Green-Rainbow Party gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein has failed to qualify for up to $519,000 in public funding, a setback for her struggling candidacy but one that gives Governor Deval Patrick a boost.
Stein, who needed to submit $125,000 in qualifying donations by last Friday’s deadline, fell short by just $3,000, according to Brad Balzer, deputy director of the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance.
Jill Stein was never going to win this election. But if she had qualified for half a million bucks in public financing, she could at least have made a decent amount of noise while not winning. Now that public financing is out of the picture, though, it’s well and truly over. She won’t win, and she won’t make much noise in the process.
The right thing to do, then, is to end her campaign. There is simply no point in sticking around for the sole purpose of appearing in the occasional debate (as election day draws closer, some media outlets will shut her out) and pretending to supply a realistic lefty alternative to Governor Patrick. She won’t win, and she can’t win, and all she can do at this point is throw the race to Charlie Baker. Frankly, I don’t think she will even do that, since I think that (a) she won’t get enough votes, and (b) many Stein voters are people who otherwise wouldn’t show up. But it’s (barely) within the realm of possibility. Is that really worth doing?
Next time around, Green-Rainbow Party, why not do things the right way. Stop pretending you can win a top-of-the-ticket race before establishing any sort of real presence in this state. Field a solid, respectable slate of candidates for the state legislature. (Why not start with Nat Fortune – he seems like an interesting fellow and he is not going to be the next Auditor.) That would be well worth doing, as well as financially manageable (state rep races cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, as opposed to the millions needed for a statewide run), and you might actually pick up a few seats. Once you do that, you can start to work on the kind of statewide reputation necessary to field serious candidates for higher office, like the statewide offices and the Congress.
This is a multi-year, probably multi-decade project. It is the only way a third party will ever get anywhere in this state (or any other, for that matter). Please, prove to us that you are serious about creating a third party – God knows we could use one. End this campaign today, and start laying the groundwork for 2012 tomorrow.
Third parties won’t be a serious force to be reckoned with until I can rank my vote:
1. Better Party
2. Okay Party
3. Worse Party
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p>That and campaign finance and then we’ll have interesting elections again.
to lay groundwork for 2012, and I do believe that is an excellent idea, the last thing she should do is end her campaign. Even though she didn’t raise enough to qualify
for matching funds, she is gaining momentum and has gained quite a few supporters in the process. If she ended her campaign now, she would look like a quitter. She, and the Green Party, can gain valuable visibility in the upcoming debates. Their platform will be more widely discussed and better understood. Her presence in this election is a very good thing.
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p>Is there any real evidence for this? And going from 4% to 5% in the polls (which, in any case, she hasn’t) isn’t “momentum,” even if that 1% represents a large percentage increase.
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p>I also doubt that having Dr. Jill Stein attending a debate will make the Green Party’s platform “more widely discussed and better understood.” The only way to do this is to build grassroots support, by doing precisely the sorts of things David mentions in his post.
If Stein’s candidacy has one of the editors of Blue Mass Group calling for Green-Rainbow to field competitive candidates against progressive democrats (!), discontinuing that campaign is the very last thing she should do.
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p>And now for the “pox on all your houses” part.
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p>First, David. I assume that you are sincere, but what will you say if what you say you want comes to pass? Imagine green candidates for the legislature challenging progressive incumbents, splitting the progressive vote and threatening to elect tea-party republicans. Still cheering?
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p>What’s that you say? Greens shouldn’t field candidates in those races? If GR is ever to be competitive and viable the way you suggest, they have to go where the progressive votes are. Not just where they won’t threaten progressives.
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p>As for Green Rainbow itself. The most striking feature, for those who have been paying attention, is the party’s complete inability to execute grass-roots organizing. This is astonishing for a political organization that is founded on a theory of people power. I cite the following three examples.
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p>1) Inability to qualify for clean-elections funds in 2002, despite having raised the required grass-roots donations. GR couldn’t file paperwork on time with 351 municipal clerks. That is not a trivial operation, but ought to be bread-and-butter for a real grass-roots organization.
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p>2) Inability to collect sufficient signatures to qualify the IRV petition for the initiative-and-referendum process. The idea was bloody brilliant, namely to get IRV on the ballot this year and base Stein’s entire campaign on the need for voting reform. But unable to collect enough signatures.
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p>3) And today, Frank Phillip reports in the globe:
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p>Please note: I take no pleasure in noting these failures. I’d much prefer a two-party system to what we have now, especially with a progressive environmental party as number 2 (or even number 1).
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p>We are not discussing Green Rainbow’s inability to raise millions of dollars from corporations or $100,000-a-plate dinners, an absurd idea and metric. These are failures to execute basic grass-root political functions. I am sorry to say that speaks volumes about the state of the left in Massachusetts.
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Whoa, now, hold on there! Did I say anything about running candidates against progressive Democrats? No sirree, I don’t think so. Under present circumstances, a progressive Democrat (e.g. Carl Sciortino) is likely to have a lot more influence than a similarly progressive GRP, so the sensible progressive would vote for the Democrat. I would be interested in seeing GRP candidates mount serious challenges to the less progressive members of our Democratic caucus. And there are plenty of those to go around.
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p>Nonsense. There are progressive votes everywhere in Massachusetts. GRP’s job is to find them and get them to show up in districts where they are not well represented. As you point out in the latter half of your comment, though, there is reason to be concerned about GRP’s ability to do that.
“run yesterday, run tomorrow, but never run today.”
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p>Political parties to which you do not belong are not likely to follow your wishes.
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p>A consequence of Green Rainbow getting its act together and fielding a legislative slate is that many of those candidates will run in districts where they have the best chance of winning. That’s what parties do.
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p>You might prefer to say, Dibs on the good districts, go elsewhere please, but the Commonwealth’s ballot-access laws do not give us any special claim. Please be competitive, just not with us.
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p>This diary already includes a comment (below) disparaging GR’s attempt to win a seat in conservative Shrewsbury a few years ago.
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p>So although you profess tough-love frustration with the green rainbow (as do I), be careful what you wish for. I think you would not prefer it to the current state of things.
Obviously I cannot dictate to the GRP where they run their candidates. But I can assure you that I (and a lot of others) will take the GRP a lot more seriously if they run candidates somewhere other than on the top of the ticket where they literally cannot win. It’s great that they’re running two state rep candidates out in western Mass. It is, however, absurd that they are running the same number of state rep candidates as they are running statewide candidates. The ratio should be something like 10:1, not 1:1.
What’s worse, Greens would not have to win so many races to eclipse the number of Republican’s in either chamber. Now that would be a game changer!
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p>From my point of view, this failure is linked to the party’s inability to execute grass-roots political projects. From a group that holds a grass-roots theory of power–the power of people versus that of money–that’s painful.
