We are people without a party. We open-minded, openhearted moderates are alienated from the two big parties because backward-looking ideologues and p.c. hypocrites are effectively in charge of both. Both are under the sway of old-school clods who consistently default to government intrusion where it doesn’t belong—who want to demonize video-game makers and criminalize abortion and hate speech and flag-burning, who are committed to maintaining the status quos of the public schools and health-care system, and who decline to make the hard choices necessary (such as enacting a high gasoline tax or encouraging nuclear energy) to move the country onto a sustainable energy track. Both line up to reject sensible, carefully negotiated international treaties when there’s too much sacrifice involved and their special-interest sugar daddies object—the Kyoto Protocol for the Republicans, the Central American Free Trade Agreement for the Democrats.

I don't believe Anderson's idea has a ghost of a chance of succeeding, primarily for structural reasons I've outlined here, but also because I believe he badly overstates the number of disaffected moderates who would be available to join such a party.

Not only that, but Anderson really ought to realize that attempting to start such a party at this particular delicate and dangerous moment in time is a very, very bad idea, for the same reason that Ralph Nader's presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004 were bad and dangerous ideas, because the party most likely to be hurt is the Democratic Party, and any even insignificant challenge to the Democrats at this point will most likely result in yet more years of disastrous Republican rule, that's how thin the knife-edge is we're balanced on.

I was not impressed by Nader's "Both parties are the same" argument, and I'm not impressed by Anderson's whining that neither party is a totally centrist one. As I wrote earlier:

It is undeniable that even watered-down and made to serve as best as possible the interests of Big Business, legislation passed by a Democratic legislature and signed by a Democratic President will more likely be beneficial to ordinary citizens than similar legislation controlled by Republicans.

Sure, I absolutely know that sounds like pretty thin gruel and meager justification for continuing to stay within the Democratic coalition, but it is, nonetheless, true. When the Dems are in power we don't take the powerful strides towards social justice and egalitarianism we would prefer, instead we get mincing half-steps, which is frustrating and annoying as hell. But, on the other hand, when the Republicans are in power, we take no steps at all! In fact, they do their damnedest to roll back the clock and take away the little progress we made in the past.

Anderson's call for a moderate third is not a hard-nosed political idea, it's a sloppy and sentimental one, with little or no chance of success, but a good possibility that it might do enough damage to help keep us under the thumb of the radical authoritarian corporate-controlled anti-humanistic oppressors we're currently suffering under. It's a dunderhead idea, which Anderson should immediately retract and apologize for.

[via The Green Knight]