Son Greens, what do you think of Ralph now?

[NWHarkness]

Washington Post:
A day after not getting the Green Party's endorsement for president, Ralph Nader brushed off the rejection as an inconvenience, described the party as "strange," called the party's national nominating convention "a cabal" and predicted who the big loser in its decision not to endorse him would be.

"The benefit was really for the Green Party," Nader said yesterday of what an endorsement of him would have meant. "I don't want to exaggerate it, so I'll just say massively more."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10480-2004Jun27.html

[LittleApple81]

1. So daughter Greens need not answer your post? n/t

[Wickerman]

3. I think the n just kinda crept into the post

:shrug: So, Greens...

[NWHarkness]

7. D'oh!

I use my spell checker, but I need a dopey typo checker!

[Justice]

2. Proof

That whatever Nader was, he no longer is.

It is all about him. Nader's attitude seems remarkably similar to the guy who is in the WH.

[AndyTiedye]

4. It's Obviously Senility in Nader's Case, What is Bush*'s Excuse?

[mzmolly]

5. Mr. Nader reveals himself for who he is more every day.

"If you're trying to build a political movement, you don't turn your backs on people who happen to live in so-called close states," Nader said. "Our plan is to get as many votes nationally as possible.

"We're campaigning all-out." ~ Ralph Nader

How does this statement mesh with the statement he made last week?

http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1972353

"Nader says he is running for the office as a way to steer the Democratic Party toward an agenda he advocates. The longtime consumer advocate wants would-be supporters to attend his rallies, but he says he wants them to feel free to cast their votes for Sen. John Kerry once they enter the voting booth -- especially in swing states where their vote might help defeat President Bush."

:wtf:

[mzmolly]

6. kick

:kick:

[Forkboy]

8. The Greens I know didn't like him to start with

:shrug:

[LoZoccolo]

9. He could have gone down as a guy who did a lot.

A consumer advocate, environmental activist, founded that Public Citizen organization...but now all this drama enters into it.

[robbedvoter]

10. But he is concerned about Michael Moore's ...health?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8713-2004Jun26.html
Tempers are hot in the capital over Michael Moore's anti-Bush production, "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- and not just in the White House. Now one of the filmmaker's old friends on the far left is accusing Moore of being . . . fat?

[LimpingLib]

11. I worry much more about our own party.

Now that the Greens are dead Id expect a sharp rightward drift for 2008 and beyond if not sooner.

I only hope that the short brief gasp of air faint shortlived (but never the less actualy present)daylight that progressives temporarily had enabled enough Michael Moores to shine long enough to influence our party and nation a bit longer.Sadly I know the flame is all but extinguished.


As a Democrat Im more pessimistic now than ever about our party and our nations future.Really sad. As the Reform party anLibertarians melted down it signaled the death of the right (far right , now we have a watered down right leaning media and institutions the nation over , socialy moderate and economicaly conservative/progressive ). Make no mistake what the death of the Green party means.

Better enjoy Kerry. Hes the most progressive or least conservative candidate we will probabilly ever have. And I hope the green chip on his shoulder stays till election day or he might even be taking advice to make a full charged sprint right.

[messiah]

12. Nice post I agree............

[PATRICK]

13. Third parties and the left

I wouldn't say the sapling Greens have died. They have not gone into nutso self contradictory dissipation like Perot's coalition of the libertarian disgruntled. They could thrive under a Democratic renaissance as other third party labels could not dream of. The structure and ideology of most third parties is self limiting and despairing of all but delusional influence upon the big parties(the fault of the more publicly exposed Nader).

I think this party has more solid credentials for health and growth than
the more truncated psychologies of other party options. They are a far cry above the Working Families Party which more generally and honestly is a mere voice for Labor's interest above the two dominant parties- not a real political entity in its own right.

It still could have a future. Nader does not.

But as to the general leaning of America. Yes, right wing extremism has become entrenched and emotionally sickly rooted. Centrism, as worldwide, has become a selfish sucker for the bullies. The far left has never been a logical force here as in most other nations, not coping with the nature of the society, its capital optimism and opportunity, foreign to the breakdown of the sense of the communal.
Elites? Great minds? Strong parties? You have to go to the Nazis and weirder to find people farther outside the mainstream and even those destructive maniacs probably have greater numbers of loyalists.

It should NOT be that way in a healthy society, no matter whether you agree with the far far away left or not. The branding of liberals or centrists or dissenters as far far far away left is absurd compared to the branding of the Right as Nazis. Absurd and perilous.

I would like to see Kerry not expressing his fighting accommodation with minority status and Reaganism(his grim past) as our future. it will take more than a great leader to effect this imbalance. The idea of a great leader, sadly is also royalist, individualistic and out of the fascist playbook. When that support(FDR) becomes history- so too the ideals of a common society that depended upon the champion.

[messiah]

14. The left is totally dead

in the face of fear the cowards faces where revealed. The outcome most be played out by the power in which they destroy themselves. There will be no other way out.

[PATRICK]

15. intellectual left

is traditionally weak and naive and unproductively long-suffering. The organized common folk rebelling against their oppression and victimization are the true force. THAT is where the real tragedy lies, in that fatness, evisceration, delusions of trust in the status quo and stripping of power. The left is sometimes relegated to those reacting against the status quo, not necessarily revolutionaries.

