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The Greens: still worse than worthless
If there is one thing I cannot stand about the left, it is the attitude of sniveling righteousness with which various of our activists pick apart our candidates for deviations from the liberal Canon of Approved Positions. The glass is never half full, but always half empty, and the outrage flows the more freely the more likely a Democrat seems to win. Waiting in the wings, of course, is that cesspool of disaffected liberals unwilling to ever compromise on anything – the Green Party, untainted as it is by the actual exercise of power. Politics, in that small spectrum of the populace, is not the art of compromise; it is the craft of sticking ever harder to one's own positions, blissfully disregarding the question of whether or not majorities will ever be found to coalesce around them. Who needs compromise when you can bask in your own purity, secure in the knowledge that you'll never be called upon to legislate?
One would think that after the debacle of 2000, the Greens would have slunk away in shame and horror over the atrocities they helped make possible. But that would be disregarding the quasi-evangelical desire they have for bellowing their moral superiority from every available rooftop.
Here in New York, in a testament perhaps to the pragmatism that is the virtue of our state, the Greens are piteously irrelevant, even if they insist on running a full slate of candidates. For example, because Eliot Spitzer is too right-wing for their refined tastes, they're running some crusty non-entity in opposition, always on the look-out to gaining a statewide line. I'd suggest to anyone concerned about Eliot's bona fides a brief glance at a right-wing blog, where his election is the subject of despair bordering on apoplexy.
Further afield, the picture is more grim. Concretely, in a year when we have a chance to regain the Senate and finally throw a wrench in the gears of the most radical administration to ever lay waste this country, the Greens are running candidates in two races that promise to be close: Pennsylvania and Washington. In Pennsylvania, Bob Casey now has a Green to contend with to his left; said Green is on the ballot only because of republican support. The alternative to Casey is not that Green – it is Rick Santorum.
In Washington, the place where statewide elections are decided by a few hundred votes, the Greens are self-consciously setting themselves up as spoilers to deny Maria Cantwell another term. From a Green blog:
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a story about Aaron Dixon's run for US Senate. The article says there is a chance that his run could throw the election to the Republican nominee.
Should this matter to Greens? Is using the power to turn an election to one party or another legitimate? Is it acceptable to use the limited power the system allows us to create conditions unfavorable to Democrats if Republicans also benefit?
Would many of us hesitate for a moment if the party being hurt were the Republicans? Of course not. So, what is needed is for more Greens to recognize that the Democratic Party is as unlikely to speak for what we value as Republicans.
Yes, because the Democrats – even in the age of Alito, Iraq, New Source Review, Katrina, and so on and so forth – are just not good enough. Why accept a lawmaker who you may agree with only 80% of the time when you can help elect one who will not vote your way at all?
It's time to call the Greens what they are: shameless tools of the status quo. They are worse than worthless: they are useful idiots helping advance the agenda of the radical right. The worst part is that they know this full well. A vote for a Green, in any race, anywhere, is a vote for more of what they brought us back in 2000. And we'll just have to live with that, because in the purity-driven universe of Green politics, the only thing that matters is the ability to be above it all on the sidelines, fiddling merrily as the country burns.
Greens
I have no problem with Practical Greens. They tend to accept the fact they are a third party and look for opportunities where there is not chance to further aid the Republicans.
Then there are the Purist Greens. They are the ones you are talking about. And they aided and abetted Bush's coup in 2000, despite their claims otherwise. And, if they are running in close elections in this day and age, they are really mere collaborators with the Republicans.
I welcome working with Greens who get the fact that unity is needed in most circumstances. There are indeed some communities where their candidates are perfectly viable candidates and more power to them. But since 2000 the Purist Green line is indeed vile. It is vile because it really does benefit no one but the right wing.
The Problem with the Greens
The real problem with the Greens is they have absolutely no local support anywhere. I would respect their party if they could get anyone elected to the city council of liberal cities like New York, Boston, and San Francisco. Instead, they always run state wide candidates or national candidates for sheer publicity. These kinds of tactics are so detrimental to a third party and will never reap any real rewards. Throughout American history third parties have come and gone, but the ones that made an impact started as regional phenomenons.
If the Greens really wanted to make a difference they would start at the bottom. Create a base of real support and look to branch out from there. I would commend their party if they did that.
Instead, the Greens are still obsessed with superficial publicity and it is why they run laughable candidates in Statewide and National election. I like Ralph Nader but even he has become so self-righteous it’s hard to listen to him anymore.
The Greens either need to do the hard leg work and create local support or get out. There goals in the next 10 years should be to have their people in city councils and state legislatures and then after that they can look towards congress and governorships.
