On Fri, 21 Jul 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >Trying to get 5% or 10% of the vote by a minor candidate is just a useless
> >attempt at a shortcut to that tougher day-to-day organizing. And 5% or
> >10% of the vote is no substitute to building a political movement that can
> >get 51% or better yet 60% or 70% support for our issues and our projected
> >leaders.
>
> Nathan, you're a master of false binaries! Who said voting for Nader
> was a substitute for organizing?
It is a direct substitute for working to build majorities through the Democratic primaries, a point I have stated twice, asking where were the Greens and Nader in the primaries. No matter how many times I ask about primaries, you invariably delete the sentence from your response to act as if I am just talking about general elections, as if pro-Dem strategies are just to suck-it-up and vote for whoever randomly gets the nomination. You were proposing using marginal third party votes to force the Dems to move left and I said it was no substitute for building the majorities needed to nominate our candidate and win a majority of general election votes for that nominee.
So my point is that IN THE ELECTORAL REALM third party organizing is not a substitute nor does it particularly faciliate building an electoral majority. Since it fails to do that, the net loss of its spoiler effects makes it a bad strategy.
Most Nader activists are activists
> in other realms, and he's running with a party that, for all its many
> faults, is trying to develop a real political alternative. In fact
> one of the reasons for voting for Ralph is to get the Greens some
> matching funds in future elections - to create a real party beyond
> Nader's celebrity.
This is exactly what's wrong with the whole strategy. Instead of doing real organizing to create a mass dues base that could fund campaigns based on accountable, membership money, the Greens want to leapfrog that hard work and have the government hand them a wad of money. It's like those folks who see getting foundation money as "grassroots" accountability.
The results are tragically predictable. If the Greens get this money, the next four years will see a free-fire as Workers World, Fulani's folks and every other kind of group descends on Green Party chapters to take it over. This will not build a unified organization but create massive recriminations and infighting - the inevitable result of fighting over externally supplied funds rather than organizing to attract grassroots support and money.
There is already plenty of grassroots-generated political funds going into electoral work, from union members and other progressive groups. It is just going overwhemingly into primary and general election campaigns for the benefit of Dem candidates. Dismayed ideologically by this fact, the Greens unable to generate or attract similar funds from actual progressive people has chosen to run a celebrity to get the federal government to goose their financial resources.
That is not organizing but crass opportunism. It is what makes the Green strategy this year least attractive.
And the result will be the equivalent of what Buchanan did to the Reform Party, only from the sectarian left (or maybe whatever we call Fulani at this point).
-- Nathan Newman