Communists in the U.S.

[ipollux]

What's the closest candidate to a communist the U.S. has had? And how big (or small) is the communist movement in America?

[GPDP]

Historically? Probably Eugene V. Debs. Or do you mean someone out of the two mainstream parties?

As for the movement... it's pretty small right now. But we'll see how things go later on in the next few years.

[DancingLarry]

For many years the CPUSA ran its own candidates for president, From WIlliam Z. Foster to Earl Browder, to Gus Hall. The US SWP does the same to this day. Of course they've never gotten much in the way of votes, I'm sure Debs in 1912 still stands as the high-water mark as a genuinely leftist presidential candidate in the US. What might strike some as odd is that Debs's best state performance that year was about 12% of the vote in Oklahoma, which is today a bedrock solid right-wing state, but in the early 20th century was probably the most left-leaning state in the nation.

[Dros]

Communists in the United States don't participate in elections.

[Red October]

Communists in the United States don't participate in elections.

Well...real communists don't, but many "communists" do.