[candidate-development] Fwd: Readers' Responses to " Nader, the Greens, and Building a Movement"

[gary hicks]

gary hicks <big_g19462002 at yahoo.com> wrote: Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:57:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: gary hicks <big_g19462002 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: Readers' Responses to " Nader, the Greens, and Building a Movement"
To: gary hicks <gooberthink06 at yahoo.com>

 

moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG wrote: Date:         Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:01:12 -0400
From:         moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG
Subject: Readers' Responses
To:           PORTSIDE at LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG

 Readers' Responses to Nader,the Greens,and Building a Movement
1. John Atkeison, 2. Carl Davidson

===
1.
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 
From: John Atkeison 
Re: Nader, the Greens,and Building a Movement

Some notes and corrections from a first-hand
participant in the Greens since 1998...

First, you should be informed that Democratic
presidential candidate and former Senator Mike Gravel
has just endorsed West Virginian Jesse Johnson for the
Green nomination rather than seek it himself. This
should make for a more interesting and healthier
nomination process for the Green Party.

The most  important correction to Hardy's article is to
point out that early in the 2004 campaign season a
number of ideas and strategies were being discussed in
the Green Party, including and "safe states." The
GP was under tremendous pressure of all kinds, including
the panicked stampede of liberals and their financial
support to the "anybody but Bush" camp.
(Also, those of us who, like myself, thought that if we
could survive a second term of Nixon, surely we could
run Bush out of town on a rail as we did Nixon...
well, we were wrong and had missed an important
transition of the political environment in the
intervening 30 years.) One important factor that made
this notion of"safe states"; worth
considering early in the season was the estimation of
David Cobb and many others that the main thing any GP
campaign could achieve in '04 was to build local party
organizations and support local candidates. In fact,
"this" was the key  consideration that dominated the
Green campaign in '04.

In the long run, "safe states" disappeared
except as a stinky herring to cloud real analysis of
the political campaigns in 2004. Nader ran a campaign
more likely to resemble that strategy. Cobb/LaMarche
ran a campaign that depended more on the state GPs. (In
the Greens, internal organization is more similar to a
confederation than a federation.) In other words,
despite the fact that it was discussed widely early on,
even use of the "safe states" term likely
marks someone as either somewhat uninformed or as one
of the "destructo"; faction, who have their
own version of reality that seems quite foreign to what
I experienced in the real world of 2004.

An example of that is the is constant carping about how
the rules of the Green convention in 2004 were
"rigged" to thwart Nader/Camejo. Well, go
check out the vote for those rules. The Camejo
delegates voted  for them! Frankly, calling these people
petulant and childish is generous, and referring to
them as sore losers overlooks the damage they
subsequently did, and continue to do.  Early on there
was an effort to paint Nader as the real choice of the
majority of Greens in '04, but the figures and logic
reeked of "funny money" reasoning and selective use
of statistics. It has been very disappointing to see so
many (but not all) pro-Nader people in the Greens
either initiate or fall for such intellectual slop.

Any progressive should recognize the value of unifying
for action after a vigorous internal disagreement. Any
progressive should also be able to see the destructive
nature of the Nader campaign's actions in using dirty
tricks to remove the Green ticket from the ballot in
Utah and Vermont.

It is unfortunate that Nader is running against the
Greens again, and the crowd around him is even less
savory than in 2004.  There is a very serious split in
all but structure, IMHO, and its cause is the
unprincipled behavior of the faction that aligns with
Nader.  It is a tragedy that such an American political
figure exits the stage so sullied.

A point correctly made by Hardy is that Cobb campaigned
for the nomination, which Nader was never more than coy
about. The morning of the Delaware State Green
convention I was on the phone to the Nader campaign,
trying to get them to have him appear, since he was
less than two hours away.  At that convention, the
Greens voted first to include Nader as a choice for
delegates, even though there were no open Nader
supporters there, and gave one delegate to Camejo, even
though a strict mathematical accounting would have
given him none. The rest of the convention supported a
Green candidate: Texan David Cobb. Cobb then persuaded
prominent Green Mainer Patricia LaMarche to join and
broaden his ticket.  (LaMarche's book "Left Out in
America"  is based on her two-week stint in homeless
shelters during the campaign.)

An honest analysis would probably credit David Cobb
with the most on-target evaluation of what the Greens
could and could not achieve in the 2004 elections. He
was an institution builder. One quip from the campaign
that retains is validity today asks, "Which is
worse, four more years of Bush, or forty more years of
Bush vs Kerry?" A nuanced and thoughtful look at
American politics should allow both for the need to
survive day-to-day and to build for the future.

John Atkeison
Director of Climate and Clean Energy Programs
Alliance for Affordable Energy New Orleans

===
2.
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 
From: Carl Davidson 
RE: Nader, the Greens,and Building a Movement

Kardy Hardy does a decent analysis, up to a point, then
draws the wrong conclusion--suggesting that because the
US electoral  system is so messy, unfair and complex, 
progressives should back away from it for the old, more
comfortable extra-parlimentary options.

This is a failure of both will and intellect.

Yes, we have a rotten system, but there is no bypassing
it, unless you're content to stay in the 'left bloc'
cul-de-sac for another 100 years.

Revolutionary change in the U.S. will pass through the
electoral arena, not by making an end run around it.
That's a good working hypothesis I'd bet good money on.
So think it through a little deeper, rather than giving
up.

If the Greens aim their main blow at McCain, and adopt
one version or another of a 'safe states' strategy,
they can still build their party while shrinking the
McCain vote relative to the Obama vote. Then they can
for a common tactic front inside and outside the
electoral; arena with PDA and other progressives, both
now and down the road.

But you have to  stop playing checkers, and start
playing chess.

Keep On Keepin' On!

Carl Davidson

===

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