How leftists can leave the Democratic Party without destroying it

If Donald Trump and the extreme right is to be defeated, labor unions must be reinvigorated. But that raises another question: How? People have been trying to do that for decades now, and it has not arrested the long, slow decline of union membership. The remaining unions have mostly fallen into a sort of operational conservatism that frequently slides into strategic malpractice.

I previously argued that the Democratic Party must recognize that the labor union is one of the few tried-and-tested institution that might bring the party back from its utter devastation at the state and local levels, and one that fits well with the political weaknesses that lost the election for Hillary Clinton.

But realistically speaking, that's probably a stretch. Pro-labor thinking is unfamiliar to most Democrats (with a few exceptions like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders), and as former labor organizer Rich Yeselson points out, politicians almost always respond to powerful actors rather than attempting to create those actors themselves.

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But suppose we created a new, explicitly worker's party?

Now, I know what you're thinking. That means vote splitting like in Florida in 2000, and we can't risk it. The Green Party and Libertarian Party have been running presidential campaigns for years, and what do they have to show for it? Therefore, leftists should work within the Democratic Party to make their voices heard (and if centrist liberals are being honest, they would generally prefer it if leftists avoided primary challenges or indeed any criticism of whatever nominee the party structure happens to vomit up).

That's where this absolutely brilliant article from Seth Ackerman comes in. He proposes a new party — but one which is cleverly designed to avoid the vote-splitting effects and tremendous effort over ballot access that consumes the Libertarian and Green parties (and to a lesser extent the Working Families Party).

Let me explain. An odd thing about the Democratic Party is that, unlike other similarly-oriented parties like Labour in the U.K., it has no members. You don't join up, pay dues, and then get to vote on the binding party platform and leadership. This is part and parcel of a whole suite of U.S. electoral laws — many of them not seen outside of dictatorships, Ackerman demonstrates — that maintain strict elite control over the party machinery, and make it nearly impossible for third parties to even get on the ballot.

Ackerman shows that a new party could easily have such a democratic structure, and then deal with ballot access on a case-by-case basis. So instead of spending gobs of money getting on the ballot everywhere, and gobs more defending from a suite of harassing lawsuits, this new party would probe to find the easiest point of entry depending on circumstances.

One easy place to start would be bulking out a slate of candidates for every one of the literally hundreds of legislative seats the Democrats do not even bother to contest, many of which would be totally winnable under decent circumstances, and campaigns for which would cost a relative pittance at the state level. (Few have noticed that the Citizens United case made it much easier to set up and fundraise for a new quasi-party like this.) In that case, they could run on the Democratic line, while only being nominally attached to the corrupt and incompetent leadership that got us into this mess — and remaining accountable to the membership due to the new party's democratic structure. Elsewhere, they might attempt primary challenges against weak Democrats, or even contest general elections here and there.

Big unions, of course, are deeply embedded in the Democratic Party. They probably wouldn't be all that excited to jump on board with a new party. However, by design it won't interfere with the actual Democrats very much — and as said before, will be relatively cheap compared to the tens of millions unions spend on presidential campaigns. If a new party manages to rack up some victories, I can easily see some big unions tentatively supporting such an effort.

A Tea Party-style hard core of disciplined, organized left-wingers is what the Democrats and the country have been crying out for. Ackerman's proposal is the most realistic and convincing plan for one that I've seen yet.