“I don’t know how you ‘spoil’ a process that’s already rotten. The Democratic Party is just as much a part of the problem in their policies as the Republicans.” – LeAlan Jones
U.S. Senate, Illinois: Mark Kirk: 48% … Alexi Gianoulias: 46% … LeAlan Jones:
With less than $5000 bucks to spend, compared to RepubliCorp Mark Kirk’s $12.4 million and DemoCorp Alexi Giannoulias’s $8.4 million, Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones still captured 3% of the vote, preventing DemoCorp President Barack Obama’s man Alexi from winning the U.S. Senate seat for Illinois. According to CNN, Jones won 4% of Democratic votes, 8% of independents, and 2% of Republican votes.
The Libertarian Party candidate received too few votes to mention (at least at CNN and ABC), except at the Chicago Tribune, which distorted the Senate results as follows:
Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones and Libertarian candidate Mike Labno each had less than 4 percent.
Jones is an interesting guy, becoming well known in the Chicago area when as a teenager he made two documentaries about life in the Ida B. Wells public housing project on the Southside. That’s where he began to learn the way the status quo political system works:
The setting for Jones’s two famous documentaries, the Ida B. Wells project at 39th and King, is all but gone now, razed as part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation, under which most of Chicago’s notorious housing projects have been demolished. Some of the residents were resettled in new mixed-income developments near their former homes, but many have been scattered across the metro area, breaking up extended families and communities. To Jones, the Plan for Transformation is a clear example of Democrats exploiting African-Americans. He says it’s benefited politicians, banks, developers, and real estate agents. “The only people who didn’t profit,” he says, “were the residents of public housing.”
Like all Green candidates, he rejects Obama’s health care reforms:
Jones thinks the federal health care legislation signed into law in March will be ineffective. He says he’d vote to repeal “Obamacare” and promote the single-payer bill drafted by Michigan’s John Conyers and Ohio’s Dennis Kucinich.
Good on ya, protest voters, and screw DemoCorp and RepubliCorp. Of course, I understand the corporate media will misinterpret the election results as an embrace of RepubliCorp and their feed the rich epiphanies. Yeah, right. Check out the latest CNN poll (CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Oct. 27-30, 2010. N=1,006 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3.):
“Which of the following is the most important issue facing the country today?” % The economy 52 The federal budget deficit 8 Education 8 Health care 8 The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan 8 Illegal immigration 8 Terrorism 4 Energy and environmental policies 4



29 Comments

I like this formula …
“According to CNN, Jones won 4% of Democratic votes, 8% of independents, and 2% of Republican votes.”
… because I think nonvoters, while not exactly the same category as what are normally considered ‘independents’, which supposedly lie between the two parties, are the true independents, and I think they mostly lean strongly Left, and represent the future of the progressive/left movement.
We, the vast pool of disaffected citizens (some of whom vote GOP, more of whom vote Dem, and most of whom don’t vote) are the majority.
The hate machine at the Daily Obama is raking Jones over the coals, along with the people who voted for him. They never learn.
Awesome! This is EXACTLY what the the DemoCorp Party needs to see: indisputable evidence that the Left lead to their defeat, by going Green. There’s nothing about those numbers that can be disputed.
If they’d kept the Left happy, that 3% wouldn’t have gone Green, and the Democrats would have won. Now DemoCorp can chew on that over the next couple years while they contemplate new shell games to throw us under the bus on their promises.
Excellent Post! Recc’d.
Good to hear DemoCorp has noticed the same thing I have.
Thanks!
When it comes to taking responsibility for their screwups, Dems are no better than Rethugs.
Jones will replace Nader as the latest Democratic scapegoat. Sad.
Feh…neither the DNC nor the DLC will learn shit from this.
Yup, but the people need to learn, I suppose. But maybe it doesn’t matter, since common sense populism can’t penetrate the mass media, or even DailyKos, and therefore affect the official Conventional Wisdom.
I’ll have to sneak my banned self over to DailyKos and do some teaching and proselytizing. Ain’t the ‘progressive post-free-speech era’ great!!??
