Green Party Presidential Debate

The first, and so far only, Green Party Presidential Debate will take place in San Francisco on Sunday, January 13. The announcement has not yet, as far as I know, gone out to press but it has shown up on the Alameda County Green Party web site and has been posted (by someone) to the Third Party Watch site as of very early this AM.

Time: 2 PM

Venue: Herbst Theater/Veterans Memorial Bldg
401 Van Ness (opposite City Hall)
San Francisco

If this announcement is correct, it is mostly good news.

I knew that the effort to organize this debate was underway. The last I had heard was the Nader's participation had not yet been confirmed. I hope that the inclusion of his name on the Alameda County announcement means that he has agreed to participate. His name is on the ballot for the California Primary. It is my understanding that he will be in attendance. What he does here will tell us a lot about what his intentions are.

This debate will take place on Jan 13. Absentee ballots will already be in the mail. Some may already have voted. Personally, I will not vote until after this debate and, if Nader wants me to vote for him, he will have to participate in this debate on an equal bass with other candidates. The risk that one would run is that Nader might choose NOT to actively seek the nomination as a Green and then my vote would have been wasted.

You may note that there are two candidates on the national GP web site whose names are not included in this list. I am assured by the organizers that they were invited and either had conflicts (Kat) or have not yet responded (Jesse).

I cross posted this at Green Commons. Some of the emphasis might change as these posts will be geared toward questions surrounding the California Primary. The one thing that will not change is my belief that a credible Green Party candidate needs to be able to respond to questions on a wide range of issues: Global Warming, Health Care, Economics including tax policies, Iraq War and other foreign policy questions, immigration and trade policy. This must not become only a matter of "electability" or in Green Party terms, of how many new voters they can bring in to the party. We need to recognize that we can only build this party based on what our candidates stand for now, today and what they will do to make this a better America, continent, world.

To that end, I will later today be posting at California Greening, a list of questions that I would like to see be answered by our candidates as well as soliciting questions from others.