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Radio War Nerd EP #633 — Why The US Can't Have Third Parties, feat. Seth Ackerman (Patreon)

Published:
2026-09-06 13:02:30
Edited:
2026-09-06 18:25:07
Imported:
2026-09
Tags:

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Content

Guest: Seth AckermanRecorded: September 4, 2026

Why can't Americans form a new third party? Why are they stuck with the same grim "choice" between the increasingly fascistic Republicans and their fake opposition, the Democrats? Seth Ackerman joins Mark and guest co-host Michael Pollak to talk about America's unusually authoritarian election and balloting laws that place it more on par with Belarus and Singapore than western democracies. Ackerman's 2016 article in Jacobin, A Blueprint for a New Party, laid out the structural problem and possible solutions, later picked up by the Democratic Socialists for America to map out its electoral insurgency.

*Read Seth's article A Blueprint for a New Party, Jacobin, 2016. (This pdf is more complete than the online version, with the timelines and graphics.)Check out Seth's substack here. Follow his Twitter here.

Further listening:-EP #239: The Anti-Populists, with Thomas Frank-EP #161: Populism vs. "populism", feat. Christopher Phelps-EP #563: Democracy & Doom, feat Joe Costello

Total: 1:53:49Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

John's new essay collection, To The Crows, is available to subscribers. You can also order a hard copy on Amazon - read it, know it, review it!

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Comments

Joshua Garcia

Because I happen to be holding my phone I am the first heart! Who says meritocracy doesn’t work? No one can say that ever.

Martin

Guest’s name was so close to Scott Aukerman that I had to do a double take

EJK

The United States of Assholes has "much more freedom" than does Russia, Belarus etc? God, what world are you living in, Mark? And Russia (to take one example) is far more sensitive and responsive to its own people than this corporate totalitarian Zionist dump. And love the thumbnail of your Jacobin guest. Now there's someone I want to be in a foxhole with!

Alec Rosekrans

Really hard to take comments like this seriously. Mark lived in and reported on Russia for years and is a frequent critic of hysterical Russo-phobia in the west.

Cory

I'll listen with an open mind but I am distrustful of anything Jacobin says about third parties. Though they have a few good contributors and maybe this is a good one that snuck through

John Miller

27:01 my oh my how things change… not 🤣🤣🤣

Madeleine Peterson

"dsa has gotten further" at creating makework jobs for people willing to collaborate with zionism, but haven't made really any headway against poverty or the oligarchy

Benj (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-13 08:00 Writer moonlighting as a drone pilot photo
2026-09-06 20:52

Benj

Also reading To The Crows inside an unmoving heat dome is a baaad idea

Maggie+Al

Ok on the development of the labour party leadership elections and the Corbyn phenomenon. Before the 1980's the parliamentary labour party has simple selected it's leader, but when the left gained some control of the party then changed the rules to give the rest of the movement. While MPs would still need colleagues to nominate the election would be decided by an electoral college where the MPs would only hold I think a third of the vote with the rest being split between dues paying party members and the membership of affiliated unions. This held up till the 2010's when the candidate of the soft left got their preferred Miliband brother as leader, largely because the the decline of British unions had disproportionately hit the more centrist Unions. So they blew the system up and tried to americanize it no more electoral college, the new Ellectorate would be members and labour party supporters (anyone willing to pay a small fee for their ballot). The idea was that you would replace a bunch of left wing union voters with middle class swing voters, candidates still had to get past MP gatekeepers. So when Ed Miliband lost his election in 2015 it still looked like the soft lefts candidate (now pm Andy Burnham) would be the favourite, meanwhile the hard left who had always put up a candidate to raise issues had decided on Jeremy Corbyn as it was his turn to do the work, but he didn't quite have the mp nominations. In response to the this a bunch of centrist MPs hoping Corbyn could peel of dissafected soft left voters to give their actual candidate a chance decided to nominate his as a cheeky bit of ratfuckung. The issue was that the centrist swing voters who were meant to flock in to crown the Heir to Blair in 2015 had just voted Tory they had no interest in paying to of select the leader of the opersition, the same can't be said for the left.

Kamran Husain

one weird tricking my way into the senate by running as a republican in vermont due to my libertarian-socialist catholic-muslim beliefs

Cory

This was unfair. I don't think you can elect your way to socialism with either DSA or third parties.

