[GNC] [Fwd: [GreenAllianceUSA] Cobb vs. Nader at the Milwaukee Convention, as seen by a Massachusetts Delegate]

[Yarden]

To everyone,
from Elie Yarden
Cambridge, Massachusetts


Rather than put my personal views on this public site, I would prefer 
to offer something that I just happened across this morning on a 
Democratic Party blog.  I have no idea who the writer (Jay) is.
But it does show some awareness of who we are.


 From http:ejswanso.blogspot..com

 From http:ejswanso.blogspot..com


7.31.2004

"I felt like a Nazi, but it had to be done"

I quote Thompson here without restraint. While he may have been talking 
about coaxing underage women out of his hotel room, I'm referring to 
politics. Specifically? The Democratic Party. Today, right now, when it 
comes to the Democratic Party and that little election that happens to 
be speeding towards us so quickly, and knowing what I'll be doing on 
November 2nd: I feel like a Nazi. On that day I'm going to vote for 
John Kerry, and I'm going to try as hard as possible to swallow the 
loathing I feel for him and the Democratic Party as a whole. This man 
and his party don't represent me and won't lead this country in the way 
I'd like to see it proceed into the future.

You see, in my history as a politically aware individual I've come to 
certain realizations, and as I've watched the Democratic National 
Convention this past week those realizations have been confirmed time 
and time again. The Democratic Party, as much as they like to portray 
themselves as a party that believes in and advocates for progressive 
policies, does not and will not represent me and my ideals.

This is a party that has spent the week playing up their convention as 
something of importance. They present the convention as an event that 
brings people together, that the delegates make up the party and they 
decide its policies. The reality is that the convention is not the 
policy-making body that it could be. It is, instead, a sham and a 
distraction. Delegates dance around to canned, piped in music while the 
Democratic Party stalls long enough for all the television pundits to 
comment on the last speaker. There is no panel set aside to actually 
decide what the party's policy is; it is given to the delegates. 
Whenever a new speaker comes on, the delegates suddenly have a whole 
new set of posters and banners that cheer the individual on the podium. 
These people aren't delegates anymore; they are props and cheerleaders. 
The only people at the convention who have any connection to the voters 
- the bulk of the party, the laymen, the delegates don't have any voice 
in the party that they define. Policy is thrown on them and they simply 
get to cheer and wave their signs.

The convention is now simply an advertising medium. The Democrats know 
that the networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CSPAN and 
others - will be watching and commenting. They know that they'll have 
the entire week pretty much to themselves with no other political news 
to interfere. They know that the Party and it's most recognized members 
will be name-dropped over and over again - the same thing that Nike, 
Disney, Microsoft and others have learned is good for business.

Granted, the political convention process has been like this for a 
while. Other people who complain about this travesty get shot down with 
responses about the old days of smoke filled back rooms and power 
brokers choosing candidates. So sure, the old ways of the Democratic 
Party were pretty sad too, but a responsible political party should 
engage in an actual democratic process where the membership decides 
what the party stands for and believes in. I want a political process 
that is responsive to the desires of the electorate instead of poll 
numbers, sound bytes, and short-sighted reactionary tactics. I don't 
agree with the Republicans any more than I do with the Democrats, but 
at least they act according to their goals rather than creating policy 
based entirely on what the Democrats have done.

Those of you who happened to catch the Green Party convention on CSPAN 
at the end of June may have seen just this sort of process in action. 
The convention may not have had the glam and spectacle of the 
Democratic convention, but they stuck to their ideals and the delegates 
worked out some serious party issues. Just before the bulk of the party 
was split three ways on the presidential campaign - nominate David 
Cobb, endorse Ralph Nader, or forgo a presidential campaign and focus 
entirely on building local and state parties. They hammered it out. 
They stuck with their convictions and used instant runoff voting to 
come to a decision as a party. And now David Cobb is their presidential 
candidate. Party leadership didn't declare anything — the delegates did.

The Green Party convention was successful because they accepted dissent 
within their ranks and settled issues. The Democrats, however, spent 
their convention glorifying their historical acceptance of dissent 
while pretending that right now there simply isn't any. Those 
convention speakers who clearly have different opinions about the 
Party's direction gave speeches that glossed over their differences and 
portrayed party unity as a valid catch-all for liberal concerns of all 
sorts. Take Dennis Kucinich for example, who ran a presidential primary 
campaign with the specific intent of reintroducing the Party to 
liberalism and as an antithesis to the establishment candidates like 
Kerry, Joesph Lieberman and Dick Gephardt. Kucinich spent his speech on 
Wednesday mapping his interests - pacifism, the ICC, sustainable 
energy, climate change - to the Kerry campaign, even though many of 
these things are contrary to Kerry's platform. A few speakers even 
referenced Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democrats - 
whose famous trip to Atlantic City in 1964 shamed the Democrats over 
Mississippi's all-white delegation and introduced the Party to 
diversity. At the same time, those who travelled to Boston to protest 
the Democrats - those who were willing to voice their dissent - were 
given a small pen with double chain-link-and-razorwire fences in which 
to gather. The pen and the area surrounding it were under video 
observation in Washington D.C. by the Department of Homeland Security.