I think the ratio of state rep candidates to statewide should be maybe 2:0 or 3:0. It takes a lot of money and human resources to run a statewide campaign, and the GRP has neither. If it were me, I’d concentrate on smaller races I could win (particularly races with no incumbent), build the grassroots, and actually win something before going statewide again.
yes, GRP candidates need progressives to live in districts in which they can compete. But they don’t just need progressives – they need unhappy progressives. That’s the problem with running in, say, Carl Sciortino’s district. Sure, lots of progs live there. But most of them are probably pretty happy with Sciortino, and so are unlikely to vote him out of office. There are also plenty of progs next door in Medford, and they’re represented by the distinctly non-prog Rep. Donato. Which one seems the more likely place to run? I can see arguments both ways, but I do think that taking on an established progressive incumbent will be a tough sell.
are those progressive districts, like Sciortino’s. I don’t think GRP candidates would have any kind of chance in traditionally Republican areas or areas that have elected more conservative Democrats. It is what it is. Only in more progressive areas where the Democrat incumbent votes were in question is where the opportunities are.
to that employed by Democrats against moderate Republicans: a vote for you is a vote for Tom Finneran, or DiMasi, or DeLeo, or whatever future felon answers to Mistah Speakah at the time.
Trickle Up raises important questions and has a good critique of the GR party’s history. But I think it’s too easy to say that the GR would only do well in districts that already have elected progressive Democrats. Remember the power of incumbency and how few of our races are even contested. There are many substantial pockets of progressive voters being represented by DINOs in this state.
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p>And how about city council, school committee, and select board seats?
Running for local office isn’t glamorous. In fact, I can tell you from personal experience its time-consuming, not very fun, and not very ideological.
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p>Campaigning for governor means you get to talk about what you believe and what you think other people should hear. Governance, particularly at the local level, is deciding about whether city people can have chickens in their backyards (Holyoke) and what restrictions to put on a gravel pit permit (Granby). Real people. Real problems. Real governing.
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p>What fun is that?
Good point.
This Green promises that, should he close on the home he’s hoping to and finally establishing “permanent residence” in the town he’s lived in for some time, he’ll start at the very bottom.
Because Greens, you know, we’re all about the chickens. And their rights. (On a more serious note, it’s an issue exploding all over the place).
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p>(Who would The Mekons support?”
Our town restrictions were that you could have chickens as long as you had a minimum of 4. Don’t ask me why that restriction. The only thing I could think of is that a minimum of 4 may keep each other warm in the winter.
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p>I had chickens for almost 5 years. They are awesome creatures, easy to care for as far as feeding and putting to bed, but very messy to clean after. They were free range in the daytime and cooped at night. I lost many to neighborhood dogs and fisher cats. I lost my last one about 6 months ago and have decide to remain chicken free for the time being. I will get them again though.
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p>The great thing about chickens is that they put themselves away at night. It is so cool. At dusk, they all return to their coop from wherever they are meandering in the yard. they jump up on their perch and start to doze off. It’s so funny. All you have to do is give them food, water, and close the door. In the morning, open the coop door, more food and water and they’re good to go. So easy.
in Holyoke. Mollypat’s hometown. I think the issue came about in part because of the large population of Puerto Ricans that live in Holyoke and migrated from the hills of the island.
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p>My town is rural, people can and did keep horses on acre lots. I kept chickens for about five years too. When I started grad school, I gave them up.
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p>When it comes to chickens, The Mekons would probably just get drunk and write a song.
Thank you, David, for one of the more respectful posts regarding the GRP (I’ll hold my breath in anticipation of the comments sure to follow).
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p>None of your points are without merit. But taken together, I’m bemused. If in fact Jill is very unlikely to have any effect whatsoever on the outcome of the election … then I really do have to wonder why you’d waste any space encouraging her to get out, since in that case, her sole effect from here on out is likely to be getting some seven minutes of speaking time on one of the debates. Are you not putting a lot of effort into swatting a gnat?Hmm.
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p>We both know what’s really at stake here. Everyone’s spinning the polls one way or the other, but no one sensible would put any real money down on what the results look like come Election Wednesday. So if JS were in fact possibly pulling 4+% away from DP, I’d understand your concern better.
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p>It’s unlikely. Democrats who enjoy bashing Nader for ’00 rely on the mistaken assumption that Nader voters would have voted for Gore were he not in the race. I’m not certain you understand the depth of revulsion on the part of what you’d probably consider the “far left” towards mainstream Democratic candidates, their big money supporters, and what many of us would consider the sacrifice of any real vision at the expense of pragmatic politics (true, the opposite charge could be levelled at Greens, and it would not be without merit. Which is why I personally often feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place). You understand the need to be sensible and pragmatic and incremental; they understand the need to stand, at some point, on one principle or another, one that simply doesn’t allow for compromise. In other words, many–how many I cannot say–of JS’ supporters would NOT trundle off and vote for DP were Jill not running (I’m actually one of the ones that would.).
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p>In return for you (excellent, btw) advice, my suggestion would be for the Democrats to stop bashing and/or exorcising Greens and to give throw them a big enough bone to give them pause. Telling Jill to drop out is hardly going to win you back any voters. Where’s the draw for those of us militantly opposed to the wars, the backbreaking defense budget, and, closer to home and more pertinent, instant run off voting and clean elections? Not in the legislature, last I looked. Not emanating from DP’s bully pulpit. Not from My Lord Steven Lynch, who pulled off quite a triumph despite his own poor ratings.
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p>You saw what we pulled off Friday–we topped what we needed to qualify on what was a well-nigh miraculous day of fundraising. I sat watching the thermometer go up by five, and ten, and fifty, and ten dollars. Those people are doing what they did because they want, and desperately, to have THEIR voice at the table. And you say: no. You don’t have enough money to make any real noise. Go away now.
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p>And, too, all those individuals aside, the trouble with simply dropping out is that it leaves some pretty large constituencies without a spokesperson. The legalize marijuana folks (smirk, but that’s the majority now)? The anti-casino crowd? Those opposed to increased school privatization? Singe-payer? Do you really think that none of those groups should have a voice on this especially large stage? (BTW, do you think TC should also drop out? he doesn’t exactly offer much in the way of a genuinely alternative view, he ain’t gonna win…)
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p>(Oh, and, uh, btw, a number of media outlets have been shutting her out of debates).
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p>I agree with you 100% about strategy. 1000%. But you know the catch-22 in play here; we need big-time candidates to inspire others to run. This IS “laying the groundwork.” And, to be honest, to add another dimension from which to choose. I don’t fall for the line that there are no real differences between Democrats (mostly) and Republicans (mostly), but I feel they’re simply two sides of a triangle. Or, more likely, a square (where’s Carla?) I want something to work FOR.
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p>But let me ask you. What’s in it for Jill, the GRP, and her supporters if she were to leave? (Make us an offer…)
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p>And another, just out of curiosity. Jill, or, say Nat Fortune, whom I can assure you is an interesting fellow has put in a few terms on a local board, and runs for state legislature. Against a Democrat you aren’t very fond of. Would you seriously consider voting for a GRP candidate in that situation?
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p>mh
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Let me try to respond to several points.
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p>Like I said, I think it’s unlikely that Stein will impact the result if she stays in. Unlikely, but possible. I’m confident that she’s not taking as much as 4% from Patrick, but it could be half a point, or even at the outside 1%. That could matter if Baker and Patrick end up in a real nail-biter. I don’t think it will, for the reasons stated in my post, but it’s certainly possible. And even a small chance of that happening is worrisome.
