Green Party campaign for U.S. President, 2012

I still think they'd do better to focus on a few of the more promising House districts than trying to elect a Presidential candidate.

I'm actually not sure what their aim is.   But whatever it is, the presidential campaign strategy hasn't come close to achieving anything, and there's no evidence at all that a big Green vote producing a Republican plurality presidency(which, after all, is all that the strategy has any real hope of achieving) has or can lead to anything progressive or positive.  The 2000 Nader campaign did not exactly end up leading to peaceful revolution.

They should be working for electoral reform and grassroots organizing of activists on environmental, social, and economic justice issues-working more with Occupy and other resistance sectors.  Running a sacrificial lamb for president does't achieve the aim of radicalizng the country...nor does it, unfortunately, have the effect of squeezing any meaningful concessions out of the Democrats.

What's there to defend in the current strategy?

If I were USian I'd be joining right now and voting for Rosaeane Barr in that primary.

I guess I don't know so much about Jill Stein.  I do know a lot about Roseanne Barr and I trust her courage as well as her values.

Additionally I think both Roseanne's personality and fame would give her huge advantages that typical third party (US) candidates do not enjoy.  I think she will be able to call bullshit and have the media report it.

I had never heard of Jill Stein before Roaseanne announced, and I haven't seen any video clips since.  I'll wait to pass judgement.  I would have to be very impressed with her indeed to feel like she would bring as much as Roseanne.

I think Cynthia McKinney has great values but I'm not really sure what her run accomplished.  I feel like Roseanne guarantees having a voice.

I'm asling this as a neutral question, honest to Gawd:

How come you never hear about any connections between the European Greens and either the Canadian or US Greens?

Thanks for posting this, M. Spector.  A refreshing antidote to the two business parties.  

Also of interest: former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/06/rocky-versus-the-capitalists/

M. Spector wrote:

You could start by watching the video I linked to in Post #1 above.

So I watched it.  Jill Stein seems articulate and intelligent.  I agree with her values and priorites.  I think she understands the issues.  And I like the Green New Deal.  She strikes me as more of a socialist than a Green.

Beyond that, I don't know.  She's not the best speaker...lots of "um"s and "uh"s, and she's a bit dry.  I was willing to listen for the whole clip but I don't know if others would. Frankly I'd say there were at least half a dozen people at Occupy Vancouver would could give at least as good an interview.  She'd be running for president.

I would expect the media just to ignore her campaign away.  I didn't see anything to suggest that she will be particularly good at getting her message through the owned media filter.

So yeah, I would still much rather see Roseanne Barr get the Green nomination because I think she will have a a louder voice.  Jill Stein will criticise and admonish Obama.  Roseanne would mock him and I think that would go a lot further.

From what I've heard though I think Roseanne is running to increase Jill Stein's profile...so we'll see.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Seriously Ken, what are you up to here? You have been freaking out about Mulcair leading the NDP and where will he take the NDP and will the NDP be worth supporting for months. Yet in spite of many legitimate issues there are with Mulcair, as Prime Minister he will still end up leading a government that is noticeably farther left than most governments Canada's elected (with the possible exception of the immediate post-war period and when the NDP held the balance of power in the 60s and 70s), certainly farther left than the Harper Conservatives. As for the Democrats, what have they done? Is there any issue of substance on which Obama has acted differently than the Republicians? What about the horrible precedent that Obama set by not holding members of the Bush Administration responsible for their crimes? And the fact that Obama has basically catered to the desires of the moneyed elite that has both the Democratic and Republican parties in a stranglehold at the expense of average, everyday Americans?

No, the Greens or any other third party campaign isn't what threatens the Democrats. It's the refusal of the Democrats to stand up for their voters that causes the problems. When people are presented with real Republicans or fake Republicans, they'll vote for the real ones. The Democrats are in trouble either way, the best the left in the US can do is build up a viable movement that challenges Republican ideology so that voters have a real choice.

I'm hardly freaking out.  I'm just pointing out that the Greens aren't actually accomplishing anything through a presidential campaign.  If that strategy worked, we'd have seen a MASSIVE increase in Green support after 2000.  Yet after 2000, they withered and died across the US.   Saying that has nothing at all to do with the question of whether the Greens elected Bush(I actually don't think that they did and didn't mean to imply that they had).  What I'm saying is that the Greens can't win a presidential election, and that by itself makes it useless for them to run.  The ONLY reason to run for the presidency is to actually try to get elected to it.

