What good would come voting Green?

[fujiyama]

Ok, I'm sick of the threads which have degenerated into Green vs. Dem. threads. I want to know instead how it is someone can possibly say both parties are the same or both parties are too similar after the last 2 1/2 years. I understand there is some frustration on some issues like the war and the tax cuts as well, but the dems have done some good. They've applied some pressure on judicial nominees and quite a few voted against the war and against the tax cuts. Several have come out against Bush's enviornmental policies and many democrats in the senate have a good record in opposing Bush.

What is happening before us is anathema to every liberal or progressive. Hell, even Lieberman would be an improvement. And if greens don't want Lieberman as the dem. candidate, then get involved in the primary process. Register as a democrat and work hard to get Dean nominated. The system will not be overthrown. Nader voters may have helped" shake up" the system in the last election but not in a positive way. Nothing good will come from what has happened.

Nader's view that thinsg need to get worse to get better are nonsense. Some things like the enviornment don't get better, even after a very long time. They simply get worse. Just remember people are really suffering under this admin. all around the world!

This election is bigger than building a third party. The long term will hold many opportunities but first the politics of the nation must be shifted leftward to the center again. Then hopefully, it can even be shifted leftward. An atmosphere in which greens won senate seats or house seats would be great. We aren't living in that atmosphere. We're instead living in an atmosphere of fear and distrust fueled by the most unscrupulous administration in US history.

No candidate will be perfect but improvement cannot occur immediately, but incrementally. The nation WAS on the right track when Clinton was in office. Now, it has derailed. Putting this country back on track will take years if not decades. Clinton couldn't fix all of Reagan's mess, but progress was made. Please, let's get back on track.

[cherryperry]

1. Absolutely no good will come from this in 2004!!!

I certainly changed my registration to Democrat in order to be able to vote on everything as a Democrat until the USA returns to an approximation of its former self!

[Iverson]

2. ahem

Are you asking a question or delivering a lecture?

[sangh0]

9. Not...mutually...exclusive.....nt

.

[Terwilliger]

20. when painted as a question a lecture sounds like a politician on the stump

same old lies

[imhotep]

3. pissing off facists

is "good."

[KG]

4. false. the nation wasn't on the right track when clinton was in office.

as the rise of a real progressive movement like the greens attests. an unsustainable economic boom doesn't mean the nation was on the right track. clinton gladly went along with the dem. partys move to the right. he was no liberal. progressive causes and ideals were on the retreat his entire 8 years. and your assertion that an elected dem. would move this nation 'leftward' is without basis in recent events. dems. have stood proudly 'shoulder to shoulder' with whistle-ass. when are they going to return to being an oppostion party?

when 'anyone but bush' is the dems rallying cry, it is a sign of surrender. voters know what dems. are 'against'. what are they 'for' is the clear and concise message they need to articulate. and for some time now, the dems seem to be 'for' the same things as the repooks, only not so much.

[ProfessorGAC]

129. Could You Please Define "Unsustainable"?

I've seen no credible econometric studies that would suggest that the fiscal policies of the 90's were unsustainable. I published such a study in 1995 that suggested that "supply-side" economics is unsustainable that was supported by the data. But, i've seen nothing in the literature to suggest that your contention is supported by academic studies.

Could you reference that conclusion to some studies or to a dataset that reinforces it?

And please, don't confuse the speculative market bubble for the macroeconomic phenomena. There aren't the same thing. They never have been, and never will be. The subjectivity involved in speculation causes market volatility independent of any economic growth or contraction. (Look at right now. Market creeping up while the economy is in shambles.)

I'm talking about true macroeconometric conclusions and data. I await your reply.
The Professor

[vi5]

5. Hey, there are always windmills to be jousted....

And someone has to do it, right?

[leftyandproud]

6. lets see...

first of all, you stand on PRINCIPLE...which is good enough for me..

then there's the fact that it will piss off DLC democrats and make the party realize they must return to their BASE and support the BASE if they ever hope to win another major election..

We can not tolerate Bush lite...and if the greens can pull the dems back to the left, I'm all for it.

[library_max]

7. Principle? Great.

So far, the Greens' stand on principle has led to the invasion of Iraq, a tax cut which is going to cripple the economy for generations to come, horrific rollbacks of environmental regulation, and a federal "boot" being placed on the public schools so they can't move. Those are just the Bush administration highlights that leap to mind.

So please, make another stand on principle in the 2004 election! Four more years of Bush wouldn't be that bad! :puke:

[Terwilliger]

10. *BZZZZZZZZZZZT*

Democrats are WHOLLY responsible for the 2000 Election (or lack thereof) and they're CERTAINLY responsible for eveything they've done since then.

[indigo32]

59. I'm not blaming the Greens for 2000

but where do you come off stating that the Dems are WHOLLY responsible for the 2000 election? Gee I thought Jeb and the USSC might have played a part.

[Terwilliger]

169. Clinton? Gore? Bad policies? Years of acceding to the right-wing sentiment

things like that

[indigo32]

221. That is completely ignoring the issues I mentioned

eom

[Terwilliger]

265. that's directly addressing the issues

the USSC and media and Bush are all well and good, but the man who should have RUN AWAY with the election couldn't even garner a majority. STOP BLAMING IT ON SOMETHING ELSE!

[Tinoire]

225. The Attack on Iraq was a bi-partisan effort by Democrats & Republicans

Oh please... "the Greens' stand on principle has led to the invasion of Iraq" ?! Let's stop blaming the Greens and understand that the attack on Iraq was a partisan effort by both the Democrats and the Republicans. Greens had nothing to do with it.

There are letters in the Congressional archive of Kerrey (D), Lieberman (D) and several other Democrats whose names I don't remember, teaming up with Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle to urge Clinton to attack Iraq even after the CIA had come out and said Iraq was no threat.

Neither Clinton nor Gore was against attacking Iraq regardless of what they've said to pander to the antiwar and Progressive Democrats because it was under their watch that Iraq was bombed and sanctioned every day for 8 years straight to destabilize it for the coming war. Clinton was ready to attack them and sent Albright and Sandy Berger out on a war drum tour to guage public support and found out, to his horror, that there was absolutely none. Clinton would have attacked had the manuafactured evidence been strong enough but not being as DUMB as Georgie boy, refused to do so because he knew there would be no coalition this time and knew how far down it would take America. Clinton was no fool and risked the black-mail he knew was coming over this one. Refusal to attack Iraq was the single most important reason Clinton was internationally humiliated over masculine weakness to a little strumpet pulling up her dress to show him her thong-clad buttocks that ridiculous blow-job.

This is why Clinton recently told people us to just "get over it". Bush soon stepped in and, with the help of the OSP, manufactured more flimsy evidence, but America had decided on this war way before Bush ever showed up.

------------------
Foreign policy team visits OSU
By Mike Spahn
Daily Staff Reporter
COLUMBUS - President Clinton's foreign policy team met yesterday at Ohio State University with a rowdy crowd in a town hall meeting to discuss the current situation in Iraq.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger met for 90 minutes with a crowd that often yelled and chanted in protest of possible U.S. military action against Iraq.

Albright said the goal of the meeting was to "explain the policy ramifications" of the Iraqi situation.

<snip>

Berger said the aim of a possible airstrike would be twofold: to diminish Saddam Hussein's weapons and reduce the threat to Iraq's neighbors.

"We will send a clear message to would-be tyrants and terrorists that we will do what is necessary to protect our freedom," Berger said. ((C'mon, honestly, does that not sound like Bush?))

<snip>

http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/feb/02-19-98/news/news1.html
-----------------------------


Albright Faces Public Opposition To Iraq
Administration's Foreign Policy Team Faced Tough Questions

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Posted 3:53 p.m. February 18, 1998 -- Facing tough questions from America's heartland, the Clinton administration's foreign policy team tried to make the case today for U.S. military action against Iraq. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called Iraq's disputed weapons arsenal the "greatest security threat we face."

The speech follows an appearance by President Clinton on national TV yesterday to explain the rationale for possible military action. With opposition mounting in Congress and doubts in the minds of many Americans, he decided to dispatch his top foreign policy aides to address those concerns.

<snip>

Joining Albright on a red carpeted-stage in the center of a basketball arena were Defense Secretary William Cohen and National Security Adviser Samuel Berger. They were interrupted several times by chants from a noisy audience that included students as well as uniformed members of the military and veterans.

"Saddam has delayed, he has duped, he had deceived the inspectors from the very first day on the job," Cohen said in a prepared statement before the three took questions. (( Just like Bush again))

<snip>

http://www.channel4000.com/news/stories/news-980218-154354.html

-------

PNAC, AEI, the Cheney Energy players, and the "all too happy to cooperate" DLC are what got us into Iraq. The DLC is closely tied to PNAC and AEI- DUers, more alert than me, did some amazing research on PNAC, AEI and their relationship with the DLC. Clinton, our hero President was CFR and DLC which is why we saw the groundwork (first draft of Homeland Security, NAFTA, WTO, case-laying for the attack on Iraq) laid under him no matter how reluctant he was about implementing certain aspects of the plan (he REFUSED to go to war with Iraq on manufactured evidence which is why we saw him humiliated in front of the world over something as ludicrous as a blow-job). Manufactured evidence for this war coming straight from the neo-cons and the OSP.
-----

(Excerpt)
Clinton Administration officials attempting to make the case for military action against Iraq were shouted down at two Midwestern campuses in late February. Evoking memories of the 1960s, protestors jeered cabinet members with profanity and derisive chants.

At Ohio State University, a media-staged international "town-meeting" went sour when activists pelted government officials with obscenity-laced interruptions. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger were at times barely audible and incapable of completing sentences due to yells of "racist," "murderer," and "liar."

http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/1998/march_1998_3.html

******************

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger were interrupted repeatedly with loud heckling, boos, catcalls and occasional obscenities from audience members in the rafters. One person was arrested. Shouts of protest occasionally were met with louder chants of support, and at times the situation got so out of hand that CNN was forced to cut to a commercial.

Some of the wildest exchanges occurred off-camera and during commercial breaks. Rick Theis, who got into a heated face-to-face shouting match with CNN anchor Bernard Shaw during a break, was hauled off the arena floor by security. Theis -- who said the United States has failed to make a case for attacking Iraq -- accused CNN of trying to shut him up and called the event a sham.. "The president has said this action won't get rid of Saddam nor his weapons of mass destruction," he said. "All we're doing is sending a message. And I don't want to send a message with the blood of Iraqi children."

<snip>

"Tell them about the oil," someone shouted. "World War I, World War II, we don't need World War III," yelled another.

<snip>

Those questioning the officials wanted to know how the United States would handle retaliation by Iraq or why there are different standards of justice for countries around the world. Often, their questions went unanswered. "How many will die?" someone shouted from the rafters. Estimates have put the number of Iraqi civilians likely to die in an attack by the United States at close to 100,000. Albright said: "I'll make a bet that we care more about the Iraqi people than Saddam Hussein does."

<snip>

http://members.aol.com/mwpress/report5.html (no copyright- request to distribute)

***

Some lawmakers insist Clinton set war date

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain said it's time for President Clinton to set a deadline for Saddam Hussein to back down or face U.S. military might. Other lawmakers insisted Sunday the president not act without a vote of support from Congress, which is on vacation next week.

<snip>

He said on "Fox News Sunday" that the current standoff - threats by the United States to use force unless Hussein gives unconditional access to U.N. weapons inspectors - gives Iraqi President Hussein an "equal place in the world forum" and "continues to erode our credibility."
<snip>
http://thepost.baker.ohiou.edu/archives/021698/briefly.html

---------------------

I would highly recommend people who care read the info from old-time, pre-Primary and pre-Partisan, progressive DU discussions that explain this a lot more:

Greens Want Candidate in 2004

Clinton: Bush Iraq Mistake Understandable

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=23111

[Tinoire]

228. Just the Greens huh?

How come it's always the Greens? How come it's never the CUBAN AMERICAN DEMS who REFUSED to vote for Gore and voted for Bush instead? http://64.21.33.164/CNews/y00/nov00/09e2.htm

How come it's never the disillusioned Dems who stayed home?

How come it's never Gore for preferring to gamble on a few centrist swing votes and alienating a ton of liberal voters?

How come it's never Gore for choosing that war-mongering Lieberman?

Republicans alone didn't vote through those fat Pentagon budgets designed with only one purpose in mind. Republicans didn't wage that horrifying war against Yugoslavia which was the beginning of PNACs Pax Americana. A Republican administration didn't maintain and impose 8 years of obscene sanctions on the people of Iraq during which millions died (nor take to the airwaves saying "we think it's worth it" about the UNICEF-documented deaths of over half a million children). Republicans bear only recent responsability for the horror in Israel/Palestine. Republicans alone didn't quibble over how to divide the paltry millions our Reps deign to dole out for the poor only to suddenly find HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS for the Yugoslavia and Iraq wars. Too many people went to bed hungry and homeless under 8 years of a Democratic adminstration that was too busy forcing working on a non-progressive agenda of horrors like GATT, WTO, NAFTA, GMOs, to pay attention to the poor.

For years I've watched the Democratic Party shift to the right ignoring it's progressive base as it courts the conservative vote because it's easier to whore than to fight for what is right.

For years progressives have been abandoning the Democratic Party in droves because of this betrayal... and now it's the fault of the Greens?

If Jesse Jackson hadn't personally walked the streets of Florida BEGGING disillusioned and angry African-Americans to vote for Gore, there wouldn't have even been a recount.

Yet, despite all this, it's still the fault of the Greens :eyes:.

The Democratic Party won't win another election until it admits the only entity responsible for the walloping losses we've had is this New Democratic Party and those of us who bury our heads in the sand refusing to address the real root of these problems.

[sangh0]

11. PRINCIPLE?

Funny how you don't mention any specific PRINCIPLES (like helping the poor, or peace, etc) but you do mention pissing off the DLC.

and if the greens can pull the dems back to the left, I'm all for it.

That's a mighty big "if", and there is no evidence to suggest it could happen. The Dems haven't "moved left" since the 2000 Election, when the Greens had their best showing ever. What makes you think the Greens are going to have any effect in 2004?

[Terwilliger]

16. because the DLC is floundering...

because everybody uses the term "Republican-lite" and I don't mean Nader...because your buddy Sharpton has as much chance of being listened to as Kucinich does...

Things like that.