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p>Nader sympathizers always say this, but it’s a mistake. I fully accept that many, or even most, Naderites would not have voted for Gore. But the numbers in Florida were shocking – nearly 100,000 votes for Nader, and only 537 votes separating Bush and Gore. So if even just over half a percent of the Naderites would have voted Gore instead, Gore would have won. And since you yourself are proof that such people exist, well, QED.
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p>Right, that’s my point. Perhaps most Nader/Stein voters would stay home, but at least some would vote for Gore/Patrick. And in an unusual situation, those votes could really matter.
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p>Well, you don’t. Sorry to be blunt, but that’s the truth.
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p>Well, this is basically my point. Even if Stein stays in, they still don’t really have a voice. Because she won’t be heard. She doesn’t have the money to buy ads, and the free media is drying up fast. That’s why this business of parachuting in every few years to run for statewide office, instead of doing the grunt work to build a real party, is fundamentally bad strategy and leads to frustration and disenfranchisement on the part of the very people the GRP claims to care so much about.
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p>Cahill has plenty of money in the bank, and he’s going to have more from the public financing. He’s able to get his message out. He won’t win, but he remains a significant factor in the race. Sorry, but the two candidates just are not comparable at this point. If Stein had qualified for public financing, it would be quite a different story, and I wouldn’t have written this post. But she didn’t.
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p>Yes, and that’s going to accelerate.
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p>I’m just not sure I believe that. I obviously can’t speak for GRP members, but is it really that inspiring to see someone get crushed every 4 years, and have not much happen in between? What kind of inspiration is that? Wouldn’t it be more inspiring to see a few winners?
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p>Absolutely! And so would a lot of other people on this site and elsewhere, IMHO. I would love to see a viable third party take root in this state. But the once-every-four-years strategy is never going to lead to that happening.
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p>OK. So what can the governor do between now and then to woo 1% back?
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p>This, to my mind, is the crux of the matter. We need the equivalent of the Moral Majority/Christian Coalition/Tea Party in the liberal universe: a sufficiently staunch element with backbone that will actually hold politicians’ feet to the fire. Without the threat of defection, there’s no reason for Democrats these days to do anything but play to the center (I will grant you that DP and a few others Democrats have shown a degree of courage on some issues–he’s not the prince of darkness in my book). I know I take the chance of being instantly dismissed every time mention the N-word, but Ralph’s point–“if you grant them your vote, they’ll take your vote granted”–seems valid. The Democrats KNOW that when push comes to shove, the progressive left will stand in line and cast their vote, thereby freeing them up to make their pitch to a center that’s moving in many ways increasingly to the right.
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p>That may be changing–Rahm’s “&%$#ing retards” charge, Gibb’s attack last week, and Obama’s recent follow-up attacking progressives are indicative of a growing impatience on the left. (Incidentally, while most Greens would crucify me for saying so, I actually like Rahm. I’d love to have the guy on my side).
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p>Patrick has made his pitch to both the center and left. Now’s bind time. The substantial number of undecideds are, presumably, centrists. Meaning that the Gov’s team is likely looking for one more pitch to woo them. Would it be worth instead, or in addition, somehow making some really strong pitch to the Greens? Maybe not, from a strategic point of view. But where does that leave us?
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p>You see, I have no desire to destroy what’s good and decent and smart in the Democratic Party, and I’m not looking for some green utopia. All I really want is a way to create SOME freaking leverage. Nader went to Kerry and offered him some 23 propositions and said that if JK would adopt three, he’d drop out (admittedly, RN was a non-factor in ’04). How would you feel about third-parties doing something similar? Or a mainstream candidate responding, “I will provide unconditional support for X in return for…”
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p>Maybe …”worrisome” is the point. I want candidates to worry–about my concerns. And I couldn’t disagree more strongly with those who claim that demanding the same is the equivalent of tantrum-throwing. Especially in that any number of my stances would seem to reflect those of the majority! (Admittedly not all).
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p>Arrrgh. This is the only comment you’ve made that upsets me in any genuine way. It seems to be synonymous with the media consortium’s stance, recently captured so nicely by Dame Margery Eagan: you need to buy your way in. Sort of like a “party poll tax.” That attitude is a real stumbling bock for me. I know your position is reflective of realpolitik, and it’s undeniable at face value, but here’s where you and I have a genuine and fundamental disagreement–I really believe that all those five and ten dollar donors deserve a voice. On the big stage and under the bright lights. Disenfrachisement based on dollars isn’t my idea of democracy in action. Hell, where else do they get coverage? All the endless small rallies, all the press releases submitted by advocacy organizations? Not a whit.
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p>Well, I’ll have always have BMG…
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p>Actually, the “free media” isn’t drying up, and I’m not nearly so sure as you are that it will be. I’m not going to make any claims to popular support growing by leaps and bound, but when it comes to the media, Google Alerts do in fact show a burgeoning number of press hits (and no, before you say it, they’re not all revolivng around negative stories like the one you posted!).
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p>…and it was in fact a stumbling block for me before joining the Party. I don’t think you’ll find much disagreement in this regard among GRP members. Greens themselves have actually levelled the same charge against Nader: why pop up every four years running for President, rather than running for Congress or devoting your time to building a credible political party? But I also don’t see it as either/or. Fact is, if we don’t start running at the ground level, we’re doomed. But I don’t see state races as precluding that.
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p>Meanwhile, it’s just increasingly hard for me to find a home in the DP. The Democrats had what I felt was a terrifc contender in my district in Mac D’Alessandro, and I can’t fathom why, with Steven Lynch’s 42% approval ratings, he won by nearly a 2-1 margin. (Actually, I’d be interested in your and others’ insights on that). So what am I supposed to do–hold my nose and vote for a pro-war, anti-choice, pro-PATRIOT Act, anti HCR candidate to protect the Dems’ edge in the House? I know how important the latter is, especially considering the whackjobs taking over the GOP, but man…. I keep feeling like voting for “Democrats” like that means winning the battle and losing the war.
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p>I don’t think anyone is really saying that disagreeing with a particular candidate’s stand(s) is equivalent to tantrum-throwing. Tantrum-throwing is stuff like this, where non-GRP people trying to engage in civil discussion are called liars. It happens all the time when the subject of the GRP comes up, as I’m sure you’re aware. It is a very effective means of driving away people who might otherwise be sympathetic.
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p>Look, I share your frustration (to a point). But realpolitik has its name for a reason: it reflects reality, and liberal mainstream frustration with the GRP stems from the GRP’s essential refusal to acknowledge reality much of the time. As for the five and ten dollar donors, do you remember how much money Deval Patrick raised from small donors long before anyone gave him a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the Democratic primary, and long before the state’s powerful interests started paying attention to him? A lot, that’s how much. It can be done. It just takes time, hard work, and organization.
