In 1972, Linda Jenness, the then Presidential Nominee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, a Trotskyite faction too insignificant to be a real political party per se) came to speak at Trinity University in San Antonio, my home town.
Just as a primer, there are several factions which describe themselves as political parties but at best they are interest groups, because they generally have no elected officeholders or maybe one or two. In the U.S., these are generally of the far left or far right. Often they try to siphon people away from the Democrats or Republicans, or infiltrate them surreptitiously, sort of like spies or secret agents. Among the better known are Communist Party USA (Pro-Soviet), John Birch Society (paranoid anti-communist), Socialist Workers’ Party (Trotskyite — when Trotsky and Stalin split, Trotsky favored making the revolution worldwide whereas Stalin instituted the policy of “Socialism in One Country” — Trotsky was rewarded for his heresy by a pickax to the face wielded by a Stalinist agent, in his exile in Mexico City in 1940); and The Revolutionary Communist Party, which is a spinoff of CPUSA or SWP or somesuch — for a great read on how these groups operate, which are ostensibly political but function like religious cults, see Susie Bright’s memoir, Big Sex, Little Death in which she documents her years as a teenage runaway in a communist cult (unnamed, but probably RCP or one just like it from the descriptions given). BTW, Bright was a lesbian feminist pornographer and that’s covered too, so, just FYI to any prudes who might complain...)
I was a just discharged Navy veteran attending San Antonio College and somebody put up signs at SAC about the Jenness speech so I was like, Sure, why not? In those days I had long unwieldy brown locks and big mustache, going for the look Ray Sawyer of the band Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show had, and I had these orange, black, and white striped bell bottom pants that cost me $12 at some hippie boutique that’s long since gone (that was big money in those days), and though the crowd was sparse there at Trinity I fit right in. Jenness’ speech was boilerplate Trotskyism — basically, sure, all what you want, peace, freedom, economic justice, etc., is what we want too and Trotskyism is the best way to get there. I was not impressed, but someone invited me to a house where the SWPers were having beers with Jenness, so, I was in, I mean, beer was my big love back then…
Trinity’s campus is just north of downtown, near Brackenridge Park, where the San Antonio Zoo is, and the Sunken Garden, a former cement quarry turned botanical wonder, originally called The Japanese Sunken Garden because a Japanese artisan had made it, then changed to the Chinese Sunken Garden during World War II. In my day it was a gathering place of hippies, drug-seekers, drop-outs, etc. — the rebels at the artsy Alamo Heights High School had held their “Anti-Prom” there. The neighborhood was then, like now, mixed, with some flophouses full of countercultural types literally next door to right-wing millionaires like the late Mayor Walter W. “Mayor Mac” McAllister and the then Republican County Chair, later City Councilman Van Henry Archer, who once famously pursued an intruder with a hammer in his hand.
I don’t remember much about the gathering. I didn’t know anyone there — most were Trinity students. Trinity is a beautiful, modern Presbyterian college. As a high school sophomore I had gone there with a group for Interscholastic League speech and drama competition. I worked as a dishwasher and bus boy at the Women’s Dining Hall as a high school junior and senior, which at the time was supervised by a strange bald-headed man with the unlikely name of Norbert MacBeth who resembled the 1940s cartoon character Casper Milquetoast. I was the only white kitchen employee except an elderly cook who was an Army retiree. MacBeth once told me, “You know, these ……..s and ……..s — they don’t want to work...” which was something I learned the first day was not true. Later a friend of mine had a gig at the Trinity Chapel, where a lot of weddings were held often for people in no way connected to the University, as an organist substituting for Carroll Smith, the stepfather and adoptive father of now-retiring Congressman Lamar Smith (I knew Lamar, too — they used to say he was reasonable for a Republican...). Anyhow, beautiful part of town, beautiful campus — they later put a freeway between Trinity and Sunken Gardens. So, we adjourned for beers in this old house full of thrift store furniture where the Trinity SWPers stayed. One big difference between Trinity students and those of us at SAC, the Junior College, was the Trinity people generally had more money and resources. So, that’s the set-up…
So, I’m talking to various people. I was a Goldwater kid in 1964. By 1967, I had changed, because of the Vietnam War, and studying the beliefs of the United Methodist Church and our Social Creed ( a church I left, then came back into). In 1968, I was for Eugene McCarthy, then, Hubert Humphrey, the latter reluctantly at first. In the last few days of the 1968 campaign, The Hump had the momentum. It was theorized if Election Day had been on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday The Hump would’ve won. As it was, California, Illinois, and Ohio were razor-thin close and Richard Nixon was not determined to have carried all three states very narrowly until Wednesday morning.
