Politics Outside
the Box: An Introduction and Conclusion
John Halle
Bard College
Conservatory of Music
4/24/07
Most of my politics have revolved around a single question which many of
us regard as key to what we hope will be our country's eventual return to
sanity. What conditions are required for a third party on and of the left
to successfully compete for power within the American electoral system?
What follows is a description of the trajectory of my involvement along
with links to some of the articles I wrote along the way.
Some of you know that my interest in this topic is more than
theoretical: it is active and it is longstanding. I became convinced in
the necessity of a progressive third party with Barry Commoner's
presidential campaign of 1980. The first opportunity I had to participate,
insofar as it was possible, occurred within Ralph Nader's more or less unofficial
candidacy of 1996. When Nader declared his intention to make a serious run in 2000
I would become deeply involved, an experience I document here.
The hours I put into Nader's campaign were not invested in the
expectation of his winning or even coming close. Nor, unlike some third party advocates, was my
intention to demonstrate the capacity of the left to undermine the
coalition required for the Democrats to win national elections. I
was aware that the spoiler issue would allow apologists to paint any
Democrat, no matter how corrupt and reactionary as preferable to a serious
third party challenger. "Those are the guys who brought you George
Bush" became a mantra intoned by party hacks in the years since and
an effective one: The subsequent decline of the Green Party, most notably
in the Democratic machine towns and cities where they had established
beachheads testifies to the success of this cynical canard, one for which
neither the Greens, nor those urging the Greens to embrace the spoiler
role, have yet to develop a convincing rebuttal.
The promise of Nader's Green Party campaign consisted almost
entirely in its potential for establishing a foundation for local and
state level third party candidacies. These, according to the plan, would
take advantage of the organization set up in the wake of the 2000 election
and continue well into the future. At best, some would follow the trajectory of
Bernie Sanders, elected to the US Senate last year as an Independent Socialist.
The routine downplaying of Sanders' third party affiliation is unfortunate
since Sanders' success should lead us to ask the question above in a
slightly different form: why we do not have several other Independent
Socialists or Greens in the senate, more in Congress and still more in
state legislatures and city councils? While there are many reasons why there
are not, I would argue that there are no GOOD reasons.
To argue this point convincingly will take more time than I
can afford to devote to it here. Suffice to say that the primary
obstacle is not, as many have argued, statutory. Yes, a thicket of
exclusionary laws passed by the majors place an undue burden on third parties- but
as Sanders and many others have demonstrated, these can be overcome.
Furthermore, as I would discover in my involvement with the minutiae of
election law, the statutes are not uniformly stacked against third
parties. For example, cities in Connecticut and around the country
have minority party set-asides which can be and have been used to a third
party's advantage. Some states are beginning to offer public financing
for candidates meeting a fairly minimal threshold of support. Even
without these in effect financial barriers are not insurmountable-though
compensating for the inevitable handicap will require the careful
organization of a substantial grassroots volunteer base-a point I discuss
in the above memoir.
If I'm right about this, a larger point follows, namely that
the failure of third parties is not written in the stars but is in
ourselves-in our failure to take advantage of clear opportunities that are
available to us to achieve real political power. The set of attitudes preventing
us from doing so are the focus of this essay
which takes as its point of departure the slogan "If the people lead,
the leaders will follow." Given that our political leaders respond to
protest by running in the opposite direction of where we are marching it
is time not only to put the slogan out to pasture, but more importantly the
assumptions which confer on it its status as a shibboleth. A follow-up piece
attempts to make concrete suggestions for the kind of organization a
functional left should be developing to move beyond the self-imposed
limits of protest politics to participation in power. While I am not
alone in making such proposals that nothing of the sort which I describe seems
to have materialized in the interim means that a critical mass of
consensus on this point has not been reached among the left, such as it
is. Nor are there any signs that it is emerging- a point to which I
will return later.
In any case, one not does advance a critique of politics obsessed with
rhetoric on the rhetorical level. Issuing one more scholarly monograph,
blog entry, or seminar to a room full of like-minded activists is not only
useless but counterproductive in reinforcing the pathology that the clever
manipulation of words, iron clad arguments and the acquisition of
irrefutable data are substitutes for or even point in the direction of concrete
action. The most effective, arguably the only effective statement, is to
show by example that the foundations for real political power can be
established, that power can be achieved and exercised in advancing a left
agenda on whatever level this is possible. There was a brief period when
Nader campaign nationally and the local Green Party chapters which supported
it seemed to be breaking through with this message. Among the most receptive
areas were the academic ghettos in New Haven where I was living at the time where
Nader came close to beating Gore and obliterated Bush.