[sangh0]

33. Huh?

None of those things suggest that the Greens can influence the Dems

[MadHound]

8. So you want to hear from a Green, eh?

Well I'm a life long Dem who has turned Green, here's why

Currently we have two major parties that are both bought and paid for by the corporate masters they serve. In the last presidential cycle, over 100 corporations gave $40,000 to both parties, with Phillip Morris topping the list with $2,000,000 given to both Dems and 'Pugs. This is to insure that no matter who wins, the corporate interests are taken care of. You extoll Clinton for cleaning up Reagans mess. Well, look at the mess that he created at the behest of his corporate masters. NAFTA, WTO, FTAA, and a whole range of alphabet agreements that simply put, put you in direct competition with every third world country to manufacture products at the least cost to corporations. And in every case the American worker loses, because you and I cannot live on the thirty one cents/hour wage that China is supposed to be paying(not that they do this, wages at sweatshops in China and other Asian coutries generaly run in the mid teens per hour). So thus we are watching good blue collar(and now high tech) jobs flee overseas.

Clinton(also at the behest of his corporate masters) did a little(illegal) jury rigging with the election laws to allow the massive waves of corporate soft money contributions to come rolling in. Thus politicians of both parties are consequently even more tied into doing their corporate masters bidding. These are but two of the anathemas to democracy that Clinton unleashed. There are many more, and if you wish to find out more, I suggest reading the works of Greg Palast, Jim Hightower, or perusing the pages of Mother Jones back issues.

Your position on Dems having to win this '04 election is a shortsighted one. Yes, Bush is an evil man, and a menace to our democracy. But any candidate who is beholden to corporations is nearly as much of a threat to democracy as Bush. It is simply a matter of being boiled slowly as opposed to quickly. Nader's comment on things having to get worse is spot on. Things will only start changing when people are pissed off enough to start meaningfully changing them, and Bush is really good at pissing people off. Does this mean that I want Bush in office for a second term? Hell no, but neither do I want a Democratic/Corporcratic sycophant who will simply mouth platitudes to soothe the masses while continuing to aid his corporate masters in the looting of our country!

The Green party isn't a quick fix solution. It is a vehicle in which ideas and ideals can be put forth before the people in a very public venue. It is also a long term solution to getting corporate money and influence out of politics. Since the Green Party takes no corporate donation, the only people it is beholden to are the true masters of this country, We the People.

The reason Nader and others say that the two major parties are the same or similar is because it is true in one large way. They both answer to the same corporate masters. No real change, no real progress is going to be made in this country until we get corporations out of our government. With the Dems and 'Pugs addictied to that corporate dollar, the change is going to have to happen from outside. You deride the Greens for running a Presidential candidate, but that is simply used as a vehicle to broadly diseminate the progressive ideals that the Greens stand for. The real trench warfare is happening locally and at the statehouse, where Greens are running and winning seats from city council to state reps. Yes, it is a slow building movement, but one that is growing, for there are more and more people like me who are fed up with the system as is, and are voting with their conscience. Do we have a shot in '04. No, but Green votes build the party, and such voting means more local offices are won.

The Democrats need to do more than shift leftward. They need to stop sucking off the corporate teat, and remember who they are supposed to be standing up for: The Working Man, The Downtrodden, We the People.

[Terwilliger]

13. *GASP*

more people like me who are fed up with the system as is, and are voting with their conscience

What are you? A COMMIE?!?!

[BeachBuckeye]

21. So you want to wait until the world is destroyed

and THEN do something?

In my opinion voting anything but straight Democratic this time around is the same as the chickens voting for Colonel Saunders. But then, what do I know?

[Terwilliger]

26. destroyed? that's hysterical nonsense

who the fuck allowed Bush to become the titular head of the US? Greens? Libertarians? Topo Gigio?

No, it was Democrats...Democrats whose policies aren't a strong refutation of the right-wing...Democrats who believe the country is more conservative so they become more conservative themselves...Democrats who can't convince even the lowliest of voters of the threat you seem to think is there.

But, of course! Just walk into the booth and pull a straight "D" and when Coca-Cola has a neon advertisement built in to your monitor, ask the Democrats where they stand.

[JVS]

229. That FIEND! This is the enemy

He caused it all to happen!

[MadHound]

67. No, by voting and working for the Green Party, I AM doing something

I find those who want to keep rewarding Dems with votes, while the selfsame Dems are looting this country at the behest of their corporate masters are the ones who are doing nothing. Same ol' Same ol' doesn't solve a damn thing.

Working to build up a party that is foursquare opposed to corporate control of government is the best thing that can be done to reclaim this country for the American people.

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results. I don't wish to continue in that same insane rut by voting for another corporate controlled Dem.

[lifelong_Dem]

76. Yes, you are doing something

You are causing tens of thousands of people to die due to an insane foreign policy. You are causing massive rollbacks of environmental regulations, leading to permanent damage to the planet. You are causing our future to be sold out so the richest Americans can have tax cuts. And you are greatly empowering the fundamentalist evangelicals who want to drag out country back to the dark ages by putting hundreds of people sympathetic to them on the federal bench.

So yes, you've accomplished a lot. Congratulations.

[MadHound]

82. No, I didn't accomplish any of that

By the by, I voted for Gore(against my better judgement), so you can peddle your happy horseshit elsewhere.

Let see though, who aided and abetted the insane foreign policy though?
Hmmm, could it be the Dems? Yes, yes it could, along with the Patriot Act, "welfare reform", NAFTA, offshore oil drilling restrictions loosened(thank you Clinton), WTO, FTAA, '96 Telecom Act, Homeland Security, and on and on.

No, I'm sorry, I'm working for a real change now, not just the pious mouthings of spineless Dems.

When you have two parties working for the same corporate masters, then both have blood on their hands. The only masters that the Greens work for is ones they're supposed to work for, We the People.

[Walt Starr]

87. BRAVO!!!

There is a discontent brewing amongst people who have been loyal Democrats for decades. The Democratic PArty stands at the cusp, it can go one way or another.

Only what unfolds over the next 14 months will tell the tale.

[Tinoire]

231. Sadly, that's what I see coming too...

This is the last round between the Democratic Party's base (Progressives & Liberals) and the Republicanish New Democratic Party whose motto seems to have been "When you can't beat them, infiltrate them.".

It's on the cusp for sure.

[lifelong_Dem]

98. "Same corporate masters"

Same old tired BS. You see everything in black and white and you think everything to the right of Nader is exactly the same and equally bad. But you, personally, don't suffer much under Republican rule, so you don't care.

[MadHound]

116. Son, let me tell you something

I suffer as much or more under this corporate greedfest we call bipartisan government as anybody else here. I'm not a rich man, I have managed over the past quarter century to work my way up from homeless to lower middle class(woo-hoo!). So don't be thinking that I'm some rich, elite limousine liberal, I'm down here in the trenches with everybody else, why the fuck do you think I'm working so hard for a change in this country?

And speaking of working for change in this country, what the hell have you done lately? That is other than sticking your head in the sand amd repeating the mantra "Dems will make it all better, Dems will make it all better." Well I've got news for you buddy, and this comes from working hard for the Democratic Party for thirty+ years. The Dems have all harkened to the siren song of corporate cash, and they think that you, with your head in the sand and your ass in the air, are the perfect candidate for a corporate reaming.

So why don't you stop whistling past the graveyard and go do two things. The first is your own research, so you can do your own thinking, and the second is to get out and do some work. Go volunteer in your local peace movement, or your local enviromental movement, or run for a local office. Anything, but just get involved. I think you'll be suprised at how much your attitude changes the more you get educated.

[Iverson]

118. kudos

Like you, MadHound, I was an active Dem longer than some of the shrill voices around here have been alive. Your response to the weak personal commentary was right on the mark. Nicely done.

[lifelong_Dem]

119. I am educated

And that's how I know your "same corporate masters" shtick is BS.

Gore got about 90% of the black vote, 65% of the Hispanic vote and, among first and second-generation immigrants, Gore received about 55-60% of their vote as well.

Want to know who Gore's "masters" were? Gays who wanted to get closer to equal rights than they are right now. Blacks who wanted the economic prosperity that had started to come their way in the last decade to continue. Labor, who wants the Democrats to be friendlier to them, but knows that the Republicans are very UNfriendly.

On the other hand, who are the masters of the two Texas oilmen in the White House right now?

[MadHound]

132. And gee, look how far minorities got under the Clinton/Gore admin.

Let see, gays. Don't ask, don't tell, no universally recognized marriage or civil union laws. Hispanics, ooh boy, now they can legally come in from Mexico to pick crops for pennies. Why do they have to do that? Because that Clinton/Gore child NAFTA killed all of the well paying ag jobs in Mexico(the better to exploit them with). Blacks, oh yeah. Toughen up this insanely racist War on Drugs, sweeping even more underpriveldged black men into prison. That's a real winner.

And I know who the masters of Gore were. The same people who rolled all of that corporate cash into the Clinton/Gore campaigns. Let's take a look at that shall we.

BP won the right, with the backing of the Clinton/Gore administration, to conduct offshore drilling in an eviromentally sensative area off the coast of Florida. What did Gore get back in return? A $650,000 contribution to his campaign.

Phillip Morris was able to stop the hemmorage of lawsuits it was facing with the help of the Clinton/Gore administration. What did Gore get in return? A fat $2,000,000 check in his campaign coffers.

The Clinton/Gore administration pushed through the '96 Telecom Act(which is a big reason why you and I don't get any real mainstream news anymore). The communications industry repaid Clinton/Gore to the combined tune of $1,500,000.

And on and on the list goes, too long for me to copy down here. Like I've said before, go out and read some Palast and Hightower.

And you still believe that fairy tale that Dems can't be bought. Nice world you live in there, a shame its not reality.

[lifelong_Dem]

150. Yeah, Clinton/Gore were SO bad for minorities...

That's why they got all those minority votes. Because, you know, minorities are masochistic. That's it. Right.

Under Clinton/Gore, minority income ROSE for almost the entire decade.

You say you're not some "limousine liberal" (a term which I hate, btw) - fine. Prove it. Go visit the inner city in New York, or Los Angeles, or Chicago. Go to a black church or community center. Talk to the people there and tell them how it's a good thing Gore lost and why they shouldn't have voted for Gore.

You just might learn something.

[MadHound]

164. Once again, you show your ignorance

I LIVE in an inner city, if I had a microphone I'd stick it out the window so that you could hear the daily gunbattles up and down the block. And yes, I talk with my neighbors(both black and white) on a daily basis. And you you know what? They weren't that fond of Gore, nor are they terribly fond of the Democratic party currently. They, like many other poor, downtrodden and progressives feel that they've been left behind by a Democratic Party that has gone chasing after the corporate dollar.

The inner city poor continue to vote Democratic because they too have become caught in the mindset of "where else are you gonna go". Presented with another option they are lifting up their heads and saying "Hmmm, I think I'll go the third way, one that is better." And they're starting to do exactly that. My councilwoman is a Green. In the '00 election, my ward went forty percent for the Green Party. In the '02 election my ward went sixty percent for the Green Party. And I imagine that next year the total will be higher. For yes, even people in the inner city can truly see who the Democratic Party is working for, and it is not them.

[Walt Starr]

168. Your ward is bad news for the DLC

If this keeps up, The Democratic Party will have to advertise themselves as "The Other Republican Party".

[MadHound]

177. LOL Walt

Thanks for the laugh! Love the idea of making the DLC squirm.

[lifelong_Dem]

178. If African-Americans weren't fond of Gore...

...then why did they turn out for him in record numbers?

Sorry, your anecdotal evidence, while interesting, doesn't really show anything. The fact is, in 2000, the typical Nader voter was older, whiter, and wealthier than the average voter. Minorities overwhelmingly voted Gore, and I trust them to look out for their own interests better than I trust anyone else to look out for them.

[MadHound]

182. Hell, why did whites vote for him in record numbers?

Why did I vote for him(against my better judgement)? Because we were all caught up in the same old Democratic mind games, you know: "Where else you going to go, the Republicans? Hahahaha!" "Gore is evil, but he's the lesser of two evils" "You must vote for Gore, Bush will destroy this country" and on and on ad nauseum.

Let me riddle you this, if the African American vote is such an overwhelming pro Democratic Party bloc, why do you have such prominent African American leaders such as Julian Bond, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton critisizing the Democratic Party for being unresponsive to their concerns, even to the point of threatening to bolt the party in '04? Why is Al Sharpton running a primary campaign that is questioning every sacred Democratic cow? Why do you have record numbers of African American voters throwing up their hands in disgust and not voting because they can't stomach either party?

You may think the African American vote is snugly in the back pocket of the Dems, but don't be too sure. From the rumblings heard around the land they too are looking at a third way out.

[Walt Starr]

183. I'm with you, brother

And it would be damn easy to get caught up in the same ole same ole bullshit yet again. So much so that I understand anybody and everybody who will say, "I really despise <Insert Democratic Nominee Name Here>, but Bush is just so EVIL that I have to vote for the lesser evil.

[Tinoire]

248. You have NO idea how close Gore came to losing the Black vote

By all means trust minorities to look out for their own interests but don't make the mistake that their interests have anything in common with yours. Please stop falling for the hype.

Black-Americans turned out for Gore in record numbers because Jesse Jackson and the NAACP made a concerted effort to convince African-Americans to vote for Gore. Do a google on how much work Jackson did to convince them or how many Black activists went door to door- not to sell Gore but to convince people Bush would be a night-mare and that even if they didn't like Gore and Lieberman, they should help keep Bush out of office.

I don't think you have a good idea about the disillusionment African-Americans felt over the Clinton administrations broken promises to them. An important one was that Clinton would grant Haitian refugees political asylum. Broken. Do you think that was just forgotten with a "well he must have had a good reason for changing his mind?"

The Democratic Party may have a serious problem with the Black vote this year.

Here's a little taste of what may come, there's plenty more out there:

MUZZLING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN AGENDA WITH BLACK HELP: The DLC's Corporate Powers of Destruction

Republicans have nothing on the DLC when it comes to slinging codewords. In truth this "rump faction" has no soul. It's just a big white corporate pocket"

"The sellout of progressive politics has been a total disgrace for the Democratic Party. Not only is it morally wrong and politically cheap, but it doesn't even work."
- Rev. Al Sharpton

'We're gonna rebuild America's cities and we're gonna do it with America's steel .... Medicare for all, money pulled out of the Pentagon budget to pay for schools and other domestic programs, and total nuclear disarmament .... This war was wrong! This war was fraudulent! We must expose this administration!"
- Rep. Dennis Kucinich

These are the voices of the Democratic Party's base, the voices that the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is sworn and determined to smother in a sea of corporate dollars.

