Green, Libertarian, and other alt-party contenders have overcome the prohibitively difficult ballot-access requirements designed by D and R legislators to privilege their own candidates and hinder others. Voting for an alt-party presidential nominee pushes the party forward regardless of his or her chances of winning the White House.
There's no greater evidence of panic among establishment Dem politicians and pundits about Bernie Sanders than their reactions to his call for Medicare For All (single-payer national health care). Paul Krugman in The New York Times upbraids those who support single-payer, while Hillary and Chelsea Clinton spout misinformation about it.(2)
The Green Party and its national candidates support Medicare For All and will continue to do so long after the summer conventions and Election Day. The demand for national health care is too important to let die after July 2016. We'll only win it with a persistent citizens' movement combined with the election of Congress members willing to vote for it. Democrats in Congress, even those who say they support it, have little motivation to enact Medicare For All as long as Republicans are their only competition during election years.
The two major parties and their One Percent sponsors fear, more than anything else, permanent and well-organized alt-party competition. They have nightmares about finding new parties seated in legislatures.
Bernie Sanders, a self-declared socialist elected to the U.S. Senate as an independent, knows the importance of alternative parties. But his decision to seek the Dem nomination precludes him from uttering a positive word about them.
It's unlikely that he'll criticize the Commission on Presidential Debates, owned and operated by the two major parties and corporate sponsors, for barring other parties' nominees from the debate stage.(3) (Question I'd like to ask: "Mr. Sanders, if you lose the nomination, will you seek an invitation to the debates for a third-party candidate who'll defend ideas you've promoted throughout your campaign?")
The future doesn't depend on Bernie Sanders. It depends on all of us who support political revolution and what we do after his campaign is history.
Climate change is a far bigger emergency than the need for reforms like Medicare For All. Hillary Clinton, if elected, will be even more accommodating to the fossil-fuel cartel than President Obama has been.(4)
Do we want to change the country's direction or are we content to rubberstamp the political status quo every Election Day? If the former, then it's imperative that we build an alternative party now, before the consequences of two-party rule become irreversible.
End notes
(1) It's a valid comparison: both were/are warhawks; Ms. Thatcher favored privatizing the U.K.'s National Health Service, Ms. Clinton declared that Medicare For All "will never, ever come to pass."
(2) See the rebuttal from Physicians for a National Health Program.
(3) There are currently two law suits against the CPD in which alternative parties are among the plaintiffs: click here and here.
(4) For example: "Obama's interior department has proposed prising open the US's Atlantic seabed for oil and gas drilling, ending various congressional and presidential bans that stretch back to 1984."
There's no greater evidence of panic among establishment Dem politicians and pundits about Bernie Sanders than their reactions to his call for Medicare For All (single-payer national health care). Paul Krugman in The New York Times upbraids those who support single-payer, while Hillary and Chelsea Clinton spout misinformation about it.(2)
The Green Party and its national candidates support Medicare For All and will continue to do so long after the summer conventions and Election Day. The demand for national health care is too important to let die after July 2016. We'll only win it with a persistent citizens' movement combined with the election of Congress members willing to vote for it. Democrats in Congress, even those who say they support it, have little motivation to enact Medicare For All as long as Republicans are their only competition during election years.
The two major parties and their One Percent sponsors fear, more than anything else, permanent and well-organized alt-party competition. They have nightmares about finding new parties seated in legislatures.
It's unlikely that he'll criticize the Commission on Presidential Debates, owned and operated by the two major parties and corporate sponsors, for barring other parties' nominees from the debate stage.(3) (Question I'd like to ask: "Mr. Sanders, if you lose the nomination, will you seek an invitation to the debates for a third-party candidate who'll defend ideas you've promoted throughout your campaign?")
The future doesn't depend on Bernie Sanders. It depends on all of us who support political revolution and what we do after his campaign is history.
Climate change is a far bigger emergency than the need for reforms like Medicare For All. Hillary Clinton, if elected, will be even more accommodating to the fossil-fuel cartel than President Obama has been.(4)
Do we want to change the country's direction or are we content to rubberstamp the political status quo every Election Day? If the former, then it's imperative that we build an alternative party now, before the consequences of two-party rule become irreversible.
End notes
(1) It's a valid comparison: both were/are warhawks; Ms. Thatcher favored privatizing the U.K.'s National Health Service, Ms. Clinton declared that Medicare For All "will never, ever come to pass."
(2) See the rebuttal from Physicians for a National Health Program.
(3) There are currently two law suits against the CPD in which alternative parties are among the plaintiffs: click here and here.
(4) For example: "Obama's interior department has proposed prising open the US's Atlantic seabed for oil and gas drilling, ending various congressional and presidential bans that stretch back to 1984."
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