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Cross posted from Pruning Shears.
Kevin Gosztola’s post on safe voting strategies quotes historian Howard Zinn’s claim that “we have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining our destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls.” But Zinn veers away from an important insight by concluding “and choose on of the two mediocrities who have already been chosen for us.” I completely agree that voting isn’t the most important thing citizens do (they still should do it, obviously; I’m not saying it’s trivial). What matters most is what they do between elections. Ongoing civic engagement is what matter most. That is true for political parties as well, and it is why recent third party runs for president have been vanity projects.
You can tell by looking at what those candidates have done besides running for president. Did Ralph Nader try to drum up support for third party candidates down ticket? Did he try to build up party infrastructure after the election? Creating a credible third party is an enormous project, one that will need to be measured in years if not decades. It requires an ongoing commitment from both citizens and those who would lead them. It also requires a lot of unglamorous grunt work – identifying candidates, compiling contact information, phone numbers, walk lists, and so on.
Ralph Nader wasn’t much interested in that, was he? He didn’t seem to have an appetite for anything that didn’t involve a microphone and a spotlight. I have little patience for those who think the two major parties are corrupt, that anyone who votes for them is a credulous dupe helping to prop up a rotted system – and don’t lift a finger between elections to plant the seeds for an alternative. There are plenty of opportunities for that kind of activity to happen, too. All you have to do is look for any issue where people feel passionately but the Big Two have avoided.
The best issues will be ones where local activists can participate. Financial reform, for instance, would not be suitable. While neither Democrats nor Republicans are in favor of cracking down on Wall Street1, there aren’t any good ways for most citizens to act. But for as angry as people are about that, there isn’t a good way for most citizens to push for action.
Here in Ohio an issue like fracking is much better suited for that kind of approach, and I’ve tried to document that on my site for months now. People can and have been pushing for ballot initiatives, demanding regulatory agencies do their job, urging elected officials to act, and so on. It’s an issue without a political constituency, one that people can get involved in, and something many people care deeply about. That is exactly the kind of ferment that creates demand for a third party, and wouldn’t it be lovely if the Greens were here lending a hand? But they aren’t. And the people who are sounding off the loudest on the awful state of the legacy parties appear to be more interested in establishing the purity of their intentions than in highlighting what they presumably regard as small scale (non-national) problems, parochial concerns unworthy of their attention.
Yet it is precisely in these political spaces where a third party will have to emerge. The people engaged at that level are the real third party activists. Those who proclaim the need for alternatives might want to consider giving the occasional nod towards those efforts – even if it means being ignored or criticized for dwelling on minutia. Independent and local efforts need to be translated into seats on city councils and school boards, then into seats in statehouses, then seats in Congress. Democrats and Republicans need to become persuaded of the credibility of that party, and feel comfortable jumping to it without jeopardizing their careers. Only after all that has occurred does it make sense to go for the big enchilada.
The real measure of a third party isn’t getting a presidential candidate on the ballot in all fifty states; it’s in building up a base of elected officials from the ground up. If you want to know about the viability of a given third party, have a look at that ballot on election day. Is it represented at the bottom as well as the top, or is voting for its presidential candidate also a straight ticket vote? If the latter, chances are pretty good it’s basically an exercise in narcissism. Those who vote for that candidate can congratulate themselves on their noble refusal to compromise their values, but they will be largely and deservedly ignored. Voting for a third party that has a strong regional presence and a toehold at the national level makes a lot of sense. Voting for one that only shows up with a moon shot presidential run every four years makes none.
NOTES
1. Spare me talk of Dodd-Frank. William Black put the Great Swindle in perspective: “If you go back to the savings and loan debacle, we got more than a thousand felony convictions of the elite. These are not, you know, tellers or something. We today have zero convictions, zero indictments, zero arrests of any of the elite, non-prime lenders that, through their fraud, drove this crisis.”
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39 Comments
Uh, sorry to rain on your parade, but there is one thing I can point to right away about Ralph Nader.