They are those voices that brought down the house at last week's Take Back America conference, in Washington, organized by the Campaign for America's Future. These are the messages that rocked the house of labor at AFSCME's Democratic presidential candidate forum in Des Moines, Iowa, last month, and have energized the party's core constituencies at gatherings across the nation. Words like these, and the struggles they evoke, are the reasons that blacks and progressives remain Democrats.



<snip>


Rev. Jesse Jackson, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, and New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine endorsed the conference - but they are marginal figures, according to the DLC. Ascendant since the mid-Eighties, the once -"disgruntled," "rump faction" of endangered white southern Democrats - as Robert Dreyfuss describes the early DLC in an excellent 2001 article - dole out millions of dollars from Republican corporations to buy the party out from under its core constituents. In a now infamous May 15 memo titled, "The Real Soul of the Democratic Party," DLC founders Al From and Bruce Reed shamelessly steal the people's very language to advance the corporate cause:


<and yada, yada, yada snipped GREAT rant about the DLC>

The DLC is the corporate-funded right wing of the Democratic Party. It was founded in the mid 1980s by a small group of mostly white, male, largely southern Democratic politicians, corporate lobbyists and fundraisers. The original clique included Tennessee Congressman Al Gore, Senators Chuck Robb of Virginia and Sam Nunn of Georgia, and Al From, a former political operative from the Jimmy Carter Administration. To them, the Democratic Party had become too open to the political voices of African Americans and Latinos, too respectful of the rights of working Americans and the labor movement, too responsive to the justice, peace and environmental movements. "The DLC thundered against the 'liberal fundamentalism' of the party's base - unionists, blacks, feminists, Greens, and cause groups generally," wrote Dreyfuss.

Most alarming of all, in their eyes, was the 1984 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, in which the black candidate received a percentage of the vote considerably higher than the proportion of black votes in several states, and sparked a significant expansion of the party's base constituencies among minorities, labor, and even some white rural voters. The Democratic Party was actually growing - but in the wrong direction to suit the "rump faction" centered in the white South.

Today, after almost two decades of DLC cash subversion and seduction of Democratic candidates and office holders, there is less difference than ever between Democrats and Republicans in state houses and legislatures, in City Halls or on the bench, in Congress or among the so-called "serious" candidates for president. Once again, actual and potential Democratic voters have been deterred from entering a political process that does not address their needs. For its next triumph, the DLC threatens to eviscerate or neutralize the very heart, soul and base of the Democratic Party - the Black Consensus.

<snip>

http://www.blackcommentator.org/46/46_cover.html


In other words, stop betting on the Black American vote. The perception from the time of Malcolm X until now is that the only time White politicians remember Black Americans is right before the elections. You don't believe me? Go walk into the Black, and I mean BLACK, neighborhoods and try to register people or sell any one of the candidates (besides Sharpton) this year.

And stop telling Black Americans we had it so great under Clinton because millions who were hungry, couldn't buy shoes for the children, watched NAFTA, WTO, GATT take their jobs away, watched Clinton implement Corporate Welfare for a bunch of yuppies,
watched Clinton's Welfare Reform screw them royally as millions of adults and children were sentenced to lives of homelessness, hunger and misery... yeah go tell them how great they had it... You're 4 years late with the bogeyman story. He showed up in those neighbourhoods way before Bush ever showed up at the White House.

And the entire time poor Black Americans were crying for help, nobody cared and just telling them how great the boom was. If the Democratic Party doesn't start getting in touch with the poor real quick, it can kiss its ass good-bye.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jun1999/welf-j02.shtml

http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/homeless/sep96/0110.html

http://www.mdn.org/1996/STORIES/PREPARE.HTM

[eablair3]

167. nice going MadHound

agreed, .. that the main point that affects most all others with the Dems is that many of them (if not most or all) are BOUGHT by big business and corporate cash. I've seen it happen from the big business side ... the corporate people plot and strategize to give (or "buy") politicians from both parties. They are always talking about "covering their bases, just in case their favored candidate doesn't win." I know you know all this.

It seems to me that the Green Party is gaining a foothold, at least in California. Camejo was excellent in the televised debate, and I read this morning that the same participants will likely be in the "debate" with Ahnold. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/05/MN151376.DTL

Seems to me that it's more important than ever to stick to principles and "hold the line" or else the Green Party will go backwards, which is what many corporate types want. The GP needs to get that foothold to become a force somewhere down the road. GP votes now while the party is still in its infancy are more important than votes later. There will be no later if there are no GP votes now.

btw, ... Great posts in this thread.

[MadHound]

180. Thank You, and I agree

Stick to our guns and our principles, otherwise we are doomed to a two party-one corporate line government.

[chadm]

42. I'm with ya

Well said.

[leftyandproud]

142. thank you

BUMP!

[Patriot_Spear]

12. Voting green would be Great!!!

...if you're committed to cementing the Bush* Coup. Jesus, are people still talking about actually doing this?

Christ almighty...

[Terwilliger]

14. yes?

I believe the only way to get Democrats to pay attention is to take our votes elsewhere. Good luck on your whole Dean/Clark/Gephardt/Kerry/Edwards/Lieberman thing :eyes:

[Patriot_Spear]

18. Must be nice not to have conscience...

Good luck with your cult of personality.

[Terwilliger]

27. hahahah

I have a conscience...I keep wondering why Democrats claim to have one.

[Patriot_Spear]

47. Sure you do...

All Greens have a conscience- they just don't mind dead kids and soldiers.

Bow down to your Green Idol as Rome burns there, Nero.

[Forkboy]

78. What a bunch of BS

I didn't seea whole hell of a lot of Dems trying to stop the war.

Guess they like dead kids and soldiers too :eyes:

[Name removed]

80. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

84. Deleted message

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[Patriot_Spear]

96. oh well...

...as you can tell I'm crushed. Have a great day!

[Name removed]

101. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

139. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

236. Deleted message

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[library_max]

30. Elsewhere?

Where elsewhere? Canada?

There's no "elsewhere" in American politics. We don't have proportional representation. It's winner-take-all. Like it or not, that's the system. Voting for Nader is like writing in Donald Duck, or staying home. How you think that's going to accomplish anything good for this country is beyond me.

As far as getting Democrats to pay attention, the time to pull the party toward its base in when the party is winning, not when it's losing. Every time a party's activists lose a close election and say, "That proves it - we can only win if we stand for principle," the next election (if they get their way), their party loses BIG. This happened to Goldwater, McGovern, and Mondale. It ALWAYS happens. There has never been an exception.

If you want the Democratic Party to be a voice howling in the political wilderness, you're going about it the right way. If you want progressives to actually have a say (not the only say, just A say) in how the country is actually run, you need to accept compromise and vote for the best deal we can get for now. It's possible to build success on success, but you can't build anything on failure, however "principled" that failure might be.

[Walt Starr]

35. It serves as a basis

If you find that you are no longer represented by your party, you have no choice but to join another party. For a person on the left, that means you must move to a third party and start trying to make it a legitimate challenger to the two parties forming the status quo.

This is the difficult ballaning act required by the Democratic Party in 2004. Either the base on the left stays on board, or there is real potential for the Democratic PArty to become Whigged. I, for one, refuse to simply hand my vote over to whomever has the (D) after their name. They must appeal to me on the basis of my political stances and be at the least, acceptable.

I see one candidate in this race who is completely unacceptable with little to no opportunity to redeam himself in my eyes as an acceptable candidate, ergo, should he win the nomination I will not vote for him because that will mean the Democratic PArty njo longer represents my interests and I must move to a Party which does, attempting to build a large enough base for that party to become legitimate.

Yes, this means Bush probably wins a second term. I consider that to be the better alternative than to accept membership in a party which no longer represents my interests.

[library_max]

49. See post #34

and do the math. It's not just a matter of Bush. A third party on the left is a permanent guarantee of the left's political irrelevence. You're going to split the vote everywhere, every time, which means you're going to hand every election to the most conservative candidate. Third parties can work where there is proportional representation. There is no proportional representation in the U.S.

[Walt Starr]

50. Nope, you're absolutely wrong there

If the Democratic Party loses the Left bnase, it must move further to the right, alienating mor of those to the left of center.

Eventually, the Democratic PArty is contending with the far right for the rightists and the LEft has it's own party which can appeal to the center.

That's long haul reform. I'm more concerned about the 22nd century than the 21st.

[library_max]

62. The destination for your "long haul" is evidently Oz.

Because your arguments have no basis in the real world.

The most you can ever hope for is that your Green Party will replace the Democratic Party after many decades of one-party Republican rule. And then, horror of horrors, your Greens will discover that they STILL have to appeal to the center if they want to win elections! In other words, they'll have to become just like the Democrats they so despise.

Of course, by then parties other than the Republican Party will probably be illegal.

[Walt Starr]

69. The center is fluid

What is left today was the center 25 years ago.

The direction the Democratic PArty is headed down, and has been under the direction of the DLC, is to move the center to what was radical right wing 25 years ago.

That must be reformed. Yes, that Green PArty would still be contending for the "center" but that "center" would be back where it was a quarter century ago.

[library_max]

72. How? By Magic?

The center moves because the party in power moves it. Think back to American political history if you don't believe me. By handing power over to the Republicans, you guarantee the center moving to the right, not the left.

[Walt Starr]

90. For the short term

But when the Democratic PArty dies and the leftist thrid party becomes viable, the center moves back to the left.

[library_max]

192. You can't have two left parties and have them both be viable

Your posts are just replete with magical thinking. Wishing it's so won't make it so. In case you haven't noticed, the Republicans control both houses of Congress, the White House, and the judiciary. What makes you think there's enough progressive vote to split if there isn't enough to get anything for the Democrats alone?

You can go off about how there's a new progressive spirit in this country. If I only talked to people who believe as I do, I might see things the same way. You need to talk (and more important, listen) to people outside your own ideological group. You'll see that, right or wrong, your hopes and dreams for this country (and mine) are far, far left of the center, and the center's moving right, not left. It may be zigzagging left now to correct for the wild rightward lurch after 9/11, but the overall trend is to the right, especially if Bush remains in office.

And don't tell me that if you and people like you throw a tantrum and bolt that it's our fault for not being lefty enough. That's playing the Look What You Made Me Do game (Games People Play, Eric Berne). If you throw away your vote, that's your decision, not Gore's, not mine, and not the DLC's.

You are planning for a future that isn't going to happen. You need to connect with the aspirations and understandings of voters who aren't political and mostly believe what they're told by the media if you want to win elections, and that's always going to be true. Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of pitching a fit until you get exactly what you want.

[Walt Starr]

193. I've been saying for weeks...

It will take decades, not years.

I'll take the hits now so that future generations are not so far to the right that Atila the Hun would be disgusted.

[Iverson]

201. a different perspective

I agree that two left parties are unlikely to be viable. Currently, there are no left parties, unless one counts the Socialists.

I agree that we all should listen to the aspirations of the regular and mostly apolitical folk. I see a grassroots, bottom-up structure as more likely to be successful there.

I do not agree that Dems left behind by the party's rightward shift are throwing a tantrum. If you insist upon characterizing people that way, you are unlikely to get through to them, which I assume is what you want.

I do not agree that giving up on left ideas in the name of "realism" is likely to get us anywhere except further to the right. Such a strategy has been demonstrated as counterproductive; when you insist upon eliminating the discourse of the left, the discourse will shift to the right. No amount of namecalling will change that.

[library_max]

232. Nobody's talking about eliminating discourse

We're talking about supporting candidates and voting.

And nobody is talking about giving up on left ideas. We're talking about getting what we can get, showing the nonpolitical middle that we're better for them than the Republicans, and building from strength to strength. When your party is completely out of power, it doesn't matter what you say because nobody is listening. You're preaching to the choir. When you're in office, you can show people what you can do and why your way is better.

This worked with Kennedy. It was working with Clinton until prosecution-as-politics wrecked things. Far from being "counterproductive," wooing the center is the only thing that ever works in presidential politics. Show me a grass-roots campaign that ever won a presidential election.

As for name-calling, read the posts on this thread and see which side is the most guilty.

[indigo32]

61. The Conservatives won their fight for the Repukes

we can win the fight for the Dems...
Unfortunately their the game in town at this given moment.

[Walt Starr]

93. But I do not have to choose to attend that game

if there is nobody playing who I am willing to back.

It's that simple.

[Clete]

65. Don't worry. You may not have to decide on voting Green in the

future. When you help the PNAC get their guy Bush back into the seat of government of the richest and most powerful nation in the world, elections will be eliminated anyway. There will be only one party then, the Republican party, which you will be expected to join or find out that you can't get a job unless you do. Of course, if you are a liberal or progressive you will be put in jail as a subversive. We are the scapegoat for the conservatives, like the Jews were for Hitler.

If you don't believe me, websurf any of the many conservative sites out there. Or, read anything by Ann Coulter. I am working on a post comparing quotes from Ann with similar statements from Hitler's "Mein Kampf", a textbook of facism.

Wake up! The Bush administration has been a classic case study of how fascists operate. They are only beginning to make themselves into our masters.

[Terwilliger]

141. and the Democrats have facilitated all this

I'm sorry, I can't accept your indignation unless you're willing to lay blame on more than just the Repukes.

[Clete]

144. Granted Terg.

The Democratic move to the right has certainly brought all this on. I would be Green myself if I thought it would do any good. I really think though that progressives need to be part of the big tent for awhile until the numbers increase enough to slough off the DLC faction. If Democrats start leaning to the left and show signs of socialism, the DINOS may be the ones this time that will form their own party or may I suggest the tattered remains of the Reform Party for them, because it really is where they belong.

[fujiyama]

235. how are

Dean worse than Nader?

Why this great admiration of Nader? It seems like the cult of personailty to a large extent. I understand frustration with the likes of Lieberman but Kucinich? He seems like more of a decent person than Nader, who believed that Clinton had to be impeached. Dean, while not perfect is making a sincere pitch (or as sincere a pitch as possible) to get Greens to vote Dem. What more does the Green Party want?

[Terwilliger]

256. why do you suggest that memebers of another party vote Dem

ESPECIALLY when they can't vote Dem in good conscience?

I admire Nader because he's been fighting for consumer rights since before I was born. Demonizing him to hell and gone smacks of RAMPANT Freeperism.

