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Tom McCall and the Third Force

Fascinating idea, whenever I hear “Third Force” I think of Pyle from A Quiet American. It’s interesting having recently read The Birth, Life, and Death of the SDP of the parallels on a third party experiment.

Just a thought, if Wallace did get the nomination in 1976 (of course a big if), wouldn’t some Democratic liberals e.g. McGovern want to run their own ticket? Or would there be some accommodation with the Third Force so it becomes a ‘catch all’ outsider platform?
 
There’s something wonderfully chaotic about this list (especially ‘Joe Biden’) but the do certainly have a ‘Reformist, Semi-Progressive’ tinge to the whole thing.

I do have say a scenario where James Abourezk could be persuaded to run would be fascinating to say the least.

It’s a fun idea for an Alternate America even if the most likely possibility is the movement eventually burning out in the Early 80s or the late 70s due to Alt-Austerity.

Yes I do think it's likely that even the very unlikely event of the Third Force coalescing and winning office in 1976 the most likely result looks like a better Carter administration. But there is the interesting wrinkle that as Sklar mentions this is all about equity and austerity at the same time - a recognition of ecological limits to growth and realist limits to American power. I'm not sure if, were the Third Force to promote a candidate, they would actually adopt steady-state economics as a platform; I doubt most of those politicians mentioned would. But if they did approach things from that perspective, the economic picture could start changing from OTL fairly quickly.

Abourezk is a very unusual and singular character for sure. He was one of the couple people who were both on this list and invited as speakers at BITR, by the way; he explained that he couldn't make it because there was some Indian Affairs business to deal with that summer but he was interested in the idea. I am curious if Kesey's project might have influenced his and Mark Hatfield's advocacy for a national initiative and referendum process a couple years later.

(Speaking of, some journalists assumed that BITR associated with the Third Force and that the delegates were helping draft a party platform for McCall, but Kesey denied it. I do think they just happened to be motivated by the same zeitgeist but it's very telling - illustrative of the thesis of my book, actually - that there were two adjacent political projects unfolding in the first half of 1974 with the premise that Oregon's leadership could save the country.)

Fascinating idea, whenever I hear “Third Force” I think of Pyle from A Quiet American. It’s interesting having recently read The Birth, Life, and Death of the SDP of the parallels on a third party experiment.

Just a thought, if Wallace did get the nomination in 1976 (of course a big if), wouldn’t some Democratic liberals e.g. McGovern want to run their own ticket? Or would there be some accommodation with the Third Force so it becomes a ‘catch all’ outsider platform?

I think it would depend on the circumstances. Some of those characters Sklar spoke to were left-liberals who the Democratic left might feel comfortable endorsing. Some were more on the libertarian reformist side and might make the Democratic left less comfortable. If the Third Force adopts steady-state economics and energy budgeting and limiting growth based on carrying capacity studies - all of which was very close to the political mainstream in McCall's Oregon at this point, even though it seems extremely radical today - I think some more traditional social democrats in the Dems might hesitate to sign up. But then again if the country's in the kind of shit that would cause Wallace and Reagan to be the 1976 nominees in the first place people might be willing to take a risk!
 
I think it would depend on the circumstances. Some of those characters Sklar spoke to were left-liberals who the Democratic left might feel comfortable endorsing. Some were more on the libertarian reformist side and might make the Democratic left less comfortable. If the Third Force adopts steady-state economics and energy budgeting and limiting growth based on carrying capacity studies - all of which was very close to the political mainstream in McCall's Oregon at this point, even though it seems extremely radical today - I think some more traditional social democrats in the Dems might hesitate to sign up. But then again if the country's in the kind of shit that would cause Wallace and Reagan to be the 1976 nominees in the first place people might be willing to take a risk!
What if they tried a Whig 1836 or unpledged elector strategy?
 
What if they tried a Whig 1836 or unpledged elector strategy?

I think that sounds like #3, which was the option that least appealed to folks. This is all a hypothetical of a hypothetical, of course, but if any of this was to happen it would probably either be #2 (left and libertarian reformists coordinating in a Stop Wallace campaign) or McCall running third party.
 
Tom McCall, Charles Ravenel, Ramsey Clark, Gary Hart, John Gilligan, Joe Biden (!), James Abourezk, Charles Mathias, Ralph Nader, Bill Moyers, Bella Abzug, Basil Paterson, Don Reigel, Pat Schroeder, Frank Church, John Burton, Barry Commoner and other eco-philosophers, lots of Sklar's fellow McGovern campaign alumni, many policy and organizer names I don't recognize
Of the ones I recognize (idk who Bill Moyers, Basil Paterson, John Burton, Charles Ravenal, or Sklar), they all would have been great (or at least decent) presidents.
 
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