I voted for Nader in 2000, in part because denying Al Gore one Massachusetts vote wasn't going to swing anything, and in part because I wanted to help the Greens keep their ballot line in Massachusetts. I voted for Kerry this year, even though it was even more obvious that he didn't need my vote. And it's not that the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow platform is bad--it's chock full of great ideas
Here's a microcosm of what's knackered about the Greens in Massachusetts. In 2002, they ran for three of the statewide offices (and got enough of the vote in each to keep their ballot lines). Of the 200 seats for the legislature, they contested exactly five of them. In one, the Green, Paul Lachelier, was the only challenger to a sitting and fairly calcified state rep, Tim Toomey: Lachelier pulled 37% of the vote. (http://www.green-rainbow.org/Elections/2002)
In June 2003, the Candidate Development and Legal Committee (http://www.green-rainbow.org/Committees/ Candidate_Development_Legal/Activities/2004/campaign_plan/2004plan.html) developed goals for the 2004 election and beyond. Among the key ideas were not to contest any of the Congressional races, but instead to run for 40 seats in the state House and 6 seats in the state Senate. The actual result of those efforts? Four contested seats in the House and one in the Senate--and one of the candidates was the erstwhile candidate for governor, so the net recruitment was a loss of one candidate. (http://www.green-rainbow.org/Elections/2004/candidates/local_index/view)
Further, progressive Democrats noticed what the Greens didn't--they ran a good candidate, Avi Green, who won 46% of the votes against Toomey in the primary (http://www.avigreen.org/StateRep/). The Greens, who had a good result in 2002 picking on entrenched incumbents, did nothing of the sort in 2004--even though the conservative Speaker of the House, Tom Finneran, was becoming a political liability, and many House Democrats had paid fealty to him for more than a little too long. Finneran has announced his impending resignation, and his successor, Salvatore DiMasi, promises to be a more liberal replacement--the Greens may have missed their chance.
All this would be fine if the Greens were working on a local level toward some of their other goals, notably instant runoff voting. but even there, the Greens talk a good game and don;t deliver. Massachusetts cities can include IRV by changing their city charters, but only Cambridge has done so, and the Greens appear to be doing nothing to convince other cities to join up.
From what I can tell, the Massachusetts Greens are moribund. And if they're moribund here, I can't see them doing much better anywhere else.
Cobb and LaMarche received 0.39% of the presidential votes (the Greens needed 3% to keep their party status), and the party fell over 75% short of the 40,000 members needed to keep party status based on membership. For all of its obvious faults, the Democratic Party seems to be more ripe for progressive and leftist politics than the Greens. Perhaps the lack of national organization puts too much of a structural burden on the state parties.
(While everyone was flaming each other about Barack Obama a few days ago, I waited in vain for anyone to start talking about why Canada has a left-leaning [as in belonging to the Socialist International] party, the NDP, with actual power [as in running two provinces and holding seats in Parliament], but not the United States. Interestingly enough, the Canadian Greens are led by a fellow who claims to be a conservative environmentalist--now there's yet another way for the Greens to stay out of the legislature.)
--tim francis-wright I remember now, I remember now, why they call it Thunderbird. --TMBG