In 1972, I was convinced Nixon could and should be beat, but, I was unsure by whom, or how. The 1968 experience was a good lesson, pointing me in the right direction, which, to me, is this:
In The United States in the present day, voting for Third Party candidates is at best an exercise of a feeble protest, in most if not every election, and certainly always at the Presidential level. There have been few “realignments” in the two party duopoly ever in American History, and some of these are overstated or overblown by historians and political scientists:
1. 1824-1856: End of the 24 year long White House occupancy of the three members of the “Virginia Mafia” (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe) Democratic-Republicans; collapse of the Federalist Party; the short rise and quick fall of the Anti-Masonic Party; dominance of Jacksonian populism; development of duopoly of Democrats and Whigs.
2. 1856-1900: Development of Republican Party as anti-slavery standard bearer; followed by Republican dominance through “Waving the Bloody Shirt” of the Civil War, uninterrupted from Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson, except for the two non-consecutive terms of Grover Cleveland.
3. 1900-1932: Dominance of Plutocratic Republicans; development of Populism and Progressivism; Brief tertiary position of Progressive Party and Reform ideologies; Fusion of Populists/Progressives with Democrats under William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson; inclusion of racist Southern Democrats in National Democratic Coalition.
4. 1932-1968: New Deal Era; Democratic dominance; acceptance of New Deal as established order by Eisenhower Administration, and progressive Republicanism — fraying by 1964 Barry Goldwater candidacy leading to dominance of reaction, racism, and plutocracy in next cycle.
5. 1968-2016: Duopoly between racist and plutocratic Republicans and Corporate Democrats; political failure of progressivism at same time as progressive forces captured cultural dominance.
6. 2016-? : Republicans openly embracing racist ideology, illiberalism, and xenophobia; Democrats ?
What we’ve seen since 1932 on with rare exceptions are a series of elections in which with rare exceptions the worst possible Democratic nominee is better than the best Republican.
Any notion of establishing a third or fourth or fifth party is surely folly, due to difficulty obtaining ballot access, cost of campaigning, and the electorate’s repeated rejection of non-Democrat, non-Republican candidates at Presidential level.
Choice is therefore limited to Democrat or Republican, no other options.
Kos’ slogan of “More and Better Democrats” continues to be the only valid option for progressive forces.
With all of that in mind, I was at the time not that receptive to SWP’s message to say the least. So, why was I there to begin with?
Curiosity, perhaps mostly.
I was interested in various forms of socialism since having read Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and was vaguely aware that the British Labor Party, various Continental European Parties, the Liberal Party of Canada, and the Australian Labor Party all espoused some form of “Democratic Socialism,” but I wasn’t sure what that was, or what was the difference between them and the “hard left,” i.e., communists and socialists like SWP. Remember I was a returning veteran attending Junior College, and a rather dumb-ass mid-twenties schmuck. I think it may have been my economics professor, the late Golfrey Connally, the liberal brother of John Connally (Texas Governor 1963-69, Nixon’s Secretary of The Treasury, and “Milkgate” scandal figure for which he was acquitted) who told me SWP was “hard left.” I’m not sure. I just wanted to see who this Jenness woman was and what she was about.
I was vaguely involved in “The Movement” as they called it then, but had no specific ideology. I was against the Vietnam War. A friend who became involved in the “Teach-ins” against the war in San Francisco had shared some material which convinced me of the folly of the war; other materials had convinced me the NLF (National Liberation Movement, formerly the Viet Minh, popularly called the Viet Cong) were actually the good guys in the Vietnam War, not unlike the Americans had been in the Revolutionary War — indeed NLF publications indicated they thought so, too.
But while I had been converted to the (American) Democratic Party’s policy of New Deal Liberalism — I did not know that much about the rest of “The Movement” except what I heard.
