AngryDems.com

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 11:47 AM -0500 11/6/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
>I didn't say they caused last night's debacle, but the claim by Nader that
>his run would help shift politics to the left has not born fruit.
>
>If the loss of the Presidency had been matched by a counterbalancing shift
>to the left in Congress by Dem leadership, that might have arguably made the
>strategy worthwhile.   But it hasn't happened.  Maybe they could argue that
>an even larger Green vote is needed to accomplish this, but I just don't see
>the evidence.
>
>And the blunt fact is that having tipped an election to Bush and created the
>possibility of what we now have-- an undivided government under the control
>of the GOP in all three branches for the first time since the 1920s -- the
>Greens need a heck of a lot of evidence of countervailing gains to justify
>the strategy.
>
>I supported Green strategies in a moderate manner for a number of years
>until it became clear to me that they do more harm than good.  That may be
>"blaming" them, but so are my criticisms of the Dem leadership.  I'm not
>calling for defunding Nader's organizations as punishment, just asking Green
>advocates to explain what we gained from the 2000 electiond debacle.

Shifting electoral politics to the left may not mean that Democrats, 
Greens, and other left-wing Third-Party candidates will make 
simultaneous gains, although that, I suppose, is not impossible, if 
Greens and other Third Parties can register the silent majority and 
get them to vote.  By and large, however, Greens have been either 
unwilling to or incapable of moving the silent majority.  The 
problem, I believe, is that Greens are too nice, too white, and too 
middle-income, thus still literally and figuratively disconnected 
from the darker and poorer silent majority.

In any case, the Green Party or any other Third Party on the left 
can't hope to win without peeling at least a layer of the 
left-wingers who continue to vote for Dems (some of whom recently 
confessed their sins here) away from the Democratic Party.  For that 
to happen, more and more Dems will have to become mad as hell, not at 
Nader but at DP.  The sorry Democratic showings in 2000 and 2002 seem 
to me to be motivating more angry Dems to give up on DP.  The 
question is whether Greens or any other left-wing Third Party 
candidates can capitalize on such anger.  The results so far suggest 
that they have not been able to do so.
-- 
Yoshie

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