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p>I certainly share your disappointment on that one. But the fact is that D’Alessandro was trying to unseat a well-established incumbent in a low-turnout primary. Very hard to do, and he started very late. That’s fundamentally what killed his chances: time. I hope he tries again, and I hope he gets a long running start. Again, compare the D’Alessandro sprint in 2010 to the Patrick marathon in 2005-06.
claim:
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p>reality:
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p>Can we please, for the sake of honesty, stop pretending that Deval Patrick and Barack Obama’s campaigns were financed primarily by the grassroots? I hope you’d agree that oth their campaigns were well-funded operations that invested in grassroots organizing. I’d go even further and say they invested in a certain cynical marketing approach that spoke very directly to what people were thirsting for… a new kind of politics… hope, change, community, together, values, vision, yes we can! Both grassroots operations were impressive, historical, and moving. Both served their purpose and both were basically dismantled upon success. Both were somewhat or other revived when the going got tough. Both were incredibly disappointing to the thousands and millions of people who believed in the rhetoric — the powerful narratives that these two leader-types were creating about themselves.
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p>In Patrick’s case, his quick reversal… that the whole “liberal thing” was the greatest misconception about him… came as early as one week after his election. Obama didn’t wait much longer to roll out his unfortunate politics-as-usual cabinet, and reverse his promises for… a new kind of politics.
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p>Most of the criticism of the Green-Rainbow Party here is valid. I’ve been at it for about 10 years in one form or another, and the time period has been dominated with the sense that the GRP couldn’t organize 1/1000th as well as it needed to to match ITS rhetoric. For a party based on not much more than its values and its vision, it has for very many years done a pretty poor job of practicing its values and its vision. Really truly executing upon them in any meaningful way.
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p>We certainly have not been helped by the political establishment, the corporate media, and the overall inertia of conventional thinking. But that’s no excuse. The party has, most assuredly, been its own worst enemy.
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p>But there’s good reason that a whole bunch of good people have stuck it out this long, and I can say with confidence that the tide has turned, and there’s a renewed sense of purpose and common cause. And the small-yet-growing political movement that it represents simply should not be separated from the larger progressive movement that we need to be building right now… together.
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p>Squashing voices like Jill Stein’s because she can’t win is not the way forward. It gives up all the leverage to make Patrick actually stand up for something. And it gives in to the anti-democratic moves by the establishment to cut her out of the political discourse, even as she’s expanding the dialogue on badly-needed solutions… solutions that the Patricks and Obamas should be backing considering the movements that got them elected. But they serve their big-money donors much more attentively than their small-money donors. How any progressive could vote for a man who would participate in numerous debates that exclude the one ballot-qualified candidate who refuses corporate money for her campaign is beyond me. But it says it all.
I am one of the Nader bashers, but I hardly enjoy it.
but the G-Rs aren’t actually interested in winning office, just throwing childish tantrums. The vast majority of their membership are people who lack any sort of fundamental understanding of what government is or does, and are almost certainly otherwise apathetic. If they were truly interested in building a party, instead of trying to suggest there’s a moral equivalence between Republicans and Democrats, they’d focus on attacking the Republican Party for holding views that are anathema to their ideology, while trying to make enough friends in the Democratic Base as to become viable in certain individual races, to build that foundation. You don’t get anywhere by making your natural constituency (progressives) think you’re a bunch of fools, by suggesting their party of choice is little different than the party of Sarah Palin. Grace Ross aside, I don’t think I’ve ever been impressed by a Green Party member — and Grace became a Democrat.
I’m beginning to think you have never met a party member. For my own part, I have hardly been apathetic but a political activist and municipal policy ‘wonk’ for more than three decades ever since joining the National Wildlife Federation at the age of five. I have served on several municipal boards; I have campaigned for my City Council on several occasions; I campaigned for State Representative in 2006. I have often worked to support Democratic Party candidates for state representative, and city council; and I have often cooperated with both Democrats and Republicans in various local campaigns against the Berkshire Power power plant, the biomass plants in Russell and Springfield, the floating casino proposal in Agawam, and monster box shopping complexes. I have helped author policy for municipal approval of Community Preservation Act projects, and even raised a public stink when our Mayor refused to help fund such projects. I have worked with the teachers union to support their having a contract, I have supported the police union in their lawsuit against my town, and I helped call attention to (and stop!) the DCR’s plans to clear cut huge swaths of the Robinson State Park. I created a municipal PAC, for pete’s sake.
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p>The Republican Party didn’t endeavor within our state to make sure that the DCR had a financial conflict of interests in forest management. The Republican Party within our state didn’t act to slash Medicare reimbursement rates for people I cared for working as a CNA for nine years. The Republican Party didn’t ensure through their utility deregulation plan that the foxes would be guarding the hen house in term of who would establish criteria through which utilities could circumvent municipal zoning codes. I’m sure that they wished they could have, but in this state they lack the power. No, here within our Commonwealth only one political party has been polluting my community’s air, threatening my town’s water supply, jeapordizing threatened species in the forests nearby, making sure people I loved could not afford dentures and then wither and die. Please don’t tell me that I don’t know how government works or why. I was a city council appointed municipal official once, and so was a part of it!
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p>If you know not whereof you speak…. You know?
Your contributions on this thread, despite the actual words, reveals a peevishness that bolsters exactly what Ryan and David have said about the GR party.
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p>Your attitude is an excellent example of exactly why the GR party gains absolutely no traction year after year. When you people take responsibility for your own failure to achieve any ground? Paradoxically, you folks are the political equivalent of Luddites, which, I suppose in and of itself, is something of an achievement.
In addition, may I add that the Massachusetts GOP IS the party that is now blocking the funds needed to run our state government (FY 11 Supplemental Spending bill).
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p>If you need a stark contrast between the Party of No and the Party of Go, here it is.
Ryan, I don’t think anyone’s ever suggested that there is a moral equivalence between the party of Sarah Palin and the Democrats. If they do, I pay no heed. But there’s a fundamental–and let me stress that word–economic equivalence between the party of Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker. Before you go nuts at the thought, let me re-iterate: fundamental. I don’t need to be told that on a day-to-day basis, there are clear, distinct, and, yes, GENUINELY meaningful differences. And most Democrats fight the good fight, and I have NO problem contacting my state and national reps and thanking them when they hold the line. Sheesh, I wouldn’t want to have to deal every day with some of the real and growing number of cretins on the GOP side, for whom obstructionism, formerly a dirty word, is now practically become a one-word manifesto.
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p>But to some of those fundamentals…
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p>Frankly, I see the country sinking. The flow of wealth upward, and its downright terrifying concentration in the hands of the top 1-4%, does not bode well. You’ll tell me that that’s practically the basis of GOP ideology, and I certainly won’t disagree. But where’s the resistance? I mean SERIOUS, meaningful resistance? When you hear now that the Dems may be taking repealing the Bush tax cuts off the table, when Democrats in the state refuse to entertain the idea of taking (admittedly not inconsiderable)steps necessary to implement a progressive income tax … I don’t see the fundamental question being addressed. I’m not a bolshevik, and I don’t see sensible wealth redistribution happening anytime soon–but I also witness NO action to stanch that INCREASING flow upwards. THAT’s a fundamental distinction between the Greens and the other two parties. I believe it’s sufficiently critical so as to warrant public discussion, uncomfortable as it may be to Dems who mutter, “shhh … that sounds like …`class war!'” And hence the need for a party that will talk about it. (Rather than wasting time defending it’s time against half-witted charges of “socialism.”)