When it became obvious to people in Ohio, circa Election 2004, that their election had been seriously hacked, it was David Cobb and Ralph Nader who got the funds together to see to it that people got to count up some of the votes. (Forget if it was 100,000 dollars – it might have been more.) These two people did this to help the vote for John Kerry – not the votes for themselves, the votes for John Kerry.
By then, John Kerry had already boogied away from the sound and the fury. And he took his election lawyers with him. He did this quickly, and he didn’t seem to remember his pledge to remain in the game until every last vote was counted! If you want to complain about something, why not complain about how our “Democratic” candidates always give up on the stolen elections – they are either outright bought and paid to do so, or else they lack the enthusiasm and the guts to do it.
Right on! Running national candidates when you don’t have a local presence is absurd. But party building is slow, gritty work and the prospect doesn’t appeal. The Green congressional candidate in my district has never held office.
Your argument can and should be turned on its head; if running a Presidential candidate is hollow (not meaningless, but perhaps an empty gesture) without party-building between elections, then can’t we similarly say that talk of “building a party” is just talk if, when we get the chance to vote, we throw out vote away by reinforcing the duoply, voting for the Slightly Less Evil (in Theory) of Two Very Evil Evils?
It’s called “an election cycle” for a reason…the work in election seasons should serve as a platform for the work in between the seasons. Each is a vital part of the other. So just as you are right to warn people that there’s more to politics than just the actual elections, you’re IMO just as wrong to dismiss non-traditional parties as “vanity projects” and imply they are unworthy of support. To say “you’re only here to vote! It’s meaningless if you haven’t done anything before that! Go support a real party” does nothing to promote change; it’s merely yet another reason to try and blow air up the Dead Democratic Donkey’s snout. No, thanks.
And, liberalarts, plenty of people have run for Congress without holding state or local office before that: John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy, to name just three off the top of my head. Also Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Hillary Clinton…it’s not really an impediment, for good or ill.
Obama supporters can spout gibberish until the Earth crashes into the Sun, but they can’t conceal the truth: It is the moral bankruptcy of Democratic candidates, bankrolled based on their willingness to act as faithful ideological servants to their corporate masters, who are to blame for where the general population finds itself now. And now Democratic party loyalists and other pwogwessives demand that citizens vote for a president who for the first time in American history has established a policy of extrajudicial assassination and lifetime detention of American citizens without even the pretense of due process.
Jill Stein 2012.
Or as the carny barker put it: “Go away son, you bother me!”
Indeed, I find your call for 3rd party organizing between presidential elections most stirring. (See http://my.firedoglake.com/jeffroby/2012/10/28/dump-capitalism-8-the-bloody-morning-after/ )
What you seem to be missing is that the Stein campaign is designed to further just that. A presidential run is an opportunity to organize, gets needed publicity, and helps build organization that can be applied to local work in the next 2 years. It also is a chance to lay out the broader Green New Deal vision that local races are less amenable to. (You lose something if all you can do is argue that a Green Party dogcatcher can catch more dogs than a Democratic or Republican dogcatcher.)
However, I don’t think you have our best interests at heart. You set ELECTING people to local office as a precondition for running for any higher office. That is the equivalent to “Go away son!” We are to beat our heads against a wall in races where the Green call for creating WPA-style jobs programs is harder to make, abandoning campaigning for one of the most critical issues of our times, as though we could just pivot to the national stage after we’ve made you happy.
Sorry, you get what you organize, and local issues gets you local issues. That kind of disciplined pivot at the right moment would require some kind of Marxist-Leninist discipline that I don’t think is what you really have in mind. Rather, we have to organize at all levels, all the time. Otherwise, we become irrelevant.
And Democrats in Ohio certainly don’t think that Jill Stein, currently polling 1% there, is irrelevant. A menace, perhaps, but hardly irrelevant.
It might seem impressive to read someone who blames the Greens for not doing successful bottom-up organizing, until one realizes exactly how few people the author is blaming.
