PART 1 OF 2
CHAPTER TWO
Green Tactics and Strategy
"Strategic Voting" Is Strategic SuicideBy Howie Hawkins
Synthesis/Regeneration 32, Fall 2003
When Granny D used her speaking time at the Code Pink antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C., in early March to tell the Greens "not to divide us" by running a Green presidential candidate, she was herself being divisive. Her demand was divisive within the peace movement, which needs to unite on antiwar demands and not exclude anyone based on their electoral approach. Her political tactic mirrors that of Bush when he says if you are not with the U.S. war on terror, you are with the terrorists. There are always more than two choices in any political question.
Granny D is not alone in making this demand on the Greens. Ronnie Dugger, Michael Moore, Carl Davidson, Daniel Ellsberg, and Noam Chomsky are among the other notable progressives who are telling progressives to support the Democratic nominee in order to beat Bush. Fortunately, few Greens are willing to rely on the Soft-Right Democrats to defend us from the Hard-Right Republicans. Unfortunately, too many Greens are accepting the sneaky version of this demand: strategic voting.
Various proposals have circulated under various names (safe states, strategic voting, tactical voting, three-dimensional, etc.), but they all boil down to the Green ticket either cutting a deal with the Democrats and exiting the campaign late, or not competing for votes with the Democratic candidate in the "battleground" swing states where the polls show the race between the Democratic and Republican tickets to be close and the electoral votes of those states up for grabs. Strategic voting proposals let the Greens run where they won't affect the outcome, but not where they might.
The minute the Greens stop campaigning where they might affect the outcome is the minute no one takes the Greens seriously. The minute the Greens start backhandedly supporting Democrats with a cute "strategic voting" scheme is the minute the public stops taking Greens seriously. This will be because the Greens have stopped taking themselves seriously. It is the minute that the corporate Democrats feel free to completely ignore their own Kucinich/Sharpton wing and take votes to their left for granted. It is the minute the whole dynamic of the election shifts to the right, with the Green Party looking like it isn't really serious about wanting governmental power to make changes.
The best way to fight the right is with a good offense around an independent campaign for a real alternative. The Democratic leadership is so complicit in Bush's tax cuts, corporate pandering, war powers, war budgets, and repressive legislation that it is hard to argue they are the lesser evil. It's more like the slicker evil of a Clinton versus the cruder evil of a Bush Jr.
Where's the Difference?Neoconservative militarism and neoliberal economics are not Bush's exclusive preserve. The Democratic leadership and majority of congressional Democrats are every bit as committed to them as they are to pleasing their financial sponsors in the corporate oligarchy who want these policies.
Neoliberalism includes cuts in social spending, hikes in regressive taxes, cuts in progressive taxes, privatization, deregulation, corporate-managed trade, union busting, and corporate welfare. In a nutshell, it means the stick of austerity for workers, on the theory it will makes us work harder and raise productivity, and the carrot of welfare for the corporate rich, on the theory they will invest and the benefits of increased jobs and tax revenues will trickle down to the rest of us.
Neoliberal austerity is the post-Keynesian economic policy adopted by the corporate rulers as they ran into the internal limits to profits and growth under the Keynesian welfare/warfare state.
The new ruling-class consensus is the austerity/warfare state of neoliberal economics and neoconservative empire. That ruling-class consensus is the pro-war, pro-corporate bipartisan consensus. To be sure, the ruling class is divided about Bush, with some worried about the economic irrationality of the latest tax cuts, the instability his cowboy style of imperialism is stirring up in the Middle East and Europe, and the domestic instability his pandering to Christian fundamentalists may stir up at home. The worried wing of the ruling class will give strong backing to a Democrat like Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, or Lieberman who will be more sophisticated in administering militaristic neoliberalism. That is their fight, not ours.
A Democrat might beat Bush, but no Democrat is going to beat Bushism, which is to say the corporate oligarchy's bipartisan consensus. If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2004, there will be no change in the basic U.S. geopolitical strategy of military basing and control of oil in the Middle East and Central Asia to keep Western Europe, Russia, China, and Japan from becoming potential rivals to U.S. hegemony. Nor will there be any change in the basic neoliberal policy of motivating workers to work harder by imposing hardship and motivating the rich to invest with corporate welfare incentives.
If the Greens don't run a strong campaign seeking every vote they can get in every state, there will be no electoral opposition to the bipartisan consensus of the U.S. as global occupation force and no electoral alternative to the neoliberal policies of economic stimulus by heightening inequalities.
Keeping Our Eyes on the PrizeWho wins the presidential election matters little because most of the power structure is not up for election. There is no election for corporations' private economic power and ability to effectively veto reforms they don't like by divesting, not for the repressive apparatus of the national security state, not for the regulatory bureaucracy that is captured by the corporations they are supposed to regulate. Whoever wins must govern within that power structure.
What matters is whether there is a movement that is organizing people to solve their own problems. That was Nader's central theme in 2000 and, I hope, the point of the Green Party. That theme is far more radical than the policy positions Nader advocated because to solve their problems people need real democratic power, and that is a threat to the whole system.
The Democrats mobilize people to win elections, not implement platforms. I would hope that the Greens are about advancing their program. There will be no hearing for that program, and no vehicle for people to organize around it, if the Greens do not run a strong campaign in 2004 against both corporate parties. Without that Green campaign, the election will be about who is stronger on "defense" and who can best restore corporate profitability (read: squeeze workers even harder) to end the economy's stagnation. There will be no opposition to militaristic neoliberalism and the Green Party will have rendered itself irrelevant.
