3D Politics - Die Grünen

UPDATE: GERMAN GREENS GAIN IN ANOTHER STATE ELECTION -- Parties on the German left prevailed in a regional election in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday... Perhaps the biggest winner of the day was the Green Party, which won 8.5 percent of the vote, more than double the 3.4 percent it received in 2006. See("State Election Adds to Gains by Social Democrats in Germany", The New York Times, September 4, 2011)

The United States may be stuck on stupid with our ridiculous permanent presidential campaign between so-called conservative Republicans and so-called liberal Democrats, but everywhere else Green Parties are on the move. The Alliance 90/The Greens party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) in Germany is the world's strongest Green Party. Founded in 1980 and merging in 1993 with the civil rights movement Bündnis 90 of the former German Democratic Republic (a.k.a. East Germany), Greens have been represented in the German Bundestag for nearly thirty years. In our time of global crisis, even the old gray New York Times has at last grudgingly admitted that Greens are on the move in disparate countries like Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Colombia, and Sweden.


_{Screen shot from a web site for the German Greens}

I am reposting the article from the NYT because it is a perfect follow-up to my earlier post on 3D politics.

Published in The New York Times, September 1, 2011
Greens Gain in Germany, and the World Takes Notice
By Nicholas Kulish

BERLIN — A string of Green Party victories and strong electoral showings across Germany, from the conservative south to the port cities of the north, are helping to redefine politics among voters who are increasingly losing faith in the more established parties.

The Green Party is poised to extend its march into the mainstream on Sunday when voters go to the polls in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The Greens could, for the first time, win seats in the State Parliament and demonstrate their ability to sustain political momentum.

"Nothing in our political science books has prepared us for this kind of party," said Josef Joffe, publisher of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, who noted that the Greens have won the culture war on the left over the rusty Social Democrats on issues like gay rights and the integration of immigrants. "I bet if you had a party like this in America, all my rich friends on both coasts would vote for it."

Although their roots are on the left, the Greens are being increasingly embraced by voters on the right, successfully tapping into a German strain of conservationist conservatism by opposing highways and the demolition of old buildings. It has benefited both from the slow collapse of European socialism and the rising awareness of renewable technologies that have brought even once-skeptical businesspeople into the fold.

With this potent coalition of voters, the Greens surprised Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party when it took control of the affluent southern state of Baden-Württemberg this spring, which is akin to capturing the Texas statehouse. In the process, the party proved it was a force to be reckoned with in German politics, where one in five voters now say they support the Greens.

The German Greens also have served as the spearhead of a global coming out for other Green parties. In Brazil’s presidential election last year, the Green Party candidate won nearly 20 million votes to place third in the first round. The Green Party in Colombia was founded just two years ago, but in 2010 saw its candidate for president place second.

Britain’s House of Commons welcomed its first Green Party member after last year’s election, and Australia’s Greens won their first seat in the lower house in 2010. More significantly, the Greens hold nine out of 76 seats in the Australian Senate, giving the party a swing vote and powerful leverage over legislation in the upper house, where no party holds a majority.

The global surge has remained under the radar in the United States, for many reasons. In a system dominated by two parties, the Greens have no representatives in Congress or, for that matter, in a single state legislature. The party’s image and electoral success in the United States has been tightly bound to the ultimately doomed presidential bids of Ralph Nader rather than depending on the grass-roots methods used to build the Greens in Germany. The German Greens even have their own local chapter in Washington, and they have served as a model for their political cousins abroad.

Gustav Fridolin, one of two leaders of the Swedish Green Party, said he kept a poster from the German Greens’ 2009 parliamentary campaign in his office as inspiration. It reads, "Jobs, jobs, jobs: Only Green helps escape the crisis."

"That important step away from the idea of threatening jobs, threatening development, has been taken in Germany," Mr. Fridolin said in a recent interview. "The party is a more interesting alternative for larger groups in society, not just for people studying environmental policy at university."

The mass killings in Norway in July riveted attention on the strength of right-wing populist parties across Europe, but particularly in Scandinavia. Yet with far fewer headlines, the Green Party in Sweden won more votes in last year’s parliamentary election than the far-right Sweden Democrats, taking 7.3 percent of the vote compared with 5.7 percent for the nationalists.