Last I remember my own actual participation in internal Green Party politics, most of America’s state Green Parties were Potemkin villages, and even in states which had Green Parties (I live in California, which had about half of America’s Green membership in 2004), locals outside of “liberal” enclaves had barely enough active members to call meetings.
California, I might add, is handicapped by its “top two” voting format, in which third party candidates are universally off the ballot in November. The only Green Party member who will be running here in tomorrow’s election will be Jill Stein.
Until America actually TRIES third-party organizing, America is not going to do any bottom-up third party organizing. Lacking that, you can just expect things to get worse.
I didn’t dismiss all non-traditional parties as vanity projects, just the ones that run a candidate for president and nothing else.
All the examples you gave for running for higher office at the start are people who did so as candidates for one of the Big Two. In other words, from a substantial base of institutional support. And in the case of Bush, Clinton and the Kennedys did so from an enviable personal (family) base of support. Those are huge distinctions.
As I touched on in the piece, a third party that starts getting regional support could begin peeling off “name” politicians. Think Dennis Kucinich. He got gerrymandered out of his seat and flirted with a move out west. Imagine if, say, the Green Party in Oregon was thriving enough for him to have a real shot at winning a House seat as their candidate. That’s one of the ways a new party could get an injection of credibility from a well known politician. But that only happens if the party has an attractive base of support to offer. The D’s and R’s had that to offer the examples you cite. The Greens don’t.
I didn’t mention Jill Stein because I think the jury is still out on her. I’d like to think she’ll devote time to party building, but at the moment I’m not optimistic. In the hottest part of an election season she’s spending time that could be used drawing attention to Green candidates instead getting arrested protesting Keystone XL.
Stein is an activist, and a fine and admirable one. She’s not a politician, though. Her career consists of activism and lone wolf (and losing) runs for high office, not party building. The one exception – Town of Lexington Town Meeting Representative in 2005 and 2008 – is also telling. She didn’t try to build up a third party from there, but went for a gubernatorial run in 2010.
Maybe she decides to go with party building after the election, but the record isn’t encouraging.
As for this:
You can call for creating WPA-style jobs programs all you want, and feel free to delude yourself that all the benighted masses need to flock to the idea is for you to introduce them to the proposal. But that is a really condescending attitude to take towards people, and by extension a really self-congratulatory one to award yourself. Maybe people are aware that WPA style programs can exist; maybe there is something else going on here that is preventing the idea from spreading like wildfire.
You’re also remarkably dismissive of local political activity. Know what? A Green Party dogcatcher candidate who wins is better than a Green Party presidential candidate who loses. And it’s not like there’s a binary choice between running for high office or ideological emptiness. Think all those Christian Coalition types who were getting elected to school boards and city councils in the 80s had renounced ideology?
On the plus side, your comment is a perfect summary of why third party activism has largely been a dead end. Dripping contempt for the citizenry, haughty dismissal of lower office, solipsistic certainty that one has all the answers – you touched all the bases, baby.
I’ve worked with Jill Stein building the Party in Massachusetts for two-and-a-half years: I’m sure she has seen and does see Party-building and coalition-building as her major job. I hope to keep working with her to expand those efforts nationwide.
I had been and activist for decades, and had worked with Greens many times, but I only joined the Green Party in 2010 after working for Jill Stein’s Gubernatorial campaign, and after she asked me to join the Party. Many other locals and students who worked with me on that campaign and this one have joined the Massachusetts Green Rainbow Party.
Speak of dripping contempt!
And why do you think I believe what you say I believe? Not at all. When I’m calling Green registrants, one of the first things I say is that we’re demanding a jobs program, and I listen for the responses. Goal One: let people know that this is a priority for the party, a significant change from prior years. Goal Two: gauge the response. It is overwhelmingly positive. Goal Three: try to organize the party around that.
Let’s face it, the notion you accuse me of (introduce a correct proposal and the masses will flock) is a pretty common disease on the left, all over FDL, in fact. But those who are involved in the Green Party know better, if not in 2000, certainly by now. That’s just a cheap shot. But it’s a proposal to organize around, nonetheless, one by one, two by two, family by family. A uniting principal.