The Green Party's political independence is not only about policy planks in the platform, but even more fundamentally about political class independence from the corporate ruling class. It is about the Green Party as an institution independent of corporate money as opposed to the Democratic Party as an institution dependent on corporate money and, when governing, dependent on corporate Investment.
The big corporations have an effective veto on reforms because they can threaten a capital strike. The Democrats will never challenge that corporate blackmail and thus can never carry through a progressive program. Political independence is an issue of the parties' class and institutional bases, not just the characteristics of individual candidates.
Were the Greens to give backhanded support to the Democrats in a strategic-voting scheme, they would be entering into a de facto coalition with the corporate rulers as subordinate partners. The Greens would be dependent on what the Democratic candidates said and did and thus surrender the Greens' political independence, their power and their voice, and their very identity as a political force that believes a different world is possible.
Nothing would be more dispiriting and demoralizing for Greens and progressives generally than a defensive, self-defeating campaign to elect another pro-war, pro-corporate Democrat as the lesser evil to the Republican version. On the other hand, an all-out Green campaign for every vote possible in every state could be the inspiration and rallying point for a movement for the Green alternative.
These Green alternatives will not be heard without an all-out Green campaign. That a Green campaign might "spoil" the Democrats' chances is exactly what compels attention to the Green alternative. Greens should embrace that attention, not try to finesse it away with a strategic voting scheme that erases the reason why the Greens would get attention.
Spoiling the Democrats is not our goal. Our goal is to advance our program. We do not have to win the office to win the debate by defining what the issues are. If we can define the debate, we set the agenda for the future and lay the basis for the democratic structural changes in society needed to replace the corporate oligarchy's bipartisan consensus around neoliberal austerity and neoconservative empire with the Green alternative.
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Debating the Election: The Democrats Don't Deserve Our SupportBy Sharon Smith
Socialist Worker
September 19, 2003
After the 2000 election, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader was roundly denounced by Democrats as a "spoiler" who helped George Bush defeat AI Gore (ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's decisive role during the Florida debacle in stealing the election for Bush). As the 2004 election approaches, the vast majority of the left -- including many who campaigned for Nader in 2000 -- has made defeating Bush (by implication, with a Democrat) its number-one priority.
The Green Party itself is considering a "safe states" strategy -- campaigning for a Green candidate only in states where Democrats or Republicans hold an uncontested majority, effectively an endorsement of the Democrats. As left-wing journalist Norman Solomon wrote recently, "The Bush team has neared some elements of fascism," while Z Magazine's Michael Albert argued, "However bad his replacement may turn out, replacing Bush will improve the subsequent mood of the world and its prospects for survival."
These are widely accepted justifications for rallying behind the Democrats as "the lesser of two evils." By this "lesser evil" logic, many progressives now attracted to Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich because of their opposition to the Iraq war will ultimately end up supporting a mainstream Democrat who seeks to win swing votes from the Republicans. Dean himself -- who boasts, "I was a triangulator before Clinton was a triangulator" -- might well fit the bill.
Out of sheer hatred for Bush, progressives can agree that the war party in power should be brought down. But the Democratic Party is a war party in waiting.
"Lesser evil" support for the Democrats has been repeated by sections of the left every four years since the Great Depression. But far from broadening the scope of left-wing politics, it has stunted the development of a radical social movement in the U.S. For this reason, it is necessary to view the role of "lesser evil" politics historically.
The term "fascist" has also been applied to conservative Republicans Barry Goldwater in 1964, Richard Nixon in the 1970s, as well as Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. in the 1980s, to express the urgency of voting Democrat on Election Day. To be sure, this Bush administration, dominated by neoconservatives, models itself on Reagan's.
"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times ... I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing ... The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan."
--
Barack Obama from "Obama, the Postmodern Coup," by Webster Griffin Tarpley
And there are differences between the Democratic and Republican parties on issues such as abortion rights. But the two parties, each funded and controlled by corporate donors, agree on fundamental aims, if not on the strategies to achieve them.
Both are pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist -- dedicated to furthering the interests of the U.S. ruling class at home and expanding U.S. power globally. Bloody wars and political repression are unique neither to this Bush administration, nor to Republicans.
Democrat Harry Truman's first presidential act was to order two atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic Party's "peace candidate" in 1964, had by 1965 massively escalated the Vietnam War -- a war that killed 1.3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S. soldiers.
Nor is Bush's USA PATRIOT Act the first time that the party in power has used large-scale repression at home. Democrat Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act of 1917, banning protest against U.S. participation in the First World War, and his administration detained and deported thousands of immigrants. In 1942, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt forcibly "relocated" the entire Japanese-American population on the West Coast into concentration camps for the rest of the Second World War.
The Democratic Party's reputation as a liberal alternative to the Republicans is greatly exaggerated -- mainly by its liberal supporters. One need look no further back than the Clinton administration.
As a candidate in 1992, Clinton promised to "put people first," but instead of advancing liberal principles, Clinton stole the Republican's agenda on key issues. The hallmark of Clinton's presidency was ending "welfare as we know it" in 1996 -- dismantling sixty-one-year-old New Deal legislation obliging the government to provide income support to the poor.