***
It was the low level, nuts and bolts and frequently menial
involvement in the Nader campaign which woke some of us up to the potential
opening the electoral system provides, even in its presently existing
corrupt and anti-democratic form. And a few of us would go further moving
beyond the rhetorical politics with which we are most comfortable into
what can be reasonably called real politics. As most of you know, in my case
this took the took the form of serving as a Green Party member of the New Haven Board
of Alderman, winning a special election in July of 2001 and the regular
election in November of that year. An account of my experiences in
that capacity can be found here. A discussion of the type of
campaign strategies which were successful for us can be found here.
Some of my other writings from this period including my semi-regular "Halle
Sez" columns are on this site here.
Rather than constituting my first steps up the political
ladder, my one and a half terms on the Board of Alderman marked the
highest rungs I would achieve followed by a precipitous descent for me and
the New Haven Greens. In what follows, I will mention some of the
factors that were involved in my withdrawl and the local party's decline.
But before I do that, this is probably as good a place as any issue an
apology to my Green Party comrades. My failure to secure an orderly
transition left them disillusioned and disappointed in me and this is
something which I particularly regret as some of them are among the finest people
I have ever known. None of reasons I discuss here are intended as an
excuse for this and other organizational failures for which I take
responsibility and which I am willing to discuss if it would be helpful to
do so.
The first reason for my withdrawl is somewhat personal and I share it
here because something of the kind is likely to be encountered by other
groups having success at electing insurgent candidates to office. I was
able to win partly because I had achieved the sort of conventional
respectability as a homeowner and taxpayer which made my candidacy
palatable to voters who might not otherwise be sympathetic to my politics. Paradoxically,
this same profile made it more difficult for me to make the sacrifices that were
required to continue function in politics. It would have meant
jettisoning a dream job-teaching music to undergraduates at Yale in
exchange for a political future which may very well have been no future at
all. The prospect of long term marginal employment and
non-employment as a gadfly activist was decidedly unattractive if not a bit
frightening.
Of course, it came as no surprise when the Democratic
machine devoted a high fraction of its campaign resources in an
unsuccessful effort to unseat me in November, even to the extent of
leaving a vulnerable Republican in another ward unopposed. No more surprising
was the active participation of nominal Yale liberals who were then beginning their
expected upward trajectory though Democratic Party ranks. Yale liberals in the service
of machine politics, frequently in its most thuggish form have been a prominent feature
of the New Haven landscape for generations-an arrangement which nurtured the political
careers of, among others, Bill Clinton and Joseph Lieberman. Exposing this marriage
of convenience was a factor in my decision to enter politics, so by no means
did it constitute a factor in my decision to withdraw from it. Having
said that, the blatant albeit well concealed opportunism of Yale liberals was
stunning to even a cynic such as myself.
And this awareness made me increasingly unsure of the coalition
which served as a foundation the local party
Reinforcing this insecurity was an incident in the spring following my
re-election. By then war on Iraq was imminent and the local party
took the lead in passing one of the country's first resolutions opposing
military action as well as sponsoring local demonstrations. One of these
would feature a Palestinian Yale Law School student whose appearance
provoked accusations of anti-semitism from supporters of Israel some of whom
had been active in the local party. An article in the
"alternative" weekly headlined "When Green Turned to
Hate" provided a megaphone for the critics. Replete with half truths
and character assassination now familiar from attacks on Jimmy Carter, the
patent intellectual dishonesty of the coverage was a bit shocking and,
unfortunately, likely consequential in undermining some of the support for
the party.
While this was upsetting at the time, in retrospect this was only a
relatively dramatic instance of the sorts of fissures which any party
attempting to forge a left coalition will have to deal with. No
party can be all things to all people nor should it be. The best it can
do is to take decent and principled stands one of which is a no brainer:
opposition to military aid to governments engaging in widespread and
systematic human rights abuses. Such stands will inevitably antagonize
those having emotional attachments to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the
United States as well as those who continue to view Israel, against all
evidence, as "a light unto nations". The hope, and I believe
the reality, is that in the long run, a foundation constructed on
integrity and honesty will stand in increasingly stark contrast to the
major parties whose politics are based on the windfalls of corporate cash
which manipulation, cynicism and dishonesty provide access to. At minimum,
political integrity means standing firm against individuals in the party for whom
a pet cause-whether it is a zoning variance for a parking lot or the rearming
of helicopter war ships to attack Gaza-constitutes a litmus test for their
support and being willing to accept the cost in doing so.