Have the Democrats in the state been good on the environment? I can point to any number of issues on which they are to be congratulated. (Along with a slew of minor, local ones on which they can be damned). The trouble is … it ain’t good enough (admission: I’m no expert, but I do take quite seriously the claims made by, conclusions drawn by, and policies advocated by what I’ll loosely call the 350.org confederation). Will the Democrats win every battle on energy and environment? Hell no. Again, I know what they’re up against. But when they START from the center, trying to buck up support from the business roundtable to the US Chamber of Commerce, they lose tremendous bargaining power, and follow by caving all too quickly. Now, we could argue all day about the real effects of climate change, but if you accept for the sake of argument that McKibben and Hansen et al may be correct–where does that leave me?
I agree with your idea that the Greens are occasionally remiss in not going after the Right, thereby forfeiting some potential friendship, or at least grudging respect. It’s a point I’ll keep in mind. But at the same time, as I explained in a response above, those of us who are starting to think in terms of economc and environmental catastrophe–not a wholly irrational, “the end is near!” stance any more, I don’t think–need some leverage, lest the argument be restricted to a certain set of very limited propositions from both sides. My leverage is my $ and my vote.
I know politics is the art of compromise. I see very few issues in black-and-white terms myself, and–laugh if you will at this coming from a googly-eyed green–I often tend to favor the pragmatic choice over the ideological one, and understand very well that the perfect is the enemy of the good. But on these key issues, the “good” simply ain’t enough; and if I can’t enjoy any real success, am I not entitled, at the very least, to have a tribune making my case? Decry our arguments–please!!!–but please don’t tell us we have no real right to be making them unless we’ve hit an arbitrary threshold for matching funds. That’s too cynical for even my own jaded self.
Sorry for dragging this into the realm of the philosophical when the real point is the potential Green effect is the current margin-of-victory for Deval. But I think its important to understand that while, sure, there are rabid anti-mainstream-party members among the Greens (just as there are plenty of Green-Hatas among the MassDems)–those whom I referred to previously as unlikely to ever pull a Democratic lever–we’re NOT all blind to the differences between the two mainstream parties, and my affiliation with the Greens isn’t based on some casual equivalence between the two. It DOES come down to a very great extent, though, to what is, on both a philosophical and politically pragmatic level, what I can’t help perceive as as a fundamental difference between the Greens, on the one hand, and the majority parties, on the other.
As for the “childish tantrums”–c’mon. Apostasy from the party in which I was raised wasn’t and isn’t easy. And you don’t win your old girlfriend back by insulting her.
on any greater level than anyone else here is by declaring that Jill Stein should end her campaign. Really, the tantrum started in the title of the post.
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p>”The Stein campaign is de facto over … she should make it official”
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p>really means:
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p>See! You can’t kick the ball as well as I do; now gimme back my ball.
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p>You do not appear to be having a tantrum, nor Jill Stein or any other Green Party candidate.
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p>
Children throw tantrums for attention or an inability to express what the want/need as much as the fact that they don’t get what they want. It is of frustration. That’s what I see the Green Party across America doing, including the Green-Rainbows. If they were serious about wanting change and building a legitimate party, they’d do it. But it’s not about that.
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p>As for giving the G-Rs money… paying attention to the tantrum is the worst thing a parent can do for a child. When the G-Rs take themselves seriously and learn how to express themselves how both to campaign and talk about the things people in Massachusetts care about, in ways that they care about it, they’ll get the matching funds.
By this time in her 2002 gubernatorial campaign, Dr. Stein had approximately $2500 in the bank. By this time in 2006 State Treasurer campaign, Dr. Stein had roughly $10,500 and gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross had roughly $4500. At no period ever throughout the Green-Rainbow Party’s entire history has any candidate of that party raised so many funds as Dr. Stein has raised; and at no period ever throughout the Green-Rainbow Party’s entire history has any candidate ever raised anything even approaching such sums of money so fast.
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p>We have fielded candidates for the state legislature, by the way, during every Massachusetts election. The slate may not always have exceeded a mere handful, but we happen to be citizen activists rather than professional politicians and/ or millionaires – and I personally believe we could only be part of the problem if that were not true. You may pretend to profess a need for some progressive third part to make inroads within our state, but I see no reason to believe you’re being in any way, shape or form at all honest in that.
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p>To the contrary, you proclaim all campaigns ‘over’ that fail to have bank accounts swollen by special interests rather than acknowledging how this has absolutely corrupted the political process – and then pretend that is actually possible for genuinely progressive campaigns to generate the funds necessary to pass your litmus test when you surely know that any such a campaign would of necessity be one plainly bought and paid for. What I believe your peevish tirade reveals is one thing alone: A misplaced anger based in fear.
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p>Here we have a candidate telling the truth about how your party has gone to great lengths to hurt working people, wreak environmental havoc, tear social safety nets apart, and sell what at one point in time was a Commonwealth to the highest bidder. For however much you sweated over Guy Glodis all throughout the primary season, his politics in point of fact have been paradigmatic of the neo-liberal technocrat tradition in Bay State politics pioneered by the likes of Paul Tsongas, Michael Dukakis, and the very lovely John Silber
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p>Dr. Stein is doing nothing new by this, of course. She was sounding the same themes in 2006 when Blue Mass Group gave her their political endorsement. She certainly had no more funds at the time. She certainly had no stronger grassroots organization at the time. Yet, O! – she DID have far fewer platforms for getting the message out at the time, far less face time in debates, and far less media coverage. My best guess is that she must not have seemed as threatening at the time, and Galvin didn’t learn to speak left while turning right
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p>The fact is, between Dr. Stein and Dr. Fortune, the Green-Rainbow Party has a very good chance of once again securing ballot status – and a therefore far more powerful chance in years to come of attracting candidates for local and regional office. The state-wide campaigns provide opportunity to broadcast our views to larger venues, and – if properly managed – provide increased opportunity to spearhead local campaigns, coalitions and political efforts. I personally view them as an organizing and outreach tool —
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p>And I believe the Clean Wave campaign demonstrates its strong potential to finally prove effective in that.
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p>This, of course, is precisely why most people don’t take the GRP seriously – they throw tantrums instead of engaging in serious discussion, as Ryan says.
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p>
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p>Great, as long as we’re clear that they’re not actually serious campaigns for political office, I guess we’ve got some common ground.
David takes a very tactful and respectful line when engaging the Greens in this thread, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Why? Because they have done nothing — nothing — beyond provide rhetorical flourishes that they are actually committed to advancing liberal priorities.
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p>
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p>That’s great. The fact that none of them have been successful may say something more than that the system is against them. It may say that people have little use for the Green-Rainbow Party.
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p>
<
p>What, barely over $100,000 for a statewide gubernatorial campaign? That isn’t particularly impressive. You may be respond that money is overrated and a candidate’s bank account shouldn’t matter as much as whatever other attributes, but you’re the one who led off your post with a statement about how Stein has raised more money than anyone than any other Green-Rainbow ever has.
