We see from their web pages that the Association of Liberty State Parties is reorganizing as the Liberal Party of the United States. The party’s official website is available here. Their current state affiliates are:
The Libertarian Party of New Mexico is the Liberal Party USA (né ALSP) state affiliate in the State of New Mexico. Their website is available here.
The Classical Liberal Party of Virginia is the Liberal Party USA (né ALSP) state affiliate in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Their website is available here.
The Libertarian Association of Massachusetts is the Liberal Party USA (né ALSP) state affiliate in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Their website is available here.
The Keystone Party (subject to a name change) of Pennsylvania is the Liberal Party USA (né ALSP) affiliate in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Their website is available here.
“My father helped create a process in the 1030’s [1930’s ?} that became the Liberal International (LI) to help develop a wealth and tolerant working-middle class while spreading democracies. If the effort here in USA is successful, the LI would likely be very interested in interacting and granting observer status. This is especially as they have no representation from North America except the Canadians.”
I would hope that any US Liberal Party would be more like the Liberals of Australia, than the Liberals of Canada. IMO, the Canadians Liberals are more socialistic than US Democrats.
I’m still working on that, and real life keeps getting in the way. In the meantime, regarding Ballot Access News; I stand by my opinion. However, I should qualify it.
I find conversations with people who offer reasons for their opinions and engage counterarguments to be interesting. I find ad hominem arguments, speculation as to who is posting under which screen name(s), name calling, grandiose pronouncements, failure to engage opposing opinions, unintelligible gibberish, links to unrelated news stories, links to sources without considering arguments about their reliability, rote repetition, and attention deficit cheerleading and sloganeering to be boring.
I tend to simply scroll past the boring stuff. I find it to be an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of what I enjoy about BAN discussion: seeing my opinions post as soon as I submit them, a reasonable degree of certainty that they won’t be removed afterwards, and reading discussions with a reasonable degree of certainty that comments have not been removed so as to make the discussion disjointed.
If you simply scroll past the aforementioned nonsense, the BAN thread you bring up is a good case in point. That includes speculation about your meatspace identity. I don’t care the least bit whether you and Mr. Stock are one and the same. Out of idle curiosity, because it kept being brought up, I spent less than a minute to discover your meatspace name, and then promptly forgot it. If it was important to me, I’d choose a venue where there could be no question, such as my neighborhood cafe or bar, the office water cooler, a zoom video conference, etc. I find this type of discussion preferable precisely because I don’t know who I’m talking to, and thus ad hominem arguments can’t distract from the discussion as easily.
Once the types of comments I mentioned are filtered out by simply scrolling past them, a variety of viewpoints which are backed up by reasoning and the willingness to engage counterarguments are present in that BAN thread and other BAN threads. The “cesspool” impression is formed only thanks to a failure to learn which comments to scroll past and simply ignore.
YMMV, but I find comments by, to, and about AZ to fit that mold something like 99% of the time, to the point where missing the remaining 1% doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the waste of time that reading the remaining 99% would constitute. The same can generally be said for people who use trolling political slogans or common first names sans last name for their screen name (Jim and, sometimes, Andy being exceptions to that general rule).
Try reading any BAN thread, including the one you reference, while skipping over those, and see if you can or can’t see what I mean.
DOH, I’ll stand by.
As for the claim BAN isn’t a cesspool? Go read comments there now, on the post about the SCOTUS ruling on Trump’s ballot eligibility. (That includes the cesspool commenters who for either cesspool trolling or for reality think that I am Robert Stock.)
Sorry, part 4 got delayed due to more pressing real life matters which took precedent, including a phone crash that wiped out what I already wrote towards it among other things, but I’ll try to write it this weekend. Part 4 is about timing and while I’ll be discussing various reasons why the timing is bad, population growth wasn’t one. It is, however, a legitimate additional factor I hadn’t yet considered.
Briefly: The “old Libertarians” are not that directionally similar to the “Mises Mice.” If they were, they wouldn’t be trying to form a new party, would they?
The naming and branding can be fixed. Maybe by more lawsuits?
Tis true that it’s gotten harder to form third parties as America’s gotten bigger. Perhaps capping the size of the House is one reason. Your average member of the Commons, the Canadian Commons or the Bundestag represents about 100K people. The smaller House seats of 100 and more years ago were more favorable to third parties.
