From: jmhm	Date: March 6th, 2003 01:16 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: False dichotomy

horse shit.

	From: tvleavitt	Date: March 8th, 2003 05:52 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Factually incorrect - Green Party is not involved in recall.

Fact: The Green Party's state Co-ordinating Committee meet to consider participation in the recall effort, and voted against becoming involved. Their spokesperson also indicated that, while the issue will be considered again in April, it is highly unlikely that they will change their mind.

While we all despise Davis, no Green Party folk are interested in being used to promote a right-wing agenda, and most of us feel that our energy will be better utilized elsewhere.

I sit on some of the internal Green Party mailing lists, where Camejo's comments, and the recall effort, have been widely discussed. I haven't seen any great enthusiasm for participation... in fact, the consensus is that, at best, this is an opportunity to push the Democrats to move our way on a few issues, by raising the specter of grassroots Green Party support for the recall.

***

Let's step back here a little bit:

How would the Green Party be able to support such a recall effort? Remember - we have no money, no real ability to generate widespread media coverage, very little formal infrastructure. The only way that the "leadership" of the Green Party would be able to effectively mobilize their constituents to support a recall effort (and the only way it would succeed) is if the vast majority of Greens and progressives in general, at the grassroots level, were not only supportive, but enthusiastic enough to put in substantial amounts of their own time, energy, and money into working on it. The Green Party leadership has no ability to simply snap their fingers and demand participation from party members.

Therefore, to be explicit:

If the Green Party made the choice to participate in the recall effort, it would only be because the vast majority of the activists and general membership were in favor of that... hundreds of thousands of individuals. This can hardly be construed as the isolated impulse of a few "spoilers", who can be safely exiled from the progressive community as a whole.

I'll repeat: it is a delusion on the party of whiny Democrats that the Green Party is driven by anything other than the desires and motivations of hundreds of thousands of average voters and grassroots activists, in and out of the party. Laura Wells and Peter Camejo didn't recieve 5% of the vote because of their rhetorical skills or stellar campaign tactics - they got their votes because they were the candidates of the Green Party (and the values it represents), first and foremost.

The leadership of the Green Party has almost no control over what the membership at the grassroots chooses to do, and it is my sense that they are significantly more pragmatic and conservative than their average voter.

Leaping on comments made by a single Green activist/candidate, that are in direct contradiction to what the official party leadership has decided, is irresponsible. If you want to smear the Green Party, go ahead, but it does nothing to build your credibility. Whose inner toddler is running the show in this scenario? I think the answer is obvious.

***

To return to the recall effort - no one is excited by the involvement of right-wing Republicans in this effort. On the other hand, a lot of progressive Democrats (who still make up the majority of progressives as a whole) are excited by the idea of being able to vote NO on Davis (along with a lot of Greens, as well) without having to risk directly electing a Republican by doing so. And they see little risk in having another election, given the success of the Democratic Party up and down the ticket in 2002, and the inability of the Republicans to get their act together or field credible candidates. That is the basis of interest in the recall effort, more than anything else.

I doubt much of anything will actually come of the impulse to participate, once people really look at the justifications being used by the right-wingers, and the difficulties of simulatenously pushing for a recall, while distancing oneself from the right-wing.

	From: jmhm	Date: March 8th, 2003 07:55 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: Factually incorrect - Green Party is not involved in recall.

Great. Maybe you can bring that nice progressive Mr. McGaa in to work on it.


Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, facing a recall threat from conservatives, may have to fight the battle on two fronts -- with former Green Party candidate for governor Peter Camejo saying he is "seriously" preparing to organize Democrats and independents in support of the recall and put his name on the ballot.

"I'm going to start getting ready . . . to put forward a candidate who can really win," Camejo said in an interview with The Chronicle.


Your national leader (who, parenthetically, arranged his campaign so that your party would receive neither a spot on the national ballot nor matching funds if he had gotten that 5%) campaigned exclusively in swing states in the final days of the election because, he said, it was a goal of his to defeat the Democratic candidate. Your local standard bearer is champing at the bit to make the Democratic governor, (who if this isn't a flyby you already know that I find noisome) who is the only thing standing between your state and being paved in asphalt by George W. Bush, spend the time between now and the '04 elections re-fighting an election he already won, taking the necessary funding for his campaign out of the pool of possible donations for candidates who actually have elections coming up.

There are two possible repercussions of such a move: either Davis will stay in office, in which case he will have spent a great deal of time and that could have been better spent fighting off and helping to defeat the President, or the Republican, with an enormous amount of national funding pouring in to try and unseat the Democrat who will control the polls in 'o4, will win.

These are the men you chose to represent you.

Apparently, since you appear to have some sympathy for this suicidally stupid beau geste, they represent you accurately.

If you feel a leaning towards the pyrrhic, kindly indulge it in some other way until that happy day when all three branches of government are not in the hands of someone who thinks they're doing God's work by helping to accelerate Armageddon.

As far as my progressive street cred is concerned, if it takes food out of the mouths of children to establish such a thing, you can keep it.