There Is an Alternative: the New Party

For years, the words “third party” have been rumbling through left-wing talk shows. One could share emotions ranging from disgruntlement to disgust with the reigning Democrats but never see a way around a practical objection. In parliamentary systems with proportional representation, a vote for a small party can pay off. A few percentage points at the polls convert into a few seats in the legislature, and hence into visibility, spoils and a modicum, at least, of influence. The small party gets public funds, hence an institutional base for later campaigns.

But the name of the game in the world’s oldest democracy is Winner Take All. The American electoral system sends small-party votes directly to the trash can, or lower. Third-party voters mostly have nothing to show for losing. When you withhold your vote from a president who calibrates his differences from Republicans in millimeters, you don’t get to build a party organization that’s a force in the government and you don’t give your party a chance to strut its stuff in the spotlight. Rather, you pay for your purism by tipping the playing field ever so slightly in behalf of the greater evil. In this setting, a vote for, say, Ralph Nader, is a vote for Bob Dole under another name.

Up periscope! There is a way around this structural impediment. I do not refer to the populist billionaire from Texas. Ross Perot is no alternative to a two-party system in which the citizens in their sovereignty get to choose whether the country will be run by Archer-Daniels-Midland or Silicon Valley. The New Party is.

The New Party is both old-fashioned and elegant. The old-fashioned part is to push for economic improvements for the majority. It likes local campaigns for a living wage, for increased school funding, for campaign finance reform. On the model of the Christian Coalition, it elects people to city councils, school boards and the like, chiefly in the Midwest. It likes winning and takes 68% of its races.

The elegant part is strategy. The New Party refuses to be a spoiler. Recognizing that politics is too important to be impractical, it goes by a strategy known as “multiple party nomination” or, more briefly if obscurely, “fusion.” Where it doesn’t have a strong candidate of its own, it’s willing to cross-endorse the best major-party candidate on the ballot. The point is to multiply leverage. If Sen. Demi Cratt knows that she owes her election to the 10% of the ballots she received on the New Party line, the argument goes, she has to take them more seriously than she otherwise would. In the meantime, the New Party gets attention and a chance to grow.

Precisely because “fusion” is a way to help minor parties, most states banned the tactic a century ago. Until six months ago, fusion was allowed in only 10 states, whereupon the New Party started taking the legal route. Losing in the Federal District Court in Minnesota, it appealed, and in January, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals (McKenna vs. Twin Cities Area New Party) found for the New Party on the ground that the state restriction infringed upon 1st Amendment rights to political association. So it is now legal in 17 states to nominate a candidate (with his or her permission) who has already been nominated by another party.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Minnesota’s appeal this fall. Cross nine fingers. As early as 1997, it may become unconstitutional to ban fusion anywhere in the republic. And the New Party will have a growing potential to build up a national force.

The Democratic Party is a decrepit Cheshire Cat that cracks a smile every two years to bring in the bucks and then melts away. Those, especially the young, who are reasonably enough estranged from conventional politics are not going to beat down their doors to lick envelopes for a beast that is so dead to their ideals. At a time when it’s easy for liberals to slump back and mutter about Bill Clinton, the New Party is a non-spoiler. It has energy and ideas, thinks there are more important goals than a balanced budget and promises to mobilize leftward without prolonging Newt Gingrich’s speakership. It’s democracy, stupid.