San Francisco
There are several Greens on the city council in San Francisco, where Matt Gonzales almost won the mayors race despote being outspent by his Dem?Repub opponent 10-1, and it many other Northern CA cities.
New York is more difficult, where city council districts are similar in size to Congressional districts, and take lots of money to win. Greens are making inroads on local level in WI, PA, CA, NM, OR, and even upstate (New Paltz, for example, where the village council is a green majority, and Jason West has done more to advance the cause of gay marriage in NY state than all dems combined.)
Largely agree
I do think Greens can have an impact in SOME regions on a local level. It is absurd, however, to aim for Senate in any state except, maybe, Vermony or for President ever. Doing so largely hurts the very causes Greens support.
oh good, more Green bashing
I find these repetitive invective anti-Green screeds to be less than worthless.
Mole's earlier post about continued corruption in the Brooklyn Machine depsite all of your best efforts is only one of the many reasons we need a viable local party on the left - the one party system in Brooklyn has got to go.
I suppose I'm one of Mole's 'Practical Greens'. I cast a vote in the 2004 National Convention for David Cobb, narrowly keeping Nader off the Green ballot, and in one move ending an effective campaign for him. The fact that democrats for two decades continue to nominate national candidates who triangulate themselves into a corner is not the fault of the Greens (and it doesnlt look like 2008 will be any different). You can't blame Greens for 2004 - that blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Democrats blank check rubber stamp policies in the house and senate on the war.
Statewide, it's the Democrats who put the laws into place requiring 50,000 votes in the Governor's race for ballot status. Ballot status would have given us the opportuinity to put Chris Owens on the ballot in November, and there is nothing more important to NY Greens than getting our ballot status back. Gloria Mattera is one of a very small list of local candidates who are fighting to keep Ratner's monstrocity out of our community, a list that does not include any statewide Dems on the ballot in November. Yes, we could easily get the 50K votes for Spitzer, and I think that most Greens, even the purists, will agree that he'll be a huge improvement over Pataki. However, getting 50,000 votes for Spitzer will hardly be a true test of our support statewide, and I think there is value in a race that is clearly already over, to injecting Greeen values into the race. I think it will be a true tragedy if we begin to execute criminals in New York again, and continue to prosecute under the draconian Rockefeller Drug laws, and Spitzer must be challenged on this, among other things.
As for PA, the issue is complicated. Of course we need to get rid of Santorum, and in a close race, were I a PA resident, I might vote for Casey. However, Casey is a social conservative who would have had difficulty getting elected as a Republican in liberal New York, and would have been laughed out of the state had he tried to run as a pro-life dem, and yet your venom is all for the Green, rather than PA dems who owould send a pro-life candidate to the Senate to help rubber stamp more of Bush's judges. Santorum's dirty tricks in trying to get the enemy of his enemy on the ballot obscures the fact that ballot access laws in PA are ridiculous, when 3rd party candidates need to get 33 times as many sigs as the two major parties. And don't give me the bullshit that the country was founded as a two party system, blah, blah. The system is a two party system b/c the two major parties, who are losing ground every year to independents and 3rd parties in registration (soon independents will be a plurality), are desperate to hang onto power, at the expense of democratic process.
We on the left, whether Green or progressive Dems, are fighting uphill battles. We obviously have differing stategies, but the goals are not that different. Negative attacks on those of us who share your values are unhelpful and divisive, and certainly don't make those of us who have decided to fight from the outside want to come back into the fold.
With all due respect...
I do believe that Al Gore would have been one of the most environmental Presidents ever and Greens should have gotten behind him.
As to Democratic presidential nominees in general, although I have to admit my first choices never make it to the final ticket, we have to consider the fact that the most Green/progressive candidates won't play in many states, making it a near certainty that Dems will only win nationally with moderates. I do think the populist approach being taken by Dems. in Montana should be a model for national Dems in the future since it seems to work pretty damned well.
I agree with Carroll above. Greens working on local levels can do wonders. It is a far worse strategy for them to work against Dems on the state and national levels because Greens are almost certainly going to lose and will probably throw more elections to Repubs in the process. Meanwhile, progressive Dems could sure use some of those Greens voting in Dem primaries...which they can't do if they are Greens. I think more progressives would make it if Greens registered Dem.
But I believe we have discussed this before.
Gore now vs. Gore then
Gore today does note equate with Gore 2000. Clinton/Gore was a disaster on the environment for 8 years, from Kyoto to CAFE standards to Clinton's pathetic last minute lame duck maesures that he knew were all rolled back by Bush. Bush is worse, sure, but I think your initial premise is unproved, at best.
