[WB-Discuss] Re: Green Rainbow party-Opinion Letter

[Edmund R. MacKenty]

PHWernick at aol.com writes:
>                      Once Again on Organization-Where I Stand

Paul brings up several things, which I'll try to list here, in random
order:

- Relationship of Greens and Democrats
- The Nadar spoiler argument
- Election strategy: global vs. local issues
- What is the Green's constituency?

I'm not so much responding directly to Paul's points as just putting out my
views on the subjects he brought up.  So I'm not going to quote him much
except for this, which I heartily agree with:

>What is needed is a multi-pronged approach, involving democratic party
>activists, progressive activists who do not vote, liberal democrats,as well
>as the unenrolled and non-voting. This approach leaves open many doors to
>long time political activists as well as newcomers.

- Relationship of Greens and Democrats

I'm thinking that Greens should try to appeal to as much of the population
as we can.  We shouldn't feel limited to the "left" of the political
spectrum, as some of our ideas aren't even on that spectrum.  Grassroots
democracy, personal and global responsibility, and nonviolence have
supporters on the right too.  Part of the reason I vote green is that I
dislike the "us and them" attitude that splits state and federal politics
these days.  We should attempt to craft messages that appeal to as many
people as we can, and one way of doing that is to deliberately step off
that left-right spectrum.  The Republican's did this with their talk of
"values", and were quite successful at getting votes with it; but their
policies often contradict the values they espouse so they end up using
their message as a shield to hide their actions.  We can use the same
approach for crafting a message, but must not allow that disconnect between
message and policies.

So yes, we should try to appeal to Democrats, and Republicans and
Libertarians too.  Should we have "a presence in the democratic party", as
Paul mentions as one option?  I think we should co-operate with them when
it furthers our goals, but not be a part of them.  We should certainly try
to create liasons, which might help defuse their perception of us as a
threat.

- The Nadar spoiler argument

The main problem on a national level is the Nadar spoiler argument.  In
fact, it came up at a dinner party last night, and I said that there's a
lot of discussion going on within the party about it, and what I'd like to
see is the national party not run a presidential candidate, encourage
voting against Bush, and run state and local candidates.  The idea is to
continue to build the party, which has to be done at the state and local
level, while not opening ourselves to the "spoiler" charge again.  We don't
need a national campaign; people are pretty aware that there's a Green
Party in the USA now.  We can put our resources to better use at the state
and local level.

The problem with that, as was mentioned at the meeting and Paul alludes to,
is voter confusion between federal and state elections.  Lots of people
vote for parties, not candidates for office.  The "major" parties worked
hard to get them this way, because it's to their advantage to have people
vote for them even if they might not agree with (or even know) all their
policies.  We're not going to change that right away, but we can try to
avoid being caught in that trap by promoting the candidate and what they
stand for more than the party label.  That will take some media work,
because they like the short-hand of associating every candidate with a
party.

- Election strategy: global vs. local issues

On the local level, what should our 2004 election strategy be?  Paul is
right when he says that focusing on foreign policy issues isn't going to
win a local or state election.  Of course it won't.  We have to focus on
local and state issues whose outcome can be controlled by the candidate
once in office.  We should only point out their relationship to national or
global issues when doing so will advance the candidacy.  We need to take a
look at the range of matters the office can influence that effect local
voters, apply our Ten Key Values to them, decide which ones give us the
best competitive advantage, and then promote the hell out of them.  Just
like the other parties do.  Now that's a lot of work, and it may have been
done elsewhere in the state already, but I haven't run across a detailed
analysis of this kind within the GRP yet.

- What is the Green's constituency?

We've been talking about "the democratic left", but something Tony said at
the last meeting made me think that we'd be better off going after the
independents and non-voters.  We have a strong appeal as an "outsider", not
tied into the existing political web of favors-owed.  We just have to do
some serious grass-roots organizing, and put in the kind of effort that
Alex did when he was elected: door-to-door.  How to appeal to them is
probably a good subject for another (and longer) message.
	- MacK.
-----
Edmund R. MacKenty
    <mack at mackenty.com>     http://www.mackenty.com/mss/
    Voice: +1-617-926-2131  Cell: +1-617-899-7653

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