[Walt Starr]

22. You're damn right people are talking about doing this

I've voted straight Democratic tickets for the past two decades and for the first time, I may actually vote something other than for a Democrat.

It all depends. If I decide that the Democratic nominee is unacceptable, I won't be holding my nose, I'll be giving a third party a shot at becoming legitimate.

I look at Bush and I can't help but think that voting for that which was really unacceptable, but was less unacceptable than the Republican alternative is precisely what has lead to this mess.

No more will I accept the lesser of two evils because what you end up with is evil to the core, regardless of which evil wins.

[Patriot_Spear]

23. Wow- That's crazy.

So you consider the Democratic Party a lesser 'evil'?

Wow.

[Walt Starr]

24. In 2000, I considered Al Gore the lesser of two evils

In 1996, I considered Bill Clinton the lesser of two evils.

In 1992, I considered Bill Clinton the lesser of two evils.

In 1988, I considered Michael Dukakis the lesser of two evils.

In 1984, I considered Walter Mondale the lesser of two evils.

I won't vote for an evil (even if it is the lesser of two) again.

[CWebster]

31. true

but Gore has come around. There is the chance to buck DLC dominance--lets go for it. Now.

[Walt Starr]

32. That's what I'm doing

If it doesn't happen, I simply walk away...

[Tinoire]

262. Lesser of two evils + lesser of two evils eventually equals absolute evil

In 1984, we considered Walter Mondale the lesser of two evils.

In 1988, we considered Michael Dukakis the lesser of two evils.

In 1992, we considered Bill Clinton the lesser of two evils.

In 1996, we considered Bill Clinton the lesser of two evils.

But by the time 2000 rolled around, all these "lesser of two evils" had done so little work for us that we eventually ended up with.... absolute evil.

In 2004, I shall vote with my conscience, for the man who will bring the greatest good to America. And I'll clue in lurking political staffers right now... if there's a D behind his name, it won't be for DINO or DLC.

[Terwilliger]

28. the fact that you don't is frightening

go wave the flag and be a good little Bush-bot.

[Patriot_Spear]

46. Yeah, a green is going to win...

...and monkeys fly; and the moon is made of cheese; and the Loch Ness monster is real, etc...

Hey, if dead kids and stolen elections don't mean anything to you, who am I to judge.

Say hi to Hinkley for me.

[Iverson]

121. a Green probably won't win

As for dead kids ... bipartisan, with Greens solidly against this illegal war and Dems mostly supporting, but with some opposing.

As for stolen elections ... Greens solidly against it, with Dems selling out the Congressional Black Caucus.

Who don't they mean anything to again? These are your examples, remember, not mine.

[lifelong_Dem]

124. "Mostly supporting?"

A MAJORITY of Congressional Dems opposed the Iraq invasion.

Sell your BS somewhere else.

[Iverson]

134. uh-huh

Have you taken an inventory of the party? Maybe it was something like 87 Dems on one vote, by which you appear to justify your contrived outrage, but consider also the party leadership and the makeup of presidential candidates. The party has a direction and an approval of policy, and we both know what that is.

"Sell your BS somewhere else."

Learn some basic manners, if it won't kill you.

[lifelong_Dem]

153. When I see BS, I call it BS

The simple fact is that a majority of Congressional Dems opposed the Iraq war. This does not translate into the party "mostly supporting" said war, as you claimed.

[chadm]

45. Absolutely

They share the same corporatist / fascist values as the repubs. The only difference is the rhetoric.

[library_max]

34. What you guys don't seem to get

is that a progressive third party always hurts progressivism regardless of circumstances.

We have winner-take-all, not proportional representation. With that firmly in mind, do the math. You have a Democrat and a Republican in a given election (any level). Say the voters are split about 50-50. This is the worst case for the Green, because any votes he gets are taken from the Democrat and result in the Republican being put in office.

Now say the votes are 60-40 progressive. That means the Green candidate can get up to 19% before putting the Republican into office, but very probably at the cost of forcing the Democrat to go more center (because he can't hope to out-Green the Green).

No matter how you work the numbers, splitting the progressive votes always makes it more likely that a conservative will end up in office. It's not safe unless the district is about 70% progressive, in which case the Greens should concentrate on getting a good progressive nominated for the Democratic slot in that election.

[Terwilliger]

36. then I guess the Dems better get progressive

or they'll lose that vote too

[indigo32]

64. Terwilliger

ONLY YOU can make the Dems more progressive. If you want that from them... GO OUT AND GET IT!!! Or walk away and wash your hand of the whole mess... for whatever good it'll do. I'm sorry I don't mean to be harsh but I think I'm finally starting to get where Will was coming from. Damn...if we care SOOO MUCH then the Party is us, we are the party.

[MadHound]

77. Indigo, indigo, many of us have tried for years and decades

And still we are saddled with the DLC and Democrats in power who only pay attention to money. I've worked HARD for the Democrats every election since '72, I've donated, caucassed, worked within the local and state Democratic party to bring about change for thirty years. And do you know what that got me? NOT ONE DAMN THING!! The party harkened to the siren song of corporate money and left.

What am I supposed to do? The party obviously doesn't care about me, it's base, or quite frankly this country in general. All it cares about is money. And if saying "How much" when the corporations say "free trade", then these money addicted Dems will say it.

So now I'm at the point where I'm tired of the BS, and will put my time, energy, money and vote where I see it doing the most good. And that certainly isn't with the Democratic Party at this point.

[indigo32]

91. What are we doing wrong then

I haven't fought as long as you... I've only been active since about 1988. The conservatives obviously won their fight for the Repuke party... what can we do differently.

Actually I understand you've already made your decision...and thats fine... just curious about your input.

[indigo32]

92. What are we doing wrong then

I haven't fought as long as you... I've only been active since about 1988. The conservatives obviously won their fight for the Repuke party... what can we do differently.

Actually I understand you've already made your decision...and thats fine... just curious about your input.

[MadHound]

123. There is one simple step the Democratic Party can do . . .

And it will change everything. Are you ready for it?


Stop accepting corporate cash! No corporate cash, no corporate master.
No corporate master means that the Democratic Party will once again be the party of the working man and woman, the average Joe, the hopeless and the helpless. And it will return to the greatness it once enjoyed.

That's all, one simple step.

But I can hear you people now "But MadHound, we'll lose elections because we'll be outspent!" I've got news for you folks, we're getting outspent now and still losing. For the most part the Democratic Party has always been outspent. And yet they've won. Why?
Because back in the good ol' days the Democratic Party had a large energized group of people like you and me who went out and did the heavy lifting, no cash required. But now with their slide into 'Pug lite they've lost that group of people. And that's one reason why I think the Greens will be a force to reckon with if the Dems don't change their tune. Energized people willing to go out and do the grunt work have and will win out over corporate cash most of the time.

[indigo32]

126. Heh

"You People" huh...cool, way to divide and loose... you don't know anything about me. I was honestly waiting for your input. Bubye.

[MadHound]

151. Being so dismissive because of grammar

Real broadminded of you. Look, I was speaking to a wider audience than just you, bringing up a rhetorical question because I know if I didn't, then somebody else would. If you are going to dismiss what I have to say simply for having poor grammar(better than having poor facts) then I say it shows a lot about your mindset.

[indigo32]

163. actually

I really would like to figure out some way that people like you and I could come together. The retoric just gets so heated. I apoligize if I jumped to conclusions. I have never ONCE jumped in and blamed 2000 on the Greens. But I have to admit I am concerned that the election is going to be very close... and I truly am convinced another term of * would be disasterous. Maybe I'm just being hysterical I don't know.
Actually Grass Roots work and support is one of the things I truly love about Howard Deans campaign, and I agree... people working together can trump the dollars, if enough people can get together.

[MadHound]

176. My apologies to you

I'm sorry if I come off as patronizing sometimes, I'm just very frustrated with the situation in this country and the world right now.
I know you haven't been a "Green basher" and I appreciate that. I think that folks like you and I can work together, and I think that on most issues it would be easy to work with you. I'm just very committed to working for the Greens, because I see them as the only progressive way out of this corporate trap we're in.

And I'm also with you in feeling that another Bush term would be a disaster. And while it might be seen as crass and cynical, another Bush disaster might finally wake up this nation of sheeple so that we can take this country back from the corporate greedheads that are currently running it. I also believe that working for the success of a party that isn't beholden to corporate cash is the way to get this government out of corporate hands and back into ours where it belongs.

You and I, I think, have a lot in common. Let's build on that and work for the betterment of our country.

[library_max]

227. Dying of Curiosity

Which presidential election did we win in the "good ol' days" when Democrats won "no cash required"?

When you say "energized people willing to go out and do the grunt have and will win out over corporate cash most of the time," I want an example - one - in which this actually worked in a presidential election.

Because the repeatedly documented fact is that money matters. The most money doesn't always win, but the bigger the race the more of a role it plays, and there's a threshhold for any given race beyond which you can't allow yourself to be outspent if you want any hope of winning.

If you're talking about local elections, what makes you think that what works in a local election will work in a national election?

[MadHound]

243. Historically the Democratic Party has been outspent by the 'Pugs

I think the only exception to this in the past sixty years was the '96 cycle, but Clinton had his DLC corporate money machine cranked up. If you want just-one-example, go check out Truman's victory in '48. Go look it up, and I'm sure you'll find many more besides. I don't know how many elections you've worked, but I've been through several, and the common axiom in any campaign, local to presidential, is the less cash equity you have the more sweat equity you have to expend.

[library_max]

244. Sorry, let me clarify the question

Please name a presidential election in which the successful candidate repudiated the main source of campaign funding and consigned it all to his opponent. That's your "winning strategy" for the Democrats in 2004 - when has that strategy ever worked before in a presidential election?

I've worked on plenty of elections. Sure, you have to work harder when you don't have enough money. But that doesn't mean throwing away your money and depending on "sweat equity" is the way to win.

No antibusiness Democrat has ever won the White House, but a whole bunch of them have lost it as the nominee.

[MadHound]

247. Thanks for your clarification

Actually there have been several times throughout history that presidential campaigns have repudiated money. I'm sorry, I'm at home and don't have a full history library(nudge nudge, wink wink, library_max) at my disposal right now. However I don't know how you would classify "major" but I do remember seeing that the amount was in the tens of thousands.

And while not advocating giving up all monetary contributions, I am advocating giving up all corporate contributions. This leaves the $1000('scuse me, $2000 now) per person contributions. While we haven't seen that happen with two major parties, I do believe that Jessie Ventura won without corp. donations. Then there is the notion of public financing of campains. Now that's real CFR there. Vermont, Maine and Arizona have enacted that, and darn, real folks like you and me are winning major elections. Democracy at it's finest, and darn it all, we just don't see enough of that these days.

[jiacinto]

251. And tell me one thing

How are you supposed to run a competetive campaign without money? Without TV ads? Without paid staff?

[Terwilliger]

145. we are the party? bullshit

unless you've come into millions, you have no say in the Democratic Party leadership...nada

I've been trying to persuade some really fine folks here at DU that the party looks like a right-wing version of what it was before. Nader said that....I've said that...so many others have said the same, yet we STILL have to suffer these pointless defenses of Democrats over and over and over again.

Have you heard Lieberman? Have you heard Kerry? The only reason Dean is doing so well is becuse he feigned an anti-war attitude, that probably doesn't match anything that he would have done.

[lifelong_Dem]

88. Obviously you understand nothing about politics

The existence of a "progressive" (and I use the term very loosely when referring to the Greens) third party will only push the Dems to the RIGHT, not to the left.

Let's say that, in the next election, Bush gets 49% of the vote, the Dem candidate (whoever it is) gets 46%, and the Greens finally reach their goal of 5%. Do you think the Dems are going to slap their foreheads and go, "Oh my God, let's move to the left and get that 5%!"?

Of course not. The Dems will look at those numbers and say "Let's move to the right and try to peel some of that 49% off the Republicans."

The reason for this is very simple. For the Dems, a vote lost on the left only represents one vote - a vote not cast for the Dem candidate. But a vote lost in the middle actually represents two votes - a vote not cast for the Dem candidate, and a vote that is cast for the Repub candidate (the only candidate with a chance of beating the Dem). By the same token, if the Dems gain a vote on the left, it only represents one vote - but if they gain a vote in the middle, it represents two - a vote added to their total and a vote subtracted from the Repub total.

Therefore, it is much more efficient for the Dems to chase votes in the middle than it is for them to chase votes on the left. Given this fact, and the fact that the Greens have shown that they're dominated by ideolouges who were willing to turn on Paul Wellstone over a single vote he cast, it's no wonder why the Dems would rather go after the middle.

[Walt Starr]

99. That's a horseshit analysis of votes

A vote lost is one lost vote, regardless.

a vote gained is one gained vote, regardless. Trying to sell anything else is "fuzzy math" bullshit.

[lifelong_Dem]

122. Nice rebuttal

But the fact remains that, in a two-party system, which is what the U.S. has, like it or not, a vote in the middle counts twice as much as a vote on either fringe.

That's political reality. Love it or hate it, you can't ignore it.

[Walt Starr]

128. Nope, that's not political reality

Every vote counts precisely the same in our system. Like it or not, THAT is the real political reality.

The problem is, some come up with a silly notion that some votes should just be taken for granted while others are more important so they try to take votes away from their opponent. While doing so, they lose the votes they took for granted. THAT is the real political reality.

[lifelong_Dem]

158. Can you do math?

Consider the following scenarios.

1. A voter who would have voted for the Green candidate is convinced to vote for the Democratic candidate. Net gain for the Democrat over the Republican (the only other candidate with a chance of winning the election) - 1 vote.

2. A voter who would have voted for the Republican candidate is convinced to vote for the Democratic candidate. Net gain for the Democrat over the Republican - 2 votes.

3. A voter who would have voted for the Democratic candidate is convinced to vote for the Republican candidate. Net gain for the Republican over the Democrat - 2 votes.

4. A voter who would have voted for some right-wing third party candidate is convinced to vote for the Republican candidate. Net gain for the Republican over the Democrat - 1 vote.

It's really quite simple.

[Walt Starr]

162. That's not math, it's bullshit

1 vote = 1 vote

1 vote cannot = 2 votes

ergo, 1 vote = 1 vote

There's your political reality. I can play your version of math, though.

1) You gain one vote that would have gone Republican from the slightly right of center group. We'll make you happy and count that as two votes.

