Posted on 06/06/2002 4:08:52 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
Ask any liberal to identify the force in American politics most intent on destroying progressive prospects and causes and you're sure to hear that it's the Bush administration or the Republican right or some such reactionary power. Let me gently suggest, however, that a very different force has wormed its way onto this list, and may indeed be right at the top: the Green Party.
There's something so very pure about the Greens' destructiveness. The Republican right, after all, isn't committed to stamping out liberalism purely as an end in itself; it is also a means to advance its own agenda of more power and wealth to the powerful and wealthy. When the Greens run a candidate against a Democrat, however, neither their campaign nor the effect of their campaign advances their agenda one whit. Their goal is simply to defeat Democrats, even the most liberal Democrats. Especially the most liberal Democrats.
Consider the appalling farce now unfolding in Minnesota, where the Greens recently endorsed a candidate to run against Paul Wellstone. As you may have heard, the two-term Democratic senator is in the race of his life against Republican challenger Norm Coleman, and many political handicappers think that this is the contest that will decide which party will control the next Senate. As you may also have heard, Wellstone is the most unflaggingly progressive member of the Senate, a dynamo who can be counted on not just to vote right, but to knock himself out for such otherwise unchampioned causes as single-payer health insurance and workers' rights in the third world. He was elected by an alliance of enviros, peaceniks, unionists, et. al., which he organized and has since nurtured into the only genuine statewide left-liberal grass-roots organization in the land. In short, Wellstone is the single most effective proponent of lower-case-g green politics in America.
All in all, a perfect target for the Green Party! When delegates arrived at their state convention last month, some wanted to teach Wellstone a lesson for having voted to authorize a military response to the 9-11 assault. Others were rankled that the Wellstone camp had endeavored mightily to keep them from running a candidate against him. (Da noive!) As a result, Green spokeswoman Holle Brian told The Progressive's Ruth Conniff, "People came to the convention with the goal of endorsing a candidate come hell or high water."
But they hadn't come to the convention with a candidate. Demand-side politics demanded one, however, so they nominated Ed "Eagle Man" McGaa. Eagle Man "was not familiar to a majority" of delegates, Brian Kaller, co-editor of the Greens' Minnesota newspaper, told Marc Cooper in the Los Angeles Times. "But there were at least some people from the Native American community who ... vouched for him. ... He is a member of a historically disenfranchised people. He's a feminist. And an environmentalist." What he's not, the Greens were to discover just after the convention, is an opponent of the war on terrorism. McGaa supports the Wellstone position on this question, though the Greens call this position the very basis of their challenge to Wellstone.
What could possibly explain this idiocy? Natural selection? Ever since Wellstone built the most vibrant left-leaning organization in the nation, any Minnesota progressive with the intellect to tie his shoes has been a Democrat -- leaving the Greens with the sandaled, the shoeless, and the slow. This could just be some Minnesota exceptionalism.
But it's not.
The race against Wellstone, in fact, is not an exception to Green strategy, but its quintessence. Already the Greens have tipped congressional races to the Republicans in Michigan and New Mexico, and there was that unfortunate outcome of the presidential race about 18 months ago. In fairness, Ralph Nader warned us then that even a Democrat who brilliantly advanced liberal causes would merit Green opposition. When asked at the June 2000 Green National Convention to name three things he liked about America, for instance, Nader listed Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman of California as thing number two. But when David Moberg of In These Times interviewed Nader that October, the candidate said that come 2002, he'd unhesitatingly back a Green against Waxman. Nader added, however, that the Greens would focus chiefly on the close races. Where the Democrats "are winning 51 [percent]-to-49 percent," he said, "we're going to go in and beat them with Green votes. They've got to lose people, whether they're good or bad."
Even Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold? Moberg asked. Even Paul Wellstone? "That's the burden they're going to have to pay for letting their party go astray," Nader answered. "It's too bad."
Indeed, and not just for Wellstone should he lose. Workers in Chinese labor camps, Africans dying of AIDS, homeless children on the streets of St. Paul would all pay a price for this piece of Green folly. But then the Greens have always believed that they are charting the true progressive course, no matter the damage they may do to the actual progressive cause.