That being said, I do believe that Gore has managed to have something of a conversion, and I'm not beyond giving the man a 2nd chance, but not if he once again buddies himself up with the corporate end of the party to get the nomination in 2008.
Part of the Conversion is yours
I see no obvious discrepancy between Gore then and now. I have not been surprised in the slightest that he has become who he is now. Of course there are some differences. It is easier to play this role when you are not part of the power structure. In fact, every time Gore broached wider subjects on the environment in 2000 he was ridiculed in the media. Secondly, I think back in 2000 there was still some hope of reason within the Republican Party, the party that STARTED environmentalism. Gore realized as Bush prepared for a completely insane invasion of Iraq that reasoning with the Republican party as it is today is impossible, so he chose to come out swinging. I heard his first post-2000 coup speech just before the invasion and it was an excellent outline of why we should NOT go to war. Everything he said was proven correct.
His second post-2000 speech was on global warming and was, in essence, the first draft of what became his movie. Excellent speech...it even impressed a Green I saw it with!
But Gore has not gone through any radical change. I think he did change earlier in his career from a typical Southern Dem to his own man, but by 2000 he already was this much of an advocate for diplomacy and the environment. But his handlers were too timid and the media too well trained by the Republicans for his best side to be as noticable as it should have.
But...and here is where I lean the same way Bouldin does...I have a very hard time forgiving the Greens for not seeing the disaster they were participating in in 2000. So much could have been avoided then had we united against Bush.
yes
and yes, we have discussed all of this before, which is why Bouldin's hateful screed is all the more worthless and uproductive
Feh.
Hateful? Cost us two Senate seats, and you'll really find out what hateful looks like. The greens just do not learn, which is why they need to be opposed no matter where they show themselves. They're foot soldiers of the real enemy, whether they like it or not.
Senate
funny you mention the senate, there are two senators who were elected in 2000 on razor thin margins, Ask Maria Cantwell or Debbie Stabenow if they would be in the senate now if they didn't get thousands of votes of erstwhile non-voters who would not have come to the polls except to vote for Nader.
Yeah right...
...and I suppose the empirical evidence for that is what, the well-known pragmatism and strategic thinking of the average greenie? Or is the lesson here "Nader giveth, and Nader taketh away?" You gave us Cantwell, as you seem to believe, so now you can take her away - because the Rs have what, become so much more acceptable? What is it going to take for you to show some solidarity and stop running candidates in swing states? Concentration camps?
For the record, there is little if any empirical evidence that Nader brought new people to the polls. He cannibalized 70% of his votes from the Democrats. End of story.
Sorry
Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of the Green party are destroying our country. Please explain to me how accepting campaign workers and cash from the Republican Party in a close race doesn't make the Greens their allies. Has it occurred to you that the Republicans wouldn't be giving cash and campaign work if they didn't consider the Greens their allies, or else their useful fools?
And "[b]allot status would have given us the opportuinity to put Chris Owens on the ballot in November" ? Had you been able to do so, I doubt that Chris would have accepted. You really don't get the concept of party unity, do you? Take a look at Connecticut, my dear. Joe Lieberman, or political suicide in slow motion, is what happens to candidates who decide that their own individual political fate is more important than their party's collective strength. But of course if you understood that, you'd be a progressive Democrat, not a Green. Chris is a progressive Democrat, and he'll be back, stronger and with more backing for having absorbed this loss, rather than insisting on a "do-over".
Greens
For all you Green Party lovers (another mostly white group espousing, but not truly practicing equality), here's a great example of how ridiculous you are:
"GOP Donors Funded Entire PA Green Party Drive" & here's the link:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001256.php
(i didn't link the headline because the formatting looked suspect, so copy and paste the url & you'll find the article)...
Typical...
All of this chit-chat about how the greenies are supposedly worthwhile founders on several rocks.
Re: Spitzer and the death penalty: So what? It hasn't been carried out in years, so for all intents and purposes, this state does not have it. Talk about a completely academic point, and besides, the greenies would have run someone no matter how much they agree with Eliot. This because they want their ballot line to play spoiler in the future.
Re: Casey, again, so what? Is he a vast improvement over Santorum? Yes. Will he vote to make Reid Majority Leader? Yes. Will that derail the Bush agenda? Hell yes. That's the calculus here - and what about Washington State and Cantwell? What's the excuse there?
Re: SFO greenies, again, so what? What have they done that outweighs the catastrophic damage done by Ralph Nader in 2000? So you voted against Nader in 2004 - BFD. Bush is in office because of you - so how do you like dem apples, hmmm?