I was aware of Feminism and the LGBT movement, which were in the early 1970s commonly referred to as “Women’s Lib” and “Gay Lib;” primarily not much later though, these terms became pejorative and were favored by right-wingers, much as they still use “political correctness” to this day, albeit with the non-cognizance of the clueless yahoos that they are. As a woman and a feminist Jenness was a novelty: Shirley Chisholm, an African-American Congresswoman from New York, was one of a dozen or so contenders for the Democratic nomination for President, but not expected to do well compared to the front-runners, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, and George Wallace. Jenness presented herself as a feminist. The difference between her and Chisholm was that Chisholm was a Democrat and Jenness was a Trotskyite.
It was obvious to me, upon first seeing the announcement of Jenness’ speech, that she had zero chance of winning. Nothing in her speech or the aftermath convinced me otherwise. While some of the policy goals of SWP and such were indeed attractive, it seemed at best a committed group with worthwhile goals (at least some of them) but poor means to obtain same, and a lack of awareness of that.
Jenness was 31 when she was the SWP nominee for President in 1972. As such, she was constitutionally ineligible to serve as President, having not yet attained the age of 35 the constitution requires. She had previously in 1970 been SWP’s nominee for Governor of Georgia. Interestingly the Wikidepia article on her states, “as recently as 2010, Jenness said she still supports SWP.”
In this and other instances, persons like Jenness those years serve simply as a “public face” of the group, in this case, the SWP, and that is perhaps their primary function as a nominee for an office they will not win. As such Jenness was exceptional — a second wave feminist, knowledgeable in all policy areas which “the Movement” supported, articulate, and of course, loyal to SWP.
There have been many efforts throughout the years to build third and fourth parties. All have failed. Here are but a few to emerge from the 1960s on:
1960 — Constitution Party, a right wing effort like the American Independent Party.
1968- American Independent Party — George Wallace’s effort. Was on the ballot in 50 states. Got 13% of popular vote and electoral votes of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. By 1972, Wallace was a Democrat again and AIP nominated Republican Congressman John G. Schmitz, a John Birth Society member, and probably not incidentally father of Mary Kay LeTourneau, the Washington State school teacher who was impregnated by her 13-year-old student and later married him.
1968 — Peace and Freedom Party — lefty; nominated Eldridge Cleaver for President.
1980- liberal Republican Congressman John Anderson ran for President as an independent and got about 8% of popular vote, no electoral vote. No movement, just a one time thing.
1992 and 1996- Ross Perot ran under the banner of the Reform Party, for those who felt we needed a businessman to straighten things out. Sound familiar? He got about 17% and 7% of popular vote respectively. No electoral votes. in 2000, Pat Buchanan ran on the Reform Party and was denounced by Donald Trump, who later followed his model of xenophobia, racism, and classism.
2000- Ralph Nader, Green Party. No more need be said about that.
2016- Jill Stein, Green Party. Same as above.
So why is it so hard and so far impossible to start a meaningful third party? Several reasons:
1. State ballot access laws put burden on independent candidates and third party organizers.
2. No money.
3. People are just not attracted to the fringe until it becomes mainstream, as it has with Trump.
We hear it over and over and over: “The Democrats are almost just as bad as the Republicans. We need a new Party!”
Except, there ain’t one, that can win. And as we see now with the Republicans controlling all three branches of government, winning is what matters. Because if we can’t win, we can’t do bupkis.
So, back again to 1972, and the beer party for Jenness. I talked to this one, I talked to that one, yadda yadda yadda. None of this mattered until this issue — third party versus using the Democratic Party as our vehicle — came up.
Now, really, nobody pressured me to join the SWP. But the issue came up. I was able to articulate, in a semi-literate way, my position that working within The Democratic Party, warts and all, was the way to go.
How I chose to respond was crucial. In that Jenness herself served as my wrang-wrang*.
[*wrang-wrang: from Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: “A wrang-wrang is a person who through the absurdity of their own example, points you in the correct direction.” (one of the tenets of Bokononism, a religion created by Lionel Boyd Johnson AKA “Bokonon” similar to Gnosticism, Buddhism, and the “dynamic tension” theory of bodybuilder Charles Atlas.]
Someone had said something about strategy and tactics. I forget what. No matter. Anyhow, I said, “I think the tactics of Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffmann (the so-called “leaders” of the Yippies- contradictory, of course, because the Yippies were leaderless by definition) are what wins us hearts and minds.”