2) In the process of moving to the right, three people get so pissed off at you, they vote Green. You lost three votes, again using your vote.

3) Net gain, -1 vote.

[lifelong_Dem]

173. Never mind

I can see it's pointless to try to explain this any further.

[library_max]

196. Thanks for trying, anyhow

[Walt Starr]

37. No no no no no

That's the meme that the Democratic Party has been pushing for two decades. It no longer holds water.

All you are really saying is, "where are you going to go?"

The only choice for somebody on the Left who feels the Democratic Party has moved too far to the right is to move out of the Democratic PArty and into a third party.

2004 is the defining moment for the Democrats. I see real potential for it to be the death of the Democratic Party. One candidate is definitely unacceptable to me. Three others will probably be unacceptable to me.

This says more about the Democrats in power than for the base. The base of the Republican party left George H.W. Bush in 1992, you see where that got him.

[library_max]

41. Never mind where it got him.

Ask yourself where it got THEM. Eight years of Clinton, right?

[Walt Starr]

44. Then four years of Bush

with a potential of eight.

And Bush has done as much for them as clinton did for the base of the Democrats.

[library_max]

51. Wrong

They got four years of Bush when they got smart and supported their party's nominee. Go thou and do likewise.

[Walt Starr]

52. Nope, Bush pandered to them, threw them a few crumbs, and they ate it up

I won't settle for crumbs any more.

[Name removed]

57. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Walt Starr]

60. Thanks for the personal attack

I haven't seen one for at least two threads.

[CWebster]

15. good post

In this election it harms the country...Although I would argue that Clinton could've been more decisive on some issues and squandered opportunities which led to many Democrats searching for alternatives to the DLC shift in priorities. And that is being generous.

[Terwilliger]

17. in this election?

what about the last election? Didn't it harm the country then?

[Classical_Liberal]

19. You just started a green/dem thread

and at 56 posts you haven't been around long enough to be credibly sick of them anyway.

[welshTerrier2]

25. Greener Pastures

you either accept the idea of building a third political party or you don't ...

i'm a democrat ... i would not rule out voting Green under certain circumstances ... your point that the democrats are way better than the republicans is an absolute given for me ... no argument there ... your argument that those who voted for Nader may have hurt Gore resulting in the Iraq War and other republican horrors may also be valid ... no argument there either ...

However, these are current situations ... if I were to vote Green, I would do so with the intent of building a third party ... however long it took ... if the democrats move the party too far to the center and turn their backs on the left, the left should seek its own political movement ... if they can't find a way to work within the party to influence its direction, building a new party is the only alternative ...

Will building a third party succeed? Perhaps not ... perhaps it will take 50 years ... the alternative, if the democratic party refuses to represent the views of the left, is to have no voice at all ... and that is just not an option ... Let's hope that the democrats find a way to balance the broad spectrum of views under the big tent and that forming a third party is not necessary ...

[Terwilliger]

29. not valid

your argument that those who voted for Nader may have hurt Gore resulting in the Iraq War and other republican horrors may also be valid

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?cp=3&kaid=86&subid=84&contentid=2919

The assertion that Nader's marginal vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. -- Al From

[library_max]

40. What data are you talking about?

About 100,000 people voted for Nader in Florida. If 10% of those had voted for Gore instead, JebNKathy and the Scalia junta couldn't have stolen the election for Bush. Don't look at the nationwide popular vote - it doesn't mean anything.

[MadHound]

58. Yes, and let's look at who voted for Bush

In the '00 race in Florida, 397,000 registered Democrats, and 198,000 self described liberals all voted for Bush. Why you ask? Because they were so disgusted by Gore, and the Clinton/Gore record(you know, NAFTA, "welfare reform", '96 Telecom Act, etc etc) that they decided to double-screw Gore and send a message.

Gee, if Gore had been paying any kind of attention to his Florida base, he could have gotten 10% of this vote and won. Howz about them apples.

Don't pull the Blame the Greens trick here, it has been disproven time and again.

[library_max]

68. Are you mental?

I suppose you can prove that the reason almost 600,000 voters who called themselves Democrats and liberals voted for Bush is because Gore wasn't liberal enough for them. So they voted for Bush. Because Gore wasn't liberal enough for them. So they voted for Bush. Really. :eyes:

It doesn't occur to you that not every registered Democrat is a progressive? It doesn't occur to you that people sometimes lie to pollsters about being "liberal"? It doesn't occur to you that those people voted for Bush because they were for Bush?

[MadHound]

89. Sure can, I've got two books for you to read

Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy That Money can Buy", and Jim Hightower's "If the Gods Had Meant for Us to Vote, They Would Have Given Us Candidates" You can find the proof there. It is all very well sourced.

And yes, people can lie, but even given that half these people lied(being generous and all), that still means that there were a substantial number of the base of the Democratic Party pissed off enough at Gore to double screw him. More than enough to give the election to Gore if he had paid a bit of attention. But I guess that siren song of corporate money was just too seductive.

[library_max]

230. Guess What!

I've read both of those books. I own Hightower's. And, while I appreciate a good anti-corporate diatribe as much as the next guy, they don't have any "proof" of what you've asserted. When you have a few thousand Floridians who actually say that they themselves voted for Bush because Gore wasn't liberal enough, then I'd say you have a point. Of course, the point would still be that there are people even more self-defeating than the Greens.

Meanwhile, the number of people who voted for Nader in Florida is an established fact, not speculation. They're the ones who cost us the election.

[MadHound]

237. Well, you had better go back and read them

I know that the stat in question is in Palast's book, and fairly certain there's a backup in Hightower's. I own both of them, and have read them repeatedly just to remember the statics. And by the by, it states that it is a few hundred thousand, roughly 500,000 total.

And actually the point that is proven is there were a few hundred thousand people in FL that Gore failed to reach, and damn, if it wasn't his base constituency that he failed to reach. Explain that? And while you're add it, count in those people like myself, lifelong Dems, who the party left so far behind that we've felt it necessary to switch parties entirely. Obviosly there is something wrong here when the supposedly captive audience is jumping out through the windows, eh?

Meanwhile, I once again see a disgruntled Dem, trying to blame the Florida fiasco on everyone else but the true culprit, the Dems themselves. Since you've read Palast's book you're familiar with the fact that Palast notified the Gore campaign repeatedly of the votescam going on in Florida. With such a blockbuster, election winning piece of material in his hand tell me why Gore refused to use it? I really would like to see somebody give a viable explanation of why this piece of bungling occured.

[library_max]

239. Dare I hope that this is a teachable moment?

You say you want an explanation. Were you in the U.S. immediately after the election? Did you miss all the Sore/Loserman bumper stickers? Most people came to the conclusion that the Gore campaign lost and was crying about it. Now, at that point, we needed to take our shot and get the votes counted. The law should have mattered more than public opinion. But that was public opinion - that arguing over the rules was a loser's ploy. It could only have hurt Gore politically to make an issue of it before the election.

As for your "few hundred thousand people" statistic, it means nothing as it stands. It doesn't prove anything, certainly not the point you're trying to make. Many registered Democrats in the South, maybe even most of them, are really Republicans for the purposes of national elections. That's a well-documented fact. They weren't Gore's base constituency. They were going to vote for Bush anyway. They voted for Bush because they liked Bush. If Gore had gone left, even more people like that would have voted for Bush.

[MadHound]

245. So, you're sticking with the Spineless Dem theory of the election

That everybody had to just roll over because a bunch of freepers decided to make a ruckus and paste some bumperstickers. Reread the book, the Gore campaign was handed this prime juicy story that not only would have won the election for them, but had the potential to destroy the Bush family and the Republican party, both statewide and nationally! Fifty thousand voters and counting who were disenfranchised! You don't sit on a story like that, it is depriving people of their Constitutional right to vote. One other thing, by sitting on this information and not disclosing, Gore violated his oath of office. He swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. Gee, I guess I won't be buying a car on a handshake from him.

When the stakes are this high, when the consequences are so dire, you have to fight the power by any means necessary. But time and again we've watched the Dems just roll over to please their corporate masters.

Oh, and I think you had better go back and check your old canard. Most Dixiecrats and Reagan Dems switched parties in the south long ago. And don't insult a self described liberal's intelligence. I'm one of those, and I say what I mean. Why would 198,000 people wish to describe themselves as liberal if they were really 'Pugs? I mean, yes there's that whole VRWC stuff and all that(which I believe in to a great degree), but even I can't fathom 198,000 people lying to a relatively obscure author just to skew his results.

[library_max]

246. I don't know how to bridge this reality-disconnect

you've got going. The Palast story about the Florida voter purges would have won the election for Gore and possibly destroyed Bush and his whole family? In what country? The facts about the Florida election are out and documented. You and I and a couple thousand other people are the only ones who give a damn. Most Americans still think that Bush won fair and square. Palast's story wasn't and isn't going to change their minds. The ones that know about it mostly say that felons shouldn't be allowed to vote, case closed.

Obviously you've never taken a poll or a survey if you can't imagine why about three percent of the respondents would lie to a pollster just to mess with him or skew the results. Yes, three percent - 198,000 is about three percent of 6 million Florida voters. Of course, they didn't actually poll 198,000 people, much less six million - the 198,000 figure is a statistical projection.

Did you ever see the Monty Python movie "Life of Brian"? Remember the scene at the end when Brian is being crucified and the Judean People's Front Crack Suicide Squad shows up apparently to save him? But then they open doors in their breastplates and stab themselves through the heart in unison (crack suicide squad, see?) and with their dying breath say, "That'll show 'em!" Your line about "fight the power with any means necessary" reminds me of that scene. We need to fight the power with means that have a chance of success. Otherwise we are just pissing into the wind, pardon my language.

Added on edit: And I live in a state full of Reagan Democrats who are still registered Democrats. Why? Because in a lot of local elections, the only candidates are Democrats. The Republican Party still isn't organized in all parts of Texas, or in a lot of other southern states. A plurality of these people are more right-wing than most Republicans in the north. I know these people. I talk to them.

[lifelong_Dem]

108. Sorry, it is the Greens' fault

Some people here are saying that Gore lost because Nader stole votes. That may or may not be true, but it's immaterial. Ignore the 97,000 votes - they're a distraction. It was the LIES that Nader told that made the difference, by pushing swing voters toward Bush rather than Gore.

ANYONE who is at all learned in the ways of electoral politics knows that it is the soft middle of the road that determines elections. Not left, or right, or even moderates who lean in one direction or the other. That is why platforms for national candidates always take the middle of the road. Only about 10-15% of voters swings elections. Most Nader voters knew they were goign to vote for Nader long before they did, as did most Gore and most Bush voters.

What Nader did that is so unconscionable is that he LIED about Gore's record, he lied about Gore's platform, and he lied about the differences between Gore and Bush. This played perfectly into Bush's moderate rhetoric and helped convince moderate swing voters to vote for Bush. THIS was what made the difference in the election.

[Terwilliger]

146. Nader told no lies

and you can't defend against what he actually said

By the way, lifelong, VERY nice revisionist history. Now that it seems that Gore was throttled by the DLC into looking like a nice little Bush-clone, NOW you come back and say that Nader made ole moderate George look more appealing BULL-FREAKIN-SHIT! Maybe you should have told the DLC to SHOVE IT in 2000 instead of blaming the only person willing to point out that the DLC was fucking everything up

[lifelong_Dem]

166. He told lots of lies

Claiming that Bush and Gore were the same was a lie. Claiming that the Republicans and the Democrats were the same was a lie.

In the final days of campaign 2000, Nader was interviewed constantly. He recieved the most media exposure of any Green candidate for the presidency. Did he use this opportunity to push his platform?

No. All he did was attack Gore, tell viewers that Bush and Gore were the same, and then call Gore a liar several times.

He pushed swing voters to Bush, and probably did so in droves.

[Walt Starr]

170. Show me the data

Show me data that anything NAder said pushed people to vote for Bush.

Hard cold facts. Trot 'em out. Cite a source.

Back up your assertions or we can dismiss them as opinion.

[jiacinto]

255. Nader wanted Bush to win

Source: http://web.outsideonline.com/magazine/200008/200008camp_nader1.html

"When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: "Bush." Not that he actually thinks the man he calls "Bush Inc." deserves to be elected: "He'll do whatever industry wants done." The rumpled crusader clearly prefers to sink his righteous teeth into Al Gore, however: "He's totally betrayed his 1992 book," Nader says. "It's all rhetoric." Gore "groveled openly" to automakers, charges Nader, who concludes with the sotto voce realpolitik of a ward heeler: "If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win." "

[Walt Starr]

259. That's not data

Produice the data that shows that Democrats were convinced to vote for Bush by Nader.

[jiacinto]

266. I was showing that Nader did want Bush to win

I though that's what you asked for. Whatever the case may be that statement exposes Nader's intentions for what they really are.

[Walt Starr]

267. The claim was made

that Nader convinced Democrats to vote for Bush. I requested data to back that up. you provided nothing.

[jiacinto]

257. Nader is also a hypcirate

He also invests via Fidelity Magellan, which owns shares in good corporate citizens such as:

Wal-Mart
Clear Channel Communications
The Altria Group (Formerly Philip Morris)
Microsoft

just to name a few.

[Terwilliger]

172. oh I see...so NOW you're blaming it on Gore's lack of principle?

all the while assigning Nader the blame for that too, no doubt :eyes:

Nader was not wrong...the DLC serves corporate masters...Nader was right...Gore was in the DLC pocket..the DLC decided what was what in 2000, and Nader attacked them.

Whats not to understand? Now...can the Democrats be Democrats again? Can you actually make what Nader said untrue?

I'd love to see it.

[dionysus]

204. Bwahahahahaha

Nader told no lies!! HA! how bout "Bush and Gore are the same"
for starters....

[jiacinto]

253. This is a misleading stat

But like most Green extremists you trot this out whenever anyone calls you on it. Yes, FL has more Democrats than Republicans. But many of those "Democrats"--especially those in the rural areas, Northern Florida, Jacksonville, and in the Panhandle--have been voting Republican for president for decades. Many of those "Democrats" haven't voted for the party's presidential candidate since 1976, and many not since 1964. They may vote for Democrats in down ballot races, but the only presidential candidate who would get their votes would be like Zell Miller.

[Terwilliger]

261. but they're excused

any Dem who wants to vote for a leftist over a Republican is OBVIOUSLY working for the GOP


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH you people are undeniably stupid

[Terwilliger]

140. excuse me, this is from the DLC

can you not even agree with people who want a right-wing takeover of the Democratic party?

