(The following was originally published on MSNBC.)
The 2014 New York governor’s race is not Howie Hawkins’ first dance. Hawkins, the Green Party’s gubernatorial nominee and a long-time UPS truck unloader, is a perennial candidate for public office, having logged six unsuccessful races in just eight years. This time, though, is different.
Politics to the left of the Democratic Party is having a miniature resurgence across the country. Recent polling shows that young people between the ages of 18 and 29 have a slightly more positive view of “socialism” than “capitalism.” For the first time in at least a century, a socialist is holding citywide office in Seattle, Wash. One of the summer’s hottest bestsellers is a treatise on wealth inequality written by a leftist French economist. And in New York – where Bill de Blasio recently seized control of the largest city in the country by running on an anti-inequality platform – Hawkins is betting that widespread dissatisfaction with Gov. Cuomo will give his ticket a fighting chance.
The incumbent governor and rumored presidential candidate has been a deeply polarizing figure in New York politics. Although he’s courted progressive adoration through a series of big-ticket achievements like the passage of New York’s 2011 marriage equality law, he’s also cut taxes for the wealthy and abandoned the liberal push for public financing of elections. His economically conservative policies have earned him the moniker “Governor 1%” from disaffected leftists.
I think there’s really an untapped market for Libertarian Greens (no, NOT LNSGP, lol). Wouldn’t get very far in either LP or GP though, and successfully starting a new party is really, really tough.
Deran if you check out some of Jill Stein’s recent appearances on youtube you’ll find she has continued to develop her talents as a spokesperson. Unfortunately I’m not sure you are correct that people are more interested in ‘socialism’…except perhaps among youth rebelling against a system/ideology they percieve as corrupt. My point is–many people want socialism, but given the system’s campaign against socialism since the Palmer Raids, the people aren’t likely to call what they want ‘socialism’.
That said I wouldn’t mind if the Greens nominated a more intellectual or charismatic type. It would be sweet if they nominated someone like Richard Wolfe and then we’d get to see him debate some LIbertarians.
Apparently they still exist on FB
https://www.facebook.com/LibertarianNationalSocialistGreenParty
“They should run a National Socialist Green who believes biodiversity applies to the human species as well as all others.”
I do miss the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party.
They should run a National Socialist Green who believes biodiversity applies to the human species as well as all others.
I think Howie Hawkins would make a better Green Party Presidential candidate than Jill Stein because Hawkins is a socialist at heart, and Stein is not. And I think there is a great deal more interest in “socialism” in the US, than there is with “progressivism”. Which I imagine bernie Sanders, when he runs for the Democratic nomination, will be the one who helps the Dems keep the progressives inside the Democratic Party. Where as the Dems will never be a vehicle forsocialist activism.