California dreamin': third-party activists get going in the Golden State.

• Author: Nichols, John

David Lysy will cast his first-ever vote for President this November. But if the contest shapes up as the pundits are predicting, the nineteen-years-old freshman at Dartmouth College will not be voting with much enthusiasm.

"When I think of choosing between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, the word `apathy' comes to mind," says Lysy, a religion student who devotes much of his free time to anti-military activism. "If it's a Clinton-Dole race, a lot of people will just say, `Why bother?"'

Like many progressives around the country, Lysy is uninspired by the prospect of a Presidential vote that pits a conservative Democrat with close ties to Wall Street against a conservative Republican with close ties to Wall Street. With varying degrees of expectation and enthusiasm, some are searching for an alternative.

"I'd be a lot happier if Ralph Nader or someone else with some real progressive credentials ran," says Lysy. "Then, at least, I'd have a chance to vote for something I believe in."

A growing number of progressives are attaching themselves to the "anti-candidacy" of consumer activist Nader, who for several months has flirted with the prospect of launching a national campaign using the ballot lines of Green and progressive third parties around the country. Others have given their support to a reenergized Socialist Party, while still others continue to search the political wilderness for some sign of light.

As the 1996 Presidential contest moves into high gear, progressives are clearly torn over the question of whether to resign themselves to backing Clinton or to build an alternative on the still shaky ground of third-party or independent politics.

Among those progressives who cannot abide Clinton, the search for a candidate they can believe in takes on new urgency as the major-party nominating process gives every indication of producing a pair of candidates who are united in their support for NAFTA, GATT, weakened environmental and consumer protections, and a downsized federal government--with the exception of the military, and punitive welfare reform.

"The main philosophy now in both major parties is that of Ayn Rand--that altruism is foolish, that everyone should be out for themselves and no one else," says former Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeidler, a Socialist and longtime proponent of independent left politics. "Gingrich has seized the whole structure of the country and is bringing it to destruction, and the Democrats just don't seem to have the direction or the energy it takes to swing back." Zeidler calls the dilemma "a choice between the eviler of two lessers."

Through much of 1995, progressives who wanted an alternative to Clinton and the Republicans looked to Jesse Jackson, who threatened to challenge the President in either the Democratic primaries or as an independent. By the fall, however, it was clear that Jackson had not made the moves necessary to launch a campaign.

Just when it seemed certain that no "name" progressive would challenge Clinton, Nader stunned observers by allowing his name to be entered in the Presidential primary of the California Green Party. Though he had long disavowed any interest in entering the 1996 race, Nader's simmering discontent with Clinton boiled over in October, when the President signed legislation that eliminated the national fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit.

Nader said the move would lead to the "killing and injuring of tens of thousands of people a year," and he wondered aloud in interviews about whether Clinton wasn't "just a Republican President" in Democrat's clothing.

Supporters...