Yet Rousseau and "The Barber of Seville" precede the sudden collapse of monarchy at its most arrogant enthronement in the "Age of Reason" trying to pre-empt thought with the idea of "The Divine Right of Kings". That in an age less religious than any other!

This apogee of maniacal right wing triumphalism is preceding their fall, not the collapse of the perennial quizzical left wing intellectual.
The middle class, the educated, the disgruntled and the rational can and will coalesce(is now if we could see the future), hopefully in healthier fashion than has been historically the case.

[messiah]

The Democratic Party has destroyed the left

shifting the society more and more to the right. The next generation of left thinking individuals wont be left at all but center-right political play things for the elite. I am the common folk I can see less and less are invovled in politics no matter how bad the ruling class treats them. The common folk have learned not to pay attention to politics at all because they know it now will not make a "difference". That left has died and the right has won the battle.

[PATRICK]

18. Remember W J Bryant

The FOUR time loser in the centrist strategy against the Gilded Age GOP machine. He co-opted the nascent populist third party with his fatuous Cross of Gold speech, It took war and depression to make the the Dems choose a millionaire with a reform package. it too WWII for that package to get enacted. The fertile ground for progressivism among the disenchanted farmers and workers up to those points never pierced the central power of the corporate puppet show.

Think long view. The long sweeping success of the FDR New Deal never really dealt with its supplanted rivals or the inevitable breakdown and reversion of its passionate coalition. Progressive thought and issues were not so much dealt with as making centrist accommodations with the very enemies of people and progress and democracy. Holding power soothed away such underlying fault lines.

The power of the left was mainly the Unions struggling on their own to grow and survive. Labeled anarchists, communists...jailed, shot etc etc. They came to the centrist Democrats, not the other way around.

If this center, which is dangerously as mythical as the notion that this nation had much more than a coffee clutch intellectual left, cannot come up with a sharper world view and direction of its own the same cycles will endlessly repeat until the country is ruined.

In short order, as the world as a whole progresses in key ways besides the political, this soft modestly insulated, parochial and irresponsible general glue will fall apart. Crises, unfaced retrograde elites and simply the lies of history make the pretty simplicities and
collaboration with the criminal elements of world woe unsustainable.

The left, if any, should stop simply seeing their philosophical roots as reactionary antitheses to the moronic greed dragons. They do them too much respect to let this legitimized right/left, two sides of a fair argument myth go on. It isn't Yin/Yang though a chunk of humanity is too challenged for the challenges of the futures. There is only reason, wisdom, justice and shared responsibility and above all the truth. It is not left, right or center but life and death as human beings.

[LimpingLib]

19. LOL no I didnt follow the ancient US history much.

The only thing I know about WJB was that he was Secretary of State (or something like that)and then in disgust resigned over the Lusitania (or whatever that scheme was)fraud Wilson used to sucker us into war.I guess my opinion of him was kind of high due to that.
He was also a major player in some court room case over evolution. I dont remember the details at all.Movies came out that simply made up things he said in the case that were 100% opposite what he atualy said.


I love studying ancient history (and have the library to prove it)but find American history boring , usually it is a watered down whitewash by elite white historians.I never heard your version of history though its probabilly the true version.I just get sick of sifting through crap all the time.I dont have the energy to have to constantly fact check which is all I spend my time doing when I try and study anything about the annals of our nation.

Anyway Canadians just voted a solid 20% for partys of the left and though the amount of seats won was closer to 7%-8% they now hold the balance of power.They will demand and get many reforms for their nation that had the courage to support the movments.

Our balance of power which effected the major partys THIS TIME (the Greens and others) is sadly crumbling for another 16 year cycle. And we will never have anybody as smart, tough, and 24/7 devoted as Nader again.Ill see somebody like Nader and Chomsky on C-SPAN taking calls from idiots and I honestly blush at the idiocy they have to put up with from all sides (even those that agree with them).Face it, our nation is one of jerks and idiots. Though all the ones with smart genes are dying off (while the idiots reproduce like jack rabbits), there surely will be another Nader (as far as brain activity goes),however few, and the one fatal flaw OUR Nader made was devoting himself to a cause larger than himself his whole selfless life.He should have used his gift of genius to enrich himself and to hell with the rest of humanity.

The next Nader will do just that.

[PATRICK]

20. Not that ancient though

and the trajectory and progression and personalities are related to what is happening today since we are facing yet again a big business takeover of democracy and a morphing Democratic Party.

[no name no slogan]

16. Sorry, but the Greens are FAR from dead

In MN, there are several Green city council members in two of our five largest cities, and a strong grassroots organization, too. In fact, the Greens are one of our FOUR major parties in the state-- the other three being the Republicans, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), and the Independence Party (Jesse Ventura's party).

I know a number of Green party activists personally, and they are great people who care about their issues and their country. They also make great allies in combating Republicans, too.

Don't be too quick to write them off. They can make good allies when you need them.

[LimpingLib]

17. I was in hurry typing that in 2 seconds.Then splitting.

I said the meadia was "conservative/progressive" on economic issues. I meant to type "conservative/opressive" lol.

Not that it matters.