Several groups, most of which are Bernie Sanders supporters, have called a national meeting in Washington, D.C., for September 8-10, for the purpose of discussing creating a new Progressive Party. The meeting will be at American University. The meeting is also called by Socialist Alternative. One of the speakers will be Rocky Anderson, who founded the Justice Party in late 2011 and was its presidential nominee in 2012.
The webpage for the meeting is convergence2017.org. Here is a Huffington Post article about the meeting, written by Gail McGowan Mellor, who supports the idea of a new party.
There does not seem to be much media coverage of this. I googled “Peoples Party Bernie” and the most recent news items were from June and February.
On the DraftBernie website the link to media coverage has items as recent as August 30,
https://draftbernie.org/category/in-the-media/
I looked at thenation.com and found no mention of the Seattle meeting. In These Times had no mention of the new party meeting, but instead had this from June http://inthesetimes.com/features/our_revolution_democratic_party_takeover.html
Rocky has been losing his sore loser lawsuits and that tactic was also successfully employed against Johnson in 2012. Bernie would be blocked if he went in primaries first then People’s Party. Plus he loves the adulation of Democrats and would hate to get all the hate that Nader got.
Or it would require that Sanders, himself, lead those people out the door. And in order to do that, he’d probably have to mount another presidential campaign with that purpose already in mind.
Most likely yes. Whatever appetite for a party to the left of the Democrats exists is probably being better met by all the existing parties in that space than some people would like to fantasize. Sure, there are many more people than that who agree with them, but as with any ideology most will either try to change the establishment party they think is closest to them or just not get actively involved at all. Sanders himself will keep promoting the “lesser evil” and those of his supporters who will break with him on that will either go for the Greens or Socialists or just not vote. Hell, a surprisingly large percentage of them voted for Trump or Johnson, so they are not even necessarily purely progressive for that matter.
It’s like if someone tried to translate Ron Paul’s following into a new party when the LP and the CP already exist, Rand Paul is running as a Republican, etc. It just doesn’t work. Not enough oxygen to light that fire.
Today is the last day of this conference and I’ve seen no meaningful media, or even social media, reports come from it. Can we safely assume that Darcy’s prediction was correct and this meeting was essentially a dud?
Right now more and more progressives identify (correctly) as libertarians. Internationally libertarians are taking back the liberal and progressive labels they created in past centuries. The far-left tries to hijack libertarian issues because it has none.
That’s where all this is coming from.
They already have the Green Party.
That was my reaction. The Green Party is basically custom-made for this, why not try to join that?
To be fair, some comments makes it look like they want to join forces with the Green Party. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t it make more sense to join up with the already recognized party rather than trying to get that party into a new one?
Green Party is TOO antiwar for them. Or should I say it IS antiwar!
I’ve heard this project an attempt to build a People’s Party. Is this at all related to the People’s Party that ran Benjamin Spock and then Margaret Wright in 1972 and 1976?
There are some highly dubious arguments in the HuffPost article, but I won’t bother getting in a (pun intended) huff about it. Any attempt to organize a new party that includes a founding block called the Socialist Alternative is doomed from the get-go.
That is an excellent point, George.
From the Libertarian standpoint, this is excellent news. There are a lot of these people, and when they try to get their candidates on the ballot they will encounter ballot access laws, which with some luck they will proceed to assist us in demolishing.
They already have the Green Party.
Nothing will come of this, Tony. I wish them well, but this will probably have even less success than the futile efforts of “Fighting Bob” La Follette’s supporters, including most of the leadership of the Socialist Party, to form a nationally-organized Progressive Party following the Wisconsin lawmaker’s insurgent 1924 candidacy — a year when a staggering one out of every six voters supported La Follette’s independent bid for the presidency.
Good thing the Democrats and Republicans are breaking up.
The blindness of zealots. Power is there for the taking in 2018 and 2020 for democrats. The GOP is splitting in two seemingly even halves. If the dems split into a smaller and larger group they will be shooting themselves in the foot.
I know Bernie himself wouldn’t support this.