NYCM&AHole

Cue my recommendation for Carcass’s R**k the Vote and Keep on Rotting in the Free World

Martin

I don't think DSA believes that socialism will be achieved through electoralism solely(although perhaps their adjacent politicos might idk)

Maggie+Al

Surely the problem of liquidation is that if you can take over the most moribund sections of the democratic party so can movement conservatives, frankly it surprises me that movement conservatives haven't tried it to fuck with dem presidential primaries.

CR

Mark himself mentioned in another episode that the LaRouche cultists have done this

Daniel Capshaw

Proud member of the War Nerd Legion, reporting for duty. As a Marxist I have found the current discussion on US party structure one of the most important ones of our time. It would be *preferable to have a solid third, economic leftist, party independent of the Dems, but we do not have that luxury. The weak point in the US system are the parties themselves, their members are not dues paying, there is no central platform or manifesto, there are few internal enforcement mechanisms, and pretty much anyone can run in primaries and the parties have influence but not control over who can run. I appreciate the connection made by Seth on the primary system mollifying the strict two party structure. I see the DSA method is the most viable strategy at the moment because it is going after the weak link in the US electoral system. The DSA may well be destroyed by the Dems from within, the Dems are already marginalizing them before they even have their majority. There is lesson in failure though and If they are sabotaged it will be a very public lesson not only for committed members but to everyone who voted for relatively modest reforms. The Dems have been saying they are a "big tent" for a very long time to discipline their left flank and if they are forced to betray a decade of messaging on a national scale... could be a good thing for the masses' consciousness. That will heighten contradiction and highlight the party elite's disinterest in democracy. Obviously I don't think that a socialist/social democratic party is going to completely transform the mode of production on its own, but it is a necessary avenue to take. It will also provide an educational platform, in success and in failure, to spread the good word of socialization and worker power. - written about half an hour in so if I repeat any points made later in the Ep, I apologize.

Will

Great episode. Basically the description of the pre-Australian reforms voting system was really interesting. I wonder if bringing back the all elections are write-in-only wouldn't be the way to go. Make people type out their choices on the electric voting machines. No more party lines at all. Boom.

J P 3

Two pieces that were incredibly clarifying for me after the Trump 2016 election were Ackerman's "Blue Print for a New Party" and Corey Robin's N+1 article in January 2017 the "Politics that Trump Makes". Ackerman's piece raised and settled a lot of questions in my mind regarding "why not a third party?" Maybe a third party might be a possibility someday, but for anyone who wants to offer that as a serious alternative they really have to engage and answer the questions raised by Ackerman's piece. Robin's piece held up very well after four years. It was one of the most useful guides for understanding Trump 1.0. I have also found it to be a very helpful way of understanding presidential power more generally. e.g. less emphasis on personality and individuals, more emphasis on coalitions and the people around the president.

Peter Z

Love how the word "crisis" is used - a crisis of choice! A crisis of democracy! Such a failure of the constitution to build proper guardrails against corruption or totalitarianism.

John Hieronymus (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-10 06:00 it’s very strange to me that we are seeing Seth trot out his 10 year old strategy justifying engaging with a political system designed to manage popular anti systemic movements via the democratic party right with the right wing of DSA is trying to endorse AOC for president just like the 2 failed bernie campaigns. 😒
2026-09-07 13:12 it’s very strange to me that we are seeing Seth trot out his 10 year old strategy that justified engaging with a political system designed to manage popular anti systemic movements via the democratic party right when the right wing of DSA is trying to endorse AOC for president just like the 2 failed bernie campaigns. 😒

it’s very strange to me that we are seeing Seth trot out his 10 year old strategy that justified engaging with a political system designed to manage popular anti systemic movements via the democratic party right when the right wing of DSA is trying to endorse AOC for president just like the 2 failed bernie campaigns. 😒

Cory

Yeah I hope not. The US does need reforms anyway so I'm torn about what I view as a reformist organization. I hate how so many get sucked into electoralism but I'm not sure what the alternative is other than tunnels and drones lol

John Hieronymus

Seth’s key insight that third party’s are a trap doesn’t make the next step that the american constitutional system has always been a trap and we need to build power outside the formal political system if we want to tear it down. unfortunately the dsa tracy flick types can’t help but imagining themselves in a fantasy version of west wing where they get to be taken seriously on CNN but nothing actually changes and cops bosses and landlords all keep their power at the expense of the rest of society.

