Fusion: What’s in it for Democrats?
In the first two posts, I tried to make the case for “fusion” voting as something that will really help liberals, progressives, labor, enviros, anti-poverty activists, climate change campaigners, you name it. Today I’ll try to make the case for fusion as a good reform that Democrats as a party should favor.
But a quick reminder if you’re just joining: “fusion” is a simple election reform that allows voters to vote for a candidate on more than one party line.
In New York, Governor Eliot Spitzer won last year running on both the Democratic and Working Families lines. The 155,000 New Yorkers who voted for him on the Working Families line were helping elect a Democrat and end 12 years of Republican misrule in Albany, but they were also helping to build an independent progressive third party and signal that they wanted the new governor to focus on the economic interests of working people – affordable health care, stronger unions, fairer taxes and support for working parents. One result – Gubernatorial support for a universal Paid Family Leave program.
For progressives, fusion is a no-brainer. And it will be even more so in the – knock on wood! – coming era of Democratic dominance on a national level. We’ll be constantly faced with the choice of devoting our energy to supporting the Democrats or maintaining an independent presence to their left. Fusion lets us do both.
But what’s in it for the Democrats?
Fusion was once legal in all 50 states but is now banned in all but half a dozen. Why should legislators in Maine or Oregon or Colorado or New Mexico want re-legalize it?
I don’t want to overclaim, but as it turns out, there are several good reasons for Democratic elected officials to favor the re-legalization of fusion voting. The impact of fusion is at the margins – even in New York, Working Families has never reached even 5 percent of the statewide vote (though we will soon!) But plenty of elections are decided by just a few percentage points. How can fusion move those critical last points to good, progressive Dems?
First, by attracting independents and “Reagan” Democrats. They may not like the Democratic Party, but they like the idea of a third party that advocates for things like universal health care and higher wages. Second, by attracting “greens” and other progressives who want to “send a message” to the Democrats from the left without spoiling. Third, by bringing new voters into the political process. And fourth, by fostering creation of fusion parties like the WFP, which, if I can boast a moment, runs one of the best grassroots electoral operations in the country.
I’m going to start by talking about the second piece – fusion as a tool for attracting progressives and solving the “spoiler” problem. Tomorrow I’ll turn to the even-more-important question of independents and new voters.
The left. Also known as solving the Nader problem. But actually, spoiling is a persistent problem, not a freak occurrence in 2000. . In New Mexico, the Green vote exceeded the Republicans’ margin of victory in the 1994 Governor’s race and again in a 1998 Congressional race. In the latter race, if even half the Green voters had supported the Dem, he would have won. More recently, several well-meaning but not very strategic Green candidates in Maine have enabled Republicans to win elections they would have almost certainly lost. (On the right, Libertarians have done the same thing to the advantage of Democrats, but in general spoiling is a much bigger problem for our side].)
I hasten to say, I don’t especially blame Green (or Libertarian) voters. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do in a democracy – coming out and supporting the party they believe in. The problem is an electoral system that means their votes have the exact opposite effect of what they intended.
With fusion, they would have another choice – support both their preferred party and a candidate who can actually win. Some voters will still choose to vote for the third-party candidate, of course, but most would prefer not to vote for a spoiler if there’s another way to support a progressive third party. That’s certainly the case in New York, where many Green Party voters have migrated to the Working Families Party, and in so doing are helping to “green up” the WFP’s identity. Most citizens prefer to cast a meaningful vote than a purely symbolic protest vote, if there’s a principled way to do it.
It’s undeniable that if we’d had fusion and a Working Families-type party in Florida in 2000, we’d now be in the seventh year of a Gore presidency. That’s why important leaders of the Democratic Party – people like Chuck Schumer -- are active supporters of fusion. They don’t agree with us on everything– but they know that in the big fights we’re on the same side. And they know that an independent fusion party brings something they vitally need in close races – credibility with the small but active and energetic group of voters who want to send a message to the Democrats.
Small, however, is a key word. I don’t mean to dismiss progressives – I’m one myself. But we aren’t where the big game is. That’s in the “center,” with swing voters, especially the “Reagan Democrats” (anyone ever hear of a Kerry Republican?), working-class voters who are with the Dems on economic issues but won’t vote for them because of their (real or perceived) stances on hot-button issues like gun control or prayer in schools. Fusion helps there too, and the potential gains are even bigger. So that will be the subject of my next post.
