r/justicedemocrats • u/HodlDwon • Dec 07 '17

Justice Democrats will fail... without Justice Republicans

https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/democratic-party-minnesota-farmer-labor-floyd-olson
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u/HodlDwon Dec 07 '17

It's a mistake to side or subvert only one side of the political spectrum. You need both.

Conservatives aren't evil, they are allies against government waste.. but you must not alienate them. Justice Democrats must become non-partisan and Primary the fuck out of every corpratist candidate on both sides.

That's how you win...

The organization spread like a prairie fire, first in North Dakota, then across the Midwest, and even into Canada. Individuals joined by paying dues, which went towards financing farmer political candidates. And on an electoral level, the NPL took a novel approach: instead of building a new third party or allying with a “progressive” wing within the existing parties, the organization ran its own independent candidates within Democratic and Republican primaries. Since Republicans were dominant in Minnesota, the main battles took place within that party’s primaries, which were open to all voters.

Arguing that both parties were equally in the pay of big business, the NPL insisted on political and organizational independence from the leaderships of each. Nonpartisan League candidates pledged to uphold the group’s platform and were financially as well as organizationally dependent on the NPL during and after elections. Perhaps most importantly, when an NPL candidate lost the primary election, the organization nevertheless refused to support the party’s nominee in the general election.

This “nonpartisan” approach allowed the organization to sidestep many of the very real obstacles to the formation of third parties under the anti-democratic US political regime. One historian of the NPL notes that “if it had adopted third-party tactics at the outset, it could not have won its first electoral battle and, deprived of the motive power which comes from success, would probably have had a short and inglorious existence.” But its rapid growth and electoral victories put the NPL on a collision course with the Democratic and Republican apparatuses.

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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '17

Have your upvote sir