2024 Third Party and Independent Candidate General discussion

[Agonized-Statism]

Any updates on this Patriot Party thing the Trump supporters have been talking about?

[Agonized-Statism]

Video of Andrew Yang interviewing Marianne Williamson. Per IPR, they discussed the Forward Party, Democratic National Committee, and third parties. The summary said Yang tried to talk her into running for the Forward nomination in 2024 but Williamson was noncommittal.

The Forward Party is shaping up to be another Reform. Efforts to draft other candidates will fail, Yang will jump in himself in 2024 and fail to make an impact, then maybe some Republican or Democrat will use it as a vehicle to spite a successful primary challenger preceding its collapse. It's just the Yang party.

[Agonized-Statism]

Left Unity in striking distance to surpass the Libertarians in the rolls

Still about half unless you want to combine Peace and Freedom and the Greens, and tf is going on in that comment section

[Agonized-Statism]

Indeed that was where I was going for.

Greens + smaller and regional left-wing parties + Progressive Democrats would be a strong start for a center-to-left-wing third-party, but have there been any actual steps toward left unity?

[Agonized-Statism]

Still leaning toward Hawkins if he runs, but considering West. Not sure why he didn't run Green.

[Agonized-Statism]

Here's an article from Dan La Botz, co-editor of the socialist journal New Politics, from early June before West jumped into the Green primaries and Hawkins decided not to run. Unable to find another source for Hawkins' quotes in the article, but La Botz features Hawkins' take on West:

https://newpol.org/cornel-west-for-president-what-does-the-left-think/

Howie Hawkins, the Green Party presidential candidate in 2020 who is still deciding whether to run in 2024 was quite critical of West and the People’s Party. “Cornel West shows poor judgment tying himself to Nick Brana’s online grift, the People’s Party. They have no organized base to do ballot access petitioning. It is doubtful he can raise money to pay for petitioners in up to 50 states and DC.”

Hawkins thinks that West will not be able to stand the heat of an election campaign. “I doubt whether West will stick it out as the anybody-but-Trump (or the next far-right Republican) pressure mounts. He’s been flip-flopping on this question for years. After supporting Ralph Nader in 2000, he was an outspoken opponent of Nader’s 2004 run as an independent candidate in part because of the left-liberal backlash against Nader and the Greens for supposedly electing George W. Bush.

“After supporting Sanders in the primaries, West flipped to Jill Stein in the general in 2016. In 2020, he flipped back to the Democrats, publicly opposing my run and calling for a vote for Biden because of the left-liberal backlash against Stein and the Greens for supposedly electing Trump. He’s never had a principled commitment to independent working-class politics, or been part of an organization trying to do that. Always more a figure in letterhead coalitions, from Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC, predecessor of DSA) to various top-down NGO or academic issue campaigns. For him, inside or outside the capitalist Democratic Party has always been a question of immediate tactics around candidates, not a question of building independent working-class organization and power.”

Hawkins also criticizes West’s platform. “He has not been consistently anti-imperialist and in solidarity with Ukrainian people’s fight for independence and survival. He has supported Medea Benjamin’s approach of demanding U.S. imperialists impose a ceasefire and settlement negotiated with Russian imperialists for land-for-peace to carve up Ukraine between Russian and Western spheres of influence. His neutrality between Russian aggressors and Ukrainian self-defense is morally bankrupt complicity in Russian imperialism. Not a good look for a Christian preacher.”

Hawkins makes a prescient point on West's flip-flopping, and it's a shame they probably won't put their strengths in party organizing and broader appeal together on a ticket. It's best for the party that Hawkins sat this one out and avoided a contentious primary, though. Hopefully West surprises the purity testers and sticks with the Greens. You can't go it alone with class conflict, the climate crisis, etc., and as many problems as they have, the Greens are the best opportunity for an independent left-wing party in this country.

[Agonized-Statism]

Well now

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/trees/mapping-trotskyism.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPvbzljPTtc

Least fragmented Trots

[Agonized-Statism]

Any updates on the Greens? Is it still pretty much just Randy Toler?

[Agonized-Statism]

Any updates on the Greens? Is it still pretty much just Randy Toler?

Pretty much. Another guy jumped in according to FEC filings - a Jorge Zavala - but his website (https://votejz.org/) doesn't scream "serious contender" to me.

I don't know what the Green Party's going to do, but I really feel like some of the members made a big mistake throwing most of their eggs in the Cornel West basket.

It's a real shame, too. A coopting of the Green Party that orients it away from single-issue environmentalism toward a broader left-wing platform that pulls labor, progressives, and minorities away from the Democrats before they inevitably throw them under the bus is what I've thought has needed to happen for a while now. But, it sounds like he got pushback from the cliquish granola liberals running the party for trying to do that and folded way too easily. I'll probably still vote West (or write-in, he really screwed up on ballot access), but when you change parties three times, it's just not a good look- it screams either incompetence, vanity campaign, or controlled opposition. Still like his platform though, and hopefully there will be another opportunity for that scenario down the road.

[Agonized-Statism]

Expecting anything from cash-strapped progressives with no organizational consistency is on you.

Maybe, but you have to start somewhere and broaden the tent a little while doing so. Not to derail the thread or anything.

[Agonized-Statism]

It's official- Claudia De la Cruz just won the Peace and Freedom primary in California! Granted, I think the primary was non-binding, but it's pretty much hers.