<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Green dropouts</title></head><body> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">Man, you guys are a bunch of whiners. If criticism from the likes of</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">me drove you out of the game - and I completely supported what you</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">did in NH, so I don't know how this even applies to me - then how you</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">going to take on the real power in this country? It took the Swedish</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">social democrats something like 40 years from their founding before</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">they won a significant electoral victory. And in their early days,</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">they worked with established liberal parties to push their agenda -</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">for decades. And Gonzalez got 47% of the vote, despite being</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">massively outspent. That's something to build on, not abandon. In</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">Sweden, 2/3 of the adult male population couldn't even vote in the</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">early 20th century, yet they persisted.</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000"><br></font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">This reaction pushes me very close to being convinced the Green Party</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Charcoal" color="#000000">(or Parties) is (or are) just not serious.</font></blockquote> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="+2" color="#000000"><br></font></div> <div><br></div> <div>I'm much happier going back to what I was doing before, I can assure you.</div> <div><br></div> <div>So, to be clear, I am not "whining;" that's your job when it comes to the Nader campaign. </div> <div><br></div> <div>Rather, our calculation was that our activism in the Greens would not pay dividends at this time given the forces arrayed against us. Of course, we might be wrong, and I hope we are wrong. I would love to be convinced otherwise.</div> <div><br></div> <div>In any case, you were among those forces opposing us now just as you would have been in opposition to all of those parties you mention and appear, disingenuously, to celebrate here.   Remember: party activism (not just ours but all forms of electoral activism) leads to "brain damage" according to you.</div> <div><br></div> <div>You should own up to and others should recognize the destructiveness of your attitudes.</div> <div><br></div> <div>John</div> <x-sigsep><pre>-- </pre></x-sigsep> </body> </html>