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p>Besides, raising money isn’t just about corporate donations. If Stein really had any real grassroots support to speak of, she would have raised a lot more money than she did from individuals.
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p>
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p>Fear of what? Fear of the Green Party candidate siphoning off a percentage or two that might swing the election from Deval Patrick to Charlie Baker in a close election? That’s a reasonable fear coming from any reasonable liberal. Otherwise, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
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p>
<
p>How? Your rhetoric might sounds great to you, and perhaps a few other of the Green-Rainbow preaching-to-the-choir types, but you’re going to have to use actual examples about how the Democrats have wreaked environmental havoc, etc. if you want to actually convince people of this.
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p>
<
p>Highly doubtful. Let’s be reality-based for a minute and consider the track record of third parties in America. Without a high-profile and charismatic leader — and Jill Stein certainly isn’t one of them — which third parties have actually built upon their success over time to actually mean anything to the electorate? Not many — especially when whatever leader they have decides to go in a different direction and not sustain the third party (e.g. William Jennings Bryan, Teddy Roosevelt, Strom Thurmond, Ross Perot, Lowell Weicker, Angus King, etc., etc. etc.).
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p>
<
p>For what end? To bash fellow progressives who decided to work with a major party by throwing ridiculous accusations their way (like stating that they’ve gone “to great lengths to hurt the working class”)? Or to help Republicans — who by any reasonable view are far worse for the left-wing than Democrats — get elected?
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p>
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p>I’ve never heard of the Clean Wave campaign, and I think it’s safe to say that neither has over 99% of the Commonwealth’s electorate. Perhaps it’s time to put more energy into actual grassroots campaigning and trying to convince Democrats to better address your issues than supporting some quixotic campaign to receive another 3% of the vote in a gubernatorial contest.
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p>This is the primary reason the Democratic Party both state-wide and nation-wide is facing some serious trouble at the moment. I have been citing such examples in this forum for years. I cited several in this very same thread. From utility deregulation’s end-run around zoning laws pertaining to the siting of power plants, to policies that allow EFSB hearing officers to be hired by the very same utility companies they held hearings on only months after the hearing; from the DCR’s conflict of interests with regards to forestry practices, to the determined efforts to confuse incinerators with renewable energy; what I’m wondering is how could anyone honestly deny how Massachusetts Democratic Party politicians have been an environmentalist’s worst nightmare within this state? I should think that any given progressive, whether he hopes to bolt the Democrats or continue to work within the Democrats, might at the very least admit that – yes this is happening, and yes it is inexcusable.
We’ve had some bad people push bad things before, and Massachusetts is almost entirely Democratic when it comes to the legislature. If it was almost entirely Green-Rainbow, maybe you’d be suggesting right now that the Green-Rainbows are somehow ebil. Fact of the matter is we have our share of people in politics in Massachusetts who are Democrats when, in nearly any other state, they’d be Republicans. When these people do bad things, I’d hardly blame the Democratic Party.
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p>Our rank and file member is right with you on a lot of these issues… yet instead of working with them to fix these problems, you insult them for being Democrats. As I said up thread, all too many G-Rs just don’t understand government or the way things work. You’ve got to learn these things if you have any hope of effecting change.
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p>Let’s see what the Greens did the last time they had official party status, shall we?
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p>http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele…
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p>No nominations for any office anywhere in the entire Commonwealth!
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p>While I feel the Greens could be a viable political party in many parts of the state, they need to start acting like one. This means recruiting and running candidates. Running for local office is a great way to build a grassroots activist base, especially if you run in districts where you have a chance of winning!
Should have read my link more carefully…
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p>Steven Baer of Shrewsbury ran for Senator in General Court on the Green Party line, but that’s all.
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p>The larger point about building a party from the ground up still stands. Running a single candidate in fairly conservative district doesn’t cut it.
you do raise a relevant point… Stein did raise more money than a GRP candidate in the past. That is evidence of the GRP slowly rising, and I’m glad to see it.
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p>Now, serious question: why doesn’t the GRP run for about one state rep seat in 5-10 of the congressional districts in 2012? Then, have all your GRPs focus really intently on just these small number of races. In many of ’em, you won’t get your break, but maybe in one of ’em the GOP candidate is terrible (or nonexistant) and the D suffers scandal or death or whatever.
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p>Then, maybe — just maybe — you’ll have one GRP state rep. Now, if that state rep doesn’t behave boorishly with the Democrats (that is: grandstand, see the world in black and white, etc), it’s possible that the Dems won’t even work hard to run someone against that GRP candidate two years later. Possible. Before you know it, you’ve got a GRP re-elected on Beacon Hill.
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p>You’ll have 0.5% of the legislature, and the occasional opportunity to get a little bit of traction for the things you care about. If that Rep doesn’t act like a jerk.
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p>In the mean time, go out to all those unenrolled voters and convince them to register GRP. They’re not hard to find, and even if they aren’t active party members you’d be able to show a growing party.
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p>
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p>Keep at it… but I’ll tell you one thing for sure. If you do have any success, and all Democrats can remember is the GRP throwing purity stones, the Democrats won’t work with the GRP winner and will crush that GRP candidate when running for re-election. After all, why let an annoying fly buzz around any more than necessary?
Is seemingly all the Massachusetts Green Party offers to those of us on the left, like me, who always carefully considers supporting a progressive third-party candidate over a Democrat who is too moderate for our tastes. (I voted for, happily, for Nader in 2000 and 2004).
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p>Incompetence: Once again Jill Stein’s campaign (and the entire GRP) has proven itself incapable of basic fundraising but, more fundamentally, that it is incompetent.
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p>Just last weekend, the Stein campaign claimed “AND THAT’S NOT ALL! Today just before the 5 p.m. deadline campaign staffers turned in qualifying contributions of over $129,000 to the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) – exceeding the required threshold for state matching funds.”
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p>Yet, now a few days later, it turns out that the “Clean Money Title Wave” fell short of the $125,000 threshold by (according to the same inept operation) about $3,000.
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p>To me, failing in this effort is incompetence and really more a matter of poor accounting/organization than an indication of lack of true fundraising ability. Strike One.
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p> Just like the pathetic incompetence surrounding the 2002 Clean Elections fiasco. Strike Two.
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p>Lies: You (and the MA GRP in general) often lie about the Democratic Party.
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p>You say, above “your party has gone to great lengths to hurt working people, wreak environmental havoc, tear social safety nets apart, and sell what at one point in time was a Commonwealth to the highest bidder.” This is rhetoric, I know and I get it. But it is also a ridiculous, insulting and a bold-faced lie.
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p>Strike Three. You’re out.
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p>
Well, I just moved up here in 2002. All I can say is that that was a long time ago. Can’t speak to it. Are you going to criticize this year’s Sox based on the ’02 roster? High and outside.
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p>I think that as a member of an opposition party I’ve always been more than willing–publicly (see GreenMassGroup)– to make the case for forward-thinking Democratic iniatives, even if they fall infinitely short of what I really want–as I’m sure they often do for you and others. I’ve certainly never accused them, myself, of what others, rightly or wrongly, perceive as the defects you cite. I understansd you’re addressing specific complaints in context here, but you’re also tarring with a rather wide brush. Ball 2.
