Les Leopold’s new book is called The Billionaire$ Have Two Parties: We Need One of Our Own. The point I like best in it is the following. Not only are the duopolistic parties of Republicans and Democrats both generally serving moneyed interests and not ordinary people or the planet, but also they have joined together in the pursuit of maximum gerrymandering — and that could create a way out from under their disastrous domination.
One key impediment to running a third-party candidate in the winner-take-all U.S. system is the spoiler problem. But in most Congressional districts and some states there is no need to run a third party and no possibility of running a third party, because there is effectively only one party. In a district in which one of the big two is guaranteed to beat the other, why not run a candidate from an actually good party as a SECOND-party candidate?
It’s an idea, anyway. There would be hurdles. You could STILL be called a spoiler. And if people could be expected to grasp the logic of this plan in a general election, why has it been so hard for them to grasp the logic of running someone actually good as a D or an R in a primary when the primary is effectively the election? If money (and twisted media) can make better candidates look worse, won’t it continue to do so? Hasn’t this idea been tried many times, albeit with a bit less gerrymandering? Doesn’t the Green Party exist despite going unmentioned in the book, and doesn’t it struggle not only because of its own flaws but also because the rules are rigged to keep a non-duopolistic party off ballots, out of media, out of debates, etc.? How much money and energy would have to go into the legal cases to try to get names on ballots, for example?
And why not just run as an independent without a party? What will the party do? Will it overcome some of the problems in the preceding paragraph? Will it build awareness? Will it grow into something nationally powerful? Or will it succumb to the financial corruption problem that is built into the current system?
Or will it impose its own version of a losing platform?
Much of Leopold’s book is about a 2025 survey of voters in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As you might expect, they turn out to be more progressive than we’re told, and to dislike the very name “Democrat” — at least when a Democrat has recently been on the throne, perhaps not after a Republican has warmed it for a while. But surveys showed that one of the many, many ways in which Hillary Clinton lost to Trump was by causing voters in some of those very states to oppose her because they feared she’d send their family members into wars. The data is very clear — and reportedly the same conclusion is also in the DNC’s own suppressed autopsy — that Kamala Harris would have beaten Trump had she simply opposed a war on Gaza. Trump is now waging and threatening wars that almost nobody supports and demanding the defunding of just about everything else in order to get the vast majority of people’s income tax dollars into the war machine. And Leopold writes as if the military budget, war, peace, international law, and 96% of humanity don’t exist. Would a PEP (Progressive Except for Peace) party succeed where a PINO (Progressive In Name Only) party has failed?
Corporate news tells us — as Leopold’s survey tells us through the absence of any questions involving foreign policy — that domestic issues are all that matter to voters, that essentially peace is a distraction from all the serious stuff being obliterated by war funding. Leopold offers as a model candidate an independent whose website reads: “NAVY MAN. MECHANIC. INDEPENDENT.” while offering a platform in many ways superior to your average Democrat’s but absolutely identical to your average Democrat’s in its silence on war, peace, and the military budget — other than by proposing to require that weapons makers repair bad products so that they kill and destroy as intended.
If, however, we could build a mass movement powerful enough to be able to use one electoral strategy or another, and if we were able to get peace added to economic fairness, and both added to environmental sustainability, then there would be much of value to draw on in Leopold’s book. One key point is the strong popularity of good policies despite virtual silence on them in media and government, policies such as direct job creation by the government, a ban on layoffs (as opposed to negotiated buy-outs) for all government contractors, banning corporations from price gouging, and — of course — taxing the rich.
The survey information is also valuable for what people say about Democrats. While about 70 percent had negative things to say, most of them bought into the notion that Democrats are weak failures. I’m convinced that the so-called leaders of the Democrats usually get done what they choose to get done. They claim to oppose oligarchic and militarist policies and to achieve them only through failure and weakness, but they often let slip what they’re actually up to. When a Republican is ruling from on high in the White House, people like Chuck Schumer apparently want people’s lives to be bad and for unpopular wars to continue. They think this is good for Democrats in the next election. When a Democrat reigns, on the other hand, the Democrats in Washington want popular and beneficial policies that their masters on Wall Street approve of — which turn out to be very few.
It’s also useful to know not only how much people care about economics, but how little they care about hating trans people or immigrants. Most people are smarter than fascist propaganda — including on wars. But we have to go to the corporate media for polling on views on wars, possibly because the power of the Democratic Party has been more insidious for more time than we realize. Possibly it has established in our own practices the unquestioned habit of avoiding peace.
I recommend getting a copy of The Billionaire$ Have Two Parties and then joining an upcoming online discussion with the author. Bring your questions and ideas.