Clinton also helped to pave the way for Bush's USA PATRIOT Act when he signed the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Also in 1996, Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act banning gay marriage, and under his tenure the U.S. prison population nearly doubled in size.
There is no reason to assume, as many do, that a Gore presidency would have avoided war after September 11. Clinton oversaw UN-sponsored sanctions against Iraq that led to the deaths of more than one million Iraqis, and U.S. warplanes dropped bombs on Iraq almost daily during his time in office. And Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, calling for the U.S. "to seek to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein." Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, admits in a recent Foreign Affairs article, "I personally felt [Bush's new Iraq] war was justified on the basis of Saddam's decade-long refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions on weapons of mass destruction."
There is another reason why supporting the Democrats as a "lesser evil" is a mistake. For nearly a century, this logic has blocked the possibility for building an alternative to the left of the Democrats. Every four years, leftists must betray their principles simply to keep a Republican out of office.
In 1964, antiwar activists adopted the slogan "Half the way with LBJ," only to see Johnson escalate the Vietnam War. In the 1990s, liberals scurried to provide cover for Clinton's welfare repeal. As former Health and Human Services official Peter Edelman noted, "So many of those who would have shouted from the rooftops if a Republican president had done this were boxed in by their desire to see the president reelected."
Largely because the left and the labor movement have remained tied to the coattails of the Democratic Party since the 1930s, the U.S. remains the only advanced industrial society without a labor or social democratic party funded by unions instead of big business. If the left is to move forward, its collective memory must stretch further back than the last Republican administration -- and it must set its sights much higher than promoting the current crop of Democratic Party contenders.
As social activist Howard Zinn argued in the pages of this newspaper, "[T]he really critical thing isn't who is sitting in the White House but who is sitting in -- in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating -- those are the things that determine what happens."
The course of the struggle, not the outcome of the 2004 elections, will shape the future of the left -- and experience has shown that endorsing the Democratic Party pulls the left into its fold, not the other way around.
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Debating the Election: We Have a Responsibility to Work to Defeat BushBy Norman Solomon
Socialist Worker
September 19, 2003
Activists have plenty of good reasons to challenge the liberal Democratic Party operatives who focus on election strategy while routinely betraying progressive ideals. Unfortunately, the national Green Party now shows appreciable signs of the flip side -- focusing on admirable ideals without plausible strategy.
It's impossible to know whether the vote margin between Bush and his Democratic challenger will be narrow or wide in November 2004. I've never heard a credible argument that a Nader campaign might help to defeat Bush next year. A Nader campaign might have no significant effect on Bush's chances -- or it could turn out to help Bush win. With so much at stake, do we really want to roll the dice this way?
We're told that another Nader campaign will help to build the Green Party. But Nader's prospects of coming near his nationwide 2000 vote total of 2.8 million are very slim; much more probable is that a 2004 campaign would win far fewer votes -- hardly an indicator of, or contributor to, a growing national party.
Some activists contend that the Greens will maintain leverage over the Democratic Party by conveying a firm intention to run a presidential candidate. I think that's basically an illusion. The prospect of a Green presidential campaign is having very little effect on the Democratic nomination contest, and there's no reason to expect that to change. The Democrats are almost certain to nominate a "moderate" corporate flack.
Howard Dean should be included in that category. Let's take Dean at his word: "I was a triangulator before Clinton was a triangulator. In my soul, I'm a moderate." If Dean becomes the Democratic presidential candidate next year, at that point there would be many good reasons to see him as a practical tool for defeating Bush. But in the meantime, progressive energies and support should go elsewhere.
There has been a disturbing tendency among some Greens to conflate the Democratic and Republican parties. Yes, the agendas of the two major parties overlap. But they also diverge. And in some important respects, any of the Democratic presidential contenders would be clearly better than Bush (with the exception of Joseph Lieberman, whose nomination appears to be quite unlikely). For the left to be "above the fray" would be a big mistake. It should be a matter of great concern -- not indifference or mild interest -- as to whether the Bush gang returns to power for four more years.
I'm not suggesting that progressives mute their voices about issues. The imperative remains to keep speaking out and organizing. As Martin Luther King Jr. said on April 30, 1967: "When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered." The left should continue to denounce all destructive policies and proposals, whether being promoted by Republicans or Democrats.
At the same time, we should not gloss over the reality that the Bush team has neared some elements of fascism in its day-to-day operations -- and forces inside the Bush administration would be well positioned to move it even farther to the right after 2004. We don't want to find out how fascistic a second term of George W. Bush's presidency could become. The current dire circumstances should bring us up short and cause us to reevaluate approaches to '04. The left has a responsibility to contribute toward a broad coalition to defeat Bush next year.
No doubt, too many Democratic Party officials have been arrogant toward Green Party supporters. "Democrats have to face reality and understand that if they move too far to the right, millions of voters will defect or vote for third-party candidates," Tom Hayden pointed out in a recent article on Alternet. "Democrats have to swallow hard and accept the right of the Green Party and Ralph Nader to exist and compete." At the same time, Hayden added cogently, "Nader and the Greens need a reality check. The notion that the two major parties are somehow identical may be a rationale for building a third party, but it insults the intelligence of millions of Blacks, Latinos, women, gays, environmentalists and trade unionists who can't afford the indulgence of Republican rule."