You’re probably right about the luck of the elector, to some degree. I think the Kochs would have shoveled a fair amount of money to the LP anyway, but maybe not quite as much.
You’re right indeed about the factionalism and fractionalism, which IMO is definitely more a problem on the left.
That said, by whatever final name, I think there is more working space for a “Classical Liberal” or whatever party than another party of the left.
==
Re BAN? I knew AZ was the former Demo Rep. I’ve been over there for years myself. That said, your idea that it’s a bot or borg recycling his comments post-mortem IS kind of funny.
We’ll agree to disagree on the overall cesspool level. Yes, recently it’s not been so back, but to respond to YMMV? “Small sample size.”
Very nice. Website doesn’t work, though.
My father helped create a process in the 1030’s that became the Liberal International (LI) to help develop a wealth and tolerant working-middle class while spreading democracies. If the effort here in USA is successful, the LI would likely be very interested in interacting and granting observer status. This is especially as they have no representation from North America except the Canadians.
I interacted with them years ago and for a while they were posting pictures of Ayn rand, Nozick and Rothbard until (my read of events) more conservative liberals got nervous. This did lead to admitting various libertarianist parties like the Movimiento Libertario in Costa Rica and others. For now they have the GIRCHI libertarians in Georgia mentioned by IPR, so they will understand what you’re trying to do.
See: https://liberal-international.org/members/girchi-more-freedom/
I’ve started on part 4, regarding timing, and hope to have it submitted for publishing consideration today, or at least this week.
Yay, part 1 made it. Part 2 is to my knowledge still awaiting moderation, so here comes part 3.
In the past near-century, efforts to organize new parties in the United States have succeeded to the following degree:
1) Flash in the pan, personality centered:
A. the Reform Party experienced some level of success around Perot, Ventura, and Buchanan, but efforts to revive it or organize new centrist or populist parties have fallen flat since then, and there have been lots of people trying in various ways.
B. The Progressive ticket in 1948 didn’t lead to anything long term.
C. Wallace 1968; subsequent outgrowths declined quickly and splintered into insignificance before long.
D. To a certain extent, Nader and Green party; after 2000, they splintered, and neither one has been nearly as successful since then.
2) Single state, for example Progressive Party of Vermont; generally these have been primarily successful as cross endorsing parties in states where that is allowed, and function more as political pressure groups than political parties per se. The Working families party is the only one I’m thinking off the top of my head that operates in more than one state under a unified structure of any sort.
3) Attempts at nationally organized parties which are based around shared ideology or ideological cluster. Within the last near century, the Libertarian Party has had the most sustained success of any of these, and it’s not very much.
I don’t think it’s because there are more libertarians than there are progressives to the left of Democrats, populist-conservatives, moderates, environmentalists, etc. There are many more libertarians than Libertarians, but that’s a separate matter . Part of the relative success of the L.P. is that it’s the only party even directionally pointed in the same ideological space.
Part of it is a historical accident; they got a single major party faithless presidential elector when they were a tiny new party on the ballot in two states. If it weren’t for that, I doubt they would have received the Koch money that fueled their growth in 1973-83 before that funding was redirected to the GOP and various nonparty efforts.
That included a 1980 presidential candidate who was nominated in 1979 and then spent over a year making hundreds of speeches at different colleges, often leading to organize or bolster campus clubs, as well as had the funds for major generally late might infomercial advertisement thanks to one of the Kochs running as his VP candidate.
There’s a lot more to LP history, but the subsequent success, such as it has been, has stemmed from those early efforts directly or indirectly. And all of those go back to the single faithless elector – something a lot less likely today – or, I would argue, they would have never happened.
The Constitution, Green, various socialist/progressive, various moderate, far right/populist, etc efforts within the last near century have been even less successful than the L.P.; not because they don’t appeal to large potential audiences which agree with them more than with any major party, not because their organisers are all incompetent, not even because they failed to occasionally attract celebrity candidates, but because that initial spark of organizing momentum is so difficult to get going against all the institutional headwinds and then to sustain and grow with all those factors working to make it very difficult.
That effort becomes even harder when the ideological directional space is fractured between minor parties which seem similar from an outside perspective. Even harder still when they saddle themselves with a counterintuitive name. I’ll argue that the current timing is particularly bad vis a vis anything in the last near century in my next installment if parts 1-3 all get approved.
