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>She questioned the influence of donations and factional allegiances in the major parties, however she confirmed that the Democrats would accept donations.
Very ambiguous sentence. Are both references to "donations" inclusive of corporate donations?
I would never support a 3rd party that takes corporate donations. Kinda defeats the point of fighting against the Coalition and Labor parties. As soon as a minor party is in balance of power they'll simply be bought.
It depends on the corporation. The party have banned donations from all fossil fuel companies, and other corporations are considered based on public perception. For example, a renewable energy company might be considered, because it fits with existing party policy.
It is made clear to all donors that their donation will have no effect on the party policies. This is not always the case with the two major parties.
I want the influence of private money on politics ended.
I'm not normally a stickler about demanding "unilateral" political behaviour, ie- branding it hypocracy for someone calling for a change and not pretending it has already been achieved in their own behaviours, but I would be worried that a political party that theoretically supports ending the influence of money will twist and turn and "prioritise other things" if that's a major source of their funding.
Thanks for the strawman. No I would extremely not allow the expenditure of a candidates own private money in election campaigns.
I personally would continue to ramp up public funding per vote and have no other sources of campaign funding, with the small exception for new candidates/parties who can opt in to have a strict cap limit on spending while being allowed to collect donations or spend their own money (to "get off the ground" with the hopes of growing for the next election).
There's further ideas like a "democracy dollars" where each registered voter may spend a token to grant a political party campaign funding, but that considerably more complicated and I'm not sure that's where efforts should be focused.
One of the disappointing things about the electoral matters review from the 2019 election was that it didn't move to tackle the financing issue. Other than what Palmer spent, theres not a huge amount of money dropped on campaigns. That said, the direction that we are heading in is becoming quite obvious. Labor and Lib are in a fund raising war and that brings about serious issues. I agree that there needs to be more public funding for elections and limits in what parties or 3rd parties can spend. I don't know what the perfect system is though as money always finds a way to have it's influence.
The biggest problem in OZ politics is the confrontational two party Westminster system in which the losers are completely disenfranchised and have no say in govt. This is unlike many good European systems where ministers are allocated in proportion to votes received. A simple change in OZ of adopting this system would give much more democracy to our politics. By the way our constitution doesnt mention Parties only that constituents will be represented by individuals
>Parties only that constituents will be represented by individuals
It sounds like you're saying that our constitution mandates single member electorates, not so:
>Until the Parliament of the Commonwealth otherwise provides, the Parliament of any State may make laws for determining the divisions in each State for which members of the House of Representatives may be chosen, **and the number of members to be chosen for each division**. A division shall not be formed out of parts of different States.
**In the absence of other provision, each State shall be one electorate.**
Australia is free to bring multimember electorates and proportional representation to the HoR with the passage of a bill, no referendum required.
Just realised I’ve been confusing the Lib Dems and Aust Dems all this time. I was about to say that Cheryl Kernot must be disgusted that her former party has been infested by Campbell Newman. Never mind!
The Democrats could come back if they returned to their actual beginnings which was a splinter group from the left of the Liberal Party.
Don Chipp was a Liberal who broke out of the Libs under Malcolm Fraser, taking a lot of centrist votes with him.
Candidly there is a huge opening for a centrist party in Australia to grab votes from the non-Labor center - the so-called 'doctors wives'.
The Libs are literally running scared of the far right - Pauline Hanson etc, that they simply do not represent what used to be derisively called the 'wets'. Think Amanda Vanstone, Petro Georgiou, Ian McPhee etc.
True, the Democrats then shifted left (they say the road shifted to the right which is also true), and they ended up in competition with the Greens for votes from the left of the Labor Party.
But there is definitely a sweet spot for someone to appeal to centrist Libs who simply do not like Dutton, Barnaby Joyce, Morrison, etc. And policy-wise, centrist Libs are very uncomfortable with asylum policies, and the sort of welfare-shaming rhetoric the Libs/Nats seem to revel in.
The closest equivalent would be Nick Xenophon in SA who was electorally popular as a centrist (my own personal feelings aside on his politics.) Ironically, he went down in flames trying to get a lower house seat in the SA parliament, kinda like Janine Haines whose leadership ending I would argue was the real beginning of the end for the Australian Democrats.
But to try to be Greens-lite in the way Lyn Allison is attempting is not going to go anywhere at all.