J P 3

Mamdani's rent-control freeze benefits over 2 million people in NYC alone. His polling in NYC and the performance of DSA candidates in NYC elections also suggests otherwise. As far as Pro-Israel money goes too, over $200 million has been spent against DSA and DSA adjacent candidates in this primary cycle alone. That should tell you something. There are only a couple of candidates on the Republican side who received anything close to the heavy spending. I don't think AIPAC aligned donors even had to make a special expenditure against Kshama Sawant, who is the only left-of-DSA candidate who made an even half-way serious run this election cycle. If you have followed spending, litigation, lobbying, the DSA is clearly a target of both the national party and the Republicans. Why do you think that is?

etienne

haven't gone through the whole episode so far but few takes from here in Quebec about having third parties. For starters, a left-wing insurgent party sounds like a dream and that's kind of what the NDP is, but after the shock upset in 2011 it started to tack to the center to attract Liberal voters and it slowly became just a nothing party. Rebuilding its credibility will take decades if it even works. Quebec kind of has the same problem with QS currenlty in the process of frittering into nothingess, but there's still an incredibly large number of viable parties, depending on how you count we're at 5 now, and all of them but QS have made breathtaking jumps to the right in recent memory to the point where the Liberal party that was the first to put down austerity in the province now looks like beacons of reasonable centrism I hear on the news all the time about how difficult and pointless it is to do left-wing entryism into the US Democratic Party or the UK Labour but my god is it disappointing to look at my third parties

a clash of purple

if you think DSA sucks, don't talk about DSA, talk about something that's actually making "headway against poverty or the oligarchy." People are desperate for any alternative. Give us something better.

a clash of purple

who cares if you're "distrustful..." Like, really, all the people sounding off about how they don't like DSA, great. I agree, they suck and are insufficient. So what's your better alternative? Oh, you don't have one? Then who cares about your misgivings. Sorry, but this crap is so annoying. "Tunnels and drones..." Yeah, good luck with that. Aren't you embarrassed to be slinging mud when you have absolutely nothing to offer and no better ideas? Come on, man... Even if your argument is "don't look on-line for something better, and if you do find something better, don't talk about it on the internet," fine, I agree, but in that case taking potshots at DSA is especially pointless.

etienne

claiming that a Corbyn style insurgency is impossible in the US when they basically ran the Bernie playbook is a bit strange

a clash of purple

How do you define freedom? It's a tricky question, isn't it. The reality is that you are only as free as power lets you be. No one is free. Everyone is oppressed by the same globalized system of systems. Some nation-states offer certain privileges to their citizens (the ones they like, anyway) in order to secure their loyalty, but this is always conditional. If you get in the way of capital, then it doesn't matter what sort of citizenship you have, you will be crushed (if they're able). Things will continue to suck for everyone until we all wake up and realize we're all on the same side. Arguing about which nation-state is nicest to its human livestock is just pathetic.

J P 3

BTW, great episode. This adds quite a bit to the original article.

a clash of purple

more sniping from the peanut gallery. DSA is not a monolithic entity, and chapters do a lot more than electoralism, and plenty of members would agree with you that AOC isn't good enough, and work to build power in their local communities (maybe in addition to campaigning for candidates, maybe not). But if you think DSA isn't an adequate vehicle for revolutionary energy, fine. You're the only real leftist in a sea of sheeple. You're so badass. We applaud you. Thanks for telling everyone how smart you are not to fall for the electoral trap. Let us know when you finish tearing down the formal political system. I'm sure it keeps the cops, bosses, and landlords up at night, knowing that you saw through their clever sheepherding tricks.

Madeleine Peterson

"give us something better" that's exactly the problem. that's why they rule you. work for it!

a clash of purple

I think DSA is fine. Or, to put it another way, the only movement(s) that can deliver real change are ones that have the support of the communities they want to help. At the moment, in the United States, that's the Democratic Party. That's it. DSA, for now, exists within the Democratic Party and is trying to wrangle more control over the party in order to do more good with their resources. I think that's a worthwhile endeavor, and the best place for people to put their time and energy. I'm not happy about it. Clearly you're not happy about it either. I wish things were better. But it is what it is. There's no other electoral strategy worth pursuing. And if you want to ignore electoralism and build parallel power, well, DSA does that too. So, as I said, I think they're fine.

