Irrelevant Microparties Megathread: Veterans' Party nominates first nat'l ticket

[Yelnoc]

lol Maoists

[Yelnoc]

How many votes will they get this time? 3,000? LOL

As with all third party candidacies, the PSL is not covered by mainstream media and is certainly not financed by major corporations meaning less/no political ads, town halls, etc. So yeah, you get less votes.

That's not a sufficient explanation. The socialist Party before WWII got over 100,000 votes like clockwork. And they certainly weren't financed by major corporations or given non red-baiting coverage by the press. The sectarian left's problems are in many ways of their own making. And Maoists are particularly to blame.

[Yelnoc]

How many votes will they get this time? 3,000? LOL

As with all third party candidacies, the PSL is not covered by mainstream media and is certainly not financed by major corporations meaning less/no political ads, town halls, etc. So yeah, you get less votes.

That's not a sufficient explanation. The socialist Party before WWII got over 100,000 votes like clockwork. And they certainly weren't financed by major corporations or given non red-baiting coverage by the press. The sectarian left's problems are in many ways of their own making. And Maoists are particularly to blame.

I certainly don't disagree with you or what the other posters said regarding sectarianism. There's no organized Left in the US, and as you said, what is remaining is divided enough as it is. But I don't think it's fair to compare today's political atmosphere with one so distant, especially pre-50s Red Scare and pre-AFL-CIO. Quite a lot has happened, both internally and externally, which leads us to where we are now. Moving forward, I don't see any any successes without a coalition.

A coalition of who? Are you a Harringtonite? Or do you mean the PSL, ISO, SAlt, the Green Party and whoever else combining their forces to get ~1 million?

And as for this..

Here's a bright idea, 'socialists' endorse Bernie...

I wouldn't be caught dead endorsing him.
My thoughts -> http://socialistworker.org/2015/05/26/bernie-sanders-is-no-eugene-debs

I really don't understand this mindset. What do his impurities matter? His candidacy as an open socialist is forcing the media to address socialism seriously, and exposing swathes of people to the ideology. What more do you want?

[Yelnoc]

I read an article a while back that I can't seem to find atm that said that many socialists thought Bernie was too conservative for them and he panders to the Democrats too much.

Probably the same crowd that thinks Palestine is more important than Social Security and Medicare

Is that really any less irrational than Republicans who think Israel is more important than tax reform or protecting the Second Amendment?

As for the comments about socialist/Leftist parties in the US, part of the reason socialists never gained a sustainable following in the US was precisely because the American socialists were so much more radical than those in Europe. A lot of the European socialists who opposed building coalitions with "bourgeois" reform movements emigrated to the US. Combine that with the fact that American industrialists were often even more hostile to socialist activism than conservative European aristocrats were (hiring private security guards to gun down striking workers, for example) and you ended up with an American socialist movement that was very violent, anarchist and confrontational in nature.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy that historiography. Remember, the US Communist Party (and all its fellow travelers) built a coalition with FDR's Democrats in the 30s. By the 40s, socialists had melted in the Democratic Party. It took the Red Scare and decades of subsequent red-baiting for old socialists to keep their identities quiet, and for young radicals to decide it wasn't worth calling their politics socialist. This is why the SDS, an organization of socialist, communists, and fellow travelers, stayed judiciously away from using the s-word.

A coalition of who? Are you a Harringtonite? Or do you mean the PSL, ISO, SAlt, the Green Party and whoever else combining their forces to get ~1 million?

I really don't understand this mindset. What do his impurities matter? His candidacy as an open socialist is forcing the media to address socialism seriously, and exposing swathes of people to the ideology. What more do you want?

Nah, I'm a Trot. And yes, I think to realistically achieve anything you'd need some kind of unity like that.

It's not about purity. I'm on-board with Bernie's reforms when it comes to education and climate change, but not his weak positions on police aggression, immigration, and Israel. Regardless, the big crux for me is that he's running for the Dems and promising to endorse Clinton. We've been through this with Kucinich. The Democratic Party is and always was a capitalist party, controlled by a corporate elite. The media covering his campaign is nice and all, but in the long run, I cannot see it amounting to much besides bringing more radicalized Americans back into the Democratic fold, which is the entire point of the campaign imo.

I hope you don't believe that Bernie is intentionally "sheep-dogging" the left; that would be a ridiculous level of conspiracy theorism. As to whether that is ultimate effect, intended or not, I have to disagree. As I noted above, American radicals have by and large been afraid to identify as socialists for half a century. This campaign, to me, marks the beginning of the end of that fear. Without the threat of the Soviet Union, red-baiting is far less effective. Bernie's campaign, whether he wants to or not, is reawakening a socialist consciousness on the left, while allowing the liberals to feel like it's "ok" to work with us (a huge departure from the past).

Sure, Stein might lose a few votes to Clinton in the general when all is said and done, but who cares? Build your coalition before demanding Sanders potentially throw the election. If you can put together some kind of Red-Red-Green coalition for 2020, I bet you'll do far better than you would have in 2012. Why? Because the Sanders campaign will have clued in a huge number of people that yes, they are indeed socialists. I expect in the next few years the ISO's (and SAlt's and DSA's) membership will expand significantly. I hope we're ready when the next recession comes about to play a leading role. I don't buy that the leading role necessary for us to play is to build a socialist electoral coalition to run in the next presidential election. As a method for consciousness raising, it seems likely to produce another Nader situation and severely disillusion potential recruits. But if the anti-Sanders crowd actually do it, actually organize a socialist coalition, I will have far more respect for them than I do now, while they're criticizing from the back seat.