Is Building A Third Party Really Worthwhile?

Do we need a Labor Party? Not exactly.

When I went around the country on book tour, one of the most common questions that came up from the audiences full of labor movement people was: Don’t you think America needs a labor Party? Indeed, I have heard this sentiment voiced in union-friendly conferences and essays and group chats for years. It represents a yearning for a political party that replicates the solidarity of the labor movement itself. For many people who understand the importance of unions, it makes perfect sense.

And yet. Do we need a Labor Party? Ehhhhhh.

Lest I seem negative, let’s first unpack the sentiment behind this common dream. It is rooted in the same mode of thinking that drives all Third Party Dreams, an affliction that is common on the left. The first step is the thought: “The Democratic Party sucks.” And yeah! Yeah it does! Just sit there and envision, you know, Rahm Emanuel and Joe Lieberman and Joe Manchin and Larry Summers all welcoming you into their party, and it makes you want to leave the party, immediately. Perfectly understandable.

a party convention stage waiting for speakers

Part of the impulse to flee that party comes from the tendency to see political parties like brands, like sports teams to support. The Democrats have done so much bad shit and contain so many bad people that their brand is polluted and therefore the only reasonable move is to start a new party that is unpolluted. I get the sentiment. But that is not an accurate or even useful way to think about what a political party is. It’s better to think of the Democratic Party as an arena, where politics takes place. All of the special interests and all of the members of the party, including the shitheads, are in the arena, pushing and pulling for control of the party. It is just a place where politics is done. In a two-party system like ours, all national electoral politicking has two parts: First you win the fight in your own party, then you win the fight against the other party. Moving the Democrats to where they should be is simply the necessary step one of winning. The fact that there are shitheads in the arena who disagree with you is the reason why you need to wage the fight within the party. If you exit the arena and form your own party, you will find that the shitheads you left behind will control the Democratic Party by default, while your own arena looks pretty empty.

This is why I say that the answer is not a new Labor Party—the answer is for labor to take over the Democratic Party. I wrote in my last essay here about the benefits of remaking the Democratic coalition so that labor sits at its center, and all of the other factions of the party branch out from there. In the immediate wake of the unusually pro-union Biden years, this sort of movement of the party’s center is more possible than it has been in my lifetime. Even if that were not true, though, the advantages of forming a new party would be incredibly uncertain, and possibly nonexistent.