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Ziggy's avatar

For states without fusion voting, the role of a third party is to run as a coherent slate in Democratic primaries. And there is value to that, especially because most local races are lightly funded. But this role only makes sense in districts that are comfortably blue.

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Steve Welzer's avatar

> What is a socialist to do?

Conundrum: The movement is 200 years old . . . and still doesn’t know what to do?

The answer is actually simple: Run candidates as socialists. Not as Democrats, as socialists.

Better yet: Support the Green Party when it runs eco-socialist candidates.

> For states without fusion voting, the function of a separate party is less clear.

The function is clear: to provide, demonstrate, and build up an alternative.

The state of our society is dreadful. The extent of inequality, military spending, CO2 pollution, habitat destruction, etc. etc. etc. is egregiously bad. The duopolistic parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, have traded turns in power for over 150 years. They are both beholden to the power elites and they are both responsible and so they are both insupportable.

If you vote for a candidate of the Democratic Party at least one aspect of your vote sends a message of support for the Democratic Party. It’s more than 50 years since some of us swore off ever sending a message of support for that party. What a misconstrual of a message! What a waste of a vote!

The function of a separate party is to provide, demonstrate, and build up an alternative. There will be some period of time when a significant percentage of the electorate starts deciding to cast an alternative vote. To be ready for that shift in sentiment we need to do all we can as early as we can (now) to be building up and promoting alternatives.

(farthest along in that righteous and necessary process is the Green Party)

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