Alabama law lets political parties prevent candidates from running in their primaries, if that party feels the candidate is “disloyal”. Recently, the Alabama Democratic Party prevented Steve Small from running for Jefferson County Commissioner. The reason is that, 4 years ago, Small ran as a write-in candidate for the same post in the general election, in opposition to the Democratic and Republican nominees.
In Alabama, write-in candidates do not file as declared write-in nominees. People who wish to campaign as write-in candidates simply campaign, but they need not file any declaration of candidacy. Therefore, in no sense was Small an “official” candidate 4 years ago. This recent Democratic Party decision shows the tyranny of an election system, like Alabama’s, which prevents people from running in the primary, and also makes ballot access for independent candidates extremely difficult. Alabama and New Mexico are tied for having the strictest ballot access petitions for independent candidates for statewide state office, in the nation (3% of the last vote cast).
Thanks to Ed Still for this news.
http://www.donaldtrump2008.com and the rise and fall of Anti Establishment movements.
We agree with every little thing that Otto Kerner said on Third Party Watch. In the bigger picture, we think that our comments (and his) indicate that politics (Mrs. Johnson’s third grade room captain or P2008) is still at it’s root, a popularity contest.
Celebriety counts, Teddy Roosevelt, Boss Ross Perot, Schwarzenegger, and BLOOMFELD, LOU DOBBS, TRUMP!
Roundly criticized by both Greens (1996 and 2000) and reformers (ARP 2000 and Reform Party USA 2004), Ralph Nader proved that stupid staff and dumb campaign decisions could not over come the mythical hallo of being a Consumer Rights Icon!
The ebb and flow of cultural evolution surely includes politics. For smaller parties we jump up and down while pointing to the ‘friendly’ (Yeah, Right, Sure) fussion of the rather conservative (what ever that word means) and fractured (Northern rural folks and all whites south of the Mason – Dixon) once Jeffersonian, once Andrew Jackson Democratic Party.
With as much possibility as the Bull Moose Party (1912), John B. Anderson (1980), and Perot I (1992), the 1870s and 1880s brought the Grange Movement and other rural Anti Rail Road Robber Baron types to a point where the Populists formally coalested in 1892! Following the lead of Anti Corporate Trusts advocates, rural Southern Dems and rural Northern Dems ‘allied’ with these new party types by the turn of the new century.
And then, the Populists disappared within the national Democratic Party during the ‘Gilded Age’. With wars and Empire Building and assacinations around the globe, attention was diverted from the Heart land and American Farm problems. Like like Bull Moose Progressives and Muckracking Journalist and urban Progressives during the 20th Century and World War I, viable third parties struck terror into the duopuly Establishment and then quietly faded away.
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In as much as peoples’ histories should be used to have them answer to their actions,I think we should take into account the context and the factors that caused him to act in the manner as he did.
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mani kanna
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