Not that they had too terribly much of it to begin with, but this recent announcement really…I dunno, shows exactly what sort of spineless hippies they really are:
OK, so they didn’t choose Nader. Whatever. But they pick this clown who says, in effect, “I’m not going to even bother. Thanks for nominating me, your nonentity candidate.” What’s the fucking point? Why not just fucking vote Kerry, call yourselves Democrats and get back to playing hackeysack? Motherfucking elitist sonsofbitches. This reminds me of '00 when Ani and other knuckleheads beseeched their legions of Birckenstock wearing hempheads to take the lowground and vote for Gore. I’m reminded of the quote, “those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.”
Perhaps I’m too inflexible. Perhaps they’ve got some sort of master plan to get Kerry elected and then using their up with people psychic flower power to get him to do the things they wanted the Greens to do. Yes, I’m sure of it. How silly of me. They’d elect Kerry, then when he fails, they’d get him out of there in '08 with the Green candidate du jour who would, of course, be a legitimate third party choice because everyone who voted for Kerry was secretly a Green who voted the lesser of two evils in so they could work their 50-year plan of dominance in.
Or perhaps Nader really was a third party candidate set up to draw votes away from the legitimate threat, like Teddy Roosevelt was during his second go-round (if you’re into that sort of thing) and this is a step in the right direction.
I haven’t read the article but perhaps they realized that Bush is enough of a disaster to their thinking that they’re better off going after the half-a-loaf concept of electing Kerry than risk another four years of GWB.
Politics is the art of compromise and if the Green Party is learning it then they’re that much closer to actually having some impact on the political dialogue. They’re not ready for national candidates anyway. Better by far they concentrate of county and state (and the occasional House seat) while attempting to build their grass roots support. When they’ve done enough of that they’ll be ready for the major leagues. But as it is they’re just one more party thinking they’re ready when their not.
Sure, and why not? It may not be as BIG a waste of tax money as Bush’s damn fool war, but the little parties have got to start somewhere if they’re ever going to learn to squander like republicans.
And it may be (I have no knowledge) that they feel they can keep their name out there as well as assist in the election of Kerry by motivating Green Party members to vote for Kerry as an ‘anyone but Bush’ thing.
This would allow them to:
A) Keep their name in the public eye
B) Earn some gratitude from the democratic President (supposing it gets that far). Maybe they get to influence who runs the EPA or Agriculture or something.
C) Give them the later ability to brag about how ‘influential’ they were in deciding the race (regardless of what the data shows…they’ll be able to make the brag).
None of those are to be sneered at by a small party trying to move up.
Of course, I would much rather see Dems than Greens infest our gov’t, but it’s a bit unfair to blame the ~2-3% that vote Green for Dem loses. Why not blame the ~50% that don’t vote?
Because it’s pretty much a given that they’re not going to vote, so you have to take that into account. Writing them off, it’s the 50% that do vote that matter. All of the sudden that small percentage is much larger, isn’t it?
Still completely arbitrary. Why assume that it would be easier to get someone to change their party affiliation than it would be to get Joe Sixpack out to vote? To someone at the fringe, their ain’t much difference between GWB and JFK. It would make far more sense for the dems to focus their effort on getting first-time voters out (and no, dead people voting and other dem shinanigans don’t count) than it does for dems to spend their effort on getting the smallest of fractions of voters to switch sides. (Not to mention, insults and perjoratives seem like an ‘interesting’ way of getting Naderites and Greens to come over.)
I think the Greens for once are showing some responsibility. Rather than nominate the egomaniacal Nader, who can only hope to spoil Kerry’s chances, they’ve nominated someone nobody knows and who will not be a spoiler. The Greens have to know that a Kerry administration will be much more eco-friendly than the Bush-Cheney administration. So good for the Greens. As mentioned earlier, to get some credibility the Greens need to work up from the bottom- some county commmision seats, some seats in state houses, etc. before working their way up to the big leagues.
It all comes down to how you look at voting in the first place. If you see casting a vote as a way of letting your voice be heard, then you’re only obligation is to vote according to your conscience. In that case, what the Greens are doing is deploreable. If, like me, you see voting as a way of using your political power, then you have to vote in order to get results, which often means making compromises. I think that’s what this Cobb person is saying.
When a President wins an election, he says “the People have spoken.” It’s a noble sentiment but it’s not true. The People speak all the time - it’s often hard to get them to shut up. Come election day, they stop talking and start acting, and that’s when they make a difference.