Communism, Leftists and Third Party in Usa?

[Toern]

Well as the title says, im curious to know if anyone tried to implement any left party in the usa, and also i would like to know if any third party had at least moderate sucess.

[pwf224]

The most success any third party has had is the 1912 US Presidential Election Teddy Roosevelt got something like 27% of the popular vote and lost to Woodrow Wilson. It's because America's election process is winner-take-all instead of the parliamentary system where you get proportioned votes and therefore the smaller parties dont get overwhelmed and die out.

[Farnan]

And there are multiple communist parties in the US. And Pat Buchannan's party was pretty successful (though he is far right).

[Guderian's Duck]

The parties in the United States aren't political parties in the European sense. The Democrats and Republicans are each umbrella organizations housing many sub-groups within them. As such, yes, there is a left party in the United States. They are registered as Democrats.

[Toern]

Farnan and pwf224-Thanks didnt know that
Guderian's-Would not Democrats be more classified as "light" right wing, because when comparing their politics with any left european party i know, they seem very different.

[Guderian's Duck]

The Democratic party houses many with Socialist and far left tendencies. They're not the majority from what I understand however. But, what you really wanted to know was if there was a European leftist party and not a leftist party, then, right? If that's the case, the answer in short is no. We have small communist and socialist parties but they don't have much in the way of support. Don't expect American politics to shift to the left anytime soon. We're to the right of Europe. Then again, most of the world is to the right of Europe.

[OneArmedScissor]

There is only one party in the U.S.
However, there happens to be two factions within this party.
The party is a business party and the two factions within this party of business are the Democrats and Republicans.
hth

[BasileII]

In fact, Teddy Roosevelt's Progressist Party wasn't really a leftist party, or even a third party. He failed to get Republican support (they went for Taft), and decided he wanted a party anyway. But his ideas were the same he had 4 years before when he was a Republican president...

In fact, the best result for what Americans would call leftists (which is an awful term, in my idea, as it conveys a vision of Left=bad) was W.Debs, in 1912, with around 6% of the votes (1 million of 15 millions votes).

[B5C]

The Socialist Party during the 1900s had it's day back then.

From 1901 to the onset of World War I, the Socialist Party had numerous elected officials. There were two Socialist members of Congress, Meyer London of New York City and Victor Berger of Milwaukee (a part of the sewer socialism movement, a major front in socialism, Milwaukee being the first city (and the only major one) to elect a socialist mayor, which it did four times between 1910 and 1960); over 70 mayors, and many state legislators and city councilors. Its voting strength was greatest among recent Jewish, Finnish and German immigrants, coal miners, and former Populist farmers in the Midwest. [2] From 1900 (before its formal union) to 1912, the Socialist Party ran Eugene Debs for President at each election. The best showing ever for a Socialist ticket was in 1912, when Debs gained 901,551 total votes, or 6% of the popular vote. In 1920 Debs ran again, this time from prison, and received 913,693 votes, 3.4% of the total.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...ocialist_Party