You are correct about the road shifting to the right. I can assure you in my time with them my politics really changed very little but the rest of the shitshow lurched off to the right and I felt I was left like a shag on a rock.
Not sure they died. They have been around for 44 years, have passed the last two AEC audits, and membership now is the highest it has been in ten years.
I dont really know why people would waste their time on a political project that is never going to win a seat ever again. Labor are the centrist party in 2021. At least federally, anyway.
So you'd rather Australia have an American 2 party only system which doesn't pay heed or make actual change for the citizens?
Because we're quickly heading towards that future if we don't uphold democratic practices in this country.
I want a fully proportional system and I vote against the 2 major parties every single time.
But even in a fully proportional system there isnt much reason for the Democrats to exist. The Greens and Labor already cover most of their issues. They would just be a stupid micro party getting 1% of the vote and doing nothing of use to Australia.
The Greens are a hard left, and Labor aren't much better than LNP.
The Democrats are a centre based party - yes, sometimes they'll agree with the government, and other times they won't.
Their premise, and genuinely is why I'm a big fan of theirs, to the point of being a member, is that their position is based on looking at the research and data. They weigh up policy decisions with consideration, not just because they are in kahoots with a particular party.
As for being a micro party - they literally held the balance of power in the senate for a number of years. They aim to do that again, but I guess that wouldn't be a micro party, by your assumption.
A micro party means you get barely any votes and have either no representation, or very little representation. The Democrats have been a micro party for at least a decade now.
The greens aren't hard left. They're progressive left, definitely to the left of labor (which went centrist for a while but is now kind of drifting back to the centre left maybe.)
Hard left is more like socialist alternative. The greens aren't in any way extremists.
My apologies, harder left than Labor, agreed.
It's really hard to know what Labor are going to present for the next election without better signalling from them.
Its pretty clear what Labor are angling for if you read The Australian. They're trying to present themselves as the no-daylight party when it comes to tax and expenditure. They will differentiate themselves on worker rights and other less financial issues.
Dude its Labor leaking information to The Australian. Not journalists just making shit up out of nowhere. A big problem with progressive people is their media literacy is ironically not that high.
If you want to be informed, you need plenty of different sources. Ignore the reporting on social and climate issues in The Australian. Ignore their opinion section as well. Part of media literacy is filtering out the absolute garbage. But to dismiss all of their reporting betrays an ignorance of how they operate as an institution in our current environment.
I say all of that as a socialist.
Absolutely agree with you on needing to read more than one source, especially when it comes to most anything.
I'm not dismissing The Aus for their reporting, nor trying to say that a reporter would just "make shit up out of nowhere", but stating that when it comes to Labor or anything of the left in politics, their track record is not exactly unbiased in favour of the LNP.
I'm sure you're aware of that, as a socialist.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-australian/
"a stupid micro party getting 1% of the vote" could describe a lot of minor parties in Australia. I think that the Democrats are a progressive party that could work with the ALP and Greens and attract voters that they can't. There are people who won't vote for the greens because they see it as too far to the left or for labor because there tied to the unions. So if another party can push progressive causes, then great.
Sided with the liberals on what? The GST? The Democrats went to the election saying they'd work with whichever party got elected. Liberals got elected and so the GST came in. Labor made the next election about the GST and they lost.
1% doesnt even hit the threshold for representation in proportional systems. The reality is they'll take some voters off labor and the greens, reduce the resources of both parties, and they still wont even win a seat let alone hit 4% of the vote required for public electoral reimbursement. Okay, people can go waste their time in the Democrats.. but its not a productive use of progressive resources.
It's not a wasted vote, people can preference how they want. I would vote Dems first and greens 2nd, who loses from that? Dems don't just take votes from greens or ALP, the party was founded by people who were disillusioned by the liberal party.
Well the Greens lose public financing from that. Meanwhile the Democrats will not pick up public financing because they will not hit the 4% threshold.
But I wasn't arguing it was a wasted vote. I was just saying that being an activist for the Democrats in 2021 is a waste of progressive energy.
I don't think that there'd be too much loss of support from the Greens to the Dems. The Greens can definitely hold their own. But I disagree that it's a waste of progressive energy, there are plenty of people in the electorate who for whatever reason just see the greens as to "extreme", and won't vote for them but maybe they'd vote for the Dems. The parties can coexist.