Well, I think we liberal Democrats have to face it: the Green party has co-opted our liberal-socialist agenda. But what has it done to propel that agenda forward? Easy question, they fuck up Democrats by stealing away votes that might have brought the Democrat a win. Think Nader and Bush. Nice going. In some cases the also-ran-Greens are helping the Republicans take down that agenda.
I like the Greens but not when they help the anti-Greens control government.
As long as the GOP and the Dems continue to fight for the status quo, there needs to be some meddle from the Left. If this country is going down, then I’m not going to go down like some kool-aid drinking sucker. I’ll attach myself to a Party that represents me and is genuine about their platform.
Enough rhetoric. It’s time for change, even if that means the pleasure is preceded by a little pain.
In a way this was the perfect time for a protest vote, since what we get with DC gridlock is about the same as what we got with Democrats In Name Only controlling Congress.
OTOH, I’m glad that our governor, Pat Quinn, won rather than his opponent Bill Brady, who thinks cutting the minimum wage would be a good idea.
As I said yesterday, voting for a lefty and against the _national_ Democratic Party (especially rather than not voting) is the best way (though still not a great way, since predictably the national media ignore this stuff (see Chicago Trib’s coverage above) to register a protest of Obama’s Republicanism.
Here’s MSNBC blaming the left:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/03/pundit/index.html
Alexi Gianoulias made loans to Mob guys after they were convicted just how were they going to pay the loan back in prison is beyond me. Maybe if the Dems ran a candidate who could win we could have won this one.
Love it :)
Gore beat Bush by nearly 1 million votes…..blame the Supreme Court and the Electoral College, not Nader.
Paul Krugman:
November 3, 2010, 8:14 am
Blame The Whiny Center
So, we’re already getting the expected punditry: Obama needs to end his leftist policies, which consist of … well, there weren’t any, but he should stop them anyway.
What actually happened, of course, was that Obama failed to do enough to boost the economy, plus totally failing to tap into populist outrage at Wall Street. And now we’re in the trap I worried about from the beginning: by failing to do enough when he had political capital, he lost that capital, and now we’re stuck.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/blame-the-whiny-center/
Shergald, Gianoullias was Rahm’s best buddy. He wouldn’t have been a friend to the palestinians. The dems lost because young people didn’t bother to vote, not because greens took the time to do it.
Actually, the best thing we can hope for is to wipe away as many Dems as possible and watch the anti-Greens control government. This gives us two great advantages. First off, the Rethugs will mobilize the left and make them want to throw those crazies out. Second, the Dems won’t have incumbents to stand in our way. That opens the door for real progressives to replace the anti-Greens in the next election cycle.
What we need to do is to start aggressively finding and funding candidates to challenge for these seats immediately.
And because 2% (?) or so of us used the Green Party candidate to register our protest vote from the left. I regret but acknowledge that we have a two-party system in the U.S., and usually grudgingly go along with the implications. But things have gotten completely out of hand how corporate power has taken advantage of that fact.
I’m proud to say that I voted for Mr. Jones. I’m done with the legacy parties.
He’s an authentically admirable person — unlike almost all of the PR-puffed elites that the parties of privilege push on us — and he did the Green Party proud.
Its a one party system now. What are the implications?
Move to France? Seriously, I don’t know. And the problem isn’t ‘just’ political: it’s a one-party media/political system. In that setting, how does the majority break the elite stranglehold on power?
Obama spent his political capital courting/dining/asskissing Republicans for 2 years. It’s arguably one of the biggest wastes of political capital in American history, and so, so, depressing.
I have to admit I laughed a bit when Kirk won. It really pissed off Obama, and as usual, Obama and the Dems blame someone else (this time, a Green candidate) for the loss. If the Dems had just kept the base happy, this wouldn’t have happened. But when you antagonise your core voters, losses will result.
russ voted for mandates after putting on a big show of saying he would oppose them.
He couldn’t help himself. He shares their values. Not ours.
Jones spent less than $5,000 and wins 3%? And they’re still not looking in the mirror?