You mean that, given the choice, Nader would have run on a campaign to throw his support to the Democrats, whom I recall he thought were indistinguishable from the Republicans? Sounds like one person's fantasy is running headlong into another's.
Now consider, too, that fusion parties are easier and cheaper to create than active candidacies. As in New York, where voters for nice sounding independent parties could inadvertantly be helping crooks like Harding play boss and line their pockets or helping dangerous sects like Fuliani's gain legiitmacy, I could see voters facing the ultimate version of the butterfly ballot, mentally at least if not physically. It might siphon independent votes to Republican extremists.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
July 5, 2007 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have liked the fusion voting idea ever since my friend turned me on to it a few years ago. We need a way for different parties to be heard and have an impact, and fusion voting does that.
Is there a group I can support, or do some work for that is pushing for this?
If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you'd better be prepared to produce the pig." -- HST
July 5, 2007 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
John,
A couple things. First, I see you've been pushing memories of the nightmare that was the Harding-run Liberal Party. But it is also important to note that this party no longer exists and you can point to the emergence of the WFP for that. I think your point is that a patronage machine with no accountability can take a ballot line and that's true, but that just makes Cantor's point that there is no substitute for organizing. A ballot line multiplies the power of that organizing a thousand-fold, but if you don't have it, you will eventually die. Like the Liberal Party did when the WFP killed it.
Second, what do you mean easier and cheaper to create? Do you know what the party requirements are state by state? But the ancillary question is how much easier and cheaper are the to sustain then a one-shot candidacy? They aren't. Under most ballot access rules the 3rd party has to maintain a serious amount of activity, active registrations, and/or vote totals to stick around.
Third,the Nader candidacy was a Nader candidacy, not a Green Party campaign. It is unlikely that Nader would have thrown his support to another cadidate, since he was a candidate already. The Green Party, on the other hand, might have given its ballot line to Gore in exchange for some explict promises for action on priority issues, and then actively moved issue-based campaigns on those priorites to keep Gore's feet to the fire. KNowing how many votes came because of those issues would let Gore know how many peopel wanted action on them.
Finally, this stuff about voters being confused is just nonsense. People know what they want, they understand issues, and in New York they have generations of voting under fusion laws. They get it, which is why Fulani's party has zero influence in NY politics.
July 5, 2007 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan says that "spoiling" is a much greater problem for the left than for the right, but history doesn't bear that out. The Libertarians were the balance of power in US Senate elections in 1998 (Nevada), 2000 (Washington state), 2002 (South Dakota) and especially 2006 (Montana and Missouri). All those 5 US Senate races were won by Democrats. The Senate would still be Republican if Libertarians hadn't been in those races. By contrast, no Green has ever been the balance of power in a US Senate race that a Republican won.
Also, historically, Republicans have lost 4 presidential elections due to "spoiling", but the Democrats have only lost to the Republicans because of "spoiling" in 2000. The 4 instances for the Republicans losing were 1884 and 1916 due to the Prohibition Party, 1912 due to the Teddy Roosevelt Progressive Party, and 1992 due to Ross Perot's independent candidacy.
July 5, 2007 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd personally prefer instant runoff voting. It allows third parties to run their own candidates and better maintain their independence from the Democrats and Republicans. With IRV, you can rank the Green first and the Democrat second without worrying about the Republican winning.
As for Perot's run in 1992, I think that exit polls showed him drawing equally from Clinton and Bush Sr.
July 5, 2007 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
For strong evidence that Perot hurt Bush and helped Clinton in 1992, see the book "Three's A Crowd." That is a political science empirical study. Also remember that in all 3 general election presidential debates in 1992, Perot criticized Bush severely and never said a word of criticism of Clinton.
July 5, 2007 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whoa... you wrote that fusion benefits Democrats by, "attracting independents and “Reagan” Democrats. They may not like the Democratic Party, but they like the idea of a third party that advocates for things like universal health care and higher wages."
You'll have to convince me of that. What kind of person wants universal healthcare and higher wages and hates the Democratic party?
I guess you could say it's people who don't like the Democratic stance on social issues. But do you really believe those people assume that the Working Families Parties is against same sex marriage or the right to choose? Because, as best I can tell, WFP is for both of those things.
While I buy that people to the left of the Democratic Party might derive some benefit and make some statement by voting WFP, I think the argument that "Reagan Democrats" derive a benefit is entirely bogus.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 5, 2007 10:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Until very recently, the great majority of the Democratic Party was dead set against universal health care. Rep. Jim McDermott, a doctor himself, seemed to me the leader for so-called "one-payer" health care that in my mind is the only truly viable solution was a prophet without honor in his own party.
