Good morning,
A THIRD PARTY? A THIRD WAY?
While the battle of the 2022 election is far from over, I am peeking over the horizon to the complete craziness that likely will occur with the 2024 election. We are faced with the prospect of an election denier (either Trump or DeSantis, but there are others) running against one amongst a series of Democratic candidates that include: an aging president, the person in pole position that few think could win a general election (his Vice-President), a centrist Democrat (Booker, Klobuchar, Buttigieg) or a Democratic Socialist with little connection to economics or a message that could win a general election (Sanders, Warren, AOC).
The alternative on the right recently was suggested when Liz Cheney, herself a right-leaning conservative, yet someone who embraces democracy, did not categorically reject the idea of running. Were she to run, she might pull votes from the far right election deniers—attracting Republicans with whom she shares both political views and a desire to save democracy.
Ominously on the horizon is a groundswell for a “middle party.” While laudable in intention, it would be disastrous in its execution. This middle party, when discussed by advocates, would be a kind of “national unity” party, bridging Republicans and Democrats.
I indicated a couple of weeks ago that there are people thinking about a “third way” (Bill Clinton’s favorite phase and one that helped catapult him from Little Rock to Washington). Of course, redefining the national debate toward reasonable political solutions to genuine problems would be helpful, but a middle party in 2024 likely would siphon votes from reasonable people on the left, strengthening a Trumpian alternative on the right. A group hovering around the edges of the 2024 election jockeying is “No Labels.”
Here are Mark DiMaria’s fears about the “No Labels” group:
“When that group first emerged several years ago, I followed it with great hopes that it would emerge as a functional, sane counter-weight to the Republican Party's abandonment of basic American principles, which might attract any folks from the so-called conservative side of the spectrum who were not nihilistic or anti-democratic (small d). However, I found that it consistently tended to land in the world of impotent, mealy-mouthed both-siderism that ultimately accomplishes other than maintain the status quo and allow the dangerous trends that keep Glenn awake at night to fester. I also found that it tended to attract political figures more motivated by ambition than principle. I went from an initial supporter to one who believes the organization is dangerously diversionary. The concept sounds fine, but not this group and not at this time.”
Bruce Goren clarifies:
“No Labels has been consistent in their mission to not be a third party, but a means of facilitating and supporting Democrats and Republicans who want to actually govern and legislate by sitting down with the other side and finding common ground. Rather than the initiative sponsored by Andrew Yang, No Labels is organizing an effort to qualify on all 50 state ballots to be ready to run a bipartisan ticket (a Democrat and Republican) in 2024 IF, and only IF, the two candidates are seen as extreme and No Labels has determined that there is a path to winning. They will not run anyone just to be a spoiler. The purpose of No Labels is to help make Congress work, not to blow it up.”
Both Mark and Bruce have important points. One can agree with both simultaneously. And yet…perhaps not at this moment can one embrace a third party.
But no, 2024 is not the time for a third party and the risk that it could reward Trump, the autocrats and the insurrectionists. The only chance the country has and, frankly, the Republican party has as a meaningful alternative to the Democrats, is if Trump and his apologists, supporters, and fellow conspirators are beaten at the polls. The risk of a third party is too great.
MINGLING CULTURES
Thanks, Adam Torson, for this wonderful Salman Rushdie quotation:
“Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion. The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Melange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world... The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves.”
-- Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (1992)
MEMORABLE LAST LINES OF MOVIES
From Howard Kroll:
“Might I also suggest:
“Shut up and deal” from The Apartment
“The stuff that dreams are made of” from The Maltese Falcon
From Bradley Tabach-Bank, some thoughts on movie lines:
“Add to your favorite final lines, in Some Like It Hot, when Jack Lemmon reveal to Joe E. Brown that he is a man masquerading as a woman, Brown replies to his would-be fiancée “Nobody’s perfect”.
While not the last line of a movie, my favorite line of any movie was in Switch (1999). While trying to enter an office building, Jobeth Williams, wearing a mink coat, encounters a swarm of PETA protesters and the following repartee ensues:
Fur protestor: Do you know how many poor animals they had to kill to make that coat?
Margo Bronfman: Know how many rich animals I had to fuck to get this coat?”
Have a great day,
Glenn
From the archives:
I'd take any of the three centrist Dems you mentioned but, unfortunately, none of them would be elected...and they are all smart and very well-qualified. What a shame. A third party would not be good. Got to keep repeating the things Biden has done well and emphasize Roe vs. Wade. And urge your readers to start writing postcards all over the country to vote Democratic.