Of course. It’s the little matter of power. How are we to WIN this demand? That’s a tough one, it’s a tough one for any demand that challenges the corporate status quo. But that’s politics. Toots.
That’s still a top-down approach, though. It’s one where the party says “here’s what we want – are you in or out?” Why not instead look to communities where there is a political vacuum and the issue in question is one the Greens are sympathetic to, then approach those activists and say “how can we help?” It’s more organic and it appeals to people on the issues they are living and struggling with. In other words, in the real world.
Trying to build a party by dictating terms to potential supporters doesn’t seem likely to produce much fruit. Meet people where they are, and go from there. Starting building up wins at that level and the bigger wins will come into focus over time.
It is Perfectly Reasonable for parties to have a platform, with a mechanism to have that platform updated or changed substantially by party participation and oftentimes in response to the needs/desires of the greater public at large.
But again, it is Perfectly Reasonable for a party to have a platform.
So you all have decided to have a conversation about whether or not Jill Stein, one of a handful of people across America who hasn’t succumbed to the bandwagon effect of American politics and registered Demopublican, is doing enough community organizing. Sure, she’s running for President. Still, why cherry-pick her?
Wouldn’t it be more productive to go after all of the people on this board who claim to be voting for her as if their votes were the only things they were planning to give to the Green Party?
Understood, but there’s a difference between hanging out a sign and saying “come to us” and actively reaching out to people. Calling people and saying “come to us” is reaching out a little. Offering assistance to activists who are already fighting on the central issues of your platform is reaching out a lot.
A lot of the third party complaints seem to be along the lines of “hey, we’re here and we’re right. Where is everyone?” I think it’s better to seek to make common cause with those who are demonstrating an affinity. Isn’t that kind of activities one of the main points of a political party? Providing the glue for disparate sets of actors?
Precisely!
People are living and struggling with not having jobs, eking out their lives with an increasingly shredded safety net, not being able to afford healthcare, etc.
That has the seductive logic of how you fit 5 elephants into a Volkswagen (2 in the front, 2 in the back, 1 in the glove department). You don’t spend a decade getting a dogcatcher elected on the basis of catching more dogs, and then somehow convert that base of support to support for a jobs program. How do you deal with the fact that so many of the people you would have the Greens uniting with are part and parcel of the Democratic Party? How do you deal with local disasters when they are the result of policies set at the national level?
Since I’m working with the Greens, I see that one problem is that the party is excessively fixated on the local level. Thus the Florida state party is a clearinghouse for the county units, and is unable to provide the support structures (funds, legal expertise, media work) that would allow the local operations to blossom, tied as they are to duplicating efforts across the board.
The Stein campaign has energized the party in large part due to the fact that the Stein campaign developed outside the party, and then provided a fresh burst of strength to a party otherwise mired in merely maintaining itself at state and local levels.
It’s not a matter of top-down or bottom-up. There has to be a dynamic interaction between local and national, in terms of issues and organization. The devil is in the details, but such is politics.
A key element of Green Party organizing is its important relationship with the Occupy movement. Same fight, different fronts.
http://my.firedoglake.com/jeffroby/2012/10/28/dump-capitalism-8-the-bloody-morning-after/
At the New Progressive Alliance http://newprogs.org/ I had the pleasure of working with many who endorsed the Unified Progressive Platform, most of whom were Greens. For what it is worth, here is my advice to Green outsiders and Greens.
Green Outsiders:
-The only national alternative party we have to work with is the Green Party. Period. (There are several state wide parties with potential.) Running tokens only for president every four years does not a national party make. Show me at least one candidate for Justice of the Peace. Occasional interviews and position papers do not a campaign make. As Jeff would point out, you get what you organize and boots on the ground means boots on the ground. Working with the Greens can be frustrating and I know it has been frustrating in the past, but I believe Jeff is right in that many and perhaps even most Greens are committed to the very difficult process of transforming their own party.