The presidency of George W. Bush is not a garden-variety Republican administration. By unleashing its policies in this country and elsewhere in the world, the Bush gang has greatly raised the stakes of the next election.
In an August essay, Michael Albert of Z Magazine wrote: "One post-election result we want is Bush retired. However bad his replacement may turn out, replacing Bush will improve the subsequent mood of the world and its prospects of survival. Bush represents not the whole ruling class and political elite, but a pretty small sector of it. That sector, however, is trying to reorder events so that the world is run as a U.S. empire, and so that social programs and relations that have been won over the past century in the U.S. are rolled back as well. What these parallel international and domestic aims have in common is to further enrich and empower the already super-rich and super-powerful."
Looking past the election, Albert is also on target: "We want to have whatever administration is in power after Election Day saddled by a fired-up movement of opposition that is not content with merely slowing Armageddon, but that instead seeks innovative and aggressive social gains. We want a post-election movement to have more awareness, more hope, more infrastructure and better organization by virtue of the approach it takes to the election process."
I'm a green. But these days, in the battle for the presidency, I'm not a Green. Here in the United States, the Green Party is dealing with an electoral structure that's very different from the parliamentary systems that have provided fertile ground for Green parties in Europe. We're up against the winner-take-all U.S. electoral system. Yes, there are efforts to implement "instant runoff voting," but those efforts will not transform the electoral landscape in this decade. And we should focus on this decade precisely because it will lead the way to the next ones.
By now, it's an open secret that Ralph Nader is almost certain to run for president again next year. Nader has been a brilliant and inspirational progressive for several decades. I supported his presidential campaigns in 1996 and 2000. I won't in 2004. The reasons are not about the past, but about the future.
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Statement on Green Strategy 2004 and Call for Dialogue and ActionBy Eighteen Green Party activists
Circulated online
December 14, 2003
As we move closer to 2004, Greens are debating strategy. Both from within and outside of the Green Party, there is enormous pressure on us. Greens and non-Greens alike are strongly opposed to the policies of the Bush administration. But Greens do not agree whether defeating George Bush, or at least not assisting in his reelection, should be a factor in our strategy.
The signers of this letter definitely agree that the Green Party needs to develop a strategy for next year's presidential campaign. We have different ideas at this point on what particular strategy is best, though we are in full agreement that any strategy which is likely to assist in the reelection of George Bush should be avoided.
We are not signing this letter in support of the Democratic Party, or of any of its candidates, though some individual signers may be supporting one of those candidates. We are not signing this letter because we regret past Green election efforts.
We are signing this letter for several important reasons.
First, the Bush administration has demonstrated a determined will and ability to manipulate the people of this country following the tragic events of September 11, 2001. They have done this to a degree worse than other political parties could have done. They have seriously undermined the democratic foundations of our country, done immense harm to the ecosystem, and alienated scores of nations, big and small, who were once our friends.
Second, the beliefs and opinions of many people and organizations who share our views and struggles for justice and the environment are important to us. They have pleaded that we take the defeat of Bush into serious consideration. We cannot totally turn our backs on their opinions solely because they have not chosen to be active in the Green Party or join our electoral campaigns.
Third, the corrupted election system in the United States creates a dynamic that harms our interest in the short and long term. It permitted the corporate-party candidate with fewer votes in 2000 to take over the White House. While all Greens hold sacred the right to participate in the democratic process -- what is left of it in the United States -- the signers of this letter believe that we neither can nor should ignore the gross faults in the system which assist the greater evil in elections. The harm that can come both to this country and to the Green Party by ignoring the corrupted system that is used to count votes cannot be ignored.
Lastly, the continued growth and strength of the Green Party depends upon how we address this issue. Contrary to what some claim, we believe that to ignore the vast numbers of progressives, many of whom are independent of any political party, bodes poorly for the future vitality of the Green Party. There are no easy choices for the Green Party in 2004, and the growth of any political party requires that it listen to its natural constituencies, including those who have not yet fully joined.
The use of the term "lesser evil" or "greater evil" in describing major-party candidates is instructive. The great majority of the members of the Democratic Party power structure have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not prepared, willing, or able to offer solutions to most of the problems the United States faces. But that party is, nonetheless, and in general, the lesser of evils. Looking at the greater of evils which we also face, we do not believe we can ignore this difference. While it is small enough to demand the presence of an alternative political party, it is not small enough to completely ignore. The history of the failures and harmful actions of many Democrats are not so relevant to voters in 2004 -- the choices we face in this election are.
As already noted, we do not all favor a single strategy, and some of us strongly disagree with each other's strategy at this point. The strategies we severally favor range from not running at all, to running in ways that will focus our campaign energies in certain states, to calls to possibly drop out of the race near Election Day if it is very close.
But we all agree that the Green Party should not ignore the damage to the country and to the Green Party that could result by ignoring the reality around us and pretending that there is no difference or that the difference is insignificant. The forthcoming issue of Green Horizon Quarterly features four articles that detail different strategies.
We call for:
1. Candidates seeking the Green Party presidential nomination to describe the strategy they would follow.
2. The Green Party to debate all strategies with respect, and for the national Green Party to take a stance on its preferred strategy. All state parties are encouraged to hold special meetings to discuss and democratically decide, using instant runoff voting, which strategy they prefer, followed by a similar decision process from the national party's Coordinating Committee. We are a grassroots party and must make decisions of our grassroots known and not leave a void for our candidates to fill.