Michael Ehrenreich

Seth is a pretty smart guy and I think it’s pretty hard to argue against what he has to say about the party structure of the US (they’re more part of the institutions of the state than they are independent bodies)

John Hieronymus

you seem like you have a lot of experience arguing about DSA, i’ll just say that one of the best things that happened to me is losing my campaign to get on NPC by less than 25 votes and eventually figuring out who actually runs DSA at the end of the day. For those who want to learn from the experience of others you can see the core of DSA activism is organized by the staff of democratic party base NGOs, business unions and “left liberal” politicos in the largest chapters where a majority of DSAs voting members live. These people often call themselves marxists or communists but their common strategic thinking is mostly a rewarmed version of Michael Harrington’s new left democratic party reform strategy updated with some organizing tips and tricks from Jane Mcalevey and Seth’s rationalizations for supporting democrats. The class basis of DSA unfortunately prevents it from becoming more than the left wing of the possible, propelling skilled opportunists into office where they escape accountability to the actually existing working class of the country. The goal of strategy is to see the world as it is not as we want it to be, and come up with new ways of fighting our enemies, rather than reheating the same worn out and failed attempts to win the whitehouse without an actual organized working class movement prepared to fight the state and capital when the generals and capital decide to Allende you. You would think that would be a shared insight by the war nerd audience but i guess not. As for your assumptions that i’m some sort of online rebel who’s sitting on the sidelines pretending to play at class war, i’ll let people google me instead of hiding behind a screen name here. good luck comrade we have a world to win ✌️

Logan Ausherman

Working within the structures of the democratic party, which is a capitalist party of the ruling class and always has been, will only lend legitimacy to the democratic party without actually build a revolutionary socialist movement. Marx was very clear about working within the capitalist state, that the working class movement cannot lay its hands on the ready made state machinery, which the democratic party is a part of. We have to build independent, working class power, otherwise the project is doomed to cooption and opportunist rot.

Carter Adams

When Obama was elected I still counted myself as an anarchist (punk who liked to get drunk) and my take at the time was “this will be good because it will show all of us exactly what their best case scenario looks like, how much or how little it can achieve.” Not proud of a lot from that phase of my life, but I think I got that one right.

Christopher Price

quick, ask Mark why he doesn't live in Russia anymore,,,

Seth Jucovy

This episode was by in large highly inforamative and engaging but one quibble and two problems come to mind there was no discussion of Germany whihc was the first nation in Europe as well as the US to have highly bureaucratized, disciplined, and modern mass-membership parties woth the SPD and Catholic Center Party (Zentrum), and in time Liberal and conservative ones. The discusssion also intentionally omits intentionally or not any discssion of what I see as a clear developing but present since the elections of AOC probles with both inadadaquacies of those DSA affiliated candidates (AOC in particular) in terms of quality (AOC in particular once again) in terms of quality but even more in what has been a so far almost inevitable for all too different degree tendeny to tone down or actually back away for one held positions that actually charecterize genuine leftist politics wiht this beinging particularly the case with regard to foreign policy,warrelated,questions AOC again standing out but with Mamdani for instance on his actual efforts at governence locally impressive but on the stances I mentioned with time disappointing though stll far better tan AOC and some other. Add to this the tendency of all to seem to eventually have sem to be increasingly nterested in working wth the DP in charge elites and leadership which is at odds withwht is required to maintian a Left agenda and purpose. It leads to and in some cases already clearly is sell out. Lastly the point about the Nebraska candidate Dan Osborn and the future tactic of running left independent candadites in of great interest.

Logan Ausherman

This is such a disingenuous argument being made by Seth Ackerman. There are multiple very important problems that are just being papered over here, namely the class nature of the state, ie the fact that it is a capitalist state controlled by capitalists for their own purposes, which the illusion of democracy in America serves. The other big issue is no where in this interview is the purpose of a left wing party discussed, ie is the party to be a revolutionary organization that exists to destroy the capitalist state or an opportunist, reform party that seeks to gain power within it. From the discussion it appears that the purpose isn't even something Mark or Seth think needs to be debated.

Logan Ausherman

OK so how is any of that a meaningful threat to the capitalist state?

Logan Ausherman

An actual Marxist revolutionary organization that seeks to supplant the capitalist state with a workers state. The only fruit that this kind of project the DSA us carrying out could hope to achieve is giving legitimacy to the existing capitalist state. This is basic Marxist theory dating back to the time of the Paris commune.

Logan Ausherman

Then why embark on a project that is clearly try to do just that?

