Here’s a story that you won’t see in the corporate media: The Green Party is growing—getting bigger, stronger and better-organized in every election cycle. Even after the infamous 2000 presidential election, when the media and Democrats blamed us for Bush’s selection and ignored the blatantly illegal and biased behavior of Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris and a Republican Supreme Court majority,… return to article
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Reader Comments (6)Page 1 of 1 pagesHere is the major problem: “In the battleground states that will decide the election, we understand if you won’t vote for our ticket this time.” This completely contradicts: “I am in no way suggesting that any one vote for John Kerry.” You are candidate for President who is endorsing another candidate? This is a lean to the right along with Kerry and Bush. The goal of the Green Party should be to educate the public and force the Demos to address the issues on the left. Instead, you have made an outright endorsement for John Kerry. How pathetic. The Democrats asked Ralph Nader not to run and apparently so have the Greens. Why don’t you just ask Bush not to run? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Ralph Nader made the Green Party in this country and now you are turning your backs on him to suck up to the Demos who in turn have been swallowed by the Republicans. Fuck You. I’m voting for Nader.
Posted by Mark Sporzynski on Jul 16, 2004 at 1:52 PM Here’s an idea for growing the Greens: Stop being so arrogant. Don’t run for President until you’ve captured a couple of Governorships. Don’t run for Governor of a state until you’ve captured a critical mass of seats in the state legislature as well as majorities in several city or county councils in the state. And… don’t forget the school boards.
Meanwhile, if you really want to be different than the Dems, don’t put party interests above the interests of people, earth, and animals. If even a single species is likely to go extinct if one candidate wins but not if the other candidate wins and Green Party participation in the election is likely to swing the results toward the candidate under whom the species would be extincted then, damn it, any truly “green” party would withdraw its own bid for power among people in deference to the interests of other species.
Posted by pattrice jones on Jul 16, 2004 at 11:32 PM I remain uncertain whether the Greens can be trusted. The German Greens, the major Green political party, has performed atrociously since it went into coalition government with the SPD. Greens backed the bombing in Yugoslavia, for example, and have sold out the welfare state by supporting Schroeder’s Agenda 2010. I can’t see anything different happening if the Greens became a force in the US or anywhere else.
Posted by James Paterson on Jul 17, 2004 at 11:35 PM Does InTheseTimes actually edit articles? Cobb says, “I am in no way suggesting that any one vote for John Kerry.” Yes you are, you freaking liar! Not only that, but the Green Party has played a major role in effectively sabotaging the foremost anti-war, anti-corporate challenge to the two-party system, Ralph Nader’s campaign. Cobb will get 50,000 votes and his message will not reach anyone outside of a small section of left-wing activists. Nader will get millions of votes and will reach millions of ordinary people who feel disgusted with the Democrats and the Republicans and are looking for an alternative. I wish the Greens had supported building this alternative rather than, along with the rest of the so-called “left”, jumping in bed with John Kerry and the Anybody But Bush crowd. Vote Nader!
Posted by Dan DiMaggio on Jul 18, 2004 at 7:58 AM Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Instead of insisting on abolition of the electoral
college and the adoption of instant runoff voting,
Cobb is temporizing with an pusillanimous “work
around” of not challenging “battleground states”.More emphasis should be put on educating the public
about the unfairness and bias in the Electoral
College whereby someone can win the popular vote
but lose the election. That seems to me to be the
first reform which needs to be accomplished.
Even my own supposedly “moderate Republican”
congressman in central Illinois came out for
abolishing the Electoral College years ago
As Matt Gonzalez, president of the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors, asked at the recent Green
convention, “When will we be allowed to vote for
whom we want? 2008? 2012?”Jim Senyszyn
Peoria, ILemail: jnsenyszyn@insightbb.com
Posted by Jim Senyszyn on Jul 20, 2004 at 10:02 PM Given the architecture of power under the deepening permanent “state of exception” (Giorgio Agamben) and its fall-out, progressives need to recognize two priorities, one medium-term, the other immediate: (1) Grow the Greens at the local level across North America wherever possible; (2) Defeat the forces represented by the Bush regime, one of the most destructive and dangerous in U. S. history. In working to assure a Bush defeat, we have to build what is commonly called a “popular front.” IT IS THE IMPERATIVE OF THIS DARK HOUR.
The U.S. Green Party is running some 350 candidates for local office. As of July 2004, 209 Greens hold elected office at local levels across the U.S. Build from that base, that is what is called grassroots. Cobb understands that. It’s not about winning the White House. Nor is it about a ‘celebrity left candidate.’ Green parties can reach out to people from all walks at the American ballot box who are fed up with the two war parties—but would not YET consider more radical politics.
Vote Green locally, across your state AND nationally—in what are deemed non-’battleground’ states in the electoral college ball game. As the Michigan Greens have suggested, vote your conscience for progressive change and the Nader/Camejo ticket as a second alternative —if that will not give Bush & Co. one up in the national sweepstakes. In all other ‘swing’ states, especially those like Florida, VOTE KERRY — that is the rational expedient at this juncture.
ACCEPT THE COMPROMISE THAT DEFEATING BUSH AND THE PEOPLE BEHIND HIM IS THE BOTTOM LINE ON NOV. 3rd FOR CONCERNED VOTERS FROM ALL CORNERS OF THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE. This tack is argued in an article well worth pondering, July 24, 2004 on ZNet: “An Open Letter to Progressives: Vote Kerry and Cobb,” http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=33&ItemID=5925
THINK RATIONALLY in this electoral college steeplechase. But ORGANIZE post-November to change the electoral college system, an absurd anachronism, as Jim stresses. Educate people thru LOCAL GREEN POLITICS to move further left, toward beginning to “regain the commons.”
If Americans are to build an indigenous Zapatismo from LA to Maine, a lot of lateral thinking on politics beyond the ballot box AND beyond the street is necessary. We need bottom-up organizing around vision like that projected by the Alliance for Freedom and Direct Democracy ( http://www.afadd.org ). And local initiatives like the work of the dynamic grassroots group REGAIN THE COMMONS in San Francisco,
http://www.reclaimthecommons.netIf Cobb’s choice seems schizoid, it is because the exceptional critical situation forces us to make a historic compromise. Far more is at stake than the “lesser evil.”
Posted by Bill Templer on Jul 25, 2004 at 9:46 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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