3. All Greens to declare their solidarity with our brothers and sisters in progressive organizations across the country in calling for the defeat of the illegitimate Bush administration, while at the same time demanding that the electoral system be reformed to include instant runoff voting, fair ballot access, and public financing.
Agreed to, in alphabetical order: Medea Benjamin, California; Dee Berry, Missouri; Jenefer Ellingston, Washington, D.C.; Tom Fusco, Maine; Holly Hart, Iowa; Ted Glick, New Jersey; Pat LaMarche, Maine; Rick Lass, New Mexico; Linda Martin, California; Dean Myerson, Washington, D.C.; John Rensenbrink, Maine; Anita Rios, Ohio; Steve Schmidt, Florida; Tom Sevigny, Connecticut; Charlene Spretnak, California; Ron Stanchfield, New York; Penny Teal, Connecticut; Rhoda Vanderhart, Kansas.
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Run, Ralph, Run, But as a GreenAn open letter to Ralph Nader, initiated by Greens for Nader (Mark Dunlea, Howie Hawkins, and Walt Contreras Sheasby) December 10, 2003
We, the undersigned, are writing to urge Ralph Nader and the Green Party to work together to run a strong, united presidential campaign in 2004.
On Election Day 2004, America needs a progressive alternative to the pro-corporate, pro-military, anti-environment agenda offered by the two major parties. Of the various progressive candidates presently considering running, Ralph Nader is by far the strongest. It is important that the Greens and Nader run together.
A strong Green presidential campaign is needed to energize and mobilize progressive voters in America, to give an electoral voice to those who promote peace, democracy, and social and economic justice. Without such a campaign, the political debate and the Democratic Party will continue to move to the right.
Among the reasons for a Nader Green presidential campaign:
• Nader is the most prominent progressive spokesperson in America, long recognized as the most trusted person in the country.
• The similarities between the two major parties are much greater than the differences.
• The Republicans stole the 2000 presidential election, and the Democrats didn't challenge the theft. The Republicans are planning to do it again.
• The world is threatened by America's drive for corporate globalization and an American military/economic empire. Both major parties embrace this goal.
• Nader and the Greens are both stronger if they work together. It would be a disaster for both and for the progressive movement if the two divide.
• If the Democrats win, as they should based on the polls, corporate interests will still be in power, not progressives. Our issues will only succeed if there is a strong independent progressive movement willing to challenge a Democratic administration, not apologize for their shortcomings.
"Anybody But Bush" Is Not a Progressive SolutionThe Democrats and their allies are urging the Greens to be silent, to sit on the sidelines while the Democrats fight the Republicans for control of the patronage that comes with control of the national government. Without a strong progressive electoral alternative, the Democrats have moved relentlessly to the right in a futile effort to win elections by offering similar policies as the Republicans but with a friendlier face.
Some self-declared progressives are running scared, demanding that the Greens not run a candidate, or that the Greens backhandedly support the Democrat by not campaigning in the swing states. To be sure, Bush is scary, particularly since September 11. Invasions launched against Afghanistan and Iraq; pre-emptive wars against "America's enemies"; a policy of an American global empire; a curtailment of civil liberties in America; more tax cuts and corporate welfare for the rich. However, the Democrats in Congress supported these steps.
We cannot rely on the Slick Soft-Right Democrats to fight the Crude Hard-Right Republicans. The Democrats haven't done it during the first three years of the Bush administration. There is no good reason to start relying on them now. The best defense against the Hard Right is not defensive support for a Softer Right, but a strong offensive around a real campaign for a progressive alternative.
The argument that it is the wrong time for a progressive third party has been raised in virtually every election cycle over the last thirty years, that it is more important to defeat Nixon, to defeat Reagan, to defeat Bush I and II than it is to build a party that reflects our principles. Yet no matter how many times they have pleaded with progressive third-party forces to "wait till next time," these voices have never said it is time to run, that it is time to admit that the Democratic Party will not support a progressive agenda.
There are differences between the policies of the Democratic and Republican parties. Just as there are differences between GM and Ford, General Electric and Westinghouse, the American and National League in baseball. But the similarity between the two parties is much greater than the differences. Both parties increasingly are financed by many of the same corporate and special interests and act accordingly after the election, rewarding their supporters. The Democratic track record on issues they cite to attract progressive voters -- the environment, women's rights, labor, the federal bench -- is much worse than their rhetoric at campaign time.
The list of the failures of the Democratic Party at the national, state, and local levels is dismal, and is far too long to be chronicled here. Their recent shortcomings include welfare, criminal justice, universal health care, campaign finance reform, global warming, childhood poverty, the ERA, hunger, homelessness, pesticides, genetic engineering, progressive taxes, corporate welfare, nuclear power, the Middle East, nuclear weapons, the military budget, child care, consumer rights, banking, insurance, the war on drugs, foreign policy, corporate crime, etc.
The Democratic Party seldom if ever takes principled stands. Instead, Democrats make decisions based on how it will help them with voters and reward their campaign contributors. At best, the Democratic Party believes for some strange reason that most voters are more conservative than they are, and pander to "them" by moving to the right, while telling progressives not to worry, it will work out in the end, just vote them into power. It didn't work with Clinton in 1992; why would anyone expect it will work with Dean in 2004?