Obama today defends an evolution towards universal healthcare since universal healthcare is now not possible according to his thinking. Strikingly a notorious investment adviser with strong ties to the hedge funds, Street.com, just a ran a lengthy article talking about the disaster that is our healthcare system. Way things go sometimes, one might think voting Republican is the way to get to Nirvana.
As far as higher wages, what do you think Clinton's trade agreements were about? Even Edwards is a quibbler on the trade pacts because the poor around the world need our help apparently (but our own don't?).
It's not a completely clear picture at all though Democrats as a whole are generally for increases in the minimum wage and Republicans are generally against.
Reagan Democrats have been heavily union members. WFP is union. Seems to me there might be something there. :-)
I was struck that "Goldwater Republicans" showed up at an Obama organization meeting. Might be hasty writing off anyone.
Best, Terry
July 6, 2007 1:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. A less loaded term than Reagan Democrats might be union republicans, of whom there are a lot more than you might think. Both experience and polls show that union members are quite responsive to endorsements from their unions and a "labor" appeal generally, but this is going to be more effective when it doesn't involve asking people to violate their partisan loyalties -- wherever those come from.
July 6, 2007 8:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
You'll have to convince me of that. What kind of person wants universal healthcare and higher wages and hates the Democratic party?
The kind of person who actually wants those things, and realizes that the Democratic Party has a -- let's put it kindly -- mixed history on those issues and others like them.
July 6, 2007 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good answer. But I have a hard time beliving those are "Reagan Democrats." I can see not trusting the Dems to deliver but why would anyone think voting Republican would be a good alternative?
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 6, 2007 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can you really count 1884? Did the Prohibition Party not fuse in any of the elections they contested? If so, that's impressive, given the political landscape at the time.
I think this info nuances Cantor's point a bit, but he still makes compelling points about why fusion counteracts spoiling, which is a particular argument among Dems. The fact that the GOP suffers from it as well just means fusion can help people across the spectrum make their voices heard, which is healthier for our democracy than what we have now.
Fusion helps put the emphasis back on issues and not on personalities and it privileges those people who can organize and mobilize people, a skill set that progressives have developed very very well.
July 6, 2007 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the realities of electoral politics is that people vote based on their own personal identity, choosing the candidate who they feel the most comfortable with.
Reagan Democrats do not feel comfortable with the image of so-called "national" Dems, even if they agree with them on issues of economic justice. They do feel comfortable with the more, umm, muscular identity of the national GOP.
If you offer these folks a way to vote on the kitchen table issues they feel are extremely important, without having to face the unappetizing task of pulling a Dem lever, then they will take that opportunity.
The WFP's internal polling bears this out, as does the polling work they've done in other states as part of their research into how they can expand fusion across the country.
July 6, 2007 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
They aren't mutually exclusive. You can have both. One thing I don't like about IRV is that is privileges candidates rather than issues, but I do like the fact that it works well in getting people elected who appeal to a majority of voters, not just the biggest minority bloc.
What IRV also doesn't do is let the people with Green Party as preference 1 have any influence with the Dem once they win. They know they will always be the second choice of Green voters so why do they need to respond to signature Green issues?
But if the Greens can provide a bloc of votes to the candidate who is also a Dem, then they can prove how much power they have and the force of their issues and can work to hold the Dem accountable on those issues.
Obviously you would need to show how many votes you got on the Green ballot line to do this, so IRV tallies would have to show how many people picked the Green as their first choice for this to make sense in an IVR/Fusion world.
July 6, 2007 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
"One of the realities of electoral politics is that people vote based on their own personal identity, choosing the candidate who they feel the most comfortable with." Exactly, but that's only an argument against adding new party affiliations to the same candidate.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
July 6, 2007 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
How do you figure?
I feel almost like you are willfully missing the arguements being advanced here about the power of showing elected officials where their votes are coming from and how that helps (a) keep them accountable and (b) moves an issue-based agenda.
You are sounding a lot like the Supreme Court in their reasoning the ruled against the New Party's fusion case in 1996 (TCANP v. Timmons I think it was). Fusion "confuses" voters they said.
Which is bunk unless you believe New Yorkers are inherently smarter than the rest of the country or that we are collectively, as a country, stupider than we were 120 years ago.
