ABSTRACT
Political parties and the electoral arena are vital spaces where issues and agendas get universalized. Parties function as a way in which multiple constituencies come together to build potent and universalizing political agendas linking major public issues and causes. An argument for engagement with electoral politics, applying in the United States mainly to Third Parties, but sometimes also to the Democratic and Republican parties, is that political parties themselves can become resistance movements with system-changing agendas. Yet another argument for electoral engagement is that liberal Presidents can be pushed more easily than conservative ones to make what French eco-Marxist theorist Andre Gorz called "radical reforms"; that is, reforms which are not system-changing, but are wedges that movements can use to create transformation. Right-wing universalizing movements have been more committed and effective than Left universalizers in using electoral political means to advance their ends, leading in 2016 to the election of President Trump.