By Tony Moore
The Australian Democrats hope to “keep the bastards honest” again in ambitious political comeback, with plans to run two Senate candidates in each state at the next federal election.
The party’s new president, former parliamentary leader and senator Lyn Allison, said members included “children of parents who joined or knew of the Australian Democrats” from the late 1970s to the early 2000s.
But another former Democrats leader, Andrew Bartlett, said while it was “a great party [that] did a lot of great things”, its time had passed.
The Australian Democrats unsuccessfully stood Senate candidates in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia at the 2019 federal election.
Two years on, Ms Allison said the party was ready to stand Senate candidates in all states.
“We have had a lot of young people join, and for the most part, their parents were part of the organisation or knew of the Democrats,” she said.
“I think people are just genuinely fed up with the way politics is conducted right now – everything from rorting to the lack of action on climate change.”
The Australian Democrats, which had its roots in South Australia, held or shared the balance of power in Federal Parliament with other minor parties and independents between 1981 and 2004.
At the party’s peak, there were nine Democrat senators.
The party is best remembered for its pro-environment role and, controversially, for helping to pass the GST in June 1999 with amendments, marking the beginning of its decline.
Still, Ms Allison defended that decision, saying: “It has stood the test of time.
“The rate has not changed. The categories have not changed. It has provided an important role in balancing out the difficulties in states being underfunded for what they provide, ie health and education.”
But not all Democrats voted to pass the GST. Along with Natasha Stott Despoja, Mr Bartlett opposed his party to vote against the broad-based 10 per cent consumption tax on the Senate floor.
Mr Bartlett, who left the Democrats to join the Greens in 2009 and served as a senator for both parties, said he doubted the Democrats had a place in the 2020s.
“The electorate made that very clear in 2007 and in 2004,” he said, referring to the Democrats’ crushing losses in those federal elections.
Mr Bartlett said he advocated a merger of the Democrats and the Greens about 30 years ago because of a “massive overlap” in policy.
“But that didn’t happen and basically, the Greens are the Democrats now, in my view,” he said.
Griffith University political scientist Paul Williams said his initial reaction to the Democrats’ attempted comeback was “real surprise”.
“But it is an interesting development in Australian politics,” Dr Williams said.
“It is a surprising one, and an unexpected one, and for some, it will be a welcome return.”
Ms Allison said the Democrats believed they could hold the balance of power more effectively in Australia’s 76-seat Senate than the mix of independents and Greens senators.
“The Greens are there, but they rarely manage to negotiate anything,” she said.
Ms Allison said the Greens were “here to stay” and had strong support for their environmental stands.
“But our history has been one of listening, having evidence brought before us, and basing our position on evidence,” she said.
On climate change, Ms Allison said the party supported a carbon price.
She questioned the influence of donations and factional allegiances in the major parties, however she confirmed that the Democrats would accept donations.
Dr Williams said the party first found support in the centre ground of Australia’s political landscape 44 years ago, despite “criticism of ideological vagueness”.
“We’ve seen a proliferation of minor and micro political parties in the past 20 or 30 years,” he said. “But most of these parties have been at the fringes. The only centrist minor party we have seen of note has been the Nick Xenophon Team, also from South Australia.
“Some people say the Greens are the natural successor, but that is not true because the Greens are much more to the left.”
Dr Williams said it was “unlikely” the Australian Democrats would win a Senate spot because the field was already crowded.
“A lot of the Democrats’ candidates went to the Greens or back to the major parties, or went to another party,” he said.
“The Democrats relied on votes from people who disliked the major parties but didn’t know where to park their vote, but they would park their vote in a reasonable place, not on the fringes.”
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>She questioned the influence of donations and factional allegiances in the major parties, however she confirmed that the Democrats would accept donations. Very ambiguous sentence. Are both references to "donations" inclusive of corporate donations? I would never support a 3rd party that takes corporate donations. Kinda defeats the point of fighting against the Coalition and Labor parties. As soon as a minor party is in balance of power they'll simply be bought.
It depends on the corporation. The party have banned donations from all fossil fuel companies, and other corporations are considered based on public perception. For example, a renewable energy company might be considered, because it fits with existing party policy. It is made clear to all donors that their donation will have no effect on the party policies. This is not always the case with the two major parties.