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p>Anticipating a fastball down the middle.
Jill Stein was the Green Party nominee in 2002, as well. Way back then, Massachusetts had a new public financing system (called… wait for it… Clean Elections).
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p>Unlike the current “voluntary check-off,” this was a very well-financed taxpayer-subsidized system, providing $2.3 million to qualifying candidates. To qualify, a candidate was required to raise and document 6,000 small donations (between $5 and 100, from different people).
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p>So, what happened, the campaign failed to plan properly, kept poor track of contributions, and ultimately fell just a few hundred short of the required 6,000 certified contribution forms in their submission to the office of campaign and political finance.
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p>Sound familar?
Jill Stein is just so unimpressive.
It ain’t working. Your platform is filled with nice sounding phrases and very little real world experience or solutions. But you and your followers are convinced you’re fighting the good fight. “If we just focused on Green Jobs…”
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p>You’re not essential to getting recycling or clean energy on the map, anymore. Nader for President 1996, 2000, 2004 & 2008. When do you move on and do something else? Instead of chewing up airtime and a few precious votes, which hav a real chance of spoiling the race for Patrick, why don’t you and the Green Party take a deep breath and do something truly noble?
Some facts for some clarity:
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p>Fact: There are two Green-Rainbow Party candidates running in two-party state representative districts (no Republican candidates) in Berkshire County. And, yes, some of us living in other parts of the state are working on their behalf. Note that these are contested two-party races only because the GRP is fielding candidates.
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p>Fact: Both Dr. Jill Stein and Dr. Nat Fortune have run for the state legislature. As OFTEN happens with first-time attempts, they did not win. Meanwhile, they both hold elected positions in their local towns.
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p>Fact: There are a number of GRP members holding elected positions in towns and cities across the state. But since such races are non-partisan, their party affiliations are not necessarily known. In fact, the media sometimes make a false assumption and automatically identify them as (D). How’s that for assuming one-party rule?
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p>Fact: The state requires 10,000 verified signatures of registered voters for someone to qualify as a candidate for Governor. Jill Stein got 16,000 — count ’em, sweet SIXTEEN thousand verified signatures. That is pretty impressive grass-roots organizing — because, of course, they were collected by volunteers, not by people being paid $2 and $3 per signature.
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p>Fact: Jill Stein DID raise the amount of money she announced. But PayPal was not able to keep up with the last-minute surge — which began after people heard Jill Stein in a televised debate. So technically, those last few thousands of dollars did not make the deadline for her to qualify for matching funds.
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p>Fact: As a former reporter for a respected national newspaper, I used to think that it was media’s responsibility (especially PUBLIC media!) to inform the public of the choices and decisions they are called upon to make. But today, here’s the Catch-22. Dr. Stein almost was not allowed in the televised debate because she had not received enough contributions. Lo and behold, when people heard her debate, they then wanted to contribute. Another criteria sometimes used for a candidate to debate is polling high enough to be considered viable, but how can candidates poll high enough without voters having the opportunity to learn about them? Isn’t that what the media should do, instead of denying their readers coverage that informs active and thoughtful citizenship?
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p>Fact: The Green-Rainbow Party did make an effort to target up to a dozen state rep districts for the 2010 election. It pains me to admit that we were not successful. One problem is that some GRP strongholds are in districts with reps who are already quite progressive. But as someone pointed out, there’s 2012 to look forward to. And visibility in statewide elections has usually led to Party growth.
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p>Don’t oversell this. Jill Stein was elected as a representative town meeting member, which is nowhere near the same thing as being elected to the Board of Selectmen or to the School Committee. There are 189 elected town meeting members in Lexington. And she resigned before her term was up so she is no longer a member.
I don’t understand why BMG and its “progressive” retinue is rabidly protecting Deval Patrick — which I believe is the purpose of driving Stein out of the race. (If she had gotten the matching funds, you’d have found another excuse to show her the door.)
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p>The fact is that Deval Patrick’s positions are not perceptively different from those of his Republican predecessors and challenger. He is a corporate flack, running as massive a corporate gravy train as any Republican — and indeed, any other Democrat, because both parties have agreed with the conservative line that business “incentives” are a requirement of economic survival (and of a fat campaign war chest). He is not supporting a single-payer health insurance system (Medicare for all), which last time I looked was the progressive preference, rather than handing all of us into the merciless hands of the insurance industry. He is promoting proliferation of charter schools, and selling out our children to get a few measly federal dollars dangled to push privatization and union-busting. He supports casinos as an economic development strategy, ignoring all the damages that will do. He ran on transparency, and practices secrecy. He ran on civic engagement, and tried to deprive citizens of legal recourse on environmental protection re: waterfront development. Try to file a public record request with him, and you’ll get, as I did when I asked for his documents on his Liberty Mutual give-away, a letter saying he is exempt from the Public Record Law, but for you, here are some documents — two emails he got from other people.
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p>What exactly are you hanging onto?
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p>You made him governor, and you could hold him accountable. But you don’t. He has co-opted you.
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p>You could make Jill Stein governor, and see if she’d do what we wanted from Deval. Since she is “unbought and unbossed” by corporations and lobbyists, we could have a controlled experiment. Can a pol really serve the people? Or is corruption inevitable?
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p>Wouldn’t you like to know? We don’t often have candidates who would let us make this test. Why are you determined to throw this one away?
I live in one of the poorest cities in the state. When a consortium of universities and corporations became interested in working together to develop a high performance computing center, he was central in directing them towards Holyoke, both because we are the municipality that needs the economic stimulus and because we offer a green power source: the Connecticut River and a series of canals.
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p>He was also instrumental in passing numerous progressive pieces of legislation, including CORI reform, investments in affordable housing, and protecting equal marriage rights.
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p>So support who you want, but don’t lecture me about who I want.
But Stein would also have done CORI, affordable housing, and equal rights (and I’d never support someone who wouldn’t). She would just as likely have directed that consortium to Holyoke, since she’s the greenest of them all, and would care most about the neediest areas. You don’t have to make a choice between those things and the ones I mentioned. You can get someone who would do them all.
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p>If there were not another alternative, I’d understand — Patrick over Baker. But we have been forced into false choices for too long. We can have more.
I think the point is that Mitt Romney, Jane Swift, Paul Cellucci, and William Weld did not do those things. I am aware of no evidence that Charlie Baker would continue those, and I suggest there is ample evidence that he would reverse them if possible.
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p>You argued, above, that “Deval Patrick’s positions are not perceptively different from those of his Republican predecessors and challenger.”
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p>I think you are very mistaken.
Jill Stein would have done CORI, affordable housing, and equal rights only in a dreamworld. She is unelectable. Moveover, the abyssmal election operation that she has run demonstrates that she is incapable of running state government. Jill Stein is running to make a statement, and to give far left-wingers a choice. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t pretend that she has any chance, or should have any change, of being Governor. A Governor Stein would make a laughing stock of progressives, and make their hopes of something like single payer health care even harder.