The major-party candidates will of course offer sound bites and photo opportunities on some of these issues. After all, the first Bush president used polluted Boston Harbor as an effective environmental photo op against Dukakis. Their positions will just lack substance, fail to educate, fail to advance a true progressive agenda both during the election and afterward.
The Democrats will not offer an alternative to the failed economic system that has greatly increased the wealth for a few, while making many poorer, with the middle class barely keeping pace over the last decade. For a long time the Democrats have been a right-of-center party. The likely nominee of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, fits the mold of Bill Clinton and AI Gore. The few progressive presidential candidates within the Democratic Party pull a few percentage points and are treated as fringe players, largely ignored by the media and the party leadership. Their role is not to make the Democratic Party more progressive but to try to pull progressives into the voting booth for the Democrats. These candidates will have been sent back to the sideline by springtime.
The Democratic Party Is Not a Peace PartyThe drive for war by the Bush administration since September 11 is frightening. If ever we needed the Democrats to act like a true opposition party, it was in the days after September 11. Instead they hopped on the bandwagon to bomb Afghanistan, curtail civil liberties, invade Iraq, lock up immigrants, and increase corporate welfare to "restart the economy."
The bipartisan approach to U.S. military interventions under both Democratic and Republican presidents since 1950 has resulted in the killing of an estimated eight million individuals. It has resulted in a military-industrial complex that has continued to grow in power and tax expenditures, despite the warnings of Republican Dwight Eisenhower when he left the Oval Office. Under both parties the torturers were trained, the CIA plotted, the weapons became more deadly, democratic governments were overthrown, American imperialism expanded.
One can argue that, apart from the atomic bomb, some of the nastiest military operations, especially the overthrow of progressive foreign governments, came during the Republican administrations. Yet the planning and implementation of many of the military adventures stretched over both Republican and Democratic administrations. Some of the biggest misadventures, such as Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, and the Balkan War, came primarily with the Democrats at the helm. Democrats were in charge of the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965; shooting peace demonstrators in Panama in 1966; supporting death squads in El Salvador and Honduras in the late 1970s; supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the late 1970s; killing five hundred thousand Iraqi civilians in the 1990s; bombing Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. And the Democratic members of Congress have usually overwhelmingly supported the many military adventures of the Republicans when they controlled the White House, including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Democratic Party has long joined with the Republicans and supported the one-sided American position in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, often isolating the U.S. from every other country in the world in votes in the United Nations. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration refused to seek any cuts in the military budget and continued to support the development of new nuclear weapons.
Ralph Nader and the Greens Need Each OtherThere is no more progressive candidate than Ralph Nader to communicate the Green's agenda to both progressives and the larger population. He has a strong track record of over thirty years of activism, with an incredible number of groups and issues he has helped launched. He has a strong staff team that has coordinated and can coordinate a national presidential campaign. He demonstrated his ability four years ago to raise a significant amount of funds and to generate thousands of volunteers. While there are some issues that we wish he would speak out on more, he is still good on those issues and getting better.
The 2004 presidential election will be a challenging one for Greens, Nader, and progressives. Some feel that the best the Greens can hope to do is to survive. We need to run our strongest candidate. Without a doubt that is Nader.
Yes, there needs to be better coordination with the Green Party and the Greens should ask to sit down and negotiate this with them. That also means that the Greens take on larger responsibilities for the national campaign than four years ago.
The Greens are a stronger entity than they were four years ago. They have obtained official ballot status in more states and have run stronger and winning campaigns throughout the country. Electoral successes in places like Maine, California, and elsewhere have generated more national attention. The national Coordinated Campaign Committee (CCC) has made some significant progress in strengthening our national political operations. While the party needs to get stronger, and its internal process can be difficult, the party is an asset that Nader strongly needs.
It would be a major historical mistake for the Greens and Nader to run independently of one another, hurting both in the short and long term. The Green Party is now part of Nader's legacy; anything he does to harm the Greens harms himself. The Greens and Nader need to build unity among progressives; if they can't build unity among themselves, the 2004 presidential election will likely be a disaster for both.
Bush Stole the 2000 Election -- and Is Ready to Do It AgainWhile Democratic partisans argue that Nader cost Gore the election, this is untrue for a variety of reasons, as most campaign experts know.
One, most progressives know that the election was stolen by Bush. Gore won the nationwide popular vote; he also won the Florida and electoral college vote. The U.S. Supreme Court gave away the election. The Democratic Party and the Gore campaign did little to prevent the theft of the election, starting with their failure to aggressively challenge the illegal disenfranchisement of African-American voters in Florida or even to demand that every vote be counted.
Nor have the Democrats made it a major priority to demand election reform since the election, starting with the failure to adopt fairer electoral systems such as preferential voting, or to address the problems with the electoral college. The proposals that have been adopted through the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) have increased the likelihood that the election will be stolen again through manipulation of computerized voting results and disenfranchisement of many new voters through improper enforcement of ID requirements, but the national Democratic Party has been largely silent on these issues.
Second, the Nader and Green electoral efforts in 2000 helped the Democrats more than it hurt them. Polls show that more than a million people voted just because Nader was on the ballot. Many of these voters also cast votes for Democratic candidates for other offices, and helped provide the margin of victory in at least two U.S. Senate races, allowing the Democrats to reclaim control of the U.S. Senate. Without Nader on the ballot in 2002, the Democrats promptly lost control. In addition, whenever Gore responded to the Nader candidacy by articulating a more progressive, grassroots agenda, his standing in the polls went up. Whenever he tried to sound more like a Republican to attract the center-right votes, his standing went down.
For the record, polls showed that if Nader had not been in the race, of the three million Americans who cast votes for him, 25 percent would have voted for Bush, 38 percent for Gore, and 37 percent would not have voted. The net gain from Nader voters for Gore would have been 13 percent (38 percent minus 25 percent), not 100 percent. However, the Democrats have decided to throw away this 13 percent net gain by failing to embrace preferential or IRV voting.
What Strategy to Follow in the 2004 Presidential ElectionThere is no agreement yet on the best strategy for the 2004 presidential election -- just as there wasn't agreement on the best strategy for 2000.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, Nader focused on states where the election was close, apparently in the hope that the additional media coverage would generate more national votes. Many Greens would have preferred to concentrate on the states where the election was a runaway, like New York, where voters were "free" to vote for whomever they wanted. The end result was that Nader and the party fell several million votes short of the 5 percent national vote total needed for major-party status.
A similar debate, at least partially if not largely in response to the "spoiler" argument, is taking place in 2004. Various versions of a "safe-states" strategy are being promoted, where the Greens and Nader consciously avoid pulling votes in toss-up states. Others object to such a strategy for ideological and party-building reasons (e.g., maintaining ballot lines). It also seems that it would be difficult to get agreement on what the "safe states" are.
This discussion is important but will likely be difficult to come to agreement on, especially as the election unfolds. The dynamics of the "Anybody But Bush" argument will also change once the Democratic nominee is selected, and his specific policies come into focus. Right now, too many "liberals" are projecting their own positions on the Democratic Party; that mistake will become clearer as we get closer to the election, and the center-right positions of the candidate are more highlighted.
Run, Ralph, run -- as a Green.
***
Letter to the Steering Committee and the Presidential Exploratory Committee of the Green PartyBy Ralph Nader
December 22, 2003
I am writing to withdraw my name from consideration as a potential nominee for the Green Party presidential ticket in 2004.
I write this with regret because of my support for your platform and civic activities, because of our shared political history, and because of the numerous efforts I have made, over the years since 1996, to help grassroots Greens build the party. Since running as your nominee in 2000 through all fifty states -- from the disenfranchised Anacostia in Washington, D.C., to corporate-dominated Alaska, from downtown Hartford to the pilot industrial hemp field of Hawaii (not to mention those states where we had to help build the party from scratch) -- I have met with Greens from around the country and the world, scheduled and completed more than forty-five fund-raisers in some thirty states, assisted in starting the Campus Greens, and supported more than a few state and local Green candidates. I remain a registered Independent. But my efforts to build the Green Party and my public contributions on issues of importance to Greens can be compared favorably with those who wear their Green Party registrations as some badge or bona fides.
More recently, as part of my exploratory effort, I have met or spoken with Greens from all over the country in extensive conversations, heard from even more through sign-on letters, Kucinich supporters, Greens for Dean, state and local Green groups, newspaper and magazine accounts, including the Green Pages and Green Horizon, etc., all of which illustrate how the reaction to George W. Bush has fractured -- more than galvanized -- the Greens as a party. Most individuals have the best intentions, and there are people who have now dedicated years to help building the Greens. However, many of the communications I have received express volumes about the maturity of the Greens as a political party.
Although its growth has been slower than many of us would like, the Green Party at least remains poised to respond to the voters' desire for a third party. The failure of the two major parties both to engage a hundred million nonvoters and to provide existing voters with choices over a broad range of important issues has been a continual reality for Greens. With this in mind, uncertainty expressed by the party's leadership regarding the conditions under which the party may or may not field presidential and vice-presidential candidates in 2004 can only be interpreted as a confused retreat.
Specifically, the Steering Committee has declared in reference to whether "the Green Party will (or won't) run a high- (or low-) profile candidate for President in 2004, and that the candidate will (or won't) drop out in their [sic] run for the presidency before election day, possibly making some kind of accommodation (or not) with the Democrats and their candidate" that:
The truth is, no one person or group of persons, inside or outside of the Green Party, will make those types of critical decisions in the Green Party. The strategy the Green Party pursues will be arrived at through a comprehensive process that is beginning now and will go on in every state Green Party, either through conventions or primaries. The conventions and primaries will in turn select delegates from every state Green Party who will come together at our National Convention in the summer of 2004 to make a final, collective decision as to whether the Green Party will run a presidential candidate, and, if so, who that person will be. *
The occasion for this letter is not simply that there are robust contending views about whether to have a presidential candidate and under which strategies and conditions, but that -- should I decide to run -- it is not feasible within the difficult parameters of state and federal election laws to wait and see what the Green Party will do in June 2004. Indeed, the framework and schedule you have chosen for making a decision seems itself tilted against anyone contemplating a serious run as your nominee. Many grass roots Greens who have views contrary to this procedure are not, nor are they going to be, in control of how this decision is going to be made or unmade. It has already been made.