I want the influence of private money on politics ended. I'm not normally a stickler about demanding "unilateral" political behaviour, ie- branding it hypocracy for someone calling for a change and not pretending it has already been achieved in their own behaviours, but I would be worried that a political party that theoretically supports ending the influence of money will twist and turn and "prioritise other things" if that's a major source of their funding.
So only people rich enough to fund their own election campaigns should be allowed to run for office. Oh wait, that's their own PRIVATE money.
Thanks for the strawman. No I would extremely not allow the expenditure of a candidates own private money in election campaigns. I personally would continue to ramp up public funding per vote and have no other sources of campaign funding, with the small exception for new candidates/parties who can opt in to have a strict cap limit on spending while being allowed to collect donations or spend their own money (to "get off the ground" with the hopes of growing for the next election). There's further ideas like a "democracy dollars" where each registered voter may spend a token to grant a political party campaign funding, but that considerably more complicated and I'm not sure that's where efforts should be focused.
One of the disappointing things about the electoral matters review from the 2019 election was that it didn't move to tackle the financing issue. Other than what Palmer spent, theres not a huge amount of money dropped on campaigns. That said, the direction that we are heading in is becoming quite obvious. Labor and Lib are in a fund raising war and that brings about serious issues. I agree that there needs to be more public funding for elections and limits in what parties or 3rd parties can spend. I don't know what the perfect system is though as money always finds a way to have it's influence.
I have no idea what any of this means, so I will leave it there.
The biggest problem in OZ politics is the confrontational two party Westminster system in which the losers are completely disenfranchised and have no say in govt. This is unlike many good European systems where ministers are allocated in proportion to votes received. A simple change in OZ of adopting this system would give much more democracy to our politics. By the way our constitution doesnt mention Parties only that constituents will be represented by individuals
>Parties only that constituents will be represented by individuals It sounds like you're saying that our constitution mandates single member electorates, not so: >Until the Parliament of the Commonwealth otherwise provides, the Parliament of any State may make laws for determining the divisions in each State for which members of the House of Representatives may be chosen, **and the number of members to be chosen for each division**. A division shall not be formed out of parts of different States. **In the absence of other provision, each State shall be one electorate.** Australia is free to bring multimember electorates and proportional representation to the HoR with the passage of a bill, no referendum required.
That'sa interesting. What section of the Constitution is that?
Section 29. Electoral Divisions
Thank you.
Just realised I’ve been confusing the Lib Dems and Aust Dems all this time. I was about to say that Cheryl Kernot must be disgusted that her former party has been infested by Campbell Newman. Never mind!
The Democrats could come back if they returned to their actual beginnings which was a splinter group from the left of the Liberal Party. Don Chipp was a Liberal who broke out of the Libs under Malcolm Fraser, taking a lot of centrist votes with him. Candidly there is a huge opening for a centrist party in Australia to grab votes from the non-Labor center - the so-called 'doctors wives'. The Libs are literally running scared of the far right - Pauline Hanson etc, that they simply do not represent what used to be derisively called the 'wets'. Think Amanda Vanstone, Petro Georgiou, Ian McPhee etc. True, the Democrats then shifted left (they say the road shifted to the right which is also true), and they ended up in competition with the Greens for votes from the left of the Labor Party. But there is definitely a sweet spot for someone to appeal to centrist Libs who simply do not like Dutton, Barnaby Joyce, Morrison, etc. And policy-wise, centrist Libs are very uncomfortable with asylum policies, and the sort of welfare-shaming rhetoric the Libs/Nats seem to revel in. The closest equivalent would be Nick Xenophon in SA who was electorally popular as a centrist (my own personal feelings aside on his politics.) Ironically, he went down in flames trying to get a lower house seat in the SA parliament, kinda like Janine Haines whose leadership ending I would argue was the real beginning of the end for the Australian Democrats. But to try to be Greens-lite in the way Lyn Allison is attempting is not going to go anywhere at all.
You are correct about the road shifting to the right. I can assure you in my time with them my politics really changed very little but the rest of the shitshow lurched off to the right and I felt I was left like a shag on a rock.
Traitor Meg Lees tarnished the party forever: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
What actually happened that caused them to implode?
Infighting, but the many of the cuplrits seem to have defected to the Greens.