It's not that I mind disagreements over the use of fusion as a tactic for progressive to gain and wield power, its that your points seem to either ignore what proponents are actually saying or fly in the face of empirical evidence and settle again and again on an arguement that fusion will just confuse voters.
We have lots of evidence that this isn't the case. What's your evidence that it is the case?
July 6, 2007 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nathan, I'm not sure how I rated a 2, but the point seems obvious to me. People, you correctly point out, vote according to the person whose public personal most projects their comfort levels and perhaps their values. Bush was the guy you drank beer with. People didn't vote for him because he was Republican or for Gore because he wasn't on whatever party line, but because the media convinced them that Gore raised his eyebrows during the debates. Or at least your own reasoning would suggest this.
I made my first post on the whole topic only after a day or two, because I wasn't sure what I felt, but the more it goes on, the less I trust the whole thing. Basically, in NY, a third party is like any other special interest group. It seeks favors, and maybe it gets them. That is truly distorting.
On the one hand, it can give a few people a clout they don't deserve. Someone asked where I came off referring to the Liberal party, since it was defunct and the Working Families party had killed it. I don't know about the latter claim one way or other, but it was still an example of how these things last in bad ways. I mentioned the New Alliance Party, a real nut case as well.
On the other hand, it may not serve as the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, as Dean famously asked, at all. Labor threw its support to the most mainstream candidate, Gephardt, who is now in Clinton's camp. I asked the original poster directly if he was really willing to push for universal health care, abandoning the labor strategy of relying on employers. He didn't answer. And, as I keep saying, it invites dozens of other parties with other interests, not necessarily mine.
Think of interest groups anywhere, with their endorsements aside from a ballot line. The pro-choice cause, which I'll defend until death, still made the strategic error of endorsing several GOP candidates in 2004. You could say, oh, that puts pressure on the Democrats to move left. But that's just the Nadar, you lose, argument again. In practice, it just got more lock-step votes to confirm pro-life judges.
Last, I was challenged by what seemed to me obvious: that it takes a lot to create a Nadar-like third party. For Perot it took a personal fortune, as it would for Bloomberg. Sure, a ballot line has requirements to fill. But ask yourself. How many New Yorkers know who Nadar is, and how many know what the New Alliance Party stands for, or even the more well-intentioned and broader Working Families party. Ask what it cost for Nadar to run for president, and ask what it cost just to have an endorsement.
Look, I encourage interest groups to form. It's a basis of democracy. And I encourage them to use their voices and their money actively, supportively, and punitively. And look, I know Dan has a union movement to build, and he's welcome to it if he keeps pushing that movement to the left. I just don't see what's to be gained by giving them a ballot line other than screwing up the whole idea. Whatever objection the framer's generation had to parties period sure applies here.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
July 6, 2007 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a great answer and thanks for it.
It also really says weird, weird things about human psychology. But, that's a discussion for another time.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 7, 2007 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
On New Mexico, Dan brings up some stuff that happened while I was living and working as a journalist there.
He says, "In New Mexico, the Green vote exceeded the Republicans’ margin of victory in the 1994 Governor’s race..."
That 1994 race gave the governorship to Gary Johnson, a libertarian who ran on the Republican ticket. The Green candidate was the then very popular Roberto Mondragon.
Johnson was a true and honest libertarian who got a lot of liberal votes because he was for the right to own guns (which a lot of New Mexico liberals also favor) and was kind of known as a pot smoker who thought thatb marijuana should be legalized. During Johnson's two terms he became associated with Jesse Ventura and with the libertarian wing of the Republican party. Johnson was nearly a third party type running on a Republican ticket, much like Bloomberg in New York City. That the Greens spoiled that election was no big loss to anyone in New Mexico. We got a tax cutting conservative who was also a social liberal.
The alternative was Martin Chavez, former Mayor of Albuquerque and kind of known in the state as being as corrupt as any Chicago machine politician.
Johnson, with his true social liberalism, actually helped New Mexico to get to the forefront on issues like gay marriage (Sandoval County was one of the first municipal governments to sanction it) and Johnson well represented the feelings of New Mexicans who wanted lower taxes and small government but also the social freedoms that a smaller government is supposed to provide.
All I'm really saying is that despite Dan's argument that the Green candidate's spoiling effect (and the Greens were a BIG deal in New Mexico at the time) New Mexicans pretty much got what they wanted. Johnson was no Newt Gingrich style conservative. He was iconoclastic and that's what the state wanted.
