The Green Party and the Democrats: Fit to be tied

Good article!

Thanks Greenhouse/Man/Global (or is that Kevin?)!

Maybe the Greens who voted for Nader and thus against Gore will take the message to heart and do a better job next time.

The Green Party is somewhat like the Citizens party of the early 1980's. Lots of ideology, but no salesmanship. The Green Party may be correct in it's analysis of the environmental problems the Earth is heading towards, but most people don't have the kind of scientific understanding to appreciate it.

It's likely that the Democratic Party will co-opt some of the Green Party message, but not the whole ideological construct. People don't get elected by promising the voters less than that which the other side offers. Besides, the environmental movement has been traditionally an elitest movement, with it's ranks filled by educated people for whom earning a living is not very difficult. When one who can't earn enough to buy bread or pay rent, one is unlikely to worry about air pollution. Besides, those lacking the perspective of a university education are simply not going to appreciate the effects of individual actions upon the environment.

My feeling is that both national parties have a similar underlying point of view, which is that the economy should continue to grow, etc. The major difference between the two is how to divide the production amongest the people. The Republicans have traditiionally been the party of business, (including small business and farmers) and the Democrats have leaned toward the workers (and their unions). Neither party is willing to consider the possibility of reducing material consumption and the long term damage which results. Neither side wants to talk seriously about the results of continued population growth, although there are many signs of it's impacts, such as urban sprawl.

I don't see things changing until some serious problem arrives in such a way that the whole ball of wax must be melted down and reformed to solve the problem. Maybe the results of Bush's changes will produce such a situation.....

May we live in interesting times.

Unfortunately, you and the author share a common misconception. Don't feel too bad, many people share this misconception.

Since so many people have bought into the 2 party system, it seems that any 3rd party is viewed as a knock off of one of those parties, and each vote for said 3rd party is a vote that would have otherwise gone to that major party.

That is completely false.

If the Democratic Party actually represented the Green Ideals, the Green Party would not exist. It is because the Democrats don't represent those ideals that the Green Party does exist. The Greens are not stealing votes from the Democrats, the Democrats are giving votes to the Greens. Then the Democrats are upset that they can't steal them back.

The same is true with regards to the Republican and Libertarian parties, but even more so. If one can make a case that Greens are disillusioned Democrats, then Libertarians are even more disillusioned Republicans. The distance between the Reps and the Libs is greater than the distance between the Dems and the Greens. But every time a Republican loses by a margin smaller than the Libertarian vote, the blame goes to the Libertarians for being traitorous to their ideology. Sorry, not true.

The members of the two major parties are in blinders for not seeing that.

Maybe the real point of the dilemma the Dems and the Greens are confronting is that using the political system to accomplish real change in the United States is hopeless, that Americans are just going to make war and kick foreign butts under GOP auspices forever.

Maybe the real point of the dilemma the Greens and the Libertarians are confronting is that using the political system to accomplish real change in the United States is hopeless, that Americans are just going to make war and kick foreign butts under Democratic and Republican auspices forever.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

IF VOTING COULD CHANGE ANYTHING IT WOULD BE ILLEGAL.

Many liberals have been urging Greens to support a Kucinich or Dean candidacy. Let me note now that Dean's positions on issues are simply not in accordance with Green Party values, and that many Green Party state organizations would lose coveted ballot status if they declined to field a Green Party candidate. It seem easy for Democrats to say that our party should endorse their candidates. Their not at risk of losing ballot status even when their members vote for Republicans, as so very many such members (as in Florida) seem all too willing to do.

Regarding now the suggestion put forth by many that we should support Kucinich or run a 'conditional' campaign to seek concessions from the Democratic Party:

Forget it. I couldn't possibly support our bolting the Greens to support yet another Trojan Horse for the Democrats any more than I could support the Rensenbrink-Sevigny plan. For those who would accuse us of being 'spoilers' or suggest that we should devote more time to building another party than to the one party that matters, I say this:

I could never, never, never support a Green endorsement of any presidential candidate running under the Democratic Party banner. Let Kucinich abandon the party that has consistently betrayed him and wage his campaign from within the Green Party. Those interests presently controlling the Democratic Party's direction and destiny shall never permit a Kucinich candidacy to survive.

Being realistic means understanding that the 'front-loaded' Democratic primary season is intended directly to prevent any candidacy such as that of Kucinich from ever becoming a threat to the controlling interests.

Kucinich has neither the funding nor the grass-roots organizational framework that will allow him to become even a credible 'dark horse' within the Democratic Party presidential race. He will fail, and the candidacies of Mosely-Braun and Sharpton shall fail as well. They shall fail because they were fated to fail from the start. This thing is fixed. Not one of these three candidates can possibly counter the full weight of those established Democratic Party machines in each and every state that shall be brought to bear, poised against them. The Democratic Party's own internal structure, together with the very design of the primary process, has already disqualified their candidacies.

