Re your specific suggestions, I don't think IRV is a good option. It retains -- in fact institutionalizes -- the focus on individual candidates as opposed to parties characteristic of American politics. Helpful if you are working for a high-profile protest candidate who is handicapped by "spoiler" conerns, not for buidling a third party on a long term basis.
Other concern is that if you're serious about local races, need to run on local issues -- not that your "Contract for America" would be a bad thing, but it's not enough.
Josh
----- Original Message ----- From: "Anders Schneiderman" <schneida at seiu.org> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 6:06 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Greens: National vs. State?
> The Nation had an interesting article about debates w/in the Green Party
> on 2004 election strategy (see below). After reading it, I've got a
> question for Green / Third Party folks on the list. In an election
> like 2004, where if Bush wins we are seriously screwed and where there's
> a clear difference between the likely Dem presidential candidates and
> Bush -- not on all issues, but on plenty -- why not focus on state-level
> races and skip the national race?
>
> A national race has one obvious advantage: it takes less work to get
> mainstream press coverage of issues you care about. But if that's the
> only serious reason to run, there are obvious ways around that problem.
> Just off the top of my head, here's two ways to get real press coverage:
>
> 1) In as many states as possible, run the same (or close to identical)
> statewide ballot initiative to change election laws to have Instant
> Runoff Voting or some other reform that would allow people to vote their
> conscience w/o helping get Republicans elected. The message would be,
> vote to survive (by beating Bush) this year and to have a real choice in
> the future.
>
> 2) In as many states as possible -- ideally, in at least most of the 15
> battleground states -- get a few Green state assembly candidates to run
> on the same platform,a detailed "Green Contract for America." As
> progressives have demonstrated in the last few years, it's possible to
> get real wins at the state level (e.g., living wage and smart growth
> campaigns). It wouldn't be that hard to come up with a solid platform
> that you could imagine actually enacting over 10-12 years of legislative
> fights and that clearly highlighted the difference between the main Dem
> candidate and the Greens.
>
> With either of these campaigns -- or if you were insanely ambitious,
> both of them -- it wouldn't be that hard to at least get serious local
> coverage and a decent amount of national coverage, assuming you had a
> real grassroots base, a smart MoveOn-style online campaign, and a sharp
> press strategy. Even if you didn't have a national candidate, running
> coordinated cross-state campaigns would put you on the national stage.
> If anything, you'd get coverage because no Left or Right third party in
> recent history has had it's act together to this extent.
>
> There must be something wrong with my argument, because at least to me
> this strategy seems head and shoulders over running yet another national
> candidate who you know can't win. This way, you get the coverage you're
> looking for, you've got a much better chance of building a party, and
> unlike another Nader whinefest, you could actually _win_ something! So
> what am I missing?
>
> In Solidarity,
> Anders Schneiderman, a life-long (Wellstone) Democrat
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031124&s=sifry
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ralph Redux?
>
> by MICAH L. SIFRY
>
> [from the November 24, 2003 issue]
>
> With a year to Election Day, Ralph Nader is quietly gearing up for his
> second serious bid for the presidency. Though he has been telling
> reporters that he won't make a decision about running until the end of
> the year, any day now he will announce the formation of a presidential
> exploratory committee, which will allow him to start raising money and
> hiring staff. A final decision to go ahead full throttle will probably
> wait until the winnowing of the Democratic primary field starts in
> February, as Nader genuinely likes progressive Ohio Congressman Dennis
> Kucinich and has been supporting his underdog presidential bid.
>
> In a recent interview, Nader rejected any suggestion that a 2004 run
> would be hobbled by the legacy of 2000, a startlingly stubborn assertion
> given how many people, including Democratic Party leaders, grassroots
> activists, labor and environmental honchos, and liberal pundits, blame
> him for costing Al Gore the election. He insists that voters he meets
> rarely raise the issue. In response, he tells people to read Jeffrey
> Toobin's Too Close to Call, which demonstrates in precise detail how
> Gore and his top advisers made a series of dumb and defeatist choices
> during the Florida recount showdown, spoiling their chances for a full
> and accurate vote tally.
>
> With a combination of irritation and amusement, Nader has watched Howard
> Dean adopt the style, if not the substance, of his 2000 campaign, no
> doubt aware that a Dean nomination would seriously hamper his ability to
> gain traction next spring and summer. While he recognizes that many Dean
> supporters may well have been Naderites in 2000, he calls Dean a "middle
> of the road" Democrat too friendly to corporate demands, and dismisses
> progressive enthusiasm for Dean's candidacy with this metaphor:
> "Everybody is starved. If you have a garden and if it rains, you're not
> excited, but if you're in the desert and it rains, you're delirious. But
> you know what rain in the desert produces? A mirage." Repeating an old
> refrain, he says it doesn't even matter if Dean is for real: "He can't
> deliver--he can be George McGovern on steroids, but when he gets into
> the corporate prison called the White House, he can't deliver."
