More on "third parties"

Annie Devine, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rev. Ed King, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates at the 1964 Democratic National Convention

Dave raised an interesting question in the discussion on third parties: what if any legitimate role is there for third parties in the American system, short of a political crisis causing a large national split in either the Democratic or Republican Parties?

I'm not sure what the answer is to that question. But it made me think about signficant roles that third parties have played in recent decades.

A party doesn't have to start out as a national organization. Those that do are typically centered around a particular leader, such as Teddy Roosevelt (Bull Moose Party), George Wallace (American Independent) or Ross Perot (Reform). When the leading figure leaves the party or loses interest, those parties normally fade into insignificance rather quickly.

One of the third parties that had significant influence was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), formed in 1964. This was a vehicle by which state civil rights activists challenged the reactionary white power structure that dominated Mississippi's Democratic Party. They famously challenged the seating of the all-white slate of delegates from the regular state Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic convention.


The initial challenge was unsuccessful. But the origin of what was widely called the "New Left" in the 1960s is conventionally dated from the formation of the MFDP. In Mississippi, the MFDP provided a way for mainstream and liberal activists - you wouldn't believe the range of things that counted as "liberal" in Mississippi in those days! - to organize and run candidates for office. They were particularly successful in electing African-Americans to local offices. In fact, last I heard, Mississippi to this day has numerically and proportionally more black elected officials than any other state. One of many paradoxes you find there.

In 1968 and 1972, the MFDP was seated at the National Democratic Convention as Mississippi's official delegation. Eventually, the state's "Regular" Democratic Party capitulated and merged itself into the MFDP essentially by recognizing that the MFDP was the official state Democratic Party. There was still some theatrical drama in the situation in 1975 when then-(Regular) Democratic Governor Cliff Finch appeared before the state MFDP convention, an unprecedented level of recognition by the Regulars.

The MFDP has long since disappeared as an independent party organization. Because its functional reason for existence was make the state Democratic Party play by the rules of the national party. Once it had achieved that, it had effectively merged with the state Democratic Party.

In a larger sense, the MFDP's creation and continued political battles provided a wider reformist inspiration for liberal and radical activists and dramatized how the national Democratic Party could be a serious impediment to some kinds of reform goals. And the Democratic President make the Vietnam War a huge issue by his foolish escalation of the conflict in 1965, which also eventually pitted many liberal activists against a Democratic President who was as liberal as Franklin Roosevelt on social programs and even more so on civil rights.

The MFDP grew up in the particular political situation of Mississippi in 1964. It's no exaggeration to say that Mississippi functioned as a police state at that time, certainly in relation to black political activists, would-be black voters and whatever whites from there or elsewhere supported them. Complete with extra-legal goon squads tolerated by and even conspiring with state and local officials. There was even a public agency called the State Sovereignty Commission whose basic function was to dig up dirt to discredit civil rights activists.

The Regular Democratic Party was effectively the one party in a one-party system within the state. There was a nominal Republican Party run by hidebound reactionaries. And a few whites who for one reason or the other didn't support the segregation system and all that came with it would register Republican. But the only elections that really mattered were the Democratic Party primaries. The general elections were essentially a formality that ratified the Democratic Party candidate.

In that system, the MFDP was acting as the only liberal opposition party (the Republicans had become a force in the state by the early 1970s) and became a real competition to the Regular Democratic Party. The MFDP also benefitted from the fact that it was eventually supported by the national Party and therefore were able to gain legitimacy from one of the two major national parties. And it had a concrete goal that was urgent enough to a significant portion of the voters that they looked to the MFDP as a viable and necessary political organization that actually had some possibility to get their candidates elected, at least at the local level. Very much related to the latter, the MFDP's base consisted largely of African-American voters who had been only recently enfranchised by the overcoming of the state's voter-suppression methods and who therefore had not built strong historic ties of loyalty (emotional or patronage-based) to the Regular Democratic Party.

I can think of other examples of third-parties or similar groups that played a significant role in politics over a long period of time. New York state has both Liberal and Conservative Parties alongside the two major parties; my impression is that the Conservatives have been more influential. They generally endorse the candidates of the Democratic and Republican Parties, respectively. But we could say that they helped create a political space for more explicitly ideological themes to be discussed and popularized.

The Libertarian Party has been around for decades now. I know in some conservative districts in California in three-way contests, they've pulled enough Republican votes to make it a competitive race between the two major party candidates. But their influence nationally has come more from the closely-related Cato Institute, which has played a notable role in propagandizing and lobbying for business deregulation.

This generalization doesn't fit neatly with the MFDP. But I would say that third parties can play significant roles as parts of "alternative infrastructures", something the right has been much more successful in building the last 40 years than the left has. But to have more influence than the numerous tiny parties on the left and the right that normally scarcely even make a "blip" On the larger political scene, such groups have to be realistic about which of the two parties actually holding office are more likely to support their positions. And to which public constituencies they want to appeal over time.

Tags: mississippi, mississippi politics, third parties

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