Winning ticket for independents?

Since Day 1 the independent political movement has struggled with a
complex and controversial issue. That issue is whether and by what means
black America would be included in its ranks and in its sensibility.

This past weekend the independent movement took a step forward on
this score. Natural Law Party leaders — John Hagelin, Nat Goldhaber and
Bob Roth — responding to my urging to make an inclusionary statement to
African-Americans, invited me to keynote at their Natural Law/Reform
Party coalition convention on the topic of coalition building in the
third-party movement. Specifically, I presented my call for the
inclusion of black America and that call was responded to by the
audience of 500 — mainly white — Hagelin/Goldhaber supporters with
emotion and conviction.

Hagelin and Goldhaber, the presidential and vice presidential
nominees of Natural Law, one of the country’s important minor parties,
were also nominated by the Reform Party Convention in California two
weeks ago. This nomination took place amidst a raucous standoff with Pat
Buchanan — who, like Hagelin, has filed with the Federal Election
Commission for recognition as the Reform nominee and receipt of Reform’s
$12.6 million in federal funding.

The Reform Party has been mired in internal factional struggles
virtually since its inception. Then Pat Buchanan’s Reform candidacy
turned sour — when he retracted his promise to build a genuine
black/white, left/right coalition (the selection of an
ultra-conservative black running-mate, Ezola Foster, was the
preposterous epilogue to his retraction) and proceeded to bend the
party’s entire apparatus to his will. The factions united behind Hagelin
to drive Buchanan out and deny him the money. The technical and legal
appraisal is now in the hands of the FEC — and will shortly move to the
courts. But, the political dynamics in the Natural Law/Reform coalition
and in the coalition’s relationship to other forces in the independent
movement are far more significant than who gets the $12 million check.

As far as the status of black political participation in the
independent movement is concerned, while the history has been marred by
ambivalence (or worse) on the part of some of its leaders, the black
community is more identifiable than ever as a pivotal partner for a new
independent political coalition.

Black dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party is palpable. Al
Sharpton holds a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and
scathingly criticizes the failure of the Democrats to address the
travesty of racial profiling. The Democrats are already concerned that
depressed black turnout could be costly to them. Hence, we see various
political maneuvers like the selection of Joseph Lieberman as Al Gore’s
vice presidential candidate, designed to mobilize conservative and white
ethnic voters — including Jewish Americans — and to use the
not-so-subtle symbolism that when push comes to shove, the Democrats
choose Jews over blacks.

Aware of the unsettled nature of the black/Democratic Party
relationship this year, the pro-Democratic Joint Center for Political
and Economic Studies issued a new report on the importance of the black
vote in the presidential elections. The report markets the rift between
the independent political movement and black voters. Joint Center
President Eddie Williams observes, “If current conjectures about Ralph
Nader siphoning off voters from Vice President Gore hold true in
November, African American voters will be an invaluable political ally,
because they are less likely than other voting blocs to support third
party candidacies.”

Certainly black Democrats hope Williams’ prediction is true. And
whether Ralph Nader is willing to leave intact the current racial
composition of the independent movement remains to be seen. Hagelin and
Goldhaber want to do something about it. And the reconfiguration inside
Reform that the fight with Buchanan precipitated has made that more
possible than ever before.

Perot stonewalled my efforts to get him to come to Harlem during his
1996 campaign. And while the Perot, Jesse Ventura, Jim Mangia and Fulani
forces have — in various configurations — been battling with one
another, it was Hagelin who managed to get Perot chief Russ Verney,
Ventura campaign manager Doug Friedline (now on the Hagelin team), newly
elected Reform chairman Jim Mangia and me all on the same stage together
at their nationally televised convention.

That coalescence — and the new political potential it creates,
including the openness to pursuing black participation which was stalled
by Perot — is probably the most significant factor in the independent
political equation this year. Arguably, a coalition that was created
over eight years of practical work, fights, successes, failures and the
diminishing control of
the Big Names together with a strengthening of the grass-roots builders
will have some staying power.

Hagelin and Goldhaber, justifiably enthusiastic about the unification
they have helped to achieve, have translated that into a projection that
they can win the White House. But for the independents it’s not about
winning, it’s about building. And this connects in some interesting ways
to the inclusion of black America.

The black community — poor, underdeveloped, disenfranchised as it is
— does not have the luxury of winning. It must instead create, it must
build, it must coalesce and it must lead. One cause of the perilous
black condition today is that we became part of a coalition — the
Democratic Party coalition — in which winning is everything. Winning
the White House. Winning control of Congress. Our interests as a
community were quickly and necessarily submerged in order to win. And
that submersion has had a corrosive impact — not only on
us, but on the country. It fueled racial and economic divisions and
allowed special interests to play Americans of all races off against
each other.

In some respects, the early years of the independent movement
recreated those same destructive patterns in American politics. Happily,
we have now come to a point where the independents are in a position to
go beyond all that. We can create a new political culture that is
inclusionary and democratic. We shouldn’t be in such a hurry to become
winners. We cannot win the White House this year. We are not big enough
or powerful enough. But more importantly, we have to define for
ourselves what winning is. That has to be about creating new models, new
coalitions and new ways of doing politics. For the independents, that’s
the winning ticket in 2000.