Posted on 06/06/2002 4:08:52 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
Ask any liberal to identify the force in American politics most intent on destroying progressive prospects and causes and you're sure to hear that it's the Bush administration or the Republican right or some such reactionary power. Let me gently suggest, however, that a very different force has wormed its way onto this list, and may indeed be right at the top: the Green Party.
There's something so very pure about the Greens' destructiveness. The Republican right, after all, isn't committed to stamping out liberalism purely as an end in itself; it is also a means to advance its own agenda of more power and wealth to the powerful and wealthy. When the Greens run a candidate against a Democrat, however, neither their campaign nor the effect of their campaign advances their agenda one whit. Their goal is simply to defeat Democrats, even the most liberal Democrats. Especially the most liberal Democrats.
Consider the appalling farce now unfolding in Minnesota, where the Greens recently endorsed a candidate to run against Paul Wellstone. As you may have heard, the two-term Democratic senator is in the race of his life against Republican challenger Norm Coleman, and many political handicappers think that this is the contest that will decide which party will control the next Senate. As you may also have heard, Wellstone is the most unflaggingly progressive member of the Senate, a dynamo who can be counted on not just to vote right, but to knock himself out for such otherwise unchampioned causes as single-payer health insurance and workers' rights in the third world. He was elected by an alliance of enviros, peaceniks, unionists, et. al., which he organized and has since nurtured into the only genuine statewide left-liberal grass-roots organization in the land. In short, Wellstone is the single most effective proponent of lower-case-g green politics in America.
All in all, a perfect target for the Green Party! When delegates arrived at their state convention last month, some wanted to teach Wellstone a lesson for having voted to authorize a military response to the 9-11 assault. Others were rankled that the Wellstone camp had endeavored mightily to keep them from running a candidate against him. (Da noive!) As a result, Green spokeswoman Holle Brian told The Progressive's Ruth Conniff, "People came to the convention with the goal of endorsing a candidate come hell or high water."
But they hadn't come to the convention with a candidate. Demand-side politics demanded one, however, so they nominated Ed "Eagle Man" McGaa. Eagle Man "was not familiar to a majority" of delegates, Brian Kaller, co-editor of the Greens' Minnesota newspaper, told Marc Cooper in the Los Angeles Times. "But there were at least some people from the Native American community who ... vouched for him. ... He is a member of a historically disenfranchised people. He's a feminist. And an environmentalist." What he's not, the Greens were to discover just after the convention, is an opponent of the war on terrorism. McGaa supports the Wellstone position on this question, though the Greens call this position the very basis of their challenge to Wellstone.
What could possibly explain this idiocy? Natural selection? Ever since Wellstone built the most vibrant left-leaning organization in the nation, any Minnesota progressive with the intellect to tie his shoes has been a Democrat -- leaving the Greens with the sandaled, the shoeless, and the slow. This could just be some Minnesota exceptionalism.
But it's not.
The race against Wellstone, in fact, is not an exception to Green strategy, but its quintessence. Already the Greens have tipped congressional races to the Republicans in Michigan and New Mexico, and there was that unfortunate outcome of the presidential race about 18 months ago. In fairness, Ralph Nader warned us then that even a Democrat who brilliantly advanced liberal causes would merit Green opposition. When asked at the June 2000 Green National Convention to name three things he liked about America, for instance, Nader listed Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman of California as thing number two. But when David Moberg of In These Times interviewed Nader that October, the candidate said that come 2002, he'd unhesitatingly back a Green against Waxman. Nader added, however, that the Greens would focus chiefly on the close races. Where the Democrats "are winning 51 [percent]-to-49 percent," he said, "we're going to go in and beat them with Green votes. They've got to lose people, whether they're good or bad."
Even Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold? Moberg asked. Even Paul Wellstone? "That's the burden they're going to have to pay for letting their party go astray," Nader answered. "It's too bad."
Indeed, and not just for Wellstone should he lose. Workers in Chinese labor camps, Africans dying of AIDS, homeless children on the streets of St. Paul would all pay a price for this piece of Green folly. But then the Greens have always believed that they are charting the true progressive course, no matter the damage they may do to the actual progressive cause.
Beware this party. At the heart of Green politics is a novel -- and ruthless -- ethic: The means justify the end.
I wouldn't worry about that. The chances of that happening is somewhere between nil and none. Remember, there are too many Demmycrats with the Cobra Carville attitude who can't help but spit venom when even the name of Nader is brought up. It even happened again last night on Crossfire.
Does anybody rememeber a certain motor-mouthed psychotic multmillionaire named Ross Perot, and his the election of a certain sleezy Arkansas disbarred lawyer (and his crooked attorney thunder thighed wife)?
Liberal totalitarians, like the loathsome author of the above diatribe, truly detest democracy.
Does anybody rememeber a certain motor-mouthed psychotic multmillionaire named Ross Perot, and his critical role in the election of a certain sleezy Arkansas disbarred lawyer (and his crooked attorney thunder thighed wife)?
Liberal totalitarians, like the loathsome author of the above diatribe, truly detest democracy.
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