In Germany, the question is now whether the Greens sustain, or even build, on their recent advances. The party was buoyed by outrage over the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, but it has fallen slightly in polls since. Still, the party could serve as a model for the postindustrial left in Europe and, perhaps, around the world.

It is a long way from the German party’s founding in 1980, when middle-class voters saw the Greens as radicals, heirs to the 1968 student protest movement or even the left-wing terrorists of the Red Army Faction. "People spat on my father when he went door to door," said Milena Oschmann, the daughter of leading party members in the city of Kiel, Germany. She now works for the party, splitting her time between Parliament and the local office in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood.

Ms. Oschmann, 27, described how the party had played host in Berlin to visiting Greens from Greece, Taiwan and Japan as well as Sweden and Australia. In her sports jacket and ballet slippers, a Sony Vaio laptop balanced on her knees during a local meeting in Neukölln, Ms. Oschmann would be right at home on Capitol Hill. She studied politics in Bremen, Germany, and in London before moving to Berlin, a representative of the new generation of Green politicians who have left the beard-and-sandals stereotype behind.

While the Fukushima disaster is often credited with helping the Greens’ surge in Germany, their initial jolt in support in Baden-Württemberg came from the party’s opposition to a multibillion-dollar rail project known as Stuttgart 21 that involved tearing down portions of an old station and downing hundreds of old trees. “They’re covering both sides of the street, serving the deep conservative instincts of Germany for no change,” said Mr. Joffe, the newspaper publisher. “Protecting nature, slowing down growth, slowing down industrialization, is actually a conservative agenda.”

In most reliable scientific opinion surveys, the Greens are polling around 20 percent of the vote, nearly twice the 10.7 percent of the votes they won in the 2009 parliamentary election.

"In former times I always said the Green Party is the party of dentists’ wives," said Reinhard Schlinkert, one of the most established political pollsters in Germany. "Now many of the dentists have started voting for them."

But polls are not votes, and opinions can be fickle. The Greens surprised the political establishment by polling ahead of the center-left Social Democrats in some surveys this past spring — and appeared poised to win the Berlin mayoral race, one of the top prizes of German politics. But as the nuclear crisis receded, attention turned to whether they had the personnel and policy credentials to govern a big state like Baden-Württemberg.

"Once you’re No. 1, you’re in charge of everything," Cem Özdemir, one of the party’s two national leaders, said in an interview recently, "and you’re held accountable."

More on Bündnis 90/Die Grünen:

A green political party in Germany, formed from the merger of the German Green Party and Alliance 90 in 1993. Its leaders are Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir. In the 2009 federal elections, the party won 10.7% of the votes and 68 out of 622 seats in the Bundestag.

January 13, 1980 - Foundation congress

In the 1970s, environmentalists and peace activists politically organised amongst thousands of action groups. The political party The Greens (German: Die Grünen) was founded January 13, 1980 in Karlsruhe to give this movement political and parliamentary representation. Opposition to pollution, use of nuclear power, NATO military action, and certain aspects of industrialised society were principal campaign issues. The Greens originated from civil initiatives, new social movements of the protests of 1968, but also from the conservative spectrum. Important figures in the first years were – among others – Joschka Fischer, Antje Vollmer, Petra Kelly, Rudi Dutschke, Undine von Blottnitz[1] and Herbert Gruhl.


_{Milena Oschmann, right, campaigned for the party last month in Berlin. She said Greens from Greece and Japan had visited to study the Germans' success.}


Four Pillars:

• Ecological wisdom
• Grassroots democracy
• Nonviolence
• Social justice

English Language Web Site:

http://www.gruene-bundestag.de/cms/english/rubrik/12/12034.english.html

What happens in a post Fukushima world?

I found two posts today that addressed the nuclear power situation and all of the considerations that arise after the Fukushima reactor failures in Japan. Let me change that wording, the human failures in dealing with a potential catastrophic technology.

Ralph Nader, whose OpEd I found thanks to a tweet from Marnie Glickman, writes very directly about the need to prevent another Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima situation. He does a very good job building an economic case against any more nuclear facilities, based on the costs will all be borne by the public either as rate payers or as tax payers, that that is slanted more to the latter.