>
> Given how Nader talks about the "corporate Democrats" and their failure
> to fight President Bush on everything from tax cuts and the Patriot Act
> to Enron and the Iraq war, the die seems cast for a rerun of his 2000
> campaign--except for one critical wrinkle. This time, there's real
> opposition to his running coming from within the Green Party, and the
> prospect of an internal primary battle that may hinder or conceivably
> block Nader from receiving the party's nomination or push him into
> running as an independent.
>
> "I don't think Ralph Nader should run again," says Elizabeth Horton
> Sheff, one of the party's slowly increasing number of African-American
> elected officials. Sheff, the majority leader of the Hartford,
> Connecticut, city council, adds, "Our message of grassroots inclusion
> did not get through with this candidate. His appeal is not broad enough
> to reach my community." (Indeed, Nader only got 1 percent of the
> African-American vote in 2000, compared with his 3 percent overall. Even
> in Democratic strongholds like Washington, DC, where Nader reached 5
> percent, he only got one in one hundred black votes.) Arguing that Nader
> reaches mainly progressive and middle-class whites, Sheff insists that
> the party doesn't even need a presidential candidate, concluding, "We
> should run someone only if they have a proven track record appealing to
> a cross section of America."
>
> Larry Barnett, a Green who is the former mayor of Sonoma, California,
> and a current member of its city council, calls any presidential bid "an
> ego-centered exercise in futility." He asserts that the party is making
> steady inroads in local electoral politics that can eventually sustain
> more serious campaigns for higher office. "In the meantime, wasting its
> time in races that are unwinnable only detracts from its message, its
> long-term goals and current accomplishments," he says. Art Goodtimes, a
> county commissioner in San Miguel, Colorado, who was elected as a
> Democrat in 1996, switched to Green in 1998 and won re-election with 69
> percent of the vote in 2000, strongly agrees: "If we're serious about
> advancing a national candidate, we have to begin to win at the local
> levels in numbers far exceeding the mere 175 or so local officials
> currently calling themselves Green."
>
> Other concerns are being raised by well-known Green activists who want
> the party to present a united front against Bush's re-election. At the
> party's national committee meeting in Washington this July, John
> Rensenbrink, one of its founders, spoke to me with pained intensity as
> he, to all effects, denounced Nader, whom he had vociferously backed in
> 2000, for toying with a 2004 run.
>
> "People...are very focused on stopping the right-wing cabal that has
> taken over the country. Therefore, the focus has to be on defeating
> Bush. Beyond that, the Green Party needs to project a sense of urgency
> around saving the country, saving the Constitution, saving the planet."
> Rensenbrink, the co-editor of Green Horizon Quarterly
> (www.green-horizon.org), a new and lively independent Green journal,
> added with a sigh, "There's a concern that we'll be deflected from that
> message because of the baggage Ralph Nader has from 2000. I doubt he can
> get over 1 percent of the vote. He'll have to spend a lot of time
> dealing with the 'spoiler' question, unfairly, but that's where it is.
> I'd add to that that he doesn't want to be a Green, he runs with his
> coterie rather than party organizers, he doesn't involve local Green
> leaders and he doesn't get the racial issue. I fear if Nader runs, he'll
> drag down every other Green in this country. I love him, but this is
> sheer practical politics."
>
> Harsh words, but they're matched by Robert McChesney, co-editor of
> Monthly Review, member of Nader's Citizen Works' Corporate Reform
> Commission, president of the professors' council of the US Campus Greens
> since 2001 and a leading media democracy activist. "I don't think Ralph
> should run," he e-mailed me a few weeks ago. "It would be bad for him
> personally; I doubt he would get half the number of votes he got in
> 2000. And it would be bad for the Greens.... Core elements of
> progressive constituencies, exactly the groups that the Greens need to
> build upon, will revolt with open contempt--far worse than 2000--to
> anything that helps keep Bush in office." McChesney concludes, "Running
> a presidential candidate in 2004 for the Greens is probably a quantum
> leap off a cliff. It is the Greens' Jonestown."