Greens:
-The most important action item is to have all Greens realize they are not an obedient branch of the democratic party. I am weary of arguing with Greens on Green sites that they cannot afford to vote for Jill or some other Green this time because this is the most important election ever (It always is!) and we can’t have democrats lose. See Jeff Roby’s above link to “Dump Capitalism 8 – The Bloody Morning After.”
-Jeff is right when he says, “It’s not a matter of top-down or bottom-up. There has to be a dynamic interaction between local and national, in terms of issues and organization.” The Greens are correct in doing both. No organization proceeds precisely with city, county, state, and then national. Get as many people running on as many levels as possible and start work on the bloody morning after of November 7, 2012.
-Running for office is a great thing. At a minimum you should have a website or Facebook presence, a point of contact – email, mailing address, and/or phone number – and someone who answers the damn mail. You should also publicize that info in as many Green lists and other sites as you can. I should not have to be a detective to find you.
-Part of the transformation that Jeff speaks of has to include more inclusiveness of other organizations who just want to help. Suggestions are not criticisms. Suing to keep other third parties off the ballot, as the Illinois Greens did, does not help.
I have made the same arguments, a far left party could have success in certain parts of the country (Bay Area, Seattle, etc) in HOR races without raising (in my view, irrational) fears that they will dilute the LOTE legacy party’s vote.
Lots of Greens are running across the country: Register of Deeds, City Council, County Commission, Water Commissioner. Here are some: http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2012/11/04/debates-today-tomorrow-plus-2012-marijuana-voters-and-investors-guide-plus-a-right-to-left-look-at-presidential-candidates-parties-factions/ and http://my.firedoglake.com/themalcontent/2012/11/04/a-voters-guide-for-electoral-activists-54-alternative-party-candidates-from-23-states/
Most Greens, and by overwhelming majority even most Greens in Illinois disapproved of that lawsuit.
When criticizing Obama on Facebook, I have found myself again and again censored by Facebook-page controllers purporting to be Green – they’re listed as Green sites.
The Greens need to work at expanding in the states where we’re most deficient over the coming year and more. We need to stress issues of health and safety and suppression of banks and corporations to lure people away from the Libertarians.
If the Greens become adamant about Hemp, and demand that the Greens’ 10 Key Values be extended to Marijuana users too, if we constantly push for it, we will attract people to our side.
We need to get would-be Election boycotters, anarchists, and the apathetic to understand that Tea Party Republicrats are always working and organizing, and that we actually need to all work together to ‘out-muscle’ them.
Local and national Green organizing and networking is abysmal. Neither local Green groups nor the national campaign are welcoming of newcomers. I am very much a defender of the Party, but we are largely lacking in many areas.
Newcomers can get the top-down feeling, when trying to break the ice with people who are consumed by their favorite issues, but have little concern and no energy for new and diverse efforts.
The biggest schism I see is Marijuana: It seems that the Green Party could increase its registration by about 80 million voters if they pushed for 10-Key-Value rights for Marijuana voters. But most of the Green locals take exactly zero interest in approaching this demographic which could easily increase our Party’s ranks one hundred times over.
I hate to be agreeing with danps, but this logic, that adopting a particular position could lead to 80,000,000 more registered Greens is fantasy. Adopting a particular position loved by any particular otherwise ignored demographic does not automatically translate into votes.
Fundamentally, the issue is not the issues we stress (we’re pretty good there), or we would have the votes of the 23,000,000 unemployed or underemployed. The issue is the concrete organizing into building a campaign organization — top and bottom — that can fight for them.
Again, see my post, the Bloody Morning After, referenced above, for the transformation required by both the Greens and the broader left for us to become a serious force.
My point is that pro-Marijuana voters do indeed vote as a block. They are not loyal to either of the legacy Parties.
Here in Massachusetts tomorrow, it’s likely that well over 60% will vote to Legalize Medical Marijuana.
Meanwhile, those other 80,000,000 people remain unregistered because as far as they know, all the politicians that they’ve ever heard of much are very much against the citizens’ Rights.