I have my issues with the politics of the Democratic Party, certainly — 
they're a centrist opposition party instead of the leftwing party they 
pretend to be — but both parties have shown over the years that their 
politics can change.   The Democrats, though, have moved in a direction 
that takes their presumed constituents for granted and disrespects them 
- and that has very little to do with their politics.  Unless the party 
fixes the disconnect between ideals and actions they've lost my support.

For a while, I thought I was blessed as regards the election: I can't 
vote for either Nader or Cobb in Illinois due to some of the nastiest 
ballot access laws in the country.  When November comes I wont have the 
option of voting for a candidate that I can trust and have faith in.  
In November the only option I will have is to vote again George Bush.

However the truth of the matter is that I'm not blessed at all.  If 
anything, I've been screwed.

The Democrats are the ones who should feel blessed because I'm stuck 
without any other option.  They're blessed because they'll be getting 
my vote without having earned it.

posted by jay @ 19:00




On Friday, July 30, 2004, at 08:01 PM, Aram Falsafi wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I recently posted this to the Green Alliance email list, after getting 
> one too
> many posting about how the Kerry/ABB forces have taken over the party.
>
> Ben Manski of the Wisconsin Green Party has since replied to me, and 
> said that
> they went through the same process, only over the course of 4 months.
>
> Would be curious to hear your opinions.
>
> -Aram
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [GreenAllianceUSA] Cobb vs. Nader at the Milwaukee 
> Convention, as seen
> by a Massachusetts Delegate
> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:47:18 -0400
> From: Aram Falsafi <afalsafi at igc.org>
> Reply-To: GreenAllianceUSA at yahoogroups.com
> To: Green Alliance <GreenAllianceUSA at yahoogroups.com>
>
> Cobb vs. Nader at the Milwaukee Convention, as seen by a Massachusetts 
> Delegate
> by Aram Falsafi, Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts
>
> Ever since the Milwaukee convention, many on the left (both within and 
> outside
> the GP) have claimed that Cobb's nomination was a takeover of the 
> party by the
> Anybody But Bush (ABB) crowd, and a sign of the Green Party turning 
> itself into
> an appendage of the Democrats.
>
> This is a dangerous myth which we should stop repeating if we don't 
> want it to
> become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here is the Cobb victory as I saw 
> it, which
> led me to the above conclusion.
>
> I'll start by saying that I do believe that the Cobb nomination was 
> the outcome
> that the ABB forces were working towards. His "safe states" strategy 
> (which he
> pretended to set aside long enough to win the necessary delegates), his
> campaign's obvious inability to influence the outcome in November, and 
> the
> unanimous support that he received from every single ABB supporter 
> within the
> party (such as John Rensenbrink, Medea Benjamin, Ted Glick, etc. ) all 
> point to
> that fact. And I heard plenty of allegations of funny business within 
> state
> parties, all intended to marginalize Nader supporters; how much is 
> true I don't
> know, so I won't repeat any of it. Maybe some academic will do a 
> research
> project on it. :-)
>
> HOWEVER, my (largely unsuccessful) attempts to convince Massachusetts 
> delegates
> to vote for a Nader/Camejo endorsement convinced me that the above 
> analysis is
> only a small part of the picture: much of the support for Cobb was 
> actually a
> reaction to the way Nader is running his campaign, and the way his 
> campaigns
> have treated local activists, both in 2000 and in 2004. In other 
> words, the ABB
> forces were far too small to carry the day without a good dose of help 
> from the
> Nader campaign itself. That fact will not change in the near future, 
> unless we
> in the left help make it happen.
>
> First a few words about the Massachusetts delegation. With 36 
> delegates, it was
> the 4th largest. And because we had to submit candidates' names early 
> in the
> year, we couldn't convince either Nader or Camejo to participate in 
> the primary.
> So the primary election resulted in 9 delegates for Cobb, 9 for 
> Salzman, 3 each
> for Mesplay and Glover, and 10 uncommitted delegates, plus 2 for 
> Nader, based on
> write-in votes.
>
> I went as an uncommitted delegate, but determined to oppose any "safe 
> states"
> candidate or any other capitulation to the Democrats. By the second 
> day it was
> clear that the race had come down to a Cobb nomination (supported by 
> the ABB
> crowd BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY THEM) vs. a Nader endorsement (supported by 
> a good
> portion of the left wing of the party, but again, not all of the 
> left). It was
> also obvious that among the MA delegates, only the 9 or so Cobb 
