See the Democracy Now! broadcast from yesterday: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/29/presidential_hopeful_rocky_anderson_dems_gop#transcript

Amy Goodman noted Rocky Anderson, the recovering Democrat, once endorsed Mitt “The Twit” Romney for governor of Massachusetts because Romney was—in Anderson’s words—“moderate” and “reasonable,” and despite the corruption of the Republican Party and Democrat Party collusion to keep out alternative parties from our U.S. democratic process.

Some examples of that collusion include the Presidential Debate Commission, as Ralph Nader has explained.

In an exclusive interview with Ralph Nader, Media Roots asked, “Do you think the game is rigged?”

“Well, of course,” Ralph Nader candidly admitted, “two-party dictatorship, completely rigged, right down to the Presidential Debate Commission, which is a fancy phrase for a private corporation created in 1987 by the Republican and Democratic parties to get rid of the League of Women Voters, which supervised Presidential Debates up to then, and to exclude anyone who they think should not reach tens of millions of Americans.” (See http://mediaroots.org/mr-original-the-two-party-dictatorship-post-ows.php )

Another example is seen in the way, in which, Prop 14, which further erodes the rights of alternative political parties, was passed. (Similar, Top Two, anti-alternative party legislation is infecting evermore states in the U.S.) Consider this interview we featured on Media Roots April, 12, 2012:

Anthony Fest: “It was placed on the ballot, not by the voter petition process, but by a vote of the legislature. The bill, that placed it on the ballot, was written by Republican [State] Senator Abel Maldonado. It passed both houses by a better than two-to-one margin and also had the support of [then-]Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“For a measure that was promoted as taking power away from the party apparatus, it had wide support from Democrat and Republican politicians. But what’s the motivation, do you think? If it was all about excluding third-parties, third-parties haven’t really made much of a dent in state politics anyway, as far as winning office. So, what’s going on behind this?”

Michael Rubin (c. 21:01): “Well, I think there’s a couple of things to say. One is that the fact that the [California] Legislature passed this was a pay-off to Abel Maldonado for his vote on the budget. It was his price to pass the budget. They needed a few Republican votes for the budget and his price was Proposition 14.” (See http://mediaroots.org/rubin-v.-bowen-third-party-challenge-to-unconstitutional-prop-14.php )

Of course, the very real empirical, substantive, problems a political system confined to two monopolistic political parties extends across the spectrum of the political process because Democrats, the misperceived “progressive” party, always sells out to the Republican Party and crosses the aisle whenever they need help passing some terrible new regressive legislation. We see this over and over again. So, what’s the point of supporting a political party, such as the Democrat Party, if it regularly sacrifices its political principles to the point where it is not a real opposition party?

The same thing may be said for those misguided souls, who support Ron Paul and Rand Paul (who prefers Rand over his birth-name Randal, but we are supposed to believe it’s not because of his devotion to the regressive Ayn Rand). Paul supporters ignore the fact the Pauls are Republicans. If they were really principled individuals, or sincerely libertarians, whatever they mean by that, then they’d support an alternative libertarian political party. But they don’t because they really don’t care about democracy or democratic elections.

As far as Rocky Anderson goes, we must ask whether the Justice Party is a serious political party, or if it’s simply the vanity vehicle for Anderson’s political ambitions, which may benefit him personally, but not the hope for democracy in the U.S. But with the poor analysis of alternative political parties (and the rigged nature of our antidemocratic elections) from the likes of Democracy Now!, which are supposed to be the more progressive news outlets, we may never know until it’s too late. They’ll simply keep us distracted with the spectacle of the two-party system and keep our consciousness narrowly focused on the corrupt Democrats and Republicans.

(By the way, DN!’s election coverage is shite. Although, I’ll admit, I haven’t been able to follow it as closely as in past years. But Rocky Anderson seemed to have been allowed more time to discuss Romney, but given very few minutes to get into the real issues at the very end of the hour. The bulk of the hour-long broadcast I heard on KPFA was devoted to hyping up the Republican candidates. And alternative parties were not discussed further in the second hour available online. Like KPFA’s News Department (and the programmes politically allied with it), DN! contextualises everything from a presumption alternative parties are irrelevant. The only reason DN! even covers any alternative parties is to maintain some shred of progressive credibility. But notice the minimal coverage alternative parties get, even on KPFA, Pacifica Radio, and its most famous programme, Democracy Now!.)