He then goes on to list the things we need to do if one is planned for our back yard.

* 1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.


* 2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can't buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can't buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don't stay in business.


* 3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn't required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.


* 4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.

Nader provides a good good set of talking point for being anti-nuclear. He does not, however, deal with the fundamental problems that we need to resolve to eliminate the need or desire for engaging in such reckless search for solutions to problems that we may not even have.

For that, I had to turn to The Nuclear Syndrome posted by Lorna Salzman at another not mainstream media site. In fact, you have to scan down the page to find it. Salzman, like Nader who she once supported as a Green presidential candidate, has a long history of ecological activism and makes it clear that she knows just what is driving the nuclear renaissance in America.

Unless there is a clear, strong message from the American public that they are ready to cut their consumption by paying more for energy and supporting stringent mandatory energy efficiency standards, we will be outflanked by those who will raise the spectre of hardship and sacrifice if growth does not continue. If we do not reject growth, we are agreeing with them that any and all risks associated with nukes or oil or gas drilling are acceptable because these are just part of "progress", jobs and development. We need to cut to the chase: either we are willing to take the steps necessary to curtail energy use and growth, or we accede to the arguments of the nuclear power proponents. There is no other choice.

California Greens have a lot to think about. There are two major reactor site in the state: Diablo Canyon and San Onofre. There is a current effort to build a new energy park near Fresno that would be home to yet another nuclear installation. As I posted earlier, the Fresno Energy Group is actively trying to circumvent the California law that places a moratorium on new nuclear power plants until there is a solution for the problems of nuclear waste.

Are Greens going to limit themselves to being yet another, admittedly small, portion of a re-awakening anti-nuclear movement, following a path clearly laid out by Nader, or can we go beyond that with to push for a new, economic future that does not depend on tomorrows growth to pay for yesterday's excessive risk taking?

Nader outlines the actions that are necessary in any case. It is a clear way to slow down or stop future nuclear expansion. But the unique view that Greens bring to the table sounds much more like Salzman. Perpetual growth is a Ponzi scheme at best. Now is the time to stop what we have been doing and focus on a Green future.

Michael Moore: Begging Obama on Afghanistan

In 2004, Michael Moore and Bill Maher got on their knees on national television to beg Ralph Nader not to run for president again. Six years later, Mr. Moore is begging Democratic President Barack Obama *NOT* to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Behold the difference between Republicans and Democrats -- when Democrats are in power we get to beg on our knees facing the White House.

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. ...

Michael Mooere's "Open Letter to President Obama" is a good letter. It is also a sad letter. It is sad that in 2010 after eight years of war that such a letter is even necessary.


Posted on MichaelMoore.com, November 30, 2009
An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore
by Michael Moore

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?

Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.

We're counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Fundamental problems

The economy is in disarray. By any measure, this has been the worst year for the economy that most living Americans have experienced and it has not ended. While the government is trying to resuscitate the banking system, Whirlpool today announced that they were cutting ~5000 jobs because their products, the necessities of a good kitchen, just are not selling.

I will try to expand on this as part of my argument that Greens should be making the most of this situation, but are not. Click Read more! to get rest of the info.


It is easy, as Obama is wont to do, to blame this all on George W. Bush and the Republican Administration. McCain's running a messy campaign makes that easier. There is a connection between the current Republican administration and Congress, the raft of Grover Norquist funded libertarian leaning think tanks in Washington and the general idea that the market is more effective than government in creating what is good and the regulation only stands in the way of prosperity forever. Even Alan Greenspan operated on that premise from the time he first read Ayn Rand until the last couple of weeks.

Buried in this is the fact that Wall Street and the banking system had been turned into a bucket shop looking a lot like a NY OTB betting parlor. They would play a 'futures' game betting on the future price of a stock without actually owning it. By the early 1920's there were outlawed. This was just plain gambling and both state and federal laws prevented it until the year 2000. In that year, the Federal law was changed to allow what we have all heard of as credit default swaps.

Some explanations that I have heard of credit default swaps compares them to buying an insurance policy against losing your money. However, there was no regulation and you did not actually have to own the obligation (in this case mortgages) in order to get the insurance. That is rather like buying and selling insurance on your neighbor's house. Now, when the prices fell, everyone wanted to collect their money but it wasn't there to be collected. We now know why our grandfathers outlawed the practice.