The assumption that principled politics are ultimately
winning politics might have been vindicated given more time and under more
favorable circumstances. Unfortunately, and this amounts to my third
reason for my stepping down, the Green's brief rise occurred at the most
unfavorable historical moment imaginable in that it overlapped almost exactly with
the climate of repression ushered in by 9/11 and the assaults on any and all expressions
of political non-conformity. While it might be expected otherwise, the climate
in New Haven was no more welcoming or tolerant of dissent than anyplace else.
A good indication was the response to an upside- down American flag hung
outside of a Yale dorm window which would precipitate a forced entry by
two by four wielding student athletes accompanied by the following message:
"I love kicking the Muslims ass bitches ass! They should all die with Mohammad.
We as Americans should destroy them and launch so many missiles their mothers
don't produce healthy offspring. F*ck Iraqi Saddam following f*cks." A
letter appearing in the Yale Daily News was representative of the reaction
of much of the Yale community: Both sides should apologize, those
perpetrating a criminal act as well as the student guilty of making the
anti-war statement. It came as no surprise that that in the months
following, anti-war protest at Yale was conspicuous by its absence. The
only regular table on Beineke Plaza was not that of organizers arranging
attendance at large peace demonstrations in New York and Washington but
Students Against Nuclear Iran organized by supporters of Israel to
advocate for an expansion of the U.S. military in the mideast.
Obviously, such a climate in the most "liberal" bastion of a
presumably liberal city did not bode well for a party committed to
non-violent resolutions to international conflicts.
In short, the internal divisions in the Greens made us
vulnerable, as did the organizational failures mentioned above for which I
share some responsibility. But even had all of us devoted more of
our energies and even had we been informed with divine foresight in our political
decisions, it seems more or less inevitable that the right wing tidal wave unleashed
by 9/11 would have forced us into a holding pattern at best, and probably a decline
more or less on the scale of that which would occur. An excellent candidate attempting
to assume my seat on the board would be defeated by a standard issue Yale technocrat.
The other Green elected in 2001, a born again Christian and former Bush supporter,
whose commitment to left politics was never more than dubious, would leave the
party in 2003 as would another equally opportunistic local politician in
Hartford. A good hearted but embarrassingly inarticulate Green has
become a perennial candidate in elections at all levels. This
included the 2006 Senatorial race in which his performance in nationally
covered debates reinforced the stereotype that the Greens are "not ready
for primetime."
***
Where the Greens have ended up is obviously disappointing to
those of us who had devoted time, money and energy to the party.
That said our disappointment is mitigated by the fact that we recognized
going in that our investment was a gamble. The potential payoff was
that which I alluded to above: the beginnings of a move towards a real oppositional
party of a sort that most of the developed world takes for granted and which is
a necessary condition for a real shift in the political center of gravity to
take place here. We ended up losing our wager-many hours writing press
releases, creating databases, studying voter lists, getting to know our
neighbors and neighborhood-none of this ended up creating a foundation for
independent, non-corporate candidates to move up the political ladder.
But in itemizing our losses, it becomes apparent that these
are really not losses at all. For what all this amounts to is not wasted
energy but experience in the form of a real world and intimate
understanding of how political power works and what is required to achieve it.
In particular we understand the precise nature of the rotten core which lies at
the heart of urban machines. And we demonstrated how a small number
of political novices are able to successfully challenge it and begin to
build a foundation for a broader insurgency.
The knowledge we acquired does not seem, at the present
moment, to be particularly relevant or useful. Since the 2004
election, a broad consensus has emerged that the only hope for effecting a
transformation of the political system involves reforming the Democratic
Party from the inside. While I don't expect that the reformist
project will succeed, I am in no way hostile to it and I have a great deal
of respect for some of those who are advancing it. In particular, I
find David Sirota's writings and his organizing to be consistently well
informed, savvy and credible. Sirota, and like minded organizations such
as the Progressive Democrats of America are undoubtedly aware of the wholesale corruption
of urban Democratic machines, but their focus is on national and state level races
and on two objectives in particular: driving the Republicans further into the
ditch while attempting to wrest control of the party from DLC hacks such as
Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer who have operated it for a generation.
