The Little Party That Saved America
Thu Nov 23, 2006 at 07:16:12 PM PDT
And while Americans are justly primarily thankful to the Democratic party candidates who won, it remains also true:
Having gone on at considerable length about the Republican Party War on America, we now reach the momentary denouement: The Republicans have lost. They lost the House. They lost the Senate. With the Senate, they lost the ability to install far-right judges. With Congress, they lost the ability to field ultraright legislation. In the next two years, there will be no more Patriot Acts. There will be no more Military Commission Acts. There will be no more Real ID acts.
I turn to three Senate elections:
Montana:
Tester (D) 198,302 49%
Burns R 195,455 48%
Jones (L) 10,324 3%
Mr. Jones, who gained some publicity a few years ago through contracting argyrosis and turning himself blue, has now done one better: He turned his state blue. MORE BEYOND THE FOLD
In the end it is the Libertarian Party that plausibly helped save the America judiciary, at least for the moment. The Libertarian Party was far more than the difference between the two votes, with a candidate likely to have drawn far more Republican than Democratic Party voters.
Then there is Missouri:
McCaskill 1,047,049 D
Talent 1,001,238 R
Gilmour 47,504 L
Lewis 18,274
Here the difference is close to the Libertarian total, but the Libertarian total is larger. But by spreading the Libertarian message of peace, freedom, and prosperity (Gilmour polled as large as 9% at one point), Gilmour contributed to separating Republican voters from their (if you will forgive the pun) talentless Senator, making Missouri Talentless.
Finally, when the Democrats did not bother to show up in Indiana:
Lugar R 1,155,577
Osborn (L) 169,858
Of course, there are a few things that Libertarians might reasonably ask from the Democratic Party in exchange for our help, recognizing that we all live in the America that we just saved. The most important is a systematic easing of ballot access laws.
In New Hampshire, the libertarian who was elected ran as a Democrat: Under New Hampshire law, that candidate was legally unable to run as a Libertarian. His choices were Democratic, Republican, and Independent. The newly-blue New Hampshire legislature could correct this; they were sympathetic in the apst when Republicans refused. For example, many states allowed 'independent' candidates within reason to choose their own ballot line name.
In Massachusetts, more than 2/3 of all state legislators ran unopposed. This includes, incidentally, five surviving Republican State Senators. In most of Massachusetts, voters for state legislature had less choice than did voters in the old Soviet Union, where it was technically legal to vote "No". I can readily name people who have tried to run for office here in MA, who collected far more than the legally required number of signatures, only to discover that the bulk of their signatures were invalid, e.g. Jim Fredrickson, who collected more than 6000 signatures in an effort to run for Congress as a Libertarian, only to have ¾ of his signatures invalidated.
It is legitimate to judge a legal process by its results. If a middle school admission exam mysteriously passes 90% of boys and only 9% of girls for no rational reason, a reasonable observer infers that something discriminatory has been build into the exam. We don't have to argue about what the something is; in the absence of an overwhelming state purpose, we insist that matters be fixed.
Massachusetts ballot access laws float in the same boat. When most voters in most races get to choose between their one candidate and leaving the ballot blank, it is time to lower ballot access obstacles until choice becomes present. (As a reasonable first step, try cutting signature requirements in half, and if that doesn't work, cut them in half again.)
In Georgia, almost no third party candidates have run for Congress in most of the past century.
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