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p>Just remember, when you make your statement and waste your vote for Jill Stein, that Charlie Baker is determined to destroy everything you believe in. Myself, I couldn’t sleep at night if I thought I had helped Charlie Baker win the election.
because she’d never have been elected. The question is, if by some miracle she receives enough votes to get Charlie Baker into office, would Charlie Baker have done those things? My gut doesn’t even say no — it says hell no.
In the real world, Jill Stein did not get the matching funds. Speculations about what might or might not have transpired had she qualified are not helpful and, in this case, insulting. I don’t know who you are or who you think I am, but comments like this make me rather less likely to consider present or future Green Party candidates.
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p>You wrote:
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p>Actually, we can’t. In the real world, she has already lost. She has few supporters, no money, and no votes. So long as we live in a representative democracy, we cannot make Jill Stein governor because Massachusetts voters don’t like her.
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p>Perhaps you see no difference between Deval Patrick’s positions and actions and, for instance, Mitt Romney’s.
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p>I do.
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p>Perhaps you see no difference between Deval Patrick’s positions and actions and, for instance, Charlie Baker’s.
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p>I do.
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p>In the real world, you and I each get to cast precisely one vote for Governor on November 2. So the real question is how will Jill Stein’s potential votes split among the other three other candidates should she withdraw.
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p>If Jill Stein’s current supporters are split in any way other than the general population, then her staying in the race hurts the candidate her supporters prefer as second choice.
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p>If, for example, her supporters are far more likely to vote for Deval Patrick than either of the other two candidates, then by staying in the race she makes it more likely that Deval Patrick will lose.
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p>Ralph Nader did cause Al Gore to lose the 2000 election.
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p>That’s how it is in the real world.
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p>
I ask you to show the same respect for yourself, this community, and the candidates as I’ve asked of JohnD — please refer to them with their full name: “Jill Stein”, “Deval Patrick”, “Charlie Baker”, etc.
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p>Thanks…
This would be more convincing if such pressure were being exerted to exclude Libertarians from races they contest. As it is, this reads too easily as an excuse to make Deval Patrick’s re-election campaign easier.
Until such time as there is IRV progressive candidates should be challenging Dem incumbents in the primary rather than general election.
votes to enact Instant Runoff Voting, small-d democrats should be voting for candidates who actively support such common sense reforms.
How is it possible to be a ‘Green’ candidate and not even have a bullet point on the issues section of your website dedicated to the environment?
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p>I guess that doesn’t matter if you just want to be included so you can high-five Charlie Baker who for much of the year was not sure if he was smart enough to tell if global warming is real.
I learned a lot.
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p>Props to David for writing and commenting, and to Cicero for hanging in there (and many others).
Just curious.
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p>Is there any downside to a candidate quitting a race – if she wants to run again?
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p>Ie, I’m not sure if you covered this:
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p>But if she has managed to raise 100k, and you’d think next time around she’d want to start by hitting the same folks up — wouldn’t dropping out now make it harder to raise $ in the future…by annoying a chunk of her current donors for not sticking it out?
that had occurred to me as well. One choice, of course, would be for her to give the money back to her donors, accompanied by a letter urging them to back GRP candidates running for offices that they could actually win. But I agree that even that could irk supporters who worked hard for her.
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p>So the real question is whether this is all about Jill Stein, or whether it’s about building a viable third party and advancing the interests of the people the GRP claims to represent. If it’s the former, she should stay in the race, spend all the money, and be happy with her 2% on election day. If it’s the latter, she has some interesting options.
several commenters have noted that the GRP should spend its time and money focused on down-ballot races. I agree to a large extent. I spent some time going to GRP functions on and off from ’02 to ’06 or so down on the Cape where I live. At one point I started asking people, “so if we’re going to be a political party, when are we going to start running candidates?”
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p>And NOBODY was interested.
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p>I was elected to my town’s School Committee in spring of ’08 after changing my party affiliation from Green to Dem so that I could vote for Obama in the primary. If the local “green party”, which was more of a pot-luck style party and a political party, had been interested in supporting candidates I might have stayed.
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p>Maybe I’ve thrown out my idealism, but you gotta start somewhere.
I don’t think you’ve thrown out your idealism at all; to the contrary, I think your attitude exemplifies idealism! You want a party that represents your views; you want that party to be successful and to win races; you’re willing to be part of what makes that happen. How is that not idealistic? There’s a difference – a big one – between idealism and pie-in-the-sky-ism. “Hope for the best, and work for it,” as a famous local politician has been known to say. 😉
Very disappointing to hear this, but I can’t say it’s surprising. I think that the single-most important thing that the Green-Rainbow Party should be doing is recruiting and running people for municipal office which is precisely where the rubber meets the road. Generally speaking, I think Green ideas are popular ones, rational ones, and to this day ahead of their time. Two-Party America is still not quite ready for the Green Party… though I have to say that there’s a remarkable shift underway where, especially since the economic collapse, where people are taking up the Green cause in an entirely non-partisan, non-electoral sense. The most obvious one is the local food movement, but it’s happening in many different ways. So while there’s a greater opening for the Green Party, and a stronger fit between the Green vision/ideology and the needs of the masses, it is non-partisan municipal races where Greens could be igniting the political movement we’re trying to create. Most of the stuff that automatically turns people off to GRP candidates vanishes. And the leap of faith to vote for someone running for Select Board is tiny compared to that for voting for someone for governor or even state auditor, especially when that person is a member of your community.
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p>SO. I’d love to talk to you about your experience on the Cape. I think one of the biggest problems with the Greens is most of us came together around a national campaign, headed by someone who was never even himself a Green and never really articulated the Green critique or the Green vision. Exit Nader, and there wasn’t enough there to keep everyone on the same page and working together coherently to build the political alternative we all wished already existed. I think what’s happening in 2010 is that Stein is representing the high-level force that Nader did, only she’s a Green through and through, so whatever comes together now will be much more coherent than in 2000. I’m thankful she’s running… not just to give me a real choice in November… but to give me a voice in this process which is dominated by the money of vested business interests. Her turning down that kind of cash for her campaign basically guarantees that she’s accountable purely to the people of the Commonwealth. So even though some BMGers are scoffing at how little cash she’s raised, or the bungling of the matching funds, I know it goes with the territory of genuine grassroots organizing, especially in today’s economy where the people most ready for this kind of change are the least able to afford to bankroll it.
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p>And I think the either-or arguments… that the GRP should be doing this and not that, or that and not this, miss the point. The fact that BMG would endorse Jill against Galvin in 2006, or that BMGers would outline what they think the GRP strategy should be, means that we’re onto something. I hope we can see each other as allies and not enemies. I’d argue that Stein is a much stronger ally for your causes than is Patrick, but only time will tell. I think the early endorsement of Patrick by BMG is tantamount to saying “don’t worry about us, Governor, we’ll go to bat for you even though you haven’t really gone to bat for us. We understand all you’re up against. Don’t make any progressive promises that will hurt your reelection chances against these big bad right-wingers. Feel free to move all the way over to the right and out-compete them there. Take up their rhetoric while you’re at it so they’ll have nothing against you!”
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p>And the rightward slide continues… even as the Democrats won larger and larger shares of power… all to be squandered all over again?