Re: the voting system: it is what it is. Don't like it? Fine, work to change it. You'll need to hold constitutional conventions ain all fifty states, plus federal, because the first-past-the-post system is mandated by state constitutions to which the federal document makes reference, but again, the greenies haven't done any work on that, have they? And why is this essentially process argument license to split the anti-republican vote? Huh? Haven't you people had enough yet?
The green party exists because some on the left just can't bear to realize that politics is about power and majorities. If you want to "make a statement", buy a composition book. Meanwhile, the country is being run by extremists, and they laugh at your "statement". End of story.
The Green Party's problem
The Green Party's problem is the same as other independent parties have had, which is lack of ideological consistency among its members. Does anyone here remember the Reform Party? This was the party built on the success of Ross Perot's two presidential campaigns. The Reform Party had a chance to be a true third party nationally, it had ballot access due to the votes Perot got, it had chapters formed across the country. There was a chance to really build something there, but the problem was that the Reform Party members couldn't get in a room and agree on much of anything once Perot was out of the picture. You had liberals, conservatives, libertarians all calling themselves Reform Party members even though they agreed on almost nothing. I knew liberal Reform Party members who were aghast in 2000 when their party nominated Pat Buchanan, but thats what happens when a party doesn't identify itself well ideologically-- you have other people swoop in and do it for you.
The Green Party has liberal members, it has libertarian/conservative members, seemingly anybody who is environmental in some way can get in the tent there. You can call yourself an "environmentalist" as easy as you can call yourself a "reformer" I think as long as the Greens nominate celebrities like Malachy McCourt and not serious lawmakers, and attempt to be all things to all people, they risk suffering the same fate as the Reform Party. A third party can't just cater to EVERYONE who wants a third party. Reform Party ended up being "generic third party", and now Green Party is the same thing. Ralph Nader wasn't even a member of the Green Party, he specifically refused to join because he knew the party's goals and ideals weren't well defined and changed with whoever is involved. Yet they nominated him anyway. Its like the Greens were saying, "we'll get an identity later, just let us got on the ballot first" It isn't supposed to work that way.
Honestly, at this point when
Honestly, at this point when I hear someone is a Green I get the same nauseous feeling I have when I learn that someone voted for Bush.
Green, you said "Funny how we never hear Republicans complain about how Perot gave two elections to Clinton, who never got close to a majority of the vote."
They had little cause to complain since the nation prospered and some of their pet policies were enacted. We Democrats complain about Nader because of his cynical campaign rhetoric (Gore=Bush)and because we have all suffered (not to mention the 100,000+ dead and counting) under the lunatic administration you helped elect.
"Perot's less 2nd run in '96 still garnered double what Nader got in 2000, and yet somehow Nader is a spoiler and Perot is just a kook."
No, we think Nader is a spoiler AND a kook. When he resurfaced for the 2004 race the last traces of doubt about his kookiness evaporated. He's a certifiable, detestable egotistical nut.
I used to feel some kinship with the Greens but the cynical politics of Nader's ego, the repeated eagerness to serve as Republican tool and spoiler in important races (lately aiding and abetting Santorum in PA), the stubborn prima donna (clean hands always)approach to the what is a tough game of hard-won compromise, along with a wanton disregard for the colossal evil they have enabled, have made the Greens radioactive for me and many others. In any place that Greens aid the election of radical rightwingers over moderate Democrats they will incur the eternal enmity of the people they hurt.
So many Greens are white men of priveleged background who are largely insulated from the grim reality of the policies they enable. The Lenninist philosophy of "the worse the better" is too common among these folks. I for one can't stand that sort of politics -- grew out of it as an undergrad. I wish that the Greens would begin to grow up by encouraging their Republican-backed candidate to drop out of the PA Senate race. That would at least show that they have some concern for the common good -- and not just for counterproductive gestures.
If only the Greens were
If only the Greens were doing something important, like blogging their opinions back and forth with a small group of friends.
Heh, heh...
Well, for the record, this blog gets read. I know that at least three candidates vying for the CD-11 race read our coverage of that race and through this blog I have recruited several new activists to attend local organizations and become more involved. We also covered the potential arson-developer link months before the New York Magazine covered it, and got hundreds of reads from all over.
So, funny though your swipe is, Daily Gotham does have a presence. And all of us have political lives outside this site as well.
Feh...
...yet another disgruntled adherent of a certain primary campaign. I'll have to address these people at some point, it seems.
Any thoughts on the Green party Senate Candidate in CT
Could R. Ferruci throw Lieberman's way?