Who to vote for?

The 2012 Presidental Election will be my first time voting. I am familiar with Obama and all the GOP canidates.... but, I don't care for any of them. Are there any lesser known Socialist or (even better) Communist canidates that I should know about? Also, I want to be involved with a strong and growing Revolutionary party in the future. Any ideas? Any suggestions are welcome and deeply appreciated.

Another thing, I do not care for CPUSA and the whole "vote Democrat" thing

Chairman McAmazing wrote:

Another thing, I do not care for CPUSA and the whole "vote Democrat" thing

I havent followed them, but is that what they have devolved to?

Pretty much. It's not so much the party as it is the leadership. But either way, if I wanted to vote democrat, I'd be a democrat.

It's easy to dismiss voting democrat but at the moment there is no alternative, that has to be created first. If you want to live in a USA in which you can vote against both/all bourgeois parties have it count, you must first win over the labour movement to the cause of an indepedent labour party. This will be a gradual process and will require good comrades working within trade union political activities, which for the time being are likely to continue focusing on the Democratic Party.

The US system does offer some advantages in this reguard -- there's nothing stopping socialist or labour candidates running for Democratic nominations with union funding, or who could be supported by a labour movement superPAC (if you can't beat them, join them). This even goes for the Presidency as a kind of Ron Paul of the left, although it would be best to start small and work towards this.

okay I might have to vote democrat, but what party do you guys recommend for me? Just a strong, revolutionary party

The PSL is probably the strongest American party. Post-USSR political programme? Ballin'.

Vote PSL

The PSL will more then likely be doing campaigning for ballot access in Iowa and Arkansas (at least they did in 2008).

Whitten wrote:

you must first win over the labour movement to the cause of an indepedent labour party.

It was tried in the 1990s and WIL/IMT recently (year or so ago) are trying to start one again. It will fail because the union bureaucrats aren't interested in supporting any kind of socialist candidate.

Whitten wrote:

The US system does offer some advantages in this reguard -- there's nothing stopping socialist or labour candidates running for Democratic nominations with union funding, or who could be supported by a labour movement superPAC (if you can't beat them, join them).

Fighting "corporate america" on their terms sounds like a horrible idea. First a candidate would need to win the primary of the Democratic Party and second win the general elections. The cost of running two campaigns for one office is enormous and there is no way the labor movement can effectively pay the bill.

edit... double post, why can't I delete these??

most progressive politician in US surely is Dennis Kuncinich, no more Cynthia McKinney... I'm not really sure there are any advantages to a two-party system, at least in other Western democracies if you put together a party you can gain some seats and have your own game plan, as a democrat, it is what it is. Anyone heard of LaRouche Democrats ? lol, they are on the street sometimes with OBAMA = HITLER stuff... Just to see what it was, I went to a meeting, and when they started talking about how the Americans were our friends, and they were innocent of any imperial warmongering, and it was actually all the British I just got up and left. Their basic focus is on the Glas-Stegall or something like that, which they believe will solve all of today's problems... On the other hand, they have some interesting publications specifically on Africa, I did like their interviews with the diplomat of Zimbabwe. I think right now if you were involved with #occupy in any way, and support it, the best thing you can do is NOT vote. The whole success of occupy will be in its members to exist outside the electoral system, ie demonstrating that they are capable of autonomy in the sense that many sites offered services to the people camped out there, free learning, and so on. The point is to show the bankruptcy of the system, so by participating in it you more or less legitimize it.

Kuncinich and McKinney are the the liberal wing of the Democrats or progressive working just to the left on the Democratic Party; however, we shouldn't kid outserlves that they are more than social-democrats in orientation.

Aurelian wrote:

I think right now if you were involved with #occupy in any way, and support it, the best thing you can do is NOT vote. The whole success of occupy will be in its members to exist outside the electoral system, ie demonstrating that they are capable of autonomy in the sense that many sites offered services to the people camped out there, free learning, and so on. The point is to show the bankruptcy of the system, so by participating in it you more or less legitimize it.

Boycotting elections is an extremely useful tool during a revolutionary upheaval. OWS has done a great job raising class consciosness; however, it has not threatened to topple the bourgeois state (compared to the Arab Spring for example). The USA's "democracy" has survived decades with about half the eligible
voters not participating in the electoral process. I'm not sure if OWS currently has the political strength to call a boycott and delegitimize the USA's "democratic" process. A large chunck of OWS comprises of labor, Greens & libertarians and they have been more than willing to direct the energy towards the ballot box.

Dont forget Bernie Sanders too, if you are looking for the progressive wing. They aren't communists, but they are at least less likely to kill you

Quote:

It was tried in the 1990s and WIL/IMT recently (year or so ago) are trying to start one again. It will fail because the union bureaucrats aren't interested in supporting any kind of socialist candidate.

They don't have to be socialists, the first step is workers' representation, followed by independent workers' representation. If you insist on political purity at this stage then your doing it wrong, the candidates I'm suggesting would be running on programmes of representing workers not bankers, with pro-worker reforms. Hell even a "Send a 99%er to Congress" campaign would be a big step forward.