By the FREAKING way idiot...TWELVE TIMES AS MANY DEMOCRATS VOTED FOR BUSH IN FLORIDA THAN VOTED FOR NADER. WHAT do you NOT understand there?

[library_max]

233. Thanks for the personal attack

That seems to be the formula for getting a post pulled without reading it.

We already had this argument anyway. Just because you're a registered Democrat doesn't mean you're a progressive, especially in the South. Texas is full of Democrats who voted for Bush because Gore was too liberal, not too conservative. If Gore had gone to the left, even more Democrats would have voted for Bush.

How desperate are you for an alibi for the Greens losing Florida, anyhow?

[Terwilliger]

254. good lord, you cant even challenge it

You keep saying that Nader took crucial votes but cant broach tthe idea that Gore LOST crucial votes.

By the way, I really get tired of this bullshit. If 30% of Nader voters were Dem (about 1/3 of 97,000 or about 30,000) yet 12 times that number voted for Bush 360,000...just how in the fuck hell can you still blame that shit on Nader? If Democrats cant unify their party enough to make people who call thmselves Democrats vote for the Dem candidate, how the hell is Nader responsible?

[welshTerrier2]

224. Did Nader Hurt Gore ... he "MAY" have ...

please notice that i indicated that the base poster's argument about Nader hurting Gore "MAY also be valid" ...

let's put this to rest once and for all ...

arguments that count votes in Florida and measure vote total differences between Gore and bush MAY not be valid ...

how can we measure how many party activists did not end up working for Gore? how can we measure how much money went to Nader that might otherwise have gone to Gore ?? how can we measure how many democrats just stayed home and didn't vote at all because Nader's arguments hit home with them but they just didn't think Nader had a chance to win ???

I don't care what schmuck boy al from had to say ... the truth is, it's very hard to quantify the effect that Nader had on Gore ... I'll stand by my original statement that the argument that Nader "MAY" have hurt Gore "MAY" be valid ...

And this was not the central point of my post anyway ... the central point was that democrats damned well better not ignore either the democratic left or Green voters ... they would do so at great peril ...

[library_max]

234. Well, maybe not once and for all

97,000 Nader voters. If 10% had voted for Gore, we'd have won. It's that simple.

This whole string wouldn't exist if Democrats were ignoring the left or the Green voters. But the nominee, whoever he turns out to be, isn't going to be able to run left without throwing away any chance of being elected. The right wing understands that the Republicans are their best deal, and take what they can get when they can get it. The result is that now they're getting quite a lot, because the Republicans control Congress, the White House, and the judiciary.

When is the left wing going to see that they need to get behind their best realistic deal and stop indulging in political fantasies?

[Terwilliger]

264. I think you're a Republican

you keep telling everyone that anyone who looks even remotely like a REAL Democrat won't win...I think you're a Repuke who wants Dems to vote for conservative Dems so they'll lose.

[fujiyama]

242. Why the hell

are you quoting From? Al From, can go to hell. The DLC annoys me as much as the Naderites (notice I say Naderites, not greens)...

If greens want to build a third party, fine. This is a democracy (or what remains of it). They have the right to form a party as much as anyone. I'm just saying that by looking so far out in the future, we aren't getting enough done now, or in the near future. As I mentioned at the top, people are really getting screwed...We need to put a stop to this and even if it doesn't become perfect right away, some improvements are better than none.

While I believe the greens are right on many issues (like the drug war for example), I think they have a belief that if a majority of the people listened to them, they'd think "wow those greens have some good ideas. i will vote for them". Most people think, oh greens...ha, and then they'll bat their eyes or laugh and think enviornmental freaks or antiwar nuts....Look I agree with the greens on both issues, but hey...people are little crazy. many think bush actually cares for their concerns. they watch fox news and believe it is f and b.

[Terwilliger]

260. I'm quoting From so you people will shutup about Nader

he did NOT cause Al Gore to lose. Al From says it...he's the mortal enemy of Nader...why the FUCK would he say that Nader's campaign didn't hurt Gore if it did?

[library_max]

38. See post #34

Also, not getting your way is not the same as having "no voice at all." Politics in a democracy is all about compromise and accepting half a loaf.

Look at it this way. Racists and authoritarians vote Republican (don't flame me about this - I didn't say that nobody else votes Republican, but you'll admit, won't you, that those people vote Republican too?). They don't expect Bush to come out and openly attack minorities or civil liberties. They settle for what they can get. They know that there's no point in trying to run the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan for president, so they vote for the best deal they can get, which for them is Bush.

"Real Democrats" are as far out on the left, considering the current political spectrum in this country, as the klan types are on the right. The fact that we're right and they're wrong doesn't change the political situation.

You have to firmly grasp the fact that most Americans are nonpolitical and uninformed. Trying to educate them is great, but we can't do an effective job of that while we're totally out of power. Clinton was starting to show what good government can do for people. He wasn't perfect, but he was a step in the right direction, until he was brought down by prosecution-as-politics. Now we know that game and we'll be ready for it next time - but there won't be a next time if the base support that we so desperately need is too damn pure to work for and vote for someone with a chance of being elected.

[Walt Starr]

43. When I started, it was "half a loaf"

Lately, it's been "half a slice".

If the Democratic Party is only going to throw a couple of crumbs my way in 2004, why should I take it any more?

[library_max]

53. Because your alternative is complete and utter irrelevance.

[Walt Starr]

70. So you're telling me to accept crumbs and like it

Fuck that shit.

Ain't going to happen. I can only be pushed so far before I will push back.

[Iverson]

110. more like this:

You're being told to accept a slow shift to the right instead of a very rapid one. Progress is just not on the table for discussion, you intransigent extremist, you.

[Walt Starr]

114. That was pretty much what I've watched over the past two decades

and I'm not going to take it any more.

Thanks for pointing out the truth of the matter!

:D

[MadHound]

111. Its not a matter of not having a voice

Its a matter of the Democratic party not listening to one damn thing except what their corporate masters says. I'm fully cognizent of what compromise is, and how it works in politics. I've worked for the Dems on a number of levels for thirty+ years now, I know how the game is played.

But the corporate controlled Democrats are only willing to listen to their corporate masters, not what the people want. A few examples:

Over half of the population want the government to create a universal health care plan(WP/Kaiser Family Foundation poll).

Sixty percent of the public thinks the government is doing too little to help the enviroment(Gallup poll)

Sixty six percent say that global trade deals hurt American workers whilst the large corporations benefit(Peter Hart), while seventy two percent of the population say that the White House and Congress give too little consideration to the American worker when making such deals(University of Maryland).

And yet time and again, the Democratic Party sides with the corporations over the people on these issues! This isn't a matter of compromising, this is a matter of giving governmnet of the people, by the people and for the people, back to the people. Common sense should tell you that when a politician, Dem or 'Pug hears the siren song of corporate cash, then all communication with the people of this country is going to cease. If you don't believe in common sense, look around! See what the Dems have done for you lately. The Patriot Act, welfare "reform", John Ashcroft confirmation, a preemptive war for oil and empire, and on and on. Wake Up! We can't compromise with a person or party when they're not even listening to what we have to say.

Or bury your head in the sand and say "The Dems will take care of it". Be be warned, when you pull your head out, the country won't be recognizable, for the Dems will have taken the corporate cash and left us to the tender mercies of those uber citizens, the corporations.

[chadm]

39. If you really wanna know...

read "Crashing the Party" by Ralph Nader.

[chadm]

48. If you guys are really scared of the Greens...

then I highly suggest you do everything you can to help Kucinich with the primary. If you don't you have no consience because you're helping Bush win because we can't vote for anybody else.

I'm just trying to use Democrat logic, as painful as it is to me.

[Patriot_Spear]

54. Scared of the Greens? I think you're missing something here...

I don't CARE how they vote. I know what they are and what they stand for.

I will bet you one dinner from Taco Bell that they don't get even half the votes the received last time; Because the Greens have isolated the only party they could have hoped to garnish voters from.

Peace.

[StandWatie]

55. it's still got you whining

it had way more impact than I ever thought it would have. Long term I think things wound up better than anyone could have imagined. Gore did not want this term. I know someone is going to say Gore would have stopped 9/11 but that's bullshit. I'll get every LIHOP and MIHOP fan and the people who talk about how Gore wanted better locks on the doors mad but it's still bullshit. The pilots came out themselves because they thought they were just going to get stuck on some shitty tarmac in Yemen or something.

The economy was going to go down one way or another. That bubble was going to burst, it had to and there would have been very little Gore could have done to stop it.

The way things worked out all this happened on Bush's watch and he even wound up owning the legislature and the Supreme Court. People talk about how socialism has never had a chance to work, no one will ever be able to say that the neo-con imperialists never had their shot and this is how it turned out: blackouts, massive corruption, unemployment, bogged down in a fucked up war over oil.

This is effectively the end of neo-conservatism as a viable school of thought.

I don't think it would do much to vote green in '04 (that's my call and I'm not going to badger anyone who thinks another protest vote is in order) but if I had known then what I know now I would have been more eager to see green defectors. The next president will know he was elected by people expecting a better world than Clinton/Gore and needs to be reminded of that at every opportunity lest they get Gored again.

[Patriot_Spear]

63. You're over-estimating Green value...

I will always be shocked at those who repeat mistakes over and over again.

The Green party to me is the show Jackass given politicaL form; there's always going to be some fool ready to jump off a roof.

Sometimes all you can do is shake your head and be amazed.

[StandWatie]

66. then why are you still bitching and moaning?

[Patriot_Spear]

71. Pointing out the village idiot is hardly moaning...

It's like having a puppy whose resisting potty training... you can't help but throw your hands up when he shits on the rug continually.

Really, Greens are a sad joke to me. We had one at our Dean Meet-up the other day and he couldn't apologize enough.

[StandWatie]

73. I bet..

That's why in all your intense intelligence (which requires being an automaton for the DNC) you have no rebuttal, just a spatter of name calling.

[Patriot_Spear]

74. Since we're both regulars, how about a friendly wager...

We'll both save a copy of this thread to our respective harddrives. I will bet you one dinner of your choosing up to $10 that the GreenOP Party receives half or less than half of the total votes they received in the 2000 presidential election.

Deal?

[StandWatie]

83. that's not fair

I'm probably not going to vote Green but I'm completely unapologetic about 2k and think it wound up better than I had hoped.

Personally I hope no one votes Green but lets the next guy up to bat know that he had better side with people over corporate interests.

[Patriot_Spear]

94. Can you see that you made my point for me?

Thanks for being honest.

Now let me- rehtoric aside, of course as a Democrat I respect and sympathize with the STATED (on paper) Green values; that being said I will never, ever vote for a Green specifically because of the 2000 election.

Don't feel bad: out of my half dozen Green friends, nohne of them would dare take that bet either- and they're the LEADERS of the local green contingent.

[StandWatie]

97. I don't know what your point is

:shrug:

[Patriot_Spear]

102. My point: Even Greens won't vote Green in the next election...

Except for the fanatics.

[Walt Starr]

104. This Democrat *might* vote Green in the next election

It all depends on who the Democrats nominate.

[Patriot_Spear]

106. Like I said...

Sorry Walt, It's clear we just don't agree- I'm happy to leave it at that.

[StandWatie]

107. I don't know if that is so

Greens will not come out for Lieberman (maybe on this board where most of the greens are disaffected democrats) but I don't think he will get the nomination. I think the figures would be similar if he ran if not larger as even people who held their nose for Gore might not be able to countenance Joe Lieberman.

[Patriot_Spear]

112. I appreciate your point...

I believe reasonabe people can come to common sense judgements. Fanatical GreensOP cannot be reached. That's all.

[Iverson]

75. this is supposed to be persuasive???

I have never found childish insults to be particularly insightful,a nd yet that is the default mode around here by Dems who seem to carry the warrant that Greens owe them their votes and allegiance in a slightly slower national drift rightward.

Can you engage progressives without reference to idiots, shit and moaning? Try.

[Patriot_Spear]

79. Who said I was trying to convince anyone?

You can't convince fanatics and menal defectives.

I don't care what they 'owe'- but don't expect me to kow-tow to their nonsense.

[Forkboy]

86. It was a nice try Iverson

[Iverson]

95. so it was gratuitous ugliness? nice.

I guess that means I can't convince you to be civil. C'est la vie. I'm sure you're busy at any rate with something bipartisan.

[Patriot_Spear]

100. Gratuitous? I didn't realize we were hacking out canons here..

It's an opinion- there's no gun to your head. Maybe it's not that my tone is too harsh, but that you're being overly sensitive.

In any event I apologize if I hurt your feelings. Really.

[Iverson]

105. don't be absurd

My objections had little to do with personal hurt feelings and much to do with the primacy of civil discourse.

Do you miss the point on purpose?

If you really think that Greens should be voting for Dems, then you should make a case instead of being nasty. I don't see what's so hard to understand about that. On the other hand, if you think that bile is a good way to go, then you and Rush can follow the same model, merely plugging in different terms at the right points.

If you need additional clarification, feel free to write me personally.

[Patriot_Spear]

109. I honestly don't think it's possible to change the mind of a fanatic.

My point was simply to heap ridicule on the idea of voting GreenOP in the current world climate.

If your going to make comparisons to the right then the GreenOP would be most like the Freeper's or Libertarian's- fanatical in the sense they have no desire to reach consensus and thereby improve the lives of everyone. They think just like Rushbot, 'my way or the highway'.

Isn't that what you're advocating when you propose voting for a party that realistically has no hope of winning the next election, while at the same time isolating the party closest to its ideology?

[Iverson]

115. reply

Yes, I see your efforts to heap ridicule, although they do look kind of foolish, especially "GreenOP" when you know that the Democrats in control revel in bipartisanship. Take a gander at the Green platform. You will not turn to stone, and you will see that it stands in stark contrast to the Republicans'.

From my point of view, it is not the Greens isolating (perhaps you meant alienating?) the Dems, but rather the other way around. I am quite ready for civil discourse and coalition-building, but mostly I see in response partisan Dems screaming "fanatic!" at Greens. Don't you think that when the immediate past VP nominee states that Dems deserve to lose if they nominate a lefty that that's a clue as to who is really fanatical?

If you have a different opinion, that is fine. If you see two pro-war parties as a sufficient choice for the polity, that's fine. Permit me equal allowance for political opinions, though, unless you're one of those - how did you put it? - "my way or the highway" types.