Jenness eyed me coldly. “Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffmann — they’re a couple of clowns,” she said derisively.
And of that there was no doubt. Which was precisely my point.
Rubin and Hoffman were indeed the “Clown Princes” of “The Movement,” to the extent we had any royalty at all. Wherever there was trouble, they were there — Berkeley, New York, D.C., Chicago. They pulled a stunt with a few others including the later-to-be star of Murphy Brown, Candace Bergen, at the New York Stock Exchange, throwing money onto the trading floor. They and 5-6 others became the “Chicago 7-8” (Black Panthers leader Bobby Seale’s trial was severed when he was bound and gagged in the courtroom). They ran a pig named Pigasus for President. They were beaten by Chicago police.
Rubin wrote a book called Do It! which was more collage than book — it was co-designed by Marshal McLuhan’s collaborator Quentin Fiore. Like McLuhan and Fiore — and Trump — Rubin and Hoffman understood media. They knew politics was theatre.
Do It! contained gems like this one:
“The Vietnam War will only be ended when the embarrassment of not pulling out will become greater than the embarrassment of admitting defeat.”
I absolutely loved Do It! It seemed to follow in the spirit of the wonderful Emma Goldman quote, “If I can’t dance at the revolution, I won’t come.”
Or — Molly Ivins’ instruction to those of us fighting the good fight, as to what to tell our kids, grandkids, students, etc.: “Tell ‘em how much fun it was!”
One thing Rubin — in this book and it’s sequel, We Are Everywhere, and Hoffmann, who wrote Revolution for the Hell of It and Steal This Book- could do was show that overthrowing the bastids who run things was hella fun.
Both Rubin and Hoffmann died young. Their paths diverged after The Movement petered out. Rubin went “from Yippie to Yuppie” to become a stockbroker of sorts and wrote Growing Up (At 37), a getting older narrative which cataloged Seventies’ fads like Rolfing (a sort of mix between chiropracty, massage, and sadomasochism). Gone were the McLuhanesque graphics; the whole thing was mostly sad like most things in the late Seventies.
Hoffman went on to be a fugitive and a community organizer in the environmental area. He was a close friend of Amy Carter, the daughter of President Jimmy Carter.
Rule #1 of McLuhan’s media theories is Hot Media beats Cold Media every time.
The Yippies understood this. Trump understands it. I think Kos does.
Trump is the most McLuhanesque President ever. But close seconds behind him were Carter, Reagan, Kennedy, Obama, Both Roosevelts, Eisenhower, Truman, Garfield, Jackson, Jefferson, Washington, and even Lincoln, the old rail-splitter.
The 2008 and 2016 Hillary Clinton campaigns such as hell didn’t, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten beat by first, a skinny community organizer, and second, a fat buffoon.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understands it.
The Right-Wing media team — Alex Jones, Glen Beck, James O’Keefe, etc.- damn sure does. Hot beats cold every day of the week.
What is it to be “hot” in this sense? To be bold. To be different. To stand out.
Why does Trump tweet? For the same reason a coyote howls. He’s keepin’ the media heated up.
You can’t beat something with nothing. That’s what Jenness and the SWP think they can do. It’s like George Washington Plunkitt said in William Riordan’s Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, where he details a professor who wants to run for office being turned down by a party office when he wants their blessing to run for office:
The professor goes, “Here’s my PhD from Columbia, and my position paper on municipal utility policies, and my thesis on transportation infrastructure...”
And the Party Boss shows him the door, saying, “Thank you for stopping by, but we have no use for you.”
Plunkitt predated McLuhan but he understood.
Whatever we propose for policy, it’s got to be secondary to the optics and haptics.
Now — the title here? That’s from Do It! In 1967, Rubin and several other young lefties visited Cuba illegally, traveling 14,000 miles out of the way through the then Soviet satellite of Czechoslovakia. Toward the end of their tour, Rubin wrote, “None of us looked forward to going back to the political bullshit in the United States.”
But just before they departed, they had a surprise visitor: Che Guevara. Guevara told them, “You know, I envy you North Americans. You live in the belly of the beast.”
Rubin and company were inspired. The country that massacred the Native Americans, brought African Americans here as slaves, stole half of Mexico’s land, oppressed Asian and Hispanic immigrants, not to mention Irish, Jewish, and Italian ones — where better to fight for what is right?