So those 80,000,000 potential votes are going to waste, and most of the un- & underemployed people don’t vote.
But those 100,000,000 possible voters are still out there, and such energy could hopefully be harnessed.
No, one issue won’t do it, but that is an issue with scores of millions of disaffected voters and scores of millions more of non-voters.
No other issue unites that many against the legacy parties. No other issue comes close.
If our message is that we’ll change something in Government or the economy, then that will get a few people. If, however, our message is that we will protect the populace from Hate Crimes committed against them by their own Government, that could excite some interest.
Normanb, we are mostly in agreement.
I agree. That is why I said the Green Party is the only national alternative party. One of the lists you cited I was mostly responsible for by hunting down and finding candidates. It was amazingly hard just to get an accurate list of Green candidates, many gave inaccurate or no contact information, and many refused to even answer their mail.
I am very glad to hear that, blocking ballot access is not in anybody’s interest except that of the Uniparty. Still the suit went on.
I and people of other states have had this problem of elected officials within the Green Party openly supporting democrats, even over Green candidates. I have witnessed this at Green Party meetings among both the leaders and followers and heard about it from several states. It is not just because I was on the wrong site and it is a serious problem.
Traditionally, the votes have just not been there. They are not even there for stopping wars, destroying the environment, unemployment, etc. It is very much to your credit that you have worked to get the votes by holding rallies and musical events for Jill. I appreciate it and that is what we need: not just blogging. Maybe because of your work, this will start to change. If we can get just a 1% vote for Jill, I would declare victory and move on. A 5% vote would mean a major victory and it is going to be much easier next time.
Roseanne Barr has built her current presidential campaign around support for marijuana. How’s she doing?
This is one of the many problems with the danps approach. It fetishizes winning races, but if winning races is always the bottom line, then of course it leads to the kind of compromises that ensure winning. And if holding to principle gets in the way, well, so much the worse for principle.
Thus some years back, term limits for elected officials was a centerpiece of the Independence Party in New York, and when their boy Bloomberg overturned term limits so he could run for a third term, they said fine and went along with it. Anyone heard from the Independence Party in a while?
She did beat Rocky Anderson to the ballot in California, however, she’s not doing well. But most Marijuana smokers don’t know she’s running, either.
She announced her campaign by starting her own Party and publishing a photo of herself pointing an assault weapon vaguely toward the camera. She said then that she was also running for Prime Minister of Israel.
More than a year later, when I finally got to ask her about it (via call-in show), she said that her candidacy had originally been a joke candidacy.
Some Election watchers have supposed that she came in to trip up the Greens: Joining the Party to campaign against Jill Stein, then still running after she lost to Stein.
Barr’s TV following included lots of people who were entertained by Roseanne’s annoyingness, which wouldn’t translate into votes. She made some good speeches, and some not as good. Almost no one took her candidacy seriously after she left the Greens.
If he was elected with the term limit law in place, it seems that the US Constitution’s ex post facto clause would require him to leave after two terms:
Remember Jerry Brown: The two-term term limit was passed after he left office his second term: So the term limit doesn’t apply to him.
I guess billionaire Bloomberg probably has good lawyers, good enough to make some judge ignore the Constitution.
Bloomberg got the City Council to revoke term limits for the city, clearing the way for his 3rd run.
My point, to keep it simple, is that choosing a popular issue, per se, as Barr did, is insufficient to actually gain any support without a whole lot of other things getting done as well.
The Greens are not in a position to do what it takes to make marijuana a burning issue to the 80 million — lack of money, lack of volunteers, lack of staff. Nor would I support their doing so. In fact, if you came to a meeting that I was at and argued that marijuana should become our primary issue, presenting it as you have presented it above, I would dismiss you out of hand.
But to give you a better shake right now, you have to think about what a given issue does, beyond just whether it’s popular. Suppose I was king, and I had a candidate for governor, and had him or her run on the proposition that the state wasn’t doing enough to ensure the supremacy of the Miami Heat basketball team. It would be a popular issue.
