Oppose the Democrats’ “all-out war” on third parties and independent candidates!

As the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for president, I condemn and oppose the Democrats’ “all-out war” on third parties and independent candidates. The SEP supports the right to appear on the ballot for all independent and third party candidates, including the SEP campaign as well as the campaigns of Jill Stein, Cornel West and others.

Reports in the media use the language of military battle. The New York Times wrote yesterday that the Democrats are deploying “an army of lawyers to challenge the steadily advancing ballot-access efforts of independent candidates.” It adds that these lawyers are preparing “a state-by-state counterinsurgency plan” to try to stop the threat.

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They use such language because they are engaged in war: imperialist war abroad and a war on the social and democratic rights of the working class at home. As far as the ruling elite is concerned, in a country of 330 million people, ballot access must be restricted to the two reactionary corporate-controlled parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

Massive, anti-democratic restrictions exist to ensure this outcome. Independent candidates have to gather hundreds of thousands of signatures to get on the ballot in all 50 states. The media systematically excludes third party candidates, particularly any serious challenge from the left. There is an escalating campaign to censor the internet to maintain the ruling class stranglehold on control of information.

In justifying its political warfare against third parties, the Democrats’ lawyer declared that it was necessary to “ensure that the people who are on the ballot have legitimate bases of support.”

What cynical hypocrisy! The two candidates of the Republicans and Democrats, Trump and Biden, are widely hated. Forty-three percent of Americans identify as “independent,” far more than either Democrat or Republican (27 percent each). According to a Pew Research poll, the disdain for both parties “is as high as it has been in more than two decades of polling.”

Their real “base of support” is in the corporate-financial oligarchy and the military.

Biden spends most of his campaign time meeting with wealthy donors and has built up a record campaign hoard. Trump, meanwhile, will hold a fundraising event next month with hedge fund boss John Paulson (net worth $3.5 billion), where the minimum donation to attend is a quarter of a million dollars.

If the type of restrictions that exist in the US to preserve the two-party dictatorship existed in a country targeted by US imperialism, it would be used as a basis for demanding regime change.

The Democrats’ “all-out war” also exposes the pretense that it is defending democracy against the fascist Trump. When the Democrats talk about the “right to vote,” what they really mean is the right to choose one of two representatives of the corporate-financial oligarchy.

And their principal concern is to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the escalating global war, including the US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza.

The defense of democratic rights is impossible without addressing the root cause of dictatorship: the staggering concentration of wealth in the hands of the capitalist oligarchy. The wealth of the billionaires must be expropriated and the gigantic corporations must be transformed into publicly controlled utilities, run on the basis of social need, not private profit.

The Socialist Equality Party is running in the elections to transform the developing struggles of workers in the US and around the world into a conscious struggle for socialism. Sign up to get involved, volunteer for the campaign, and donate today at http://socialism2024.org.