>
> This dispute has been roiling Green Party ranks for some time [see
> Ronnie Dugger, "Ralph, Don't Run," December 2, 2002]. In May,
> Rensenbrink and Tom Sevigny (then one of the party's five national
> co-chairs) circulated a memo proposing that the Greens run a vigorous,
> "home-grown" candidate for President, not Nader. This candidate would
> run with the intention of supporting the Democratic ticket if the race
> was very close, concentrating on "safe" states where Bush or a Democrat
> would be very likely to win and thus a Green effort would pose little
> risk of helping Bush. (Only seventeen states are generally considered to
> be "in play.") Greens would focus on a handful of Congressional races,
> with Nader running for Senate from Connecticut, his home state.
>
> This proposal prompted a strong counterstatement circulated by Ben
> Manski, a youthful firebrand who was Nader's Midwest field coordinator
> in 2000 and has been a party co-chair since 2001. Manski's manifesto,
> titled "2004 in Perspective: Green & Growing," rapidly gained the
> endorsement of more than 160 party activists, including at least ten
> elected officials. It starts with a restatement of the party's hopes to
> effect the political transformation of America. Recalling the corporate
> free-trade inclinations of the Clinton/Gore years, bipartisan support
> for intervention and empire, and unaddressed issues like global warming,
> "Green & Growing" asserts that the party is ready to aim for and achieve
> "realistic" goals as a genuine opposition to both major parties. And the
> manifesto insists that the 2004 presidential race "is vital for the
> Greens":
>
>
> It's the race which deals directly with national policy, and which
> defines for the voters the Greens as a real party.... A strong Green
> presidential ticket will provide voters with the means to confront the
> establishment parties for their disastrous economic, international,
> ecological, and social policies. A strong Green ticket will force the
> establishment to address the failures of the electoral system, and to
> choose between the implementation of reforms such as Instant Runoff
> Voting (IRV), and the continued loss of votes to the Greens. A strong
> Green ticket will bring nonvoters into the arena of electoral politics,
> and thus strengthen the overall movement for democracy in the United
> States.
>
>
>
> Dean Myerson, until October the Greens' national political coordinator
> and thus formally neutral in such arguments, disagrees--and, indeed,
> believes 2004 is the "most dangerous year" in the party's existence.
> "The best strategy to build the party," Myerson tells me, "is to not
> focus on states where we'll do poorly. Why should we hook ourselves to
> the Democrats' strategy and campaign against them? We should campaign in
> nonbattleground states and safe states. In medium-sized cities Nader
> will be on the front page--he'll actually get to talk about his issues
> and keep the focus there, not on his being a 'spoiler.'" Myerson insists
> that this is the year the party has to demonstrate its political
> maturity. "Many people just say to me, look at how the party grew in
> 2000; that's why we need to run again in '04. And I say, 'Lots of
> parties run presidential candidates and it doesn't help them grow.'"
>
> Right now, the Green debate over 2004 breaks into three distinct camps.
> There are those, a definite minority, who don't want the party to run
> any presidential candidate at all. There is another group, also a
> distinct minority, that backs Nader as the party's best spokesman and
> wants him to run an unconditional national campaign, though their
> motivations run from hard-core oppositionism to wanting to maximize
> their leverage in the event the race is close. The third group wants
> some version of a "safe states" strategy, and holds all shades of
> opinion as to whether Nader is the best candidate for it.
>
> Ross Mirkarimi, an investigator in the San Francisco district attorney's
> office, who ran Nader's 2000 California operation and has often
> functioned as the state party's media spokesperson, has perhaps the most
> nuanced view. "We can devise a campaign plan that can contribute to the
> unseating of Bush while building the Green Party," he argues, noting
> that "we may be shopping for popular votes while the Democrats are
> shopping for electoral votes." Choosing his words slowly, he insists,
> "Democrats need to drive carefully as to where Greens may go, and the
> Greens need to do the same thing. A mechanism may be needed, whether
> it's over the table or covert, a sort of red phone to avoid danger and
> exercise diplomacy" [see "The Democrat-Green Death Struggle," opposite].
> Is Nader capable of playing such a flexible role? "Ralph alone is not
> capable of acting in this manner," Mirkarimi says. "Ralph and a team and
> the party together are capable of devising such a strategy." Medea
> Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and the Greens' 2000 candidate
> for US Senate in California, agrees that it's hard to see Nader
> calibrating his message and strategy in this way on his own. "I worry
> about the reputation of the Greens," she told me. "I think we'd get less
> votes with Nader this time than last time." Benjamin wants the Greens to
> be players in the presidential election, but only if the overarching
> goal is beating Bush.