Beware this party. At the heart of Green politics is a novel -- and ruthless -- ethic: The means justify the end.
Now you know why I say: "I Like RALPH!!!"
It couldn't happen to a better bunch.
Neither of these factions has much respect for anybody's viewpoint if it does not coincide with their own. Awfully hard to keep up a dialogue that has any civil conclusion then.
LOL! (Let 'em stew in their own ignorance.)
"I will not speak his name," hissed Democratic spin man James Carville. "I'm going to shun him. And any good Democrat, any good progressive, ought to do the same thing."
They don't get all the blame. Don't forget that the Washington State Republican Party held back money from that campaign ($1 million, if I recall, held back from a race lost by 1,000 votes!) in order to finance a move of party HQ from the Southcenter area down to Olympia.
Someday we'll overturn this "leadership" that seems to have a permanent lock on the party.
I believe that my strength is that I will be the strongest opponent to combat the two major party candidates. Except for education level, their backgrounds are totally opposite of mine. For this unusual time span in our history, they are both very, very vulnerable. I can write and I can speak. I can hurt them and from my warrior past, and some strong advisors, I know where to attack their weaknesses. People are now uniquely patriotic. If you wear a flight jacket, they come up and touch it. They follow you out of theaters asking respectful questions and thank you for your service unlike the past. Governor Ventura has well demonstrated that a particular, unique and memorable candidate can defeat major party prospects who bear the same tired Good ol' Boy faces with the same materialistic 'easy issue' crime/education/no taxes rhetoric. Governor Ventura has also demonstrated that a special candidate can put his party and office on the world map. If the Green Party can find an individual, with more qualifications than I, I will readily support him or her. My books are not a bad life to go back to.
Whatever, I hope that the Greens are going into this race with the philosophy that you can win it with the right candidate and not let party politics diffuse your selection. An entire world is at stake. A Green Senator can turn the entire Nation the way the numbers in the senate stack up. It is highly important who you select.
deal with it..
You know I came back to the fold hoping something had changed. That maybe the dems had learned the hard way you can't ignore labor and environmentalists forever and expect left support. Faux DLC "liberalism" might have worked in the early 90's but if you go around in camoflague long enough don't be suprised when you get mistaken for well...a Bush.
The Greens have to take certain percentages in different states to stay alive and keep party status. There is a more complex game plan here than ousting Waxman or Wellstone, but I'm sick of trying to explain real world politics, staying on ballots, securing matching funds and another of other real considerations of which minor party effects will not go away no matter how much you chant "Nader bahhhhhhhhhhd" to a bunch of mouthbreathing fools that hold beliefs absolutely 180 from what their political party supports and I could give a damn what mod dems think.
Get pissed, prepare to keep getting pissed. The green party was nothing when the Dems stood for something, now it's just the party that doesn't want to ban abortion and only kowtows to the religious right for presidential elections where the dems get to act like the moral strongarm on Hollywood.
Throw ANWR in my face, I dare you. There was an administration that opened up large areas of northern Alaska for drilling and it's not the one that just tried and failed.
I always figured that most democrats weren't horribly happy with the leadership and it's DLC strategy. That maybe 2k was a wake up call. I was wrong, it's swing voters that are the audience. The disaffected Perotistas, (of which Nader did one hell of alot better than Buchanan at scraping up even though Buchanan was reform party)
You say "Nader makes you sick"? Fu*king Al Gore makes me want to vomit and watching supposedly progressive people stump for him makes me feel like slitting my wrists. I've about hit the point where helping throw elections until the dems are a footnote in history like the bull-moose party, sounds pretty damn good. I didn't get that way listening to Nader, I got it by listening to the Gorestapo until I have come to hate you people worse than republicans. At least republicans don't bitch about people who actually want change, instead of just talking about it and then voting for the party that will take them for granted while courting the right with compromise.
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved
Yup! It sounds pretty damn good to me too.
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