance to win at local levels. Green Party members such as Bruce Dixon have pointed out that it is not just simple to run progressive alternatives at a local level against duopoly lesser evil politics. He reveals in many states the laws are that you cannot run people on a partisan basis for local office unless you've already got one percent, two percent, five percent of the votes statewide. Thus an electoral breakthrough in the single digits is quite important, because it could allow for the Green Party to run local candiates.
Furthermore five percent is an important number for third parties to achieve. That is because five percent is what is needed for third parties to get that much to receive federal funding. With that in mind, voting for a third party is not a wasted vote, because it can help third parties grow stronger federally and run for local office.
3. Growing Support for Third Parties can raise issues on what disenfranchises Third Parties:
Some argue that supporting a third party is useless because a third party can make no breakthrough within America's first past the post system. This would only split votes and allow Trump to win over Hillary. However, because America has existed for so long with two parties, and with both of them moving right to the detriment of progressives, how could electoral reform happen if no third party rises to challenge them? In Canada for instance, the existence of third parties are why there is such a big issue over electoral reform, with parties such as the New Democratic Party(NDP) vowing to fight for electoral reform that would take into account the voices of the populace. This is one of the reasons the new Liberal government has created a committee for electoral reform, through only time will tell if it will benefit all political voices or be solely used to entrench Liberal dominance.
With this in mind, one should not be too pessimistic about third parties. Rather, progressives should help build third parties in spite of the obstacles preventing third parties from achieving sucess in elections. The 2016 election, with both Johnson and Stein gaining influence, offers much for progressives to work on in creating an alternative to the two party system. For instance, progressives should try to get third parties on the debate, or make an effort for more ballot access, particularly to the greens as the libertarians have access to all 50 states. And assuming that the Greens make their electoral breakthrough, progressives could use this opportunity to raise issues about electoral reform and running greens at a local level.
By contrast, not growing third parties will prevent issues holding back third parties from being raised. And as noted above, without a noteworthy federal showing, the Green Party would be prevented from undertaking other means to grow itself such as through local elections. Thus, by supporting third parties we could raise issues such as ballot access, and if the growth of progressive alternatives to the two party system is sucessful, we could see debates over things like first-past-the-post to accomodate third parties in the years ahead.
4. This is not election 2000:
Some of the more pragmatic people say we have to vote for the lesser evil or else repeat the mistakes of 2000. That mistake was that progressives chose to listen to Nader and grow a movement in 2000 by lining behind Ralph Nader's own political revolution, and that allowed Bush to win because Nader supposedly split the vote. As a result, building the Green Party to continue Bernie Sanders' political revolution is less fruitful than voting in Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump and continuing the political revolution from within the democrats.
First of all, I do not believe Nader somehow killed Gore, this section will explain my rebuttal to the 2000 arguement in two parts. Namely that Nader did not ruin Gore's chance of victory in 2000 and that 2016 is a completely different election.
Firstly, it was the Supreme Court that chose not to investigate the Florida election, but rather rule the election as going to Bush. Secondly, many of the Florida Democrats themselves voted for Bush over Gore, so it was less of Nader costing Gore and more of Gore's own party giving Bush momentum in Florida, particularly as a response to "New Democrat" policies. Consequently, it cannot be fully said that Nader somehow ruined Gore's chances of winning or only existeed as a spoiler. Thus, the analogy of Nader is less of a legitimate justification and more of a bogeyman used to maintain the "lesser of two evils" mentality.
Secondly, it should be noted that 2016 is a completely different election from 2000, to the point where the entire election is an Republican Civil War. The polls say the election is not even close. In every single poll Trump is losing to Hillary, with possibilities of a landslide victory. Part of the reasons for Hillary's sucess is that this election is just as much of a GOP civil war as Trump's behavior, xenophobia, and even his foreign policy has pushed Republicans to supporting Hillary Clinton. This has even gotten to the point where neoconservatives such as Robert Kagan and James Kirchick endorsing Clinton, the latter even going as far to claim Hillary was 2016's "real Conservative" not Trump. With Trump failing to secure the endorsements of key figures of the Republican establishment it appears the election is less a left-right divide or even a center-right vs. center-left divide, but the division of two right wings between the neoliberals, neocons and GOP moderates on one side that has chosen to thrown their lot in with Clinton, and the neo-fascistic/far-rightist alt-right on the other that has thrown their lot in with Trump. And the moderates are winning by a landslide without much progressive help. As a result, progressives are consequently freed up of any consequence to support the Greens , and thus, 2016 proves to be a great opportunity to sow the seeds for building an alternative to the two party system both with the democratic establishiment relying moreso on moderate Conservatives appalled at Trump over progressives, and signifying themselves less a desire to enact the most progressive platform in democratic party history but a desire to continue neoliberal and hawkish policies with their alliance with dissident neocons and the GOP establishiment against Trump.
Conclusion:
Overall it can be seen that 2016 offers a great opportunity to sow the seeds, however slowly, for a third party growth in the future. Despite the naysayers cries of a need to vote the lesser of two evils against Trump, it can be seen that the benefits of voting third party outweighs the negatives. Voting a third party can help them get prominence and raise important issues connected to third parties such as first past the post and electoral reform, as well as allow them to compete on a local, grassroots level against establishment politics. This effort furthermore, even from a supposedly "pragmatic" perspective does not necessarily mean the triumph of the alt-right on the federal level given Hillary's massive lead over Trump. The growth of third parties would in turn give progressives dissatisfied with Hillary movements they would be more inclined to support. Ultimately, rather than progressives holding their nose and voting for the lesser of two evils once more, 2016 provides significant opportunities to gradually weaken the "lesser evil system" in America.
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