Sent by the Green Party to [email protected]
Green Party leaders are urging progressive, independent, and antiwar voters to invest their votes in a growing progressive, antiwar party on Election Day 2008 by voting for the Green Party presidential ticket: Cynthia McKinney for President, Rosa Clemente for Vice President.
Greens are making a special appeal to Obama and Nader supporters to vote for the ‘Green Imperative’ on November 4. “Millions of Americans who favor the Green Party’s positions on the wars, health care, global warming, and other important issues plan to vote for Barack Obama, who doesn’t share their views. It’s not enough just to defeat John McCain and the GOP agenda,” said Green vice
presidential candidate Rosa Clemente.“Democrats have retreated over and over and voted for Bush-Cheney policies — war funding, the unconstitutional US Patriotic Act, telecomm immunity, corporate handouts and taxbreaks, the death
penalty, record incarceration rates, and a $700 billion Wall Street bailout that doesn’t help working Americans. The only way to reverse the dangerous direction of US politics is to build a real opposition
party. Voting for Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente will strengthen a party that’s dedicated to ecological, antiwar, and truly democratic values and doesn’t take money and orders from orporations,” Ms. Clemente added.Greens stressed that votes for the Green presidential candidates, as well as for Green candidates for state and local office, will also help some state Green Parties achieve or keep official party status in
their states. For example, Iowa requires 2% in a presidential race to maintain a party’s ballot line, Arkansas requires 3%, and Minnesota and Rhode Island each require 5%.Green Party leaders praised Ralph Nader for his strong political positions and have argued for his inclusion in the presidential debates (along with Ms. McKinney and other excluded candidates). But
they said that votes for Mr. Nader would have no effect after Election Day, since he’s running as an independent. Mr. Nader’s Green run in 2000 helped put the Green Party on the political map, but his
independent campaigns in 2004 and 2008 leave no lasting legacy.“A vote for the McKinney-Clemente ticket is an investment that will continue to pay off as the Green Party grows and challenges bipartisan corporate-money politics in the years to come. A vote for an
independent like Ralph Nader is a valid protest vote, but does nothing to establish a permanent political alternative. The Nader campaign will be over after Election Day, while the Green Party is a permanent political fixture with the hope of achieving major party status in the coming years,” said Sanda Everette, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States.
I’m only speaking on behalf of myself. People are more than free to agree with me.
I know that McKinney has openly opposed Obama’s agenda before, but I don’t get why she wouldn’t do so on C-SPAN when she had the opportunity to be heard by potentially millions of voters on the air and online.
I stepped into that one before, so I’m avoiding that argument. However, anyone else is free to agree or disagree with you on that here.
That’s fine Paulie, as I’ve never accused her of secretly backing Obama.
But even when directly prompted, she refused to criticize him or his record.
That bothers me, because that seems like something any good third party candidate should be willing and able to do in this election.
I’ve certainly heard Rosa Clemente take Obama to task in this election season and I’ve seen no reason to believe that McKinney supports Obama in any way…
…until that interview. I wouldn’t call it supporting him or endorsing him, but it felt like a refusal to outright oppose him.
Even not supporting her, I want her and any third party candidate to be able to dismantle false assumptions about Obama when asked about him and his record. Because, regardless of candidate or campaign, that’s a message I want people to hear.
And McKinney refused to even comment on that.
And that bothered me. She should have hit a home run, but she refused to even swing.
I’m just quoting it. The headline and text are both directly from the GP.
Sorry to drag this into a fight right out the gate, Paulie, but the letter does directly address Nader supporters – which I am – and makes assertions about his campaigns.
I removed that post at reader request, since the rumor did not pan out.
And not to beat a dead horse, but her recent C-SPAN interview from a couple weeks back bothered me a great deal.
When posters on here talked about her “endorsing” Obama, I didn’t believe them and watched the interview for myself.
What I saw wasn’t an endorsement, but it upset me.
She was asked about Obama by callers on no less than four occasions, but she steadfastly refused to criticize him, even when it was clear that that was what the caller was asking her to do.
When one caller wrongly told her that she and Obama were on the same page politically and implored her to instead back his candidacy, she didn’t correct him. She changed the subject and talked about why she became a Green.
When one caller proclaimed himself a supporter of hers and asked for the sake of his watching relatives for her to illustrate the differences between her platform and Obama’s – a wide difference – I hoped to see her knock it out of the park.
She could have mentioned his support of the PATRIOT Act, his FISA vote, his vote for war appropriations, his refusal to talk about civil liberties, his support for warrantless domestic spying, his phony Iraq “withdrawal” plan, his plan for a surge in Afghanistan or his support for the death penalty.
But she changed the subject again and talked in vague terms about her disagreements with “Democratic leaders” and her switch to the Green Party. She wouldn’t even say Obama’s name or disparage any caller when they proclaimed how great Obama was and how McKinney should back him.
When a caller asked if she’d accept a job in an Obama administration, the answer – and I’m paraphrasing – was a smile and a “we’ll see”.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t support her candidacy and that I find her to be a candidate unworthy of my support… but when I hear any third party candidate asked these questions – especially when the questioner is a supporter tossing you a softball – I want to see that candidate knock it out of the park.
