Dear Marianne Williamson:
In a recent tweet, you stated that you are “not a third party candidate.” You are at least in the running for the office of the presidency of the United States, and unless your goal is simply to get some subjects included in the national discussion, something that alas Bernie Sanders could be accused of doing, it is reasonable to assume that you wish to win. With that in mind, I have two suggestions.
The first of these is that you become a third party candidate. The mention of Bernie Sanders above provides the compelling reason: The Democratic Party has no interest in choosing progressives as their nominee. Twice now, the country’s best hope for a return to the social democratic principles that the party held between Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson have been thwarted by a leadership that cannot stand the idea of a leftist platform, be their opposition encouraged by former president Obama in 2020 or actively organized during the 2016 primaries to rig the system in favor of their anointed star. Democrats have made it clear by choosing Al Gore over Bill Bradley, John Kerry over Howard Dean—back when Dean was a progressive—Clinton and Biden over Sanders, and by nominating Barack Obama to run somewhat on the left and governing in the center-right that they are a party that any member of the Bush family could comfortably run and hold office in. And that they will squash any presidential candidate who dares to challenge their neoliberal program—or to co-opt those who get elected to lower offices, the Squad being the obvious example.
There will be the tactical question of how a third party candidate can win, given the degree to which our media, legal system, and two major political parties oppose that possibility. As I have written before, in a three-way race, the victor only needs thirty-three percent plus one vote to win an individual state. The challenges to get those votes are naturally name recognition and a message. You have some measure of the first, and a lot of the second. On so many points, your platform offers something to ordinary Americans—especially to the one-third to over a half who are eligible to vote but choose not to do so, eighty percent of whom, according to a 2020 poll, believe that “traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like me.” With your presence on social media, you have the opportunity to raise a movement that will get progress done, but not if you remain within the walls of the Democratic Party. Inside, you act only as an opportunity for Joe Biden to show how far to the right wing he is willing to go. Outside, you are the independent that millions have been demanding.
That demand is no merely for a celebrity who goes against the grain, despite what Donald Trump would have us all believe. His racism and reality-show schtick appealed to many, but I have to wonder how many of his voters would not be so hateful and so willing to smash institutions were they guaranteed healthcare, all forms of education beyond high school, and a living wage. When people are not desperate, they are more willing to tolerate their neighbors and even to develop a sense of common community with them. Your platform offers exactly the combination of hope and practical change that we all were teased with by Obama and that this country must adopt if we are to survive and thrive.
But there is one thing that you must do if you want to win over the millions of working-class voters who can get you elected. This is my second suggestion: Drop gun control. Around thirty percent of us own firearms, about a hundred million Americans, based on U.S. census data. And while estimates vary as to how many guns we own, ranging from close to four hundred million up to half a billion, what should be clear is that any attempt to restrict, confiscate, or ban some or all of those guns is doomed to failure—and to mass resistance. Your platform regarding gun policy is sadly nothing more than the usual wish list of typical Democrats, and it is entirely unnecessary, given the rest of what you advocate.
I mean exactly what I said there. Your agenda of economic and political justice is what I have been offering as a solution to violence in America for some time now. If we guarantee economic security and education to all, if we end the war on drugs and the incarceration of so many who are left without any realistic path of escape from prison and poverty, if we restore the promise of America as a nation that gives everyone a decent chance at success, we can have rates of violence akin to many countries in Europe and have no need to push the kinds of controls that will only anger gun owners.
With hope for this nation, I have the pleasure to be,
Respectfully yours,
Greg Camp
The Hoplite Magazine
Good points. I won't vote for anyone who shows up with the same old garbage to run on. Period. And for the last two cycles, the Dem primaries seemed to me to be just as much of a shitshow as That Other Party that I will not name.
My major concern is that, given the realities of the current two-party system, a third-party candidate running to the left of the Democrats will only serve to hand the Electoral College to the GOP candidate. Considering that the Trump team has already announced a plan to erode any checks and balances that our system might be able to impose upon them, the likelihood of SCOTUS rubber-stamping any executive overreach on the part of a GOP presidential administration, and the virtual monopoly on violence that the far-right enjoys in this country, there might not be a way back from that.
Not to mention that a truly left-wing president would be stonewalled by both parties in Congress.
The better strategy IMHO is to copy what the far-right did with the GOP i.e. build power at the state and local levels and move the Democratic Party to the left via a bottom-up strategy. I don’t see another viable strategy in the current moment without an overhaul of our two-party system and first-past-the-post method of determining victors in electoral contests.