>
> The problem is that the Greens have no formal way to compel Nader to do
> anything he doesn't want to do. The party had little influence on his
> 2000 campaign strategy and hiring practices, a sore spot for many
> veteran Greens. Despite numerous requests, he never gave the national
> party his 2000 campaign donor list, claiming--incorrectly--that federal
> law prohibited such a contribution to the party. He only rented the list
> to the party three years after his run, when it was undoubtedly far less
> valuable. (In his defense, Nader always mentions the more than
> forty-four fundraisers he has attended on behalf of Green Party
> committees and candidates.)
>
> But politics abhors a vacuum, and among the Greens this debate is
> generating support for an insurgent named David Cobb, the party's
> general counsel and a hardworking activist who helped found the Texas
> Green Party in 1999. On the issues, there is little to distinguish Cobb
> from Nader--indeed, he dates his own political awakening to a speech
> Nader gave in 1996. But in launching his admittedly longshot attempt to
> get the party's presidential nod, Cobb has made a series of pledges that
> stand as an implicit rebuke and challenge to Nader--promising to share
> his volunteer lists with local and state party chapters, to freely share
> his donor lists with the party's national committee and to coordinate
> his hiring of staff with party affiliates. He has also stated that he
> will withdraw from the race if either Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton is
> the Democratic nominee, that he will run hard to prevent the election of
> a "corporate conservative" like Joe Lieberman and that otherwise he will
> follow a "strategic-states plan" focusing on states that are not "in
> play."
>
> Asked in early October about Cobb's candidacy, Nader's first response is
> that he won't have anything to say before he makes his own 2004
> decision. But after I describe Cobb's positions on Kucinich, Sharpton,
> Lieberman and "strategic states," he scoffs. "It sounds to me like
> political schizophrenia. You either run or you don't. You don't say to
> people in some states that we're going to ignore you." He also argues
> that the party shouldn't impose any kind of strategic constraints on its
> candidates. "No candidate will want to be bound by [having to avoid
> battleground states] and be told by the party that we don't want you to
> go into, say, Wisconsin. Imagine the major parties having that kind of
> restriction." Told that the Greens will defer any such decision until
> the party's national convention next June in Milwaukee, Nader says,
> "This shouldn't be delayed until June. They're not being fair to their
> candidates. They should have a meeting and come out with a policy."
> Almost as an afterthought he adds, "Assuming they can enforce it on
> their candidates." Nader has not ruled out leaving the Green fold and
> running as an independent. Nor is it inconceivable that he would file
> against Bush in some Republican primaries, and then try to switch to an
> independent line for the fall.
>
> "The top priority should be to defeat Bush," Nader insists. "Obviously,
> the Democrats are having trouble showing how they can do that." With
> palpable frustration, he cites the Democrats' failure to make more
> headway from the corporate scandals and their timidity in the face of
> Republican appeals to war fever and patriotism. Growing more animated,
> he declares, "The real issue for Democrats beating up on the Greens is,
> can the Democrats win without a third-party effort to launch the issues
> that the Democrats are too dense or cautious or too indentured to raise
> themselves, which they'll then pick up?" Arguing that some kinds of
> poison can make a body stronger, he insists, with a touch of his own
> schizophrenia, that a third-party push could cause the Democrats "to say
> and do things that would get them more votes than they would lose to the
> third-party candidate."
>
> If Nader and the Greens sound like they're contradicting themselves,
> it's because they're trying to bridge two conflicting goals: the
> long-term need for an independent political force and the short-term
> imperative of defeating Bush. In my opinion, 2004 is not 2000 and the
> "Gush-Bore" similarities I once wrote about don't apply now. I love
> Ralph and respect his legendary accomplishments and example, but another
> Nader run as a Green or independent without an explicit and binding
> agreement to concentrate on safe states would be a terrible mistake.
> Apart from risking the re-election of Bush, it would only hurt Nader.
> Barring an unforeseen shift in the contours of next year's election, he
> would do far worse than the 2.7 million votes he got in 2000. This is
> not his year.
>
> As for the Greens, as long as the two-party duopoly misrules America,
> third-party efforts will percolate and independent voters will
> proliferate. But that doesn't mean that a particular party like the
> Greens is fated to have a long life beyond the margins. If the party is
> to grow outside of the progressive venues where it already has a
> foothold, it has to control its strong taste for self-indulgent symbolic
> statements and focus on where its opportunities are greatest, in local
> races in the one-party cities and counties where many of America's most
> alienated and disenfranchised citizens live. Nader and the Greens made
> their point about Democratic decrepitude in 2000; now they should make
> their own demonstration of good judgment or face their own decline.
>
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