Frankly, Johnson is one of the few politicians I've ever seen who was fiscally conservative and socially liberal. It was kind of a treat to see him win and the Greens played a big part by moving the whole election to the left, at least on social issues.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 7, 2007 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can't seriously believe that a candidate who gets 5% of his votes from a group that believes fervently in a flat tax, for example, but 95% of his votes from a group that has a variety of beliefs, including both for and against a flat tax, is going to be influenced preferentially by the pro flat tax group. That just isn't sane.
Either IRV or fusion voting allows a candidate to know how much of his vote came from which group. They are the same in that regards. They are also the same in that the winner will get the vast bulk of his votes from his own party, having a variety of hot button issues.
It is only IRV that allows a new party to slowly build up strength for the future, without sabotaging the present.
Hoppy in Sacramento
July 7, 2007 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is ironic that you chose the flat tax.
Jerry Brown chose to base his quixotic campaign on a flat tax that even he did not fully understand. It was a wonder decidedly different from the wingers' dream of a head tax. A usually perceptive Moynihan denounced it for such things as destroying Social Security. Indeed it would have ended the farce that has wage earners paying the cost of wars and corruption while the politicians are putting IOU's in their accounts but it would have even offered the possibility of Moynihan's aborted dream of a negative income tax becoming something other than another lost hope of a better world. Of course, Governor Moonbeam was never going to be nominated. We chose instead just another Republican Lite dedicated to comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted. And the result is the bad we have with a choice of bad Republicans and worse Republicans for the voters.
Good to talk about issues rather than which Republican to elect I think.
Best, Terry
July 8, 2007 7:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tell that to the NY WFP, which has been growing steadily since 1998 and is now probably the most influential minor party in NY.
If that 5% of the vote is consistently within the margin of victory in race after race in year after year, then, yes, I can seriously believe it. What's more, the WFP experience with the minimum wage raise in NY and the first steps at reform of the Rockefeller Drug laws, to name just two examples at the state level, bear this supposition out in reality.
What makes the cross-endorsed candidate take it seriously is not just the vote total, but the follow-up by the party to hold the candidate accountable to the promises he/she made to get the ballot line. The WFP doesn't just do it's thing in a vacuum, but has candidates fill out questionnaire's that run to 140 questions. People who don't answer the way the WFP likes, don't get the line. Those that do and that get elected get held accountable for voting the right way on specific policies. There is a real danger to either lose the ballot line to a new challenger or have the party sit out the election all together, both of which are tactics that can be used to ensure accountability.
Fusion doesn't solve problems just by existing, as the old Liberal Party proved. What it does is give organized, active parties a powerful means to influence public policy. No organizing = shrinking power until you die, like the Liberals did.
July 8, 2007 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think anything I can say will make a dent in your position, so I'm not really going to try.
I do just want to answer this:
One of the senior staff members for one of the member organizations of the WFP once said that the thing that keep the union/community group coalition together in NY is that they belong to a party with a ballot line. That ballot line gives them power, power which they don't have as a coalition. Why not? Because as simply a coalition it is very hard to explicitly show to a politician, a person who's life is dedicated to counting the votes, how much public opinion they actually control. With a ballot line they can deliver the one thing that any politician needs to keep being an elected official: votes.
That power keeps the coalition together because the individual members of it see that ballot line as being more powerful than what they can achieve on their own. So the disincentive to break with the coaltion to pursue their own organizational interest is very high and very powerful.
If you care about the impact that progressive coalitions can have in today's political environment, then fusion is something to be closely examined, not dismissed out of hand as a crazed exaggeration of America's sordid history of party politics.
I think it is also instructive to think about why it was outlawed in the first place: because Dems and Repubs didn't want minor parties, especially citizen-oriented parities like the People's Party, to gain power. Simple as that. They elections of the 1880's and 90's so freaked them out they needed to change the structure of American elections so they and their corporate masters could hold power. So if the party bosses and their corporate patrons from the turn of the 20th century are against something, it makes me wonder why they feared it so.
July 8, 2007 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can't seriously believe that a candidate who gets 5% of his votes from a group that believes fervently in a flat tax, for example, but 95% of his votes from a group that has a variety of beliefs, including both for and against a flat tax, is going to be influenced preferentially by the pro flat tax group.
It's completely common for politicians to respond to a dedicated minority on an issue over a less involved majority. It's called appealing to your base.
July 9, 2007 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink