The Green Party's voting process of the electoral college that apportions electors to states based on their total populations rather than numbers of state Green Party members -- determined by the fearful technocratic faction of Medea Benjamins who cannot endure flaks from their Democratic friends and who need patronage of their Democratic benefactors for survival -- at its national convention was the antithesis of internal democracy, and that is why David Cobb and His Vice Presidential Candidate Who May Not Vote for Herself and Her Running Mate got nominated by the delegates (many of whom have few grassroots supporters in their respective states), even though they did not receive the majority of the popular votes in the Green primaries. <blockquote>Cobb won the party's presidential nomination by a narrow majority of the nearly 800 delegates voting at the convention . . .
Cobb won about 5,000 votes in the California Green Party primary, for less than 12 percent of the total. Fewer people than that voted for him in all of the other state caucuses and primaries combined leading up to the convention. Yet Cobb came to Milwaukee with nearly one-third of delegates already committed to him. Camejo, who won 33,000 votes in the California primary alone, had less than half the number of delegates that Cobb did.
Camejo says that he and Nader have support from a majority of Greens at the grassroots. (Alan Maass, "A Report from Milwaukee: Green Party Shifts Into Reverse," <em>CounterPunch</em>, <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/maass07012004.html">July 1, 2004</a>)</blockquote>It was arrogant and self-destructive of the Cobb/LaMarche faction to reject Camejo's offer of a unity resolution that would have endorsed both the Nader/Camejo and Cobb/LaMarche campaigns, leaving it up to state parties to decide which campaign would get their 23 ballot lines, since the Cobb/LaMarche faction lack grassroots Green supporters. As of today, only "138 have signed up" for the National Cobb in 2004 Meetup -- just 3.1% of Nader/Camejo supporters: <http://cobb2004.meetup.com/> and <http://nader2004.meetup.com/>. Why such a small number of supporters for Cobb/LaMarche? Probably because many of the Green delegates who voted for Cobb/LaMarche did so merely to keep Nader/Camejo off the Green ballot lines in favor of John Kerry, rather than to work on the Cobb/LaMarche campaign.
Nader and Camejo have far more rank-and-file supporters inside and outside the Green Party than Cobb and LaMarche, and Green leaders who have done the most for the Green Party -- Matt Gonzalez, Jason West, Ross Mirkarimi <http://www.rossforsupervisor.org/>, Donna Warren, and others -- support the Nader/Camejo campaign rather than the Cobb/LaMarche effort to help elect John Kerry.
It's Peter Miguel Camejo and his supporters who are the present and future of the Green Party. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>