The day is past in which losing presidential campaigns can build political movements in the US.  Why would anyone think otherwise?

And, if none of the past Green presidential candidacies succeeded in getting concessions out of the Democratic ticket(and I agree that the Democratic party deserves any criticism from the left that it gets)why would anyone think that tactic would work in the future?

Still, I suppose they'll run.  It can't help anything, but they'll run and they have a right to.  So will Rocky Anderson.  Good luck to them both.

But we need to be honest about the history, here:

No Green presidential campaign has succeeded in spreading radical values across the US, or in building that party, or in helping to create a culture of resistance, a culture we sorely need.  So why bother repeating it when it can't work if it hasn't worked YET?  The only people who have succeeded in building a resistance movement have been Occupy, a group in which the Greens have had little if any influence.

And why have they refused to seriously involve themselves in work for electoral reform?

It would not be retreat for the Greens to focus on winnable races.  It would be effective politics. 

I just don't get why you put destroying the Democratic Party before any and all other objectives for the U.S. Left., Spector.  Why you think that is worth going back to Bush-style immiseration.

Julia Butterfly Hill occupied a tree for 738 days. That's dedication to a cause.

I agree;

Obama re-election depends essentially on the rate of new-job creation, which has been good since October 2011, but slowed down in most recent monthly report; a few months "lull" and all bets are off

a major new Mideast conflagration would not help, either

The Republicans are toxic and Romney is a terrible candidate.  Not only is he Mr. 1%, but he has a tendency to say ridiculous things.  And let's see who he picks for a running mate.  Could be worse than Palin.

Obama will seem like far and away the more reasonable choice.

The bigger the voice of Occupy and the Green Party, the more we will get out of Obama during the campaign.  This may not translate into gains during his next term (although it may, in some domains) but it will at the very least move the Overton window left.

Romney looks terrible just going up against Rick Santorum and Newt Gringrich (and they both had to pull their punches).  Imagine how he's going to look going up against Obama.  Romney will say with a straight face that Obama doesn't have enough experience to be president and he will be laughed at.

The bigger question is will the Dems keep the Senate, and can they win back the house.  And in both chambers, the Greens could actually have a shot at holding the balance of power.  If the Greens could win two senate seats or 6 house seats that would be HUGE.

I think there is value in the Greens running a presidential candidate IF they can get the message out.  I think Roseanne is especially well equipped to do that in the way that most conventional green policy wonks are not.  If you can't get the message out it really diminishes the the utility of running.

Jill Stein (or Ralph Nader, for that matter) would make much better candidates for Senate then President.

I really hate to say it, but, Elizabeth May showed the way.  The USian Green Party (running the socialist candidate) should be following the example of the most successful Green Party in North America.  Focus on regional seats with advantageous demographics.  Especially since at least one of the chambers is going to end up very close.

Ken Burch wrote:

The fact that radicalism didn't grow anywhere under Nixon in the early Seventies

I don't know about that. Based on what I've read and heard, my understanding is that the '70s was one of the high points of U.S. militancy. The '70s had the Women's movement(s), the anti-war movement, labour militancy, the American Indian Movement, the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, the Young Lords Organization, queer liberation movements, the environmental movement. The level of organizing that was going on back then forced the Nixon administration - against all its natural inclinations - to be the most progressive administration of the post-war era, at least in terms of domestic policy.

Ken Burch wrote:

Why would you think it would be any different under Romney? Why would it not be just as bad for organizing and resistance under him as it was under Nixon, Reagan, or either Bush?

I don't think it's the Republicans that are the biggest obstacle to a more progressive or radical U.S. Rather, it's the complacancy and demobilization that sets in when a Democrat is in the White House.

M. Spector wrote:

There's always going to be a Republican bogey-man running so that you lot can point in terror and say "thank god for the Democrats". That's how Obomba got elected, and that's why good candidates for president will never be elected.

And occasionally, some of those Republican bogey-men will actually be elected, the sky will not fall, and anybody paying close attention will realize that things are not all that different from when there's a Democrat in the White House.

And don't kid yourself that Obomba's campaign is going to be affected in any way by the Occupy movement or the Green Party. The 1% are not backing Romney, as you suggest. They are backing Obomba, just as they did in 2008.

So really the whole thing is pointless isn't it?

As long as we're being honest, let's admit what we both know...that the MSM will ignore Jill Stein into obliviion, she won't get even 1% of the vote, and the green party candidacy will produce nothing of measurable value.

I remember there being radicalism in Nixon's first term, but it died as soon as he was re-elected.  And the same thing happened under Reagan.  Under Bush the only radicalism that happened was as a result of Katrina...and the same thing would have happened if ANY U.S. administration had responded that badly.

What I'm saying is that the activism in those times ended up just dying-and it died because the Repubican presidential victories helped convince most of the activists that the fight was lost.  Why would anyone think it wouldn't die in a new Republican ascendancy?  How would you fight the sense of overall futility that would creep up on people?

Probably Obama does have it locked up,  And the Greens are going to run and so will Anderson.  Whatever.

My real point was that there wasn't any real evidence the Greens actually built anything lasting as a result of their presidential campaigns.  The party didn't grow and the movement didn't grow.  It didn't have the effect the Debs campaign had of helping create the consciousness that later produced the New Deal, either.  Nothing whatsoever remains to remind the country that Nader even ever ran.

Ken Burch wrote:

Why would anyone think it wouldn't die in a new Republican ascendancy?  How would you fight the sense of overall futility that would creep up on people?

I'm not sure what's going on currently that you feel would be at risk of being lost under Romney. The Occupy movement is the only large-scale progressive thing I can think of at the moment, and I think that movement is fueled more by a sense of desperation than a sense of [img]http://www.prosportstickers.com/product_images/m/barack_obama_hope_stick....

M. Spector wrote:

the liberal left has gone into hibernation and Obomba has had a free ride from all those leftists who said they were going to "hold his feet to the fire", etc.

A timely column that illustrates this point nicely: [url=http://news.salon.com/2012/04/10/the_liberal_betrayal_of_bradley_manning... liberal betrayal of Bradley Manning[/url]

Charles Davis wrote:

More than three years into the presidency of Barack Obama, it’s almost a cliché now to ask: What if George W. Bush did it? From dramatically escalating the war in Afghanistan to institutionalizing the practice of indefinite imprisonment, Obama has dashed hopes he would offer a change from the Bush’s national security policies – but he hasn’t faced a whole lot of resistance from liberals who once decried those policies as an affront to American values.

Like those on the right who now crow about fascism but spent the Bush years gleefully declaring left-wing celebrities “enemies of the state,” many of those on the liberal-left treat issues of war and civil liberties as useful merely for partisan purposes. When a Democrat’s in power those issues become inconvenient. And usually ignored.

Former dean of the Yale Law School Harold Koh, for instance, used to rail against the imperial presidency, speaking of the horror of torture and “indefinite detention without trial.” Now a legal adviser for the Obama State Department, he recently declared that “justice” can be delivered with or with out a trial. Indeed, “Drones also deliver.” Don’t expect much more than a yawn from Democratic pundits, though, much less any calls for impeachment. It’s an election year, after all. And what, would you rather Mitt Romney be the guy drone-striking Pakistani tribesmen?

“Obama and the Democrats being in power in Washington defangs a lot of liberal criticism,” Chase Madar, a civil rights attorney in New York, told me in an interview. Indeed, but with a few exceptions – Michael Moore, Dennis Kucinich, The Nation – those who would be inclined to defend Manning were Bush still in office are the ones either condemning him or condoning his treatment, which has included spending the better part of a year in torturous solitary confinement, an all too common feature of American prisons. Even his progressive defenders, remaining loyal to the Democratic Party, tend to downplay Obama’s role in the Bradley Manning affair; his authorizing the abuse of an American hero is certainly no means not to vote for him again.

“The whole civil libertarian message only really seems to catch fire among liberals when there’s a Republican in the White House,” says Madar. When there’s not a bumbling Texan to inveigh against, all the sudden issues that were morally black and white become complex, and liberal media starts finding nuance where there wasn’t any before.

wage zombie wrote:

The Republicans are toxic and Romney is a terrible candidate.  Not only is he Mr. 1%, but he has a tendency to say ridiculous things.  And let's see who he picks for a running mate.  Could be worse than Palin.

Obama will seem like far and away the more reasonable choice.

M. Spector wrote:

There's always going to be a Republican bogey-man running so that you lot can point in terror and say "thank god for the Democrats". That's how Obomba got elected, and that's why good candidates for president will never be elected.

You misunderstand me.  I am certainly not making any kind of Republican bogeyman argument, nor would I ever blame third party spoilers for any mainstream candidate's lack of appeal.

Obama will win in a cakewalk because the Republicans don't have a candidate.  Or any way of talking about issues that will have appeal beyond their minority of supporters.

Romney's an empty suit, and the Republicans are toxic.