Reply #39: "are rowing in opposite directions" [View All]

Not always, and not even most of the time. Every blue dog has a significant partisan voting record (and you're free to name one that doesn't, but I would suggest that you check first because I've gone through this exercise before and no one's been able to give me one that hasn't; I like to use the Washington Post's congress site to look up voting records because they will list the percentage of party-line votes where the two parties differ).

And even if they were, there is still no strategic advantage to a third party. If you actually want to get someone in office to do these progressive things, you'll still have to convince people to vote for the third party, which is at least as difficult if not more difficult than getting them to vote for a progressive primary candidate. The same amount of effort in convincing them to vote for that person is there in both cases. I would argue that it's more difficult to get them to vote third party because you not only have to sell them on the progressive position, but also sell them on the tenuous strategy which has failed at least once, if not twice in the last eleven years, and has been catastrophic in terms of progressive policy.

I feel that there simply is no substitute for creating a liberal electorate in a democracy. The Republicans are still engaged in creating a more conservative one, and we cede control every year we do not do this work.