The candidate is....

The GPCA has had it's General Assembly in Riverside, decided on a list of candidates (Jared Ball, Elaine Brown, Jesse Johnson, Kent Mesplay, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, Kat Swift) to place on the primary ballot for California's early primary.

I was working on a post supporting one of those and the ground is changing under my feet. Cynthia McKinney has sent a letter to the national steering committee asking that her name be withdrawn from the ballot.

For many, this is not surprising. While some hoped that she would run, I always felt that her final decision would be to not run, to not leave the Democratic Party. After all, she is a politician and politicians want to position themselves to win elections.

McKinney's withdrawal provoked two interesting comments: one from Gregg Jocoy and another from Alex Walker. Both can be read here, as Alex cross posted his comments as a response to Gregg. Both are worth your reading. Both have a lot of practical political insight.

Gregg made the following comment about a letter from California's Mike Feinstein.

Mike Feinstein wrote a long missive to the national Green Party, and no, I don't have a copy, in which he says that the California Green Party must address the problem of inability to cross the electoral threshold in partisan races. It's not the inability to win a congressional seat that has him concerned, but our inability to win county council, state legislative, judicial and other seats which are partisan. I'm not sure which seats are partisan, but those listed often are.

Having never seen that letter, I would hope that it contains some practical insight as to how we can manage to get this done.

Still, this is post is about the presidential candidates and I offer the following opinion. All of our candidates are anti-war. That is a given. We need to find those candidates who can best articulate the other problems we will be facing:
economic, environmental, social.

In my opinion, from the list of candidates that the GPCA will place on the ballot, there is no one candidate who can do that, not even Nader. I think that is is very important to have someone who can address the economic and social problems of the urban population. It is equally important to have a candidate who can talk about the environment, global warming and all that this entails.

From what I have gleaned from the videos of the Reading, PA Candidates Forum, this comes down to Jared Ball and Kent Mesplay from among those who are "home grown" Green Party candidates.

Will Nader run as a Green again? Until he says "yes" I will have to assume that the answer is "no".