Union bureaucracies tend to be conservative and avoid decisive action when ever possible, but this has to take place along side a campaign for union democratisation, putting forward the demand for unions to change their political strategy certainly seems like less of a mountain than running no-hoper candidates for President/Congress/school board.

Quote:

Fighting "corporate america" on their terms sounds like a horrible idea. First a candidate would need to win the primary of the Democratic Party and second win the general elections. The cost of running two campaigns for one office is enormous and there is no way the labor movement can effectively pay the bill.

The union movement already pays the bill. They're among the largest campaign doners in the US, the problem is they're donating it to the wrong people. Union democratisation and reform of union political strategy - the resources are just sitting their waiting to be seized. If the workers' movement decided to start funding ts own candidates the US political system wouldn't know what hit it.

Aurelian wrote:

the best thing you can do is NOT vote.

How is that better than, say, voting for the PSL?

-double post-

Has anybody thought about voting Republican to promote Communist goals?

I mean, they try to remove social institutions which give higher standard of living to the poor, they promote policies which increase the class divide they crack down on the poor in a much more obvious way than Democrats and they even try to make it easier for anyone to have firearms. If anything was going to create conditions for a Proletarian Revolution, wouldn't it be Republicans?

And let's not forget their color is red, Communists in disguise perhaps?

I'm not saying Communists should start voting Republican, but it's something interesting to think about, a sort of ends-justifying-the-means approach.

Dzerzhinsky wrote:

Has anybody thought about voting Republican to promote Communist goals?

I mean, they try to remove social institutions which give higher standard of living to the poor, they promote policies which increase the class divide they crack down on the poor in a much more obvious way than Democrats and they even try to make it easier for anyone to have firearms. If anything was going to create conditions for a Proletarian Revolution, wouldn't it be Republicans?

And let's not forget their color is red, Communists in disguise perhaps?

I'm not saying Communists should start voting Republican, but it's something interesting to think about, a sort of ends-justifying-the-means approach.

Well, the 8-year Bush era (and all other Republican presidencies) certainly did lead to socialist revolutions recently, didn't they? Oh wait, they didn't. Even if you vote Republican for that reason, the other ~60 million Republican voters won't.

I agree with Whitten on strengthening the position of the labour movement, but what does that have to do with voting Democrat? One can easily fight for trade unionism without voting, or voting PSL or something. The sad fact of the matter is that this is a 100% worthless and purely academic discussion, because communists in the US are not in a position to effect any kind of change by deciding whom to vote for, if they vote at all. Obama is not exactly sitting around with his campaign managers wondering how he's going to bring in the communist vote. So the answer to this thread is to vote for whatever you feel like. Or stay in bed. Whatever.

Red Rebel wrote:

Fighting "corporate america" on their terms sounds like a horrible idea. First a candidate would need to win the primary of the Democratic Party and second win the general elections. The cost of running two campaigns for one office is enormous and there is no way the labor movement can effectively pay the bill.

IIRC, you don't even need to campaign that much for local and State primaries. Most Local/State caucuses are quite small and not very active. It should be possible for a determined hard Left party with a sizable membership to 'hijack' those primaries just like far-right fundamentalists used to hijack Republican primaries in the '80s-'90s. You just swarm those conventions with hordes of fringe voters . Big unions could pull it off without breaking a sweat . That's relatively cheap if you've got the membership (if you ain't got the membership, Get Back To Work (tm)).

That's when you can start a campaign for control of the national Party apparatus proper. Whoever controls the local and State party conventions can cause an inordinate amount of meddling in Federal primaries (BTW, if you've hijacked the apparatus, you've got the superdelegates for the Presidential Primaries).

Once the primaries are subverted (cheaper than playing by corporate america's terms) Leftists would still have tho run the actual election campaign. At that, word-of-mouth and voter mobilization are probably more cost-effective than advertiding. Internet ads are nearly free and can go viral, and pickets beat placards. An active Party membership spreading and explaining the Party's agit-prop to the masses is worth a gazillion cable ads and it's probably cheaper.

The Party would just have to spread agit-prop person to person in the workplaces and the mass organizations. It requires more dedication, but less resources.

If it's that easy, then I don't understand why no-one's done it yet. The situation in America may be different, but in London, Ken Livingstone, the former mayor and now a candidate again, was essentially a puppet of Socialist Action, some obscure Trot sect. What did that accomplish, apart from Socialist Action members earning hundreds of thousands of pounds as advisors to the mayor? You tell me.

Chairman McAmazing wrote:

The 2012 Presidental Election will be my first time voting. I am familiar with Obama and all the GOP canidates.... but, I don't care for any of them. Are there any lesser known Socialist or (even better) Communist canidates that I should know about? Also, I want to be involved with a strong and growing Revolutionary party in the future. Any ideas? Any suggestions are welcome and deeply appreciated.

You might be interesting in the Socialist Party U.S.A. I myself once voted for on of their candidates, Dan La Botz, in a U.S. senatorial race. I feel that this party has the most ballot access. However it's still rather small, and weak, like all of the Communist/socialist parties, in this country.