[lbo-talk] Green dropouts

[Doug Henwood]

Man, you guys are a bunch of whiners. If criticism from the likes of 
me drove you out of the game - and I completely supported what you 
did in NH, so I don't know how this even applies to me - then how you 
going to take on the real power in this country? It took the Swedish 
social democrats something like 40 years from their founding before 
they won a significant electoral victory. And in their early days, 
they worked with established liberal parties to push their agenda - 
for decades. And Gonzalez got 47% of the vote, despite being 
massively outspent. That's something to build on, not abandon. In 
Sweden, 2/3 of the adult male population couldn't even vote in the 
early 20th century, yet they persisted.

This reaction pushes me very close to being convinced the Green Party 
(or Parties) is (or are) just not serious.

Doug

John Halle wrote:


>>Which reminds me - several people have said they were unpersuaded by
>>John Halle's account of why he didn't run for re-election. Any
>>further thoughts, John?
>
>I have known about Matt's decision not to run again since January.
>
>My response is congratulations.
>
>The continual denigration of the Green Party achieved its goal which 
>was to create the widespread impression among potential supporters 
>that activism within the Green Party (or any other organized 
>electoral entity such as the Labor Party) leads, as you put it a 
>while back, to "brain damage."   As I wrote in my piece, Matt and I 
>were doing what we were doing based on the hope-though not the 
>expectation-that we might be contributing a "brick in the wall" for 
>the only kind of politics which, we believe, has the potential to 
>address the root causes of the problems we face.
>
>We began to recognize that we were not going to be successful in 
>this capacity partly because of the effective propagandizing of 
>people like yourself with access to the establishment progressive 
>media.  So we gave up.   We both got better things to do with our 
>lives. That's the long and short of it.
>
>So you won and we lost.  Whether everyone else also lost is a 
>question which others might want to do some thinking about.
>
>John
>
>P.S. I have yet to hear anything minimally intelligent from anyone 
>who was "unpersuaded" by my account of my experiences, whatever that 
>might mean.
>
>--
>
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