[Patriot_Spear]

120. Let's be clear...

You talk about civil discourse, coalition building and acceptance of differing political opinion which is laudable and of course soemthing we can both agree on; but in my view a Green presidential candidate in the next election is an ipso facto endorsement of the Bush* occupation.

The almost Utopian voting conditions that would need to exist for a true muti-party system in this country are not even on the horizon and until such time as they do appear, anything that puts neo-cons and republikkans in control of the nation is, in my view, reckless and dangerous.

And I have no regrets about ridiculing GreensOP for this kind of activity.

They have lost sight of the forest 'fore the tree.

[Iverson]

127. so far so good

The main thing that I add to that is the refusal to emulate Republicans or continue their agenda, even if at a greatly reduced rate. To borrow your idiom, the continuation of the Bush direction is an ipso-facto endorsement of the Bush occupation. Thus, the corporate wing of the Democratic party has that forest-trees problem to which you alluded.

Failing that route, then, I must do something to make meaningful our Constitutional experiment in government by consent of the governed.

That set of preferences does not in fact make me utopian or unable to reason, and be reasoned with.

[Name removed]

148. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

160. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Terwilliger]

174. isn't that sweet

that doesn't help the fact that you're a warmonger, and you support other warmongers blindly like a freeper

Way to go, America! woo hooo! :nuke:

[John_H]

56. Rummy will write your name on a 2000 lb. cluster bomb.

and Ashcroft will write a rousing patriotic song about you, "Fidelity Funds the Fatherland"

[LiberalEconomist]

81. Nader?

Dismiss Nader at our own peril. Nader had and does have real legitimate points. The Democratic Party is the party of the people, or at least supposed to be. Afterall, "demos" is the ancient Greek word for "people." That the most progressive faction of our party felt compelled to split off and form their own party is a sad indictment of the "Liebermanization" of the Democratic Party.

To the Greens and everyone out there, I say vote your conscience. It is your vote and your sacred right. As for me, I am voting for anyone but Lieberman or Bush. In any case keep up the fight against the common enemy: corporate greed and the laissez-faire myth.

[dionysus]

103. Nader is an egotistical fool

who has absolutely zero credentials to hold office. He is a hypocrit, owning stock in the very corporations he rails against. That's right, he's a wealthy man.

He's run for president 3 times now, and only the last time has he had an effect because the race was so close. He's got as much of a chance of winning an election as Steve Forbes or Al Sharpton

Democrats the same as republicans? Ralph are you on crack? Thanks for helping to destroy the country with your ego trip.

[truebrit71]

85. Not a damned thing...

Thanks to the mis-guided efforts of the Greens we have had to suffer pResident Happy-crack for three years....

But then again there was no difference between Gore and * right?? Riiiiiiiiiight.... :eyes:

[dionysus]

113. There is no good from voting green

and arguing with Greens is like talking to a concrete block. The Greens are out to destroy the Democratic party, pure and simple. There it is. The Greens want to destroy the democratic party.

We've got a defacto 2 party system, and 3rd parties do nothing but drains votes from the main parties.

If we had had a European-style goverment, the Greens could co-exist, caucas with us, or, if we had run-off elections, give people the opportunity to send a message by voting Green, and vote Dem in runoff voting if needed to stop the GOP. But guess what? We don't.

If the Greens wanted to be credible, they would build a strong local base and slowly build up to the national level. Alas, they simply run spoiler candidates like Nader.

The Green Dream is to take out the Democratic Party, and replace it with a party further to the left. During that whole process, however long it would take, and afterwards, enjoy total governmental control by the Rethuglicants. A fractured Left is a useless Left. Hell, I'd like to see us go to the left, but I'd like to see it come from within our party, not out party's destruction.

BTW Greens, how happy will you be when you achieve your goal and NO ONE from the left holds office? Perhaps then Saint Ralph will swoop down in his holy Corvair and save us all, smiting corruption wherever it exists...

edit for typos

[Iverson]

117. incorrect

I encourage you to look beyond boilerplate propaganda and at actual evidence. This means leaving off hysteria about others' motives for a moment and investigating your claim:

"If the Greens wanted to be credible, they would build a strong local base and slowly build up to the national level. Alas, they simply run spoiler candidates like Nader."

This is only if facts matter to you, I mean.

[dionysus]

125. Facts? Here are the facts, since you seem to have glossed over them

Any 3rd party takes votes from the Dems or the Pugs. Greens are on the left, so they take votes from the Dems.

In Europe, it's different; there are many, many parties, and they win by joining forces. In our system, the Greens can't work with the dems if they have their own candidates.

In order for the Greens to win, they must destroy the Democrats.

When your party gets 3%, and you're running a candidate for President, all you can ever do is siphon off votes, and if you siphon enough votes, you have sucessfully "spoiled" the election.

I don't blame the Greens solely for what happened in 2000. There were many factors, and the Greens were definately one of them. I'm not even against many Green stances and ideas.

It's my opinion that if you want to be sucessfull, join the Dems and take the party back. You, want to destroy the Democratic Party and replace it with yours. Doesn't that seem like the most wasteful and time consuming way of getting the left back into the majority?

[Walt Starr]

130. Your analysis only works if you take certain votes for granted

You are taking those voters who may vote Green for granted if the Greens did not exist. That's a horseshit analaysis job.

Let me lay it on the line here:

1) If the Democrats nominate somebody I consider unacceptable (let's just say Lieberman for simplicity's sake), I refuse to vote for them.

2) I look over and see a Green candidate who would be acceptable to me as president, so I decide to vote for him instead.

Now let's say there is nobody on the ballot except Lieberman or Bush. What do I do in that instance?

I CAST NO FUCKING VOTE FOR PRESIDENT IF THAT IS THE CASE!

See how that works? You took my vote for granted and it still comes back to bite you in the ass Green candidate or no Green candidate.

That's what taking votes for granted gets ya.

[dionysus]

135. Hell, you can vote Green, or not vote, I don't care

But either way, you are helping Republicans, and you know it. What high "principles". Hey pal, at least you can feel you did the right thing as the republicans lead this country further into the toilet.

How the hell can I possibly take your vote for granted, since you're a member of an opposition party? How does it bite me in the ass if you're don't realise the consequences of your actions?

"Hmm, I don't like the Dem nominee, so I'll vote Green/not vote, in order to let the republicans further damage the country. Gee, THAT's whats best for America!" Please explain the rationale for that type of thinking.

[Walt Starr]

137. Actually, no I don't help the Republicans

I do not help them or the Democrats. I make the statement that I find both unacceptable under those conditions and help neither.

See how that works?

[dionysus]

154. no Walt, you are helping the republicans,

whether by voting Green or sitting on your ass and not voting at all, it's all the same. And by constantly trashing Dems left and right on this board, you are indeed helping the republicans, whether or not that is your intention.

I state my opinion on greens and you say I'm trying to get you to vote Dem. You and other greens go around DU trashing Dem up and down, left and right, and thats ok? Then you have the audacity to say your actions don't help the GOP!

[Terwilliger]

186. the inability of Democrats to gain consensus is their achilles heel

I slam Dems all day because you people would NEVER ask yourself tough questions. All that pollyanna crap, and on Nov 8, 2004 you'll be looking around saying "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.....?????????" and looking desperately for a Nader, or a media, or a Supreme Court to blame.

[Walt Starr]

197. Well said

If not for the boring campaign of Gore, NAder would not have even been a footnote in the 200o election.

If Clinton had kept his pecker in his pants, Gore would have won in a landslide after a primary season with no or at best extremely token opposition.

[library_max]

238. Consensus doesn't mean "everybody has to agree with me"

To say, "If I don't agree with the candidate on litmus test, he can't have my vote, case closed," is no way to work toward consensus. Consensus requires compromise, and the position I keep hearing from you and the other Greens posting here is that compromise means selling out to "corporate masters."

[Walt Starr]

250. I've been compromising more and more every election for two decades

I'm all comproimised out. Time for some compromise back in the other direction or I'll have to find a progressive party.

I'm sick and tired of two conservative parties.

[Terwilliger]

258. yes, and the Democratic party can't do it

they can't even get a simple majority

[Walt Starr]

190. You've made an incorrect assumption

I'm not a Green. I amn a dyed in the wool Democrat and have been my entire voting life.

You seem very willing to throw a lifelong Democrat overboard in your zeal to win.

The Republican Party has always been the one willing to do anything to win. It would now seem yet another prediction is coming to life and the Democrats are following the Republicans down the "win at all costs" road too.

Frankly, if that ends up being the case, the Democratic Party will have obviously left me.

And saying that by voting for somebody other than a Democrat, even if the only difference I see between that Democrat and Bush is the (D) behind the Democrat's name and the (R) behind the Republican's name is helping the Republican with an (R) behind his name, you're not pushing me out, you're shoving with all your might.

[dionysus]

200. If you're a dyed-in-the wool Dem you sure could have fooled me

cause I sure as hell don't see it.

[Walt Starr]

203. Because I dare to question our precious Democratic Leadership?

Yeah, I thought so.

I don't roll over any more. All that used to matter to me was the lil (D) after the name.

No more. I demand more and if I don't get it from the Democrats, I'll go elsewhere.

[Iverson]

131. not at all

In your rush to paint me as ignorant of fact, you have missed a couple of things.

One is that the Democratic Party could very easily make the Greens unnecessary. Put another way, there is no law which demands that the Dems lurch rightward.

You also totally ignore the non-voting majority.

And I'm sorry to challenge your dogma, but I have no wish to destroy the Democratic party. I just need a party that more-or-less represents my politics, and the pro-choice conservative party doesn't do that sufficiently.

Thanks for the advice about joining the Democrats. I was there most of my life, but they left.

[dionysus]

133. When people from the left leave the party, it goes rightward.

you, by leaving, would be partly responsible for it.

Explain to me how the Greens will capture that non-voting majority. By being more to the left? There are other leftist parties here (Socialists, Communists, probably a few others) in this country, where is their massive support?

What is it that your party has that wil get that groundswell of support, and get all those people involved? I'd like to hear how you think it can be done. Do you even have a plan.

How can you possibly claim you don't want to destroy a party when you are one of it's opponents? I assume you play to win, and that means defeating us.

I don't see you as ignorant Iverson, I see you as someone who wants the Dems gone, no matter how you phrase it.

[Iverson]

136. When the party goes right, lefties eventually leave it.

Sorry that you're seeing what you wish to see rather than what is there. I suspect that an absolutist either-or mentality is at its root, which oddly enough is what Greens typically get accused of having.

I say I don't want the Dems gone, and you say I do. Is this the best that Democrats have to offer Greens? Good grief! When do I get to dictate to you what's in your head?

[dionysus]

143. How can you not grasp the fact...

You say you don't want to hurt the Dems, yet you are in an organisation whose goal is to defeat them ( and everyone else).

That's a contradiction.

Do you want the Democrats to exist despite your efforts to defeat them? Do you want them to exist as a minority party like yours?
Please explain that to me. Isn't your goal for the Greens to win? In order for them to prevail, they have to beat everyone else.


BTW, what is this strawman bullshit about trying to dictate whats in your head? I haven't told you what to think. Unless you can't grasp what you guys are, which is part of the opposition.

AND, I never told you or Walt who to vote for. I express my opinion on greens so I'm telling YOU how to think? not quite

[Iverson]

152. to answer your question

from your post #143: "BTW, what is this strawman bullshit about trying to dictate whats in your head?"

from my post #131: "And I'm sorry to challenge your dogma, but I have no wish to destroy the Democratic party."

from your post #133: "I don't see you as ignorant Iverson, I see you as someone who wants the Dems gone, no matter how you phrase it."

I usually don't prefer to call my opponent's erroneous claims "bullshit," but there you are.

[dionysus]

155. profound...

really.

[Iverson]

159. mockery is all you've got left?

I am interested in accuracy. I recommend it to you.

[dionysus]

165. Thats so weak.

You're a Dem-bashing Green to the bone. You slam dems, day in, day out, for hundreds of posts. You advocate an opposition party, for Christ's sake, and then you have the BALLS to claim you don't have it in for the dems. thats called bull and shit. You're claim rings false to me.

[Iverson]

185. there's no reasoning with fanatics

Have a nice day.

[dionysus]

199. oh, I'M, the fanatic?!?!?

please wipe the Green froth from your chin, it's unbecoming.

[dionysus]

202. remember I asked you

your grand Green strategy to pull in those non-voters, how your teams strategy would sway millions.....

you don't have any type of answer for that, do you?

Just slam the Dems and all will be well?

[Walt Starr]

205. It takes decades, not years

If the Democrats continue the march to the right, the Greens will expand by default.

If not, the progressives still win because the march to the right is haulted.

[dionysus]

208. Right! Decades!!

And how do you think the country will fare for those decades when

The Greens grow enough to siphon major amounts of dem votes... GOP wins

After many years the Greens find parity with the Dems... GOP still in power...

Finally the Greens surpass Dems, but Dems siphon green votes.... GOP still in power...

you think they'll be a country left for the Greens to run once that happens? Do you?

[Iverson]

209. um, Walt?

You are arguing against a position that progressives who deviate from the Democratic party aren't progressive. You are arguing against a discussant who has decided that "bashing" is the totality of any Green argument or political strategy. It is an ill-tempered and enforced self-blindness.

I have to go grocery shopping and then change the cat litter. You might want to wait for a civil opponent too. Cheerio.

[Walt Starr]

210. Thanks for the advise

I believe I will take it.

[dionysus]

212. ah, the High and Mighty card is pulled

so I'm uncivil, a fanatic? you're full of it man. STRAWMAN. find where i said you weren't progressive. and yes, from reading your posts for months and months, you are a "basher" in the first degree. You can sure dish it out, but you're skin's too thin to take it. have a tissue. Peace.

[Walt Starr]

215. Okay, I'll just point out one last thing and let you figure it out

Jeffords made a point. He could get up and cross the aisle any time he chose to. He became a hero to some and a villian to others

I make a similar point. I can get up and walk away from the Democratic Party any time I choose to. I will be making a stand to some and be "helping the Republicans" to others should I choose to do so.

[dionysus]

220. well of course you can do whatever you want, it's America!

To clarify, when I say you are "helping Republicans", I'm not saying that's what your trying to do... but you are in my opinion. We'll just have to disagree on that I suppose :evilgrin:

[library_max]

240. How many decades exactly is it going to take

for 2+2 to stop equalling four? There are never going to be enough progressive votes to split between two parties. Splitting the progressive vote is always going to give every election to the most conservative party.

