New Orleans The polarity embedded in the current presidential and Congressional contests offers as a clear a choice as we have had in my voting life between Harris and Trump. In some quarters, the choice almost seems between good and evil. With voting only one month away, the race is still amazingly close, both in national polling of the general electorate and the controversial continued dominance of the Electoral College. The classic democratic argument that every vote counts has hardly ever been truer than now, yet we still have conscientious objectors. Voters who look away because of the multi-fronted conflict in the Mideast, with Israel now fighting against everyone and no peace in site. People some pique or another with Harris, even as the Trump base seems rock solid. What does it take to pull people together?
According to some, the answer is that we need more parties, and we need to couple this by once again moving to revive fusion voting. I received a recent copy of the Boston Review with exactly that title. The lead essay by Lee Drutman of the New America Foundation argues that the two party duopoly is responsible for our deep divisions, and the solution is a robust flowing of parties able to distinguish and propel their votes by voting their ballots with other parties. ACORN was one of the principal pillars within the New Party effort of the last century. ACORN was one of the three founders of the Working Families Party. Our basic reflex is to support every effort Dan Cantor makes to move the needle forward on these programs. We have been firm believers in supporting political formations which allow the repressed voices of low and moderate income families and workers to be distinguished and clearly heard.
Yet, I find the arguments more unpersuasive now than I have in the past, less because I have become more jaded, than because hope is not a plan. It is hard to imagine a proposal that would find more bipartisan opposition than legislating fusion back to life, which would allow different ballot line parties to “fuse” together behind a candidate. In Congress, this proposal would be dead on arrival, if it even got that far. Responders to Drutman’s argument noted the need for mass movements that combined labor and community efforts as a potential precondition for pushing such a notion forward, but there’s not much evidence of such movements and combinations in the US now. My old friend and comrade Joel Rogers concludes that the only real prospects are in state and local areas, which seems exactly right, though not easy either, and even as he makes the case and is ready to sign up, his warnings about careful attention needs to be paid to the efforts to maintain ballot status among other things would also imperil non-federal parties and fusion.
It was also sobering to read about the status of the Working Families Party efforts. Harvard Professor Danielle Allen notes that:
…the Working Families Party in New York. In 2000…claimed 0.07 percent of registered voters. This year, after nearly a quarter-century of effort, it represents 0.42 percent. Over the same period, the share of Democrats grew from 46 to 49 percent. This is not favorable evidence that fusion will promote party dynamism.
Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld from John Hopkins and Rutgers respectively also argue that…
WFP has often been a valuable player, but its preeminent concern with its own ballot line, for which it must receive 130,000 votes for president or governor, has weakened its substantial contribution. The ballot line itself, more than any policy, was the central element in the long, convoluted drama between WFP and its archnemesis, Andrew Cuomo.
And, that’s in deep blue New York State, not some of the bright red, political blood sport states where initiated referenda might be available to allow fusion.
I worry that our support for multiple parties and fusion has become strategically nostalgic and something of a default tactical option, because we lack the strategy or base to wrestle the power away from the existing parties in the current political reality. I don’t have a better idea, so would continue to support these efforts were available, but I have the nagging feeling that we need a better plan and a way to implement it.