I cannot, nor could any serious potential candidate, embark on a committed campaign for president as a Green Party nominee when the party will not even be certain whether or how it wishes to run a candidate until June 2004. Nor would it be tolerable (not to mention counterproductive for ballot lines, local candidates, party growth, and vote totals) for the party to impose on its nominee varying geographical limits to campaigning. Nor, under such ambiguous conditions, could a committed candidate run the risk that individual state parties would prevent the national nominee access to their ballot lines for whatever conceived motives, with little penalty for nonacquiescence to the convention decision. The deadlines for obtaining ballot access in many states come due prior to or around your convention's decision. Were I to become a candidate, I would not want to launch a campaign with such an uncertain compass regarding what should be a bedrock, genetic determination to run presidential and vice-presidential candidates all out -- which is what, after all, national political parties -- as opposed to movements -- do.
As you know, I have scrupulously refrained from interfering in any internal Green Party matters. For purposes of encouraging more intensive and resourceful initiatives, I have commented on the need to expand the number of state Green offices through more assiduous fund-raising and on the importance of running more candidates. The Green Party has endless opportunities to field candidates, especially among the 2.5 million elective offices at the state and local levels, many of which offer no opposition to the incumbents by the other major party. Given the absence of decision that has been effectively formalized into an unchanging, misguided national procedure on the presidential front, I submit that 2004 might be the year that the Green Party makes a deeper commitment to building the party through state and local candidacies. I and many Greens concur that this is the party's clearest present strength and will be the source of its important talent in the future. During the 2001, 2002, and 2003 elections, Greens won approximately 25 percent of the local offices they contested.
Accordingly, for the reasons described above, I am withdrawing my name from consideration and wish the party and its local community adherents the best in their future endeavors. I still believe that Americans deserve more political parties and better choices than the rhetoric and offerings of the two major parties. I believe in giving people real power to achieve solutions to the problems we have today and in the long-term potential for a reorganized Green Party. In the event that I should still decide to become a presidential candidate, any collaborative efforts that are possible, especially at the state and local level, would be welcome.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
***
Letter to Ralph Nader Urging Reconsideration of WithdrawalBy the Green Party Steering Committee
December 24, 2003
Dear Mr. Nader,
In response to your letter of December 22, we regret your decision not to place your name on the ballot in the Green Party primaries. We believe that the pairing of your legacy with the Green Party was a powerful combination. We are sorry that you have chosen to discontinue this relationship for the purposes of the 2004 presidential race.
We truly appreciate your past and promised future support of Green candidates for elected office. We are convinced that your presence on the campaign trail was a great aid to many of the over one thousand Greens who have run for public office since your own campaign in 2000. We know that your Green presidential bids in 1996 and 2000 led to the formation of dozens of new state parties and hundreds of new Green locals. Your efforts, combined with those of hundreds of thousands of people across the nation, have produced for the first time in seventy-seven years a national progressive party with proven staying power: the Green Party of the United States.
In this light, we sincerely urge you to reconsider your decision.
We also wish to express our confusion at your suggestion that the Green Party is not preparing to field a presidential ticket in 2004. As you know, our 2003 National Meeting in Washington, D.C., produced "a clear mandate" for the Greens to run a presidential ticket in 2004 (
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_07_21_03b. html).
Additionally, as you know, the national party has established four well-staffed and funded committees hard at work on preparations for the 2004 presidential race: these are the Ballot Access Working Group, the Coordinated Campaign Committee, the Annual National Meeting Committee, and the new Presidential Campaign Support Committee, which subsumes our old Presidential Exploratory Committee within it. The letter you refer to, as we have told you, was a fund-raising letter written by a former staff person, not a statement of Steering Committee opinion or party policy; after that letter went out, the Steering Committee reassigned responsibility for writing our fund-raising appeals to one of our number.
Six candidates are currently participating in the Green Party presidential primaries: Peter Camejo (California), David Cobb (California), Paul Glover (New York), Kent Mesplay (California), Carol Miller (New Mexico), and Lorna Salzman (New York). The eventual Green Party nominee will be whichever candidate wins the allegiance of the members of the state party affiliates of the Green Party of the United States and, thus, the votes of their delegates to the 2004 Green Presidential Nominating Convention in Milwaukee, June 23-28. The date and location of the convention were chosen by the Coordinating Committee of the Green Party of the United States (
http://www.gp.org/press/pc06_20_03.html). The Steering Committee does not have the power to select the nominee, to choose the dates or site of the convention, or to decide how the candidate will be chosen. These decisions are made democratically by the elected delegates of our affiliated state parties.
We remain committed to the proposition that America needs not just an opposition candidate, but an opposition party. Your commitment and support of the Green Party for the past seven years has brought us and our country closer to a true democracy. We are grateful for your contributions and look forward to more great work together in the future.
***
Endorsement, Not Nomination
Letter to the Green Party Steering Committee By Ralph Nader
March 24, 2004
Dear Friends,
As you may have seen from media appearances and public remarks, our independent campaign is advancing a people's agenda of social and economic justice, protection of the environment, and ending the militarization and corporatization of our country and its policies at home and abroad.
Thus far, the campaign has drawn people from across the political spectrum. We have received calls from many Green Party members who want to work with Nader for President 2004. Some Greens are also urging a draft-Nader movement. Some state parties have asked whether I would accept a ballot line in their state. We have also received support from some Reform and Libertarian Party members, Independents, first-time voters and disaffected members of the two major parties.
What is developing is a true independent coalition of voters who oppose the direction in which our country is being taken. There are people in all parties and no party who want to unite to take a strong stand against the corporatist two-party duopoly that is taking the United States downward and taking apart our domestic economy. These are people who are saying enough is enough! They want a government that is truly of, by, and for the people.