The Significance of the Green Party

If you’re like me – you see Obama for what he is, not a centrist, but a hawkish,  Constitution hating, corporatist, conservative who flicks some crumbs to the liberal base with a pro-coporate Republican healthcare plan, and an end to DADT.

I have spoken on this before in regards to Obama.  Glen Greenwald’s latest piece discusses the hypocrisy of most so-called Progressives in regards to Obama’s conservative stances, pro-torture, anti-whistleblower, and war stances that the left got outraged about under the Bush Administration, but they’ve come around to agree with the policy now that they have what is perceived to be a “dovish” “liberal” black President in office.

Glen Greenwald isn’t the only person who attacks the dominant left in this nation.  “Chomsky reserves his fiercest venom for the so-called liberal elites” states Chris Hedges of Truthdig. “Chomsky has accused liberal elites as serving as a smoke screen for the cruelty of unchecked capitalism and imperial war. He exposes their moral and intellectual posturing as a fraud. And this is why Chomsky is hated, and perhaps feared, more among liberal elites than among the right wing he also excoriates.

Chomsky once stated that “I don’t bother writing about Fox News. It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, “˜Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”

Ralph Nader is right up there beside them, usually decried by most faithful Democrats as a friend of the Republicans because he has consistently threatened their power structure by having the audacity to actually be a civil libertarian and a liberal in more than just in name.

I don’t know of three people’s opinions I tend to respect and agree with more than the aforementioned individuals.   But often you hear it from liberals – who do I vote for?    Do I sacrifice half (or more than half) of my values and vote for a libertarian or a libertarian-Republican?   Do I vote for a left-wing party and politicians that aren’t really left wing?

The Greens are almost always never mentioned in these conversations, it’s the same old catch-22 – people dont’ vote for them because they don’t think they have a possibility of winning, they don’t win because people don’t vote for them.    So people look at the Green Party as the glass is half empty.

But lets take another perspective at them.

First a little Wikipedia history:

In the United States, Greens first ran for public office in 1985. Since then the Green Party of the U.S. has claimed electoral victories at the municipal, county and state levels. The first U.S. Greens to be elected were David Conley and Frank Koehn in Wisconsin 1986. Each was elected to a position on the County Board of Supervisors in Douglas and Bayfield counties respectively. Keiko Bonk was first elected in 1992 in Hawaii County, becoming Official Chairwoman in 1995. The first Green Party mayor was Kelly Weaverling, elected in Cordova, AK in 1991. Approximately 160 Greens hold elected office across the US as of summer 2009. . The first U.S. Green elected to a state legislature was Audie Bock in 1999, to the California State Assembly, followed by John Eder to the Maine House of Representatives in 2002 and 2004 and Richard Carroll to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2008. While in office in 2003 in the New Jersey General Assembly, incumbent Matt Ahearn made a party switch to Green for the remainder of his term. The Green Party has contested four U.S. presidential elections: in 1996 and 2000 with Ralph Nader for President and Winona LaDuke as Vice President, in 2004 with David Cobb for President and Pat LaMarche for Vice President, and in 2008 with Cynthia McKinney for President and Rosa Clemente for Vice President.

So how can you look at this as the glass being half full?

You can see the Greens as a weak fringe group or, you can see them as incredible survivors who’ve managed to withstand the barrage from Wall Street, and the fear and smear campaigns, and being kept off the ballot, and censored and away from the microphone, kept off of tv..

It is  impressive that the Greens have survived when the New Party and the Progressive Party and the Labor Party and the Socialist Party as electoral organizations have all folded.

The only modern liberal party out there is the  Van Jones’ “American Dream Party,”  which is trying to parallel the Tea Party, but like the Tea Party  – the American Dream Party is nothing more than an astroturf and co-opt of the Occupy Movement through various Democratic Party fronts.  They don’t stand in solidarity with OWS, they wish to co-opt it into the power-structure fold.  I’m sure Van Jones thinks he’s doing a good thing, but it’ll falter because of the Democrat influence.

The Greens haven’t won big or blown up because they do not have compelling positions or really dedicated people – it is just that it is extremely hard to survive in this extremely repressive political environment.

The conservatives are against you, the corporate structure is against you, and centrists and slightly less right wing conservatives run as liberals who’s power is threatened by you.   Democrats and Republicans came together after the run of Ross Perot to make it incredibly difficult for third parties to get on ballots and to participate in debates.

From Wikipedia:

Control of the presidential debates has been a ground of struggle for more than two decades. The role was filled by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters (LWV) civic organization in 1976, 1980 and 1984. In 1987, the LWV withdrew from debate sponsorship, in protest of the major party candidates attempting to dictate nearly every aspect of how the debates were conducted. On October 2, 1988, the LWV’s 14 trustees voted unanimously to pull out of the debates, and on October 3 they issued a dramatic press release:

The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates…because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.

The same year the two major political parties assumed control of organizing presidential debates through the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The commission has been headed since its inception by former chairs of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee.

Some have criticized the exclusion of third party and independent candidates as well as the parallel interview format as a minimum of getting 15% in opinion polls is required to be invited.

The CPD was created just before Perot – who was the last third party candidate to participate in the debates and you can guarantee the only reason that man had access was because he was a billionaire.   Every  year since then, third parties have had to host their own debates.  In 2004, David Cobb of the Greens debated Michael Badnarick of the Libertarian Party.  Last year, McKinney, Baldwin, Nader, and Barr were all given nudges by Ron Paul after his loss of the GOP primary, and they too had to hold their own debates – only covered by CSPAN.

The Greens have had to fight like hell to end up on ballots and for the tiniest amounts of exposure as the corporate media suck up to the government collusion with CPD has kept them largely out of the loop.

But as the rest of the liberal parties  have fallen, the Greens have endured.  They may not be winning, but they are surviving – waiting for the day that America decides it truly wants a liberal party.  The one that’s been here for years, that has weathered the storms over decades now.  They know you have to start local.  They believe in true grassroots.  And they’re waiting for the rest of us liberals, socialists,  Democrats, Pirate Party members, and other lefties to get onboard.