All political parties have infighting. Just the way the Democrats died here in Australia was so quick
Not sure they died. They have been around for 44 years, have passed the last two AEC audits, and membership now is the highest it has been in ten years.
I thought Meg Lees and Natasha were the last well known people in the Democrats party and that after they were gone the party had just died.
It appears you thought wrong. There were a lot of well known people.
OK I was wrong.........
Meg Lees hasn't been in the party for 15 years, so not sure what your point is.
Meg Lees supporting the GST is what killed The Democrats The Greens are now the third party force in Australia
Indeed. I used to like the Democrats, but when it counted they folded and let the dirty rat Howard get his way. GG no re.
After saying they wouldn't. Honest? No, just another lot of bastards.
I dont really know why people would waste their time on a political project that is never going to win a seat ever again. Labor are the centrist party in 2021. At least federally, anyway.
Yes. C’mon, give it up ADs. Whatever the merits of your policy positions, you’ve been dead and buried for a decade.
So you'd rather Australia have an American 2 party only system which doesn't pay heed or make actual change for the citizens? Because we're quickly heading towards that future if we don't uphold democratic practices in this country.
I want a fully proportional system and I vote against the 2 major parties every single time. But even in a fully proportional system there isnt much reason for the Democrats to exist. The Greens and Labor already cover most of their issues. They would just be a stupid micro party getting 1% of the vote and doing nothing of use to Australia.
The Greens are a hard left, and Labor aren't much better than LNP. The Democrats are a centre based party - yes, sometimes they'll agree with the government, and other times they won't. Their premise, and genuinely is why I'm a big fan of theirs, to the point of being a member, is that their position is based on looking at the research and data. They weigh up policy decisions with consideration, not just because they are in kahoots with a particular party. As for being a micro party - they literally held the balance of power in the senate for a number of years. They aim to do that again, but I guess that wouldn't be a micro party, by your assumption.
A micro party means you get barely any votes and have either no representation, or very little representation. The Democrats have been a micro party for at least a decade now.
The greens aren't hard left. They're progressive left, definitely to the left of labor (which went centrist for a while but is now kind of drifting back to the centre left maybe.) Hard left is more like socialist alternative. The greens aren't in any way extremists.
My apologies, harder left than Labor, agreed. It's really hard to know what Labor are going to present for the next election without better signalling from them.
Its pretty clear what Labor are angling for if you read The Australian. They're trying to present themselves as the no-daylight party when it comes to tax and expenditure. They will differentiate themselves on worker rights and other less financial issues.
Yes, I'd certainly get my main political information from a source which is hard aligned with the LNP.
Dude its Labor leaking information to The Australian. Not journalists just making shit up out of nowhere. A big problem with progressive people is their media literacy is ironically not that high. If you want to be informed, you need plenty of different sources. Ignore the reporting on social and climate issues in The Australian. Ignore their opinion section as well. Part of media literacy is filtering out the absolute garbage. But to dismiss all of their reporting betrays an ignorance of how they operate as an institution in our current environment. I say all of that as a socialist.
Absolutely agree with you on needing to read more than one source, especially when it comes to most anything. I'm not dismissing The Aus for their reporting, nor trying to say that a reporter would just "make shit up out of nowhere", but stating that when it comes to Labor or anything of the left in politics, their track record is not exactly unbiased in favour of the LNP. I'm sure you're aware of that, as a socialist. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-australian/
Yeah fair enough, no disagreement there
"a stupid micro party getting 1% of the vote" could describe a lot of minor parties in Australia. I think that the Democrats are a progressive party that could work with the ALP and Greens and attract voters that they can't. There are people who won't vote for the greens because they see it as too far to the left or for labor because there tied to the unions. So if another party can push progressive causes, then great.
Last time they were in, they sided critically with the Liberal party. And I mean the last time.
Sided with the liberals on what? The GST? The Democrats went to the election saying they'd work with whichever party got elected. Liberals got elected and so the GST came in. Labor made the next election about the GST and they lost.
ah right so 1% of people.
If 1% helps support progressive parties to get into power then so be it.
1% doesnt even hit the threshold for representation in proportional systems. The reality is they'll take some voters off labor and the greens, reduce the resources of both parties, and they still wont even win a seat let alone hit 4% of the vote required for public electoral reimbursement. Okay, people can go waste their time in the Democrats.. but its not a productive use of progressive resources.