I won’t put words in McKinney’s mouth or ascribe any motives to her without any evidence, but I just don’t understand why she steadfastly refused to address Obama or his record directly and why she wouldn’t criticize him even when directly prompted to.
Her avoidance of the topic was clearly intentional, but why?
Fantabulous.
Catholic Trotskyists support 9/11 truth. McKinney ran a bad campaign because she heroically destroyed the national Green Party to make way for the Obama revolution. McKinney is the best candidate besides Obama and Brian Moore.
And you Pig Naderites have an inferiority complex when it comes to Obama.
Obviously, I disagree.
I see no legitimate future in the Green Party. As someone that invested four years fighting for the Greens, I came to see the party as unsalvageable, unserious and at times, hypocritical in their internal leadership and policies.
Even Rosa Clemente said during an interview with Vibe.com that the Greens just can’t get it together and can’t run a real national campaign.
Even with all the pre-hype I heard from Greens about how she was going to outpoll Nader and their past campaigns and “grow the party”, she appears on only 4 more ballots than no-name David Cobb did four years ago.
They still talk about getting five percent of the vote, when it’s painfully obvious that even 1% is likely to be beyond their grasp this year.
I voted for Ralph Nader this year because he was the best candidate. Period.
Were he not running, I’d likely write in “None of the Above” for president this year, even though Cynthia McKinney appears on my state’s ballot.
I don’t say this because my stance is “Nader or no one”. There simply are no other candidates who represent my values running for president or for whom, I wouldn’t have to make serious compromises to support.
For a long time, I gave McKinney the benefit of the doubt when she talked about 9/11 and I was willing to assume that she was being misrepresented by both Truthers and establishment types who ascribed “inside job” conspiracy theories to her.
But as her virtual uncampaign unfolded, it became clear that this wasn’t the case as she dropped the name “9/11 Truth” in her nomination speech and “911 Truth Movement” in an interview with Newsweek. She even proclaimed “I love the 9/11 Truth Movement”, as covered by IPR.
I simply cannot support anyone who aligns herself with lunatic conspiracy kooks who base their “theories” on little more than assumption and a convoluted web of subconspiracies stacked up like a house of cards and has no concrete evidence, no eyewitnesses, no whistleblowers or any credibility.
I can no more support a Truther for president than I could support someone who didn’t believe in Evolution by Natural Selection, a Holocaust Denier or someone who believes that the moon landing was faked or that Elvis is still alive.
Nor do I like that her entire campaign wraps everything under the bow of identity politics, even calling their absence of media coverage as a “white out”, all the more absurd a statement given the mainstream press’ love affair with Barack Obama.
Not to mention the latest unsupported tirade about a mass grave in the swamps of Louisiana that presumes that none of the prisoners would have anyone looking for them. This speech made even the Green Party’s National Political Director, Brent MacMillan “cringe”.
And it’s just a lie that the Nader campaign will have no legacy.
Unlike the McKinney campaign, who turns down even the debate opportunities offered to it and until they won the Green nomination, made no real effort to campaign and hung up on the media, the Nader campaign has been far more visible, organized better, put on bigger rallies, reached far more voters and worked more effectively to get the message of a non-corporate alternative to Obama/McCain.
How can one build anything on the foundations of a campaign that gaffes so often and can’t organize an event with a large turnout? Without votes, a credible campaign and visibility, how can you translate that into anything post-election?
The Nader campaign in 2004, despite having to spend 75% of its funds on defending its ballot lines, still appeared on more ballots than the Greens and outpolled them despite not being on ballots like CA’s. And the Nader 2004 campaign ended heavily in debt from legal challenges and still dealing with lingering lawsuits.
Lawsuits that have led to the overturns of out of state petitioners in Ohio and Arizona. Not to mention other lawsuits still in play elsewhere. That’s not “no lasting legacy”.
This time, the Nader campaign won’t end the campaign in debt and has already committed to continuing into 2009 and beyond.
Not only has Ralph committed to helping the CA Peace and Freedom Party expand into multiple states – running under their name in both Iowa and Utah as well and pledging to offer resources to help them run hard in the 2010 midterms.
His campaign has also made it clear that it will turn its attention to building a progressive Congress Watch organizations all over the country, continuing the fight for his candidacy’s goals.
Four years ago, Ralph didn’t have the resources and freedom to fully build upon his 2004 campaign. He does this year.
The Greens won’t gain much from the McKinney campaign. If anything they’ve lost. My state’s Green Party has already atrophied to the point that their state convention was held “online” for the first time. And it voted to dismantle the state organization and put it in a coma for the next two years, leaving only a caretaking committee to watch the bank accounts.
I predict the Greens won’t exist as a national party in four years. That we’ll be left with the same four of five serious state parties and the rest existing mostly on paper and in arguments over the internet.
I see no future in the Greens. And I’m getting sick of their oddly Freudian inferiority complex when it comes to Ralph Nader.