Rahula Anoir

Forcing dems off the ballot BAMN should happen as soon as possible, I don’t see the democrats in red states ever exempting themselves. Also there seems to be a lack of ideological standards in the DSA, unless we all secretly desire a nationalist socialist party with zionist sympathies

Cory

@Michael - I agree. I enjoyed the episode

Martin

This being a war podcast I feel like a Guevara quotation may be in order ... "Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted."

leedo

As much as I appreciate this interview, the discussion of internal DSA politics is incredibly one sided. To say that only NYCDSA has read this article is nonsense. Most people in the organization have read it, and very few disagree with using the D party line. Many do disagree with the NYDSA left populist strategy, though. You’ll notice no mention of labor or the working class in the interview, and very little discussion of eventually breaking from the Dems. There are plenty of large city chapters that disagree with the NYC approach, so it’s nonsense to blame it on disconnected rural cranks. Lastly, I'm not really sure where this idea that DSA doesn't exist as a national organization comes from. I suspect this was said because the makeup of the national organization has more diverse perspectives than NYCDSA.

leedo

If you’re interested in hearing other perspectives on DSA, please bring on some other folks from the MUG or Bread and Roses caucuses.

DominusCaveaVulpes

Damn! Michael P. and Seth! LBOsters (including myself) are doing an entryist move on RWN . . . . (Waiting for Doug to show up next . . . .)

leedo

It's like people are willfully ignoring that left patently populism _failed_ over the last decade, all over the world. What we need is a real party of the working class. Now if they need to use the Democratic party line, that is IMO a detail, but should not be the defining characteristic of the strategy.

leedo

That's the problem with left populism, and the cross-class collaboration strategy they argue for (even if they won't say it). It papers over the contradictions that will eventually bubble up and destroy the movement.

jer

I cant believe these RWN capitalist pigs charged us extra this month. Typical champagne leftists.. Jk luv ya

Christopher Price

all you're saying is "why isn't the party I don't agree with doing something I don't agree with?" it's hollow and it ignores what DSA is trying to with its project.

Christopher Price

the DSA that exists in your head is not the DSA that exists in real life.

Jennifer Hammerhead

The unofficial party thing would be a good idea if DSA wasn't such a big ball of poop. Big Ball of Poop is a technical phrase that means it's an organization in which socialism means whatever you want it to. Have an unofficial party ok sure but for the love of God have a "statement of faith" that every member agrees to publicly and that is reinforced by mandatory political education. I grew up very evangelical and while we all differed in theological particulars, to be in you had to adhere to the apostles creed and at minimum go to Sunday school.

Carter Adams

A nation with a military intelligence and policing budget in the trillions and a single digit unionization rate in the workforce is not going to have any kind of realistic radical left worthy of the name, the comments here need to get real. Keyboard warriors and larpers. What the DSA have accomplished in the past 10 years is remarkable and I hope they continue to find success.

Matt Colston

Im in DSA and there is an internal battle right now about whether we are just a professional canvassing group for progressive liberals or an actual socialist movement committed to worker's controlling the means of production and revolution. Im a Socialist. Not a Democrat. Not a Democratic Socialist. Im a Marxist. I hope other's who aren't in our organization join us who are fighting to make DSA actually a socialist organization join us and help us oust the social democrats.

John Pearson

What an invaluable discussion. Please please make this one of the free episodes, I would like to share with a few non-RWN friends who would otherwise not be drawn to RWN

Mac Robertson

The main problem is that it brings up uncomfortable, and frankly depressing, questions for the left about the class composition of the US

Quinn

Great great episode

Quinn

some of these comments are just insufferable man disagreements one thing but we have people here just making fun of guys picture and taking dorky online left jabs at DSA, as if "the US is really not a multiparty democracy, it's all rigged, but there's potential to identify and exploit institutional loopholes to advance socialist politics" is somehow the same thing as saying pokemon go to the polls

Mark Ames

Without disagreeing with your point, I would only counter that Evangelicals already had the numbers.

Hector Jaime

You should unlock this one so I can share it with all my milquetoast liberal friends thank you 🙏

Jennifer Hammerhead

For sure. I know there a factions within DSA that are pushing for exactly what I'm suggesting and I support their efforts. Frankly, I'm just burnt out. I'm in MPLS and had some comrades who were put in serious and unnecessary danger by the lack of discipline, structure, and general adventurism during metro surge. We may not have the numbers but it seems like it's a huge struggle to get functional consensus even amongst core members.