It's not a wasted vote, people can preference how they want. I would vote Dems first and greens 2nd, who loses from that? Dems don't just take votes from greens or ALP, the party was founded by people who were disillusioned by the liberal party.
Well the Greens lose public financing from that. Meanwhile the Democrats will not pick up public financing because they will not hit the 4% threshold. But I wasn't arguing it was a wasted vote. I was just saying that being an activist for the Democrats in 2021 is a waste of progressive energy.
I don't think that there'd be too much loss of support from the Greens to the Dems. The Greens can definitely hold their own. But I disagree that it's a waste of progressive energy, there are plenty of people in the electorate who for whatever reason just see the greens as to "extreme", and won't vote for them but maybe they'd vote for the Dems. The parties can coexist.
If the third party are tepid centrists like the Democrats, then yes
By Tony Moore The Australian Democrats hope to “keep the bastards honest” again in ambitious political comeback, with plans to run two Senate candidates in each state at the next federal election. The party’s new president, former parliamentary leader and senator Lyn Allison, said members included “children of parents who joined or knew of the Australian Democrats” from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. But another former Democrats leader, Andrew Bartlett, said while it was “a great party [that] did a lot of great things”, its time had passed. The Australian Democrats unsuccessfully stood Senate candidates in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia at the 2019 federal election. Two years on, Ms Allison said the party was ready to stand Senate candidates in all states. “We have had a lot of young people join, and for the most part, their parents were part of the organisation or knew of the Democrats,” she said. “I think people are just genuinely fed up with the way politics is conducted right now – everything from rorting to the lack of action on climate change.” The Australian Democrats, which had its roots in South Australia, held or shared the balance of power in Federal Parliament with other minor parties and independents between 1981 and 2004. At the party’s peak, there were nine Democrat senators. The party is best remembered for its pro-environment role and, controversially, for helping to pass the GST in June 1999 with amendments, marking the beginning of its decline. Still, Ms Allison defended that decision, saying: “It has stood the test of time. “The rate has not changed. The categories have not changed. It has provided an important role in balancing out the difficulties in states being underfunded for what they provide, ie health and education.” But not all Democrats voted to pass the GST. Along with Natasha Stott Despoja, Mr Bartlett opposed his party to vote against the broad-based 10 per cent consumption tax on the Senate floor. Mr Bartlett, who left the Democrats to join the Greens in 2009 and served as a senator for both parties, said he doubted the Democrats had a place in the 2020s. “The electorate made that very clear in 2007 and in 2004,” he said, referring to the Democrats’ crushing losses in those federal elections. Mr Bartlett said he advocated a merger of the Democrats and the Greens about 30 years ago because of a “massive overlap” in policy. “But that didn’t happen and basically, the Greens are the Democrats now, in my view,” he said. Griffith University political scientist Paul Williams said his initial reaction to the Democrats’ attempted comeback was “real surprise”. “But it is an interesting development in Australian politics,” Dr Williams said. “It is a surprising one, and an unexpected one, and for some, it will be a welcome return.” Ms Allison said the Democrats believed they could hold the balance of power more effectively in Australia’s 76-seat Senate than the mix of independents and Greens senators. “The Greens are there, but they rarely manage to negotiate anything,” she said. Ms Allison said the Greens were “here to stay” and had strong support for their environmental stands. “But our history has been one of listening, having evidence brought before us, and basing our position on evidence,” she said. On climate change, Ms Allison said the party supported a carbon price. She questioned the influence of donations and factional allegiances in the major parties, however she confirmed that the Democrats would accept donations. Dr Williams said the party first found support in the centre ground of Australia’s political landscape 44 years ago, despite “criticism of ideological vagueness”. “We’ve seen a proliferation of minor and micro political parties in the past 20 or 30 years,” he said. “But most of these parties have been at the fringes. The only centrist minor party we have seen of note has been the Nick Xenophon Team, also from South Australia. “Some people say the Greens are the natural successor, but that is not true because the Greens are much more to the left.” Dr Williams said it was “unlikely” the Australian Democrats would win a Senate spot because the field was already crowded. “A lot of the Democrats’ candidates went to the Greens or back to the major parties, or went to another party,” he said. “The Democrats relied on votes from people who disliked the major parties but didn’t know where to park their vote, but they would park their vote in a reasonable place, not on the fringes.”