>But that isn't wisdom, it's unwisdom & the ticket to obscurity. Local
>contests (by themselves) are like a very light drizzle of rain on a sand
>dune. All the drops soak in and no channels for future drops are formed.
>Local contests only trigger energy if they are felt to be linked to a
>national struggle. The exception is when there is some seriously
>outrageous local condition, but that can best be met by a one-time local
>struggle within the local framework. It has no keeping power.
Well I wasn't thinking of anything but local contests linked to a national struggle (and hell, why not an international one?). It's about the Green Party, after all. State and local races present much lower, almost manageable, financial and organizational obstacles to an independent party. The usual lesser of two evil argument applies with much less force than when the office at stake is chief executive of the world bourgeoisie. It can even happen in a place like NYC, where we have a (Red-)Green running a plausible campaign for city council. You can win one now and then, which always helps morale, create a network of Green elected officials, develop an armamentarium of campaign strategies, etc. Beats the hell out of running chimerical presidential campaigns, which guarantee Stassen-like results. The ground-up strategy worked for the Swedish social dems, and for other social democratic parties around the world too I'm told.
Doug