> delegates were
> totally committed to Cobb, and only a fraction of this 9 were 
> motivated by the
> ABB argument. In fact, the primary contact for the Cobb campaign in MA 
> had
> helped me write a resolution rejecting unilateral concessions to the 
> Democrats,
> a resolution which had been approved at the state convention in May.
>
> In Milwaukee, I tried to lobby the non-Cobb delegates to vote for a 
> Nader/Camejo
> endorsement. I encountered a lot of resistance, but NONE of it based 
> on the ABB
> argument. Here are a few examples. Nobody that I refer to here has any 
> interest
> in ABB or "safe states" strategies, as far as I can tell.
>
> - One delegate left the Friday Camejo rally in disgust when a woman 
> from Cobb's
> hometown got on stage and started a vindictive personal attack on 
> Cobb. This
> delegate was furious with the Nader/Camejo people for giving voice to 
> such petty
> attacks on a fellow Green. (I was also quite embarrassed by that 
> performance.)
>
> - Another uncommitted delegate had tried to call Nader's office before 
> going to
> Milwaukee to ask some questions about the Nader campaign. They never 
> returned
> his call.
>
> - Another delegate who, like me, was trying to convince others to vote 
> for
> Nader/Camejo, took it upon herself to approach a Nader campaign worker 
> and try
> to get some assurances on a few issues that were of concern to MA 
> delegates. The
> Nader rep was totally dismissive of her.
>
> - A former co-chair of the party said that the Nader campaign's 
> treatment of
> party activists (starting with 2000 and through the current season) 
> reminds her
> of a domestic abuse situation, where the victim stays with the abuser 
> because of
> fear of the unknown.
>
> - A number of veterans of the 2000 campaign were still resentful of
> disrespectful and arrogant behavior on the part of the Nader people 
> who had come
> from DC to Boston in 2000 - people who are now involved with the 2004 
> campaign.
>
> I myself tried to contact the Nader campaign before the convention. I 
> wanted to
> make sure that, if we endorsed him and offered him our ballot lines, 
> he would
> actually agree be on the ballot in states where the GP has ballot 
> status. I was
> told that he would be deciding state by state. I asked specifically 
> about MA,
> since we need to get 3% of the vote in November in order to maintain 
> ballot
> status. I received a snide reply from someone in the DC office, with no
> commitment either way. We were finally told on the second day of the 
> convention
> that Nader would agree to appear on the ballot in MA. (By then a 
> number of the
> other delegates had decided that the 2004 Nader campaign was starting 
> to treat
> local activists the same way as the 2000 campaign, and didn't want 
> anything to
> do with it.)
>
> Did all of this justify us making ourselves irrelevant in the 2004 
> elections? I
> didn't think so. But I can respect those who don't agree with me on 
> this, and
> I'm not willing to paint them all with the same brush, especially 
> since these
> people are going to be my allies after November 3.
>
> So while the Cobb nomination was the outcome that the Kerry forces 
> were hoping
> for, I would argue that it was made possible in large part thanks to 
> the
> piss-poor campaign that Nader ran within the party and the way his 
> people
> treated the rest of the party both during and before the Milwaukee 
> convention.
> The important thing is that THE ABB FORCES WERE (AND CONTINUE TO BE) 
> JUST TOO
> SMALL A MINORITY WITHIN THE PARTY TO HAVE PULLED THIS OFF ON THEIR 
> OWN. THEY
> HAVE NOT TAKEN OVER THE PARTY, SO LET'S STOP ACTING LIKE THEY HAVE!!!
>
> Of course, this will all end on November 2. I predict that most of us 
> (the
> non-ABB majority) will wake up on November 3 and realize that we made a
> strategic miscalculation. I hope I'm wrong. In any case, if we treat 
> the Cobb
> nomination as a takeover of the GP by Democratic Party infiltrators 
> and keep
> talking about rejecting the Cobb campaign at the state level, and 
> accusing his
> supporters of being Kerry infiltrators, we will hand the damned 
> Democrats an
> even bigger victory: a permanent split within the Green party that 
> will truly
> make us irrelevant, and for much longer than one election cycle. Let's 
> not make
> that mistake.
>
> This fall, many committed Greens will work hard on the Cobb/LaMarche 
> campaign.
> Others will work for Nader/Camejo. Come November 3, we will all need 
> to come
> back together and get back to building a unified party, to be ready to 
> absorb
> all the disillusioned Kucinich, MoveOver.org, etc. supporters, who are 
> about to
> realize that they've been taken for a ride.
>
> I would like to hear the experience of Nader/Camejo supporters in 
> other state
> delegations, and what reactions they got from Cobb supporters among 
> their ranks.
>
> Aram Falsafi
> Watertown, MA
> afalsafi at igc.org
>
>
>
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