First of all, full disclosure:  I identify myself primarily as a Progressive, although I do generally support most Democratic candidates for statewide office.



When I write about the Vermont Progressive Party on GMD, I am always prepared for some grief and recognize that I do so under tolerance; but I think it is in both parties’ best interest to remain connected and in constructive dialogue on as many levels as possible.

For that reason, I wanted to share what I think is a pretty valuable perspective on the VPP and its significance in the greater scheme of things, from national labor organizer Steve Early, writing for In These Times

Mr. Early speaks of the strong economic-populist message of the Vermont Progressive Party that helps it recruit voters even in some traditionally conservative counties, where the elderly, low-income and rural populations particularly feel the bite of cuts to social services, and of income inequity exacerbated by questionable tax policy.

“We have a homeopathic role in the Vermont body politic,” says Ellen David-Friedman, a former organizer for the Vermont-National Education Association (NEA) and longtime VPP activist. “We’ve managed to create enough of an electoral pole outside of the Democrats to constantly pull them to the left on policy issues, by dispensing an alternative brand of medicine that’s become increasingly popular.”

Without that powerful VPP incentive, one has to wonder whether progressive issues like universal healthcare would be faring any better in Vermont than they are in the rest of the country.

In coordination with a strong grassroots movement, Sanders and the VPP continued to make single-payer a central political issue, keeping the pressure on local Democrats (at a time when their counterparts in neighboring Massachusetts were opting for lesser reforms that provided the model for President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).

Lacking a viable third party in other states, Mr. Early discusses an interesting alternative that has been tried to break the two party inertia on labor issues.

Elsewhere in the northeast, labor-financed Working Families Parties (WFP) were launched instead so “fusion voting” could be used, where permitted under state law, to reward the friends of union causes by giving cross-endorsed candidates an additional ballot line. Banned in most of the nation a century ago (as part of the corporate counter-attack against Populism), fusion allows major party candidates, in states like New York, to garner additional votes on each endorsing minor party’s separate ballot line.

In conclusion, Mr. Early is wistful for a national Progressive Party movement on the lines of the Vermont model

If there was more Left partying like this going in other states, at least one of our two major parties might feel greater pressure to better represent its own much-abused working class constituents.