Second portion:
It’s a terrible idea because getting a new third party off the ground is extremely difficult in the US, particularly when another party already exists which is already directionally similar. For illustration, see the myriad socialist parties. There are far more socialists than have anything to do with any of them, separately or combined.
There are also far more moderates than have ever had anything to do with any of the many attempts to start centrist parties, far more environmentalists than have ever had anything to do with the Green party, far more Pat Buchanan / Trump type populist-conservatives than have ever had anything to do with the constitution party or Buchanan’s reform party run, far more libertarian directional voters than have ever had anything to do with the L.P., etc.
With so many efforts to organize different kinds of third parties appealing to so many different kinds of voters over so many years, it’s more than amply evident that it’s something much more systematic in terms of handicaps than merely the mix of ideas, even directionally. It’s also not merely differences in strategy or tactics, or personality related issues. All sorts of strategy and tactics have been tried over the years by the many people and parties involved in these many different attempts over the years and decades, including by many people who have proven themselves to be much more competent and successful in their various other efforts.
Pre new deal / World War 2 examples would be misleading for a variety of reasons. I can get into that in a separate comment if this series is approved and if there’s further interest. Part 3 coming up..unless parts 1 and 2 are already rejected.
Gadfly, why not tell you here? I can try, since someone bothered to ask. I tend to write at much greater length than I set out to, and this site frequently doesn’t approve my comments, or approves them initially and doesn’t approve followups.
I prefer sites where I can speak much more freely, even if I have to scroll past total gibberish like AZ to do it. I have to disagree with the contentions that 1)it’s in the top half of anything 2) it’s the former demo rep – I lean towards the theory it’s a bot which has weaponized his ideas as part of a toxic attention zombie mix after he passed away. I also don’t think BAN comments are a cesspool; aside from AZ and comments to or about AZ, it’s actually been pretty good lately. YMMV.
I’ll try to make this short, and in all likelihood utterly fail.
It’s a terrible name because liberal already has a meaning, and to 90%+ of voters (high 90s) it means progressive, not libertarian or libertarian adjacent. Classical liberalism is an esoteric concept to the vast majority of voters. There are times and places for things like “taking back words” and such. Getting a brand new party off the ground is a particularly bad occasion for that, because it further handicaps an effort which is already heavily handicapped by its nature to begin with.
I see this comment is already long for attention spans here, so I’ll break off the terrible idea part into a separate comment. Whether either one, both, or neither get approved, we shall see.
Word to Doh:
Why not just tell us here?
Second, BAN’s comments are general a cesspool. When the former DemoRep is the brightest light bulb in the socket, or at least in the top half, at least half the time? Enough said.
==
Per Jordan, since two of the four state parties DO have ballot access, to me, the bad idea, contra Doh, seems to be them not getting a presidential candidate on the line this year. Strike while the iron is hot!
They are a separate party as free as the Republicans, Democrats, and New Whigs.
NewFederalist,
It raises a similar question for Massachusetts. The Libertarian Association of Massachusetts is the libertarian party recognized by the State, but not by the Libertarian National Committee. It’s also the party with ballot access. This also means that the Libertarian National Committee will need to petition in a place where it otherwise wouldn’t for this cycle, assuming LAMA disagrees with the eventual nominee.
I’d explain many ways why this is a terrible name for a terrible idea, but it would probably be a terrible waste of time even if my comment gets approved here. I’ll probably not be able to stop myself from spouting off about it at ballot access news, if nothing else. If anyone here would like to know what I think and why, and doesn’t already read comments there, let me know and I might give it a shot, provided this comment is even published for that matter.
This sounds like the Party that I need to be a part of. Start one up here in Arizona. The Classical Liberal movement is ready to rise up!
I wonder if the four state affiliates are free to nominate their own candidates for president and vice president?
I wonder what the four state affiliates will do regarding a national ticket? I know the LPNM has major party status so they are an automatic ballot line for someone. Could be interesting.
Readers may also be interested to know that since this article was published, Kevin Gaughen, who is involved with Liberal Party organizing efforts, shared on X that the party does not intend to field a candidate for the 2024 presidential election. However, it does plan to run candidates for Senate, Congress, and state legislatures for this cycle. Additionally, the party has drafted a party platform, which Gaughen says will be shared soon, but it has not yet finalized its party bylaws, which are still in progress.
Original post here: https://twitter.com/gaughen/status/1757287517068390745