So, yes, let us therefore please BE realistic. The Democratic Party will advance as its party's own candidate he who can best promote the realpolitik interests of its financial backers. The party's nominee shall persist in that party's right-ward trend. Forget attempts at influencing that party's direction. Progressives have tried and failed at that for more than thirty years.

That is why we created the Greens. The single most important and vital thing for Greens to continue doing is building the party, because it is THIS party- not any single other party- that is humanity's final and last chance to stop the creeping fascism that the Democratic Party has quite knowingly become complicit in implementing. The Democratic Party has had its chance to prove its worth. The Democratic Party had the numbers in the Senate to prevent Bush from ever securing the White House, and they failed. The Democratic Party had the numbers in the Senate to prevent Bush from ever having John Ashcroft as his Attorney General, and they failed. The Democratic Party had the numbers in the Senate to prevent Bush from ever having Gale Norton on his Cabinet, and they failed. The Democratic Party had the numbers in the Senate to prevent the Patriot Act from being passed, and they failed. The Democratic Party had the numbers in the Senate to prevent Bush from eviscerating environmental regulations, and they failed. The Democratic Party had the numbers in the Senate to prevent a tax give-away to the rich, and they failed. The Democratic Party had the numbers in the Senate to prevent a neo-colonial war with Iraq, and they failed.

They failed because they wanted to fail. They failed because they were paid to fail. They failed because their puppeteers told them to fail. If Greens support the Democrats in 2004, then the Greens will fail. We will fail because we will thereby lend our support and endorsement to the failure to challenge neo-conservative policy. We will fail because we shall thusly be lending our tacit support to fascism with a softer face. We will fail to be relevant. We will fail to be meaningful. We will fail to be the party that I joined. We will fail to become a party that is at all worth supporting.

The Democratic Party has had opportunities after golden opportunities to demonstrate that a Green challenge would be both counterproductive and superfluous, and they have failed. They have failed and betrayed their progressive base for more than thirty years, and have amply demonstrated a strong desire to fail again. This did not have to be the case. It wasn't necessary for this to be the case. The Democratic Party could easily have deactivated the threat of a Green Party challenge. They merely had to pretend to be human. They didn't do that. They failed.

I have been a great fan of the Lesbian Feminist thealogian, Dr. Sonia Johnson, now for many years- and it was with an eco-feminist ecosophy such as hers in mind that I became involved in the Green movement in the first place. I rather like what this pyromantic author had to say re: this-

'Some people were shocked that I didn't vote in the 1988 election. I was shocked that they did. The day after, I overheard a conversation on a plane in which one man was lamenting to the other: 'It seems to me that we never have a decent candidate any more, that we have to vote for the lesser of two evils every time. I can't understand it.' If he had realized that by voting for the lesser of two evils, he helped create a world in which he would always have to vote for the lesser of two evils; if he had understood that by voting for evil at all, even if for a lesser evil, he was still voting for evil, and that since everyone who voted, voted for evil- either a lesser or greater one- surely there was no possible way to get anything but evil; if he had understood that what he was doing every moment of his life was determining future moments, he would have been shocked to see his collusion in the deteriorating political situation that he deplored. We cannot compromise our integrity and have a reality with integrity anymore than we can have peace by waging war.'

Voting evil encourages evil, and generates evil for years to come. Evil begets evil. As the first ecosophists of both the social and deep ecology movements had been inspired by the satyagrahi, so then am I. There can be no greater force on Earth than soul-force or conscience. I vote accordingly.

We're not the spoilers, and no one understanding the role of the Democrats in implementing Bush policies and proposals can seriously suggest that we have ever been spoilers. Indeed, no one is accusing us of being spoilers beyond those who want our party to disappear from the national stage, period, in any case. Let's not humor them.

You do like the Conservative and Liberal parties used to do in New York

Many states may permit that, Lloyd, but I believe the state of Massachusetts does not. I would ill advise such a thing in any case, any way, for reasons I noted.

What, a party can choose anyone it wants for a candidate except one or two people? Is that really MA law?

Any party may nominate anyone it chooses. A candidate may be nominated by more than one party. But take note of this provision:

'If a candidate shall receive the nomination of more than one party or more than one political designation for the same office, he may, by a writing delivered to the officer or board required by law to prepare the official ballot, direct in what order the several nominations or political designations shall be added to his name upon the official ballot, and such directions shall be followed by such officer or board.'

In other words, a Democratic candidate would in all likelihood ensure that the Green designation is the last designation listed- again, endangering our ballot status. Of course, if the Greens nominated a Democratic presidential candidate, I would understand their party to be no less useless and corrupt than the Democrats.