But would voters consider it a MORE IMPORTANT issue than others? Would unemployed marijuana smokers be more concerned about marijuana reform than something that would get them a job? Especially if they had a connection and could generally smoke in peace (which most do)?
And suppose my Miami Heat candidate won. So what? Would his or her base of support be able to pivot, or be pivoted, to supporting a state public works program that would entail a major showdown with Florida corporations?
One of the delusions of the 60′s was that potheads were naturally more progressive than the general public, and for a while that was even true as the powers-that-be reacted to pot with hysteria. But things chilled out, perhaps not as much as we would have wished them to, but if you wanted to smoke pot (or so I’ve been told), you could, and in the early 70′s, even at a quite modest price. But it turned out that these counter-culture potheads donned their designer bell bottoms, got perms for their long hair, and joined the corporate world, or the factory, or McDonald’s grills, or just hung out. The alleged progressivism of potheads was co-opted quite easily, either through reduced penalties or deliberately negligent enforcement. (Lots of cops smoked pot as well, you know.)
So what would happen with your army of pothead reformers, if the Greens won office on the basis of their support? Would they be able to then take that social base and launch that 80 million into the fight for jobs programs, challenge corporate power for massive corporate taxation to expand the welfare state, etc? No. It would be back to square one, the very attempt would divide the Green pothead base, and therefore, the Greens own base would actively prevent the Green Party from straying from their original mission.
And by the way, marijuana reform is highly co-optable. The anti-war movement was smashed not through repression so much as by getting the troops out of Vietnam. Student protest was chilled out with co-ed dorms. Black Power militance was bought out with superficial poverty programs that gave jobs to the leading militants, isolating the true radicals who could then be shot down with impunity. So marijuana reform, if it became successful, would leave the basic power relations of capitalism quite intact.
The demands for full employment, strengthening the social safety net, and ending our wars is not so co-optable. Not so immediately winnable, a much harder struggle. But the struggle worth winning.
So we dig in for the long haul.
I wouldn’t want the Green Party to stray from its goals, as I said, I’d like to see them extend the 10 Key Values to the Marijuana demographic.
It could be that the Republicans will co-opt the pot issue, as Paul Ryan signaled last month.
I know that 80 million people who are getting stoned but not voting now will be very difficult to educate and motivate. But I think it needs to be done. It may be that the Occupy Movement was the first awakening of a sense of self-preservation.
And, as things stand, we don’t need all 80 million of them, as the Ds & Rs may only have about 30M loyal voters each.
I personally feel that quite a few people will vote for Roseanne. Will their votes be counted? I don’t know. I know way way back in 1980, people voting for John Anderson had their ballots examined and re-examined so that the election judges at the polling places could decide that the person’s ballot was not handled correctly.
Election judges at polling places are often Republicans, even those that have signed in for the day as Democrats.
USA Today poll showed just about seven weeks ago, that over 50% of all Americans who vote want more possibilities than these two Big, Corporate and MIC-favoring established parties.
So you are saying that if someone came to a local meeting for the Greens and wanted to see marijuana established as a primary issue, YOU would dismiss it out of hand.
And you are – ?? God of the Green Party? King of the Green Party? ?
Curious minds want to know.
To indulge your curiosity, I said:
And your crack about “God of the Green Party? King of the Green Party?” is just fucking nasty. I’m a member, and I’m entitled to my opinion, and I take things seriously on their merits. I’ve discussed the merits at some length, and you might try the same.
Per their website:
and:
Extending those Key Values would also include demanding the release of Political Prisoners related to the issue, and embarrassing the Administration by publicly citing the most egregious cases of pot’s Politically Imprisoned. Such Party reforms are probably coming.
Jill Stein has brought the issue out among the Greens as never before.
I prefer candidates who have paid some dues.
Are you referring to the Demogreens? I gather they flooded into the Green Party a few years ago and took over the executive apparatus. They seem to be most notable for their negotiable affections.