CNtodd, in a post hoping for the rise of a new labor party to challenge the Democrats, writes:
Unless labor unions drop their support of the Democratic Party, workers will continue to lose the rights they fought for so long ago. The Democrats need a wake-up call in 2008.
Sorta like the wake-up call Nader gave them (and the country) in 2000, right? And do you think things would be quite so bad for workers if, say, that wake-up call hadn't happened and Gore had won? If Kerry had won?
I don't.
In any case, new parties really aren't the way to go. Lipset and Marks wrote a great book called It Didn't Happen Here, explaining why socialism never grabbed hold in the States. They argue, basically, that the essential impenetrability of the two-party system killed its chances; there was no electoral space in which it could breathe. Convincing stuff, and worth a read if you're interested in that sort of thing.
A good example of why these initiatives fail can be seen on the right. Howard Jarvis, a tax-cutting zealot whose wingnut ballot propositions screwed up California for a generation, tried to parlay a failed Senate insurgency into a Conservative Party. This was in 1962, a time of remarkable conservative mobilization in California, and the new party got 60,000 members. And then, when Barry Goldwater announced his candidacy for President, it lost most all of them (as did the CA organizations in other states).