Or is your agenda simply to have the progressive party in this country called "Green"? Because I guess you might accomplish that, after handing the country over the the Bush Republicans for god knows how long. Of course, after you've killed the Democratic Party, you're going to have to do exactly what you hate them for doing - wooing the center and raising money where there's money to be raised - if you ever hope to win an election.

[Walt Starr]

249. Well, I'd settle for one progressive party

and we don't even have one today.

[Walt Starr]

138. I didn't leave for more than two decades and the party still went right

so tell me again what I gain by staying?

[dionysus]

147. for starters, you'd have the knowledge that you did

SOMETHING to fight back against the conservative horde in the WH.

You tell me, what do YOU gain by helping republicans? Thats what I don't understand about you guys. You do what you do knowing where it will lead the country. Glad you could be of help (to the GOP)

[Terwilliger]

149. You voted for Bill Clinton...you helped Republicans

I hope you're happy now!

[dionysus]

157. That's quite a

bullshit statement Terwilliger. Oh Clinton, that evil republican in disguise!! I shoulda just voted for Dole!

[Terwilliger]

175. He was

he instituted so many right-wing policies, I dont see where you can say he was anything but a Republican

[Name removed]

179. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Walt Starr]

181. It does make as much sense as saying a vote for Nader

is a vote for Bush.

[dionysus]

189. Not in the slightest sense.

Sure, not EVERY Green was lured in by Nader's lies about Bush and Gore being the same. But those dissaffected Dems, whether they meant to or not, helped Bush. Just like you do when you are on a Dem board bashing Dems. Since the Greens have no chance of winning any elections, you are a de facto bush enabler.

[Terwilliger]

194. more Dems voted for Bush than for Nader

how does that square with your lunacy?

[dionysus]

198. more Dems voted for Nader in Florida

than the amount of votes * "won" by. Nice attempt, addled one.

[Terwilliger]

211. I dont think so, honey

http://prorev.com/greenpages.htm#2004

This fits in well with the liberal myth that Gore lost the 2001 election because of Ralph Nader. In fact, Gore lost the election because he was a poor candidate, ran a bad campaign, and failed to separate himself morally from Clinton. Further, not only the Democratic Party, but the liberals within it, made it absolutely clear over eight years that they had no interest in, nor would respond to, the sort of politics espoused by Greens.

A study by the Review of national and Florida polls during the 2000 election indicates that Ralph Nader's influence on the final results was minimal to non-existent. The Review tested the widely held Democratic assumption that Nader caused Gore's loss by checking changes in poll results. Presumably, if Nader was actually responsible for Gore's troubles, his tallies would change inversely to those of Gore: if Gore did better, Nader would do worse and vice versa. In fact, the only time any correlation could be found was when the changes were so small - 1 or 2 percentage points - that they were statistically insignificant. On the other hand when, in September of 2000, Gore's average poll result went up 7.5 points over August, Nader's only declined by 1 point. Similarly, in November, Gore's average poll tally declined 5.7 points but Nader's only went up 0.8 points. In the close Florida race, there were similar results: statistically insignificant correlation when the Gore tally changed by only one or two points, but dramatic non-correlation when the change was bigger.

During almost all of 2000, Bush led Gore with the major exception of a month-long period following the Democratic convention. During this high point for Gore, Nader was pulling a running average of 2-4% in the polls. While it is true that during October, Nader began pulling a running average of 6% at a time when Gore was fading, Gore continued to lose ground even as Nader's support dropped to its final 3%. In other words, despite the help of defectors from Nader, Gore did worse.

Further, as Michael Eisencher reported in Z Magazine, 20% of all Democratic voters, 12% of all self-identified liberal voters, 39% of all women voters, 44% of all seniors, one-third of all voters earning under $20,000 per year and 42% of those earning $20-30,000 annually, and 31% of all voting union members cast their ballots for Bush. In other words, Bush did better among these traditional liberal constituencies than did Nader.


OnEdit: I could also point you to the DLC evaluation tat Nader did not significantly hurt Gore in the election.

[dionysus]

214. your bogus Green website ain't a-foolin me

Nader had, I believe well over 10,000 votes in Fla. You're trying to tell me there weren't a couple hundred swayed by Nader? Yeah. If 5% of those votes were from people swayed by Ralph's lies about Gore, there's your margin of victory right there.

I never said Nader was the only factor for Gore's defeat. The purged voter rolls in Fla, "Clinton Baggage", relentless smear campaign by the press, all of these played a part.

But for you to claim Nader had NOTHING to do with it is disingenuous.

[Walt Starr]

217. IT would have been easier to get the Democrats swayed by Bush

There were tons more of them.

[Terwilliger]

252. you're still trying to place blame that isnt deserved

You just cant stand it that Democrats cant seem to live up to democracy...too pathetic

[Walt Starr]

213. Yeah, but more Dems voted for Bush than voted for Nader in Florida

Bigger pool to have gained votes from than the Nader pool.

Why didn't Gore pick up those registered Democratic votes who instead went for Bush?

[Terwilliger]

184. yep...you voted for Clinton

and all we got was George W. Bush

How am I wrong?

[Walt Starr]

187. Well, if Clinton had kept his pecker in his pants

all of this discussion would be moot today. :D

[dionysus]

195. well, er... uh, yeah!

[dionysus]

188. Clinton never ran against W.

Gore did. You know this, and your above statement doesn't make sense.

[Walt Starr]

191. His legacy turned of millions

Yes, I know, the VRWC went after him, but you know what? All the guy had to do is keep his pecker in his pants and the Democrat would've won by a landslide because there would have been no phony "high crime" to base a phony misdemeanor on.

Yes, I know his pecker is his own business, but instead of trying to play JFK, he should have been himself and realized years earlier, "hey, these Republican fucks are willing to do anything to get me outta here and I better watch muyself because any dalliance could cost me big time."

[edward]

216. Disagree about the pecker effect.

Much is made of this, but not convinced this was a real issue for voters(his poll numbers high during impeachment).
The problem was that he was never really as popular as some think, as far as actual political support.
The opposition party was looking for anything to impeach him on.
All Gore had to do, was say something to the effect," OK the president got a blowjob while give unprecedented peace and prosperity to this nation. Now lets move on."

[Walt Starr]

156. Sorry, but the conservative horde exists not only in the WH

I see four out of nine candidates as willing participants in the crimes of the conservative hordes. So in effect, I again nothing.

And again, by choosing to not vote for a Republican in Democratic clothing I do not help the Republicans ofr the Democrats. I vote the way I feel and it stands at that, neither party is helped.

[dionysus]

161. Well, to each his own then.

I get the feeling you would view a Kerry , Leiberman (blech), Edwards, ect presidency as being just as bad as a * presidency.

That is what you're saying, isn't it?

[Walt Starr]

171. That's the choice between worse and worser

in either case, things continue to get worse.

My vote is worth more than choosing one evil over another.

[dionysus]

206. Just what would be soooooooooooo

Bad about one of these fine (well, most of them) candidates winning? And name me the Green candidate who's better than any of them? I see no proposed solutions, only dem bashing.

[Walt Starr]

207. They are as guilty for the mess we're in as *Bush

They voted to give Bush carte blanche in Iraq, devestating our surplus and causing the deaths of untold thousands.

That's bigger than any SCOTUS appointment or domestic agenda item.

[dionysus]

218. I can't defend the war votes Walt,

and I'm not going to go into a spiel covering for them. But that isn't enough to make me turn my back on my party. What about DK or Dean, they were against all of the things you mentioned. Would you not vote for either of them?

Just seems we've got fundamentally different opinions on how to get liberals back in power...

[Walt Starr]

219. I agree fundamentally different opinions

I see a longer term turn around as far more important than just getting Bush out of office next year.

[dionysus]

222. serious question Walt

I asked you before and you didn't answer yet.

You said it would take decades. Suppose the Greens, over many years, surpass the Dems. For those decades, you will have a steadily weakening Dem party, the 2 parties will reach parity, then the Greens eventually surpass the dems.

What do you think will happen to country for those many years of complete GOP control of the government, when neither Dems nor Greens can muster a majority? And, are you willing to risk it? I want to know what you think about that. What do you think that scenario would be like?

[Walt Starr]

223. The GOP will do one of two things should the Democrats continue

the movement to the right.

They will either take it as carte blanche to wreck everything, in which case the process speeds up and it goes back to taking years instead of decades, or they will slow down the wholesale raping of the nation, in which case it could extend out to a century or more.

edited to add

One final point. I am not saying that I will absolutely be voting third party or walking away from the Democratic Party next year. The potential exists, and quite frankly will continue to exist, but there are no guarantees.

My vote used to be a guarantee in the (D) column, but no longer. It may be and probably will be, but it's no longer guaranteed.

[dionysus]

226. Alrighty then. 5 o'clock and the quittin bell rings.

Thanks for the give and take, man, it's been real.


Peace

[mlawson]

241. It will make bush and KKKRove very happy!!!!

Other than that, NOTHING.

[jiacinto]

263. I've come to this conclusion

Unfortunately there is a core group of DUers who will will not vote for the Democratic Party no matter what, won't support its candidates, or do anything positive in 2004. It is a shame that they have been allowed to take over and to bully people on this site. And frankly talking to them is pointless as they are going to do everything possible to "send their message" next year.

It is blatantly obvious that compromise with most of these Greens is impossible. The only candidates they will support--Kuchinich, Sharpton, or Moseley-Braun--are clearly unacceptable to the general electorate. Even Dean is not acceptable for many of them. That being said it is impossible to reach any deal with them.

Most of the Greens won't accept less than a candidate whose agenda borders on socialism or Marxism. They honestly think Americans would support that in spite of the weak support those agendas receive here in this country.

That being said I would frankly just put these people on ignore, not reply to their posts, and work with people who do want Bush out of office. Dealing with these unreasonable people basically wastes time that could be used on other more productive tasks.

[TheYellowDog]

268. I wholeheartedly agree

It is important to vote for almost any Democrat over a Republican.

[Walt Starr]

270. I've come to this conclusion

Some DUers will accept no candidate who is not only slightly to the left of George W. Bush or better yet, is pretty much a George W. Bush clone with a (D) after his name. Mainstream candidates such as Dean are too "commie" for these DUers and it is unfortunate they have been allowed to take over DU and bully everybody.

Most DUers in this category won't accept less than a candidate whose agenda borders on Fascism or Nazism. They honestly think Americans would support that in spite of the weak support those agendas receive here in this country.

[jiacinto]

272. Whatever

I really am sick of trying to reason with you. I really am.

I am out their trying my best every day, working to make change. And I really can't deal with people who just want to do whatever they can to defeat the Democrats next year.

If you don't want the Democrats to win, fine. If you want to vote Green, fine. I'll leave at that.

I just am wit's end.

[Walt Starr]

274. If you want the Democrats to win

you had better pick a candidate who appeals to Democrats like me while also appealing to the mushy middle.

That's the only way you're going to do it.

[jiacinto]

276. And that is impossible

Given what you and the others have said finding such a "Democrat" is impossible.

[Walt Starr]

277. Dean seems to fit the bill

But I'll tell you one thing, any candidate that voted for the war in Iraq will lose to Bush, guaranteed. It doesn't matter if I vote for them or not.

[jiacinto]

279. oh

Lately it seems like people have turned against Dean too.

[Walt Starr]

281. He's nowhere as liberal as I would prefer

but I honestly believe he would stand a chance against Bush.

And Veep choices will be a big factor for me, too. Put a Dean or a Clark with any of the four who voted in favor of war and you'd probably get my vote.

See, it's not as hopeless as you thought.

[jiacinto]

282. It seems that way sometimes

It really does.

[Walt Starr]

278. Clark would fit the bill for me too

and I definitely believe Clark would ahve broad appeal to the general populace, even possibly getting thousands who have never voted before to register and vote for him.

He just proudly proclaimed himself a liberal on Maher's show.

[bluestateguy]

269. You get to stand on "principle"

At least that's what the wealthy limousine Leftists who support the Green Party tell us. Of course, it is not they who have to suffer the consequences of a Bush Administration, but they will feel good about themselves and have something to brag about at cocktail parties. There is a reason why lower income voters and non-whites shunned Nader in 2000: they knew the stakes better than anyone because it was they who had the most to lose.

[jiacinto]

271. OF course not

But then they will trot out the argument that the Democratic party has "done little" for minorities and that they are not deovid of those groups in spite of what the numbers say. They will then trot out the same old tired lines because they know how shaky they are with miorities.

I would just ignore the Greens.

[Walt Starr]

273. Wrong thread

Sorry

[Deja Q]

275. Try Kuncinich instead of the NAFTA whore and I'll vote...

Okay, I'd still vote for Dean anyway, only for the sake of getting Bushbastard's* bumbling bum out of the White House. Along as NAFTA and anything like NAFTA are enacted in the future, what we're seeing now will only continue into the future and get worse.

Also, how "right on track" was it when the big corporations had been cooking their books long before Bush was selected by the SCOTUS? Some corporations were still laying off Americans despite the 'prosperity'; go read "Downsize This" and "Stupid White Men" for more edification.

Clinton also enabled the DMCA into being, of which corporations have used it an excuse to try to sue anybody for any thing. (Lexmark, a company who makes toner for other printer brands, sues another company who dared to make toner cartridges for their brand!)

Clinton also signed the welfare "reform" bill in 1995, so what's he done for "corporate welfare"?

And the sacking of Jocelyn Elders is unforgivable. She made Americans at least talk about sex, which is still very much a serious issue. She was the brighest person Clinton had, and he cowered - terrified because it was an election year. But the pukes still won big in '94 anyway, gee I wonder whatever happened with their "Contract With America"?

Over the years, Clinton did a lot for the republicans and look at how they treated him!

We don't need another capitulator in 2004. We need KUCINICH, somebody who'll stand up for what's right!

And the administration is only as scrupled as the people who support it. The administration supports corporate america and what they're doing. And they LOVE NAFTA. Food for thought...

[bigtree]

280. I understand the Greens put the environment at the head of their platform

It's an issue that the every candidate claims to support and defend, but the Global Green Network's candidates promote environmental responsibility worldwide. These issues sometimes only get a hearing in a presidential election year.

Hey Green supporters, what's on the environmental agenda. What issues will the Green candidate(s) bring to the debate?

[bigtree]

283. n/t

I shouldn't have mentioned the 'issues'.