The results of the 2006 elections provided some grounds for
optimism on achieving the first objective and it seems likely that 2008
will bring further gains. The second objective is a much tougher nut
to crack. There is no evidence that grassroots base of the party- the
Wellstonian Democratic wing of the Democratic party-has had its hand
strengthened in any significant respect. A good indication was the recent
vote on the Iraq supplemental which the PDA lobbied congressional
Democrats to reject. That only six Democrats vote no shows that the
PDA remains no less marginal than those who have remained on the outside-their
efforts to make themselves respectable notwithstanding. An earlier indication
was the Lieberman victory in Connecticut over Lamont, in which the national party
demonstrated to the anti-war Democrats in no uncertain terms who really holds
the cards. In perhaps the most significant indication of the near
total grip of the corporate wing, not only does every serious presidential
candidate pay homage either explicitly or implicitly to the
corporate-militarist wing, unlike in previous years there is not even any discussion
of a candidate who be credibly claimed to represent the party's left. A
year before the first primaries and the Kucinich candidacy has already
become a joke. Judging from the polls where he doesn't even register, I
may be one of the few who even knows who Mike Gravel is and what he stands
for-or at least used to. That Wesley Clark, a known war criminal,
has assumed the role of a marginal peace candidate is among the more
bizarre ironies of the through the looking glass political system which we have made
for ourselves.
As for the front runners, comment is no longer necessary on Hillary
Clinton following her having received the endorsement of Rupert Murdoch.
In contrast, her main competitor Obama makes for a particularly impressive
candidate-virtually a platonic ideal- for those concerned with the
continuing dominance of the nation's political system by those who own it.
His recent comment that he would "not play chicken" with American
lives by "cutting off funding to the troops" was surely received
warmly by military contractors who need not be concerned about reductions
in cold war level defense expenditures to address domestic needs.
His promotion of ethanol under the guise of an environmentally responsible
energy policy was another indication of his ability to provide a veneer of
activist legitimacy to what is just one more scam funneling federal subsidies
to agribusiness. His abject genuflection before AIPAC immediately on the
heels of throwing an old Palestinian friend
under a bus signaled as a near certainty that death, torture
and misery will continue unabated on the West Bank. Staking out these
positions surely played a role in his reaching his $25 million fundraising
target, but it came at the expense of any claim to representing minimally
decent politics. While I agree with Sirota that the current dark horse
candidate Edwards may have the most credible purchase on populist support,
this assessment
by Doug Ireland effectively removes the halo which Edwards has managed to
acquire. Edwards has recognized that the only hope for his campaign lies
in taking advantage of activist energies to compensate for what is likely to
be an inability to compete on the financial playing field. This realpolitik
recognition in no way should be seen as a repudiation of the more or less classic neo-liberal
profile staked out during Edwards' tenure in the Senate. That said,
it is not impossible that I will register as a Democrat to vote for Edwards in
the New York primary if it seems likely that this will make a difference.
Given their support among liberals- some pragmatic, some
star struck and others merely opportunistic- it may take some years into
an Obama or Edwards administration for an awareness to sink in among the
Wellstonians that they have been played for suckers yet again. But if
American troops are still dying in Iraq in 2010, no serious attempt is made to
deal with Global Warming, wealth and income disparities continue their steady progression
to still more grotesque levels, bloated military budgets prevent addressing a dangerously
decaying domestic infrastructure, those who are willing to face the facts will recognize
that the reformist strategy had the opposite effect of what was intended. Rather than
strengthening the influence of the rank and file core of the Democratic Party,
its having yet again pledged its unconditional fealty to the party will
have resulted in a further erosion of its already insignificant influence.
When this occurs, we will be back to where we were in the
waning years of the Clinton presidency. An awareness will return that the
only hope for the future lies in the development of organized politics
which is explicitly directed to challenging a two party system, one whose
very essence is defined by corporate domination, unchecked militarism and
environmental pillage. At this point, the work which the Greens did and for
that matter the important ongoing work which some Greens continue to do, will
have many lessons for how activists need to direct their energies.
If and when this occurs, I and others will again have something to
contribute. At the moment, as should be apparent from the rest of
this website, I'm perfectly happy remaining on the sidelines while tending
to, figuratively speaking though somewhat literally, my own garden here in the
Hudson Valley.