>And Nader's public pronouncements over the last three months have been
>wholly noble and just? On the contrary; Nader is playing the game to win,
>and that does mean getting dirty and maligning people who might have
>otherwise been his allies. Gore, in particular, seems to sympathize with
>the environmental movement, but he gets lumped with your local texas
>oilman. Winning for Nader is a 5% share of the popular vote, nothing
>more, nothing less, no matter who actually assumes the presidency, and
>he's obviously aiming for that.
>If the blame for a disastrous (or even mildly embarrassing) Bush fils
>presidency can be laid on Nader and the Greens, they will find it much
>more difficult to raise funds, gain volunteers from the general populace,
>and so on. While the true believers of the Green Party will remain, they
>can't elect a dogcatcher without appealing to the general populace.
Marco has nailed the pragmatic reality of the Nader campaign. It appeals to the true believers, while alienating everyone else - a disasterous strategy for any movement planning to try to build in the future and to expand. While a burgeoning movement does not have to gain the allegiance of the whole society in the beginning, deliberatly alienating the closest potential allies is disasterous over the longterm. Whatever goodwill the Greens had slowly been building at the local level has been squandered.
My suspicion is that local Green party candidates will soon find it extermely hard to win even the city council seats they won in recent years. The resignation of the Seattle city council members from the Green Party is probably just the beginning. Any campaign whose major result so far as been the resignation of some of the handful of the party's elected members should be a warning, but a warning I think few in the Greens will recognize until too late.
-- Nathan Newman