As early as April of this year, the word was out. This should not have been a surprise.

The sacrosanct free market would supposedly regulate itself. The problem with that approach is that regulations are just rules. If there are no rules, the players can cheat; and cheat they have, with a gambler's addiction. In December 2007, the Bank for International Settlements reported derivative trades tallying in at $681 trillion - ten times the gross domestic product of all the countries in the world combined. Somebody is obviously bluffing about the money being brought to the game, and that realization has made for some very jittery markets.

So, we blame everything on Bush when this practice was signed in Federal law by Bill Clinton and he is no Republican. Better yet, the Federal law stipulated that no state could regulate the practice either.

Where does this have to do with Greens? It would seem to be a great time to go forward with an alternative. We know the problems, we should be telling everyone what will get us out of the mess, but we are not. We are not even making much of an effort to do so.

Greens have never come to any agreement on a set of fiscal policies. There Greens who are socialist, communists, anarchists or just generally convinced that big corporations are inherently evil. We need to be really clear about the alternative. We need to understand just what we mean by a Green Economy. It is not just, as Van Jones or Thomas Friedman (God, I hate put them in the same box) would have us believe: an economy based on global warming and energy, though that is part of it.

Even Ralph Nader comes off as being only an activist against some vaguely evil corporate state. His CounterPunch OpEd on the bailout outlines some steps to a remedy, but there are NOT based on any idea of what a Green Economics would really look like. It is only tweaking a broken system with any systemic modification. Still, that is more than I have seen from our leadership.

Republican have a Free Market ideology with a little bit of policing. Democrats have a different public ideology, but it looks a lot like the Republicans, only with more policing because they know that the Republicans are evil. Greens have no common understanding of either economic or fiscal policy and, for that reason, are not able to take advantage of the current turmoil to advance our cause.

Just look at the various committees that we have in the national party. None of them deal with economic or fiscal policies.

Bail out at 10,000

I tend to be a contrarian when it comes to politics. As for politicians, I am a pessimist and rarely pleasantly surprised. But there is a long list of things that most commentators are not talking about.


I did appreciate the analysis of the House vote offered by Chuck Todd on NBC's Nightly News.
According to Todd,the yes no vote depended on whether the Representative was in a close race, or had one recently. Those is safe districts voted aye. Those facing a challenge listened to their constituency's fears and voted "nae".

Beyond that, if there was a failure of leadership here, I think that started with Nancy Pelosi who could not make up her mind whether to blame everything on the Republicans for the last 50 years, or to urge more bi-partisan work. As usual, her timing was terrible. Cindy Sheehan should be all over this as it is a great opportunity to trash Pelosi.

I don't know whether having Nader in town helps or hurts on that question. He will also trash the plan but the focus will be on Ralph, not Cindy.

Almost every staffer in Washington in working double overtime trying to protect their bosses backside.

When I heard the Republican plan for an mortgage insurance.

House Republicans negotiated a section into the bill that would establish an insurance program for toxic assets. Instead of selling troubled mortgage-backed securities to the Treasury, banks could instead purchase insurance from the Treasury on the assets.

That still leaves the situation without regulation and the lack of regulation is very much what got us into this mess. What makes them think that the industry that found creative ways to leverage the risk will show any more risk aversion with an insurance policy to bail them out. That is even worse than the Paulsen plan.

With all of the fear and uncertainty in the market, someone should be asking the House Republicans, beginning with Mike Pence (IN), what they think about privatizing Social Security. That never made sense to me, even though the long range track of such assets is upward, life circumstances happen when they happen and don't ask permission from the market first. It was a fraud when it was suggested and it is clearly not something that they want to talk about now.

Thanks to Dave Roberts at Grist, I got around to reading Chalmers Johnson at The Nation. It is not normally on my reading list, but this is one of the best commentaries that I have read.

Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on present and future wars that have nothing to do with our national security is simply obscene. And yet Congress has been corrupted by the military-industrial complex into believing that by voting for more defense spending, they are supplying "jobs" for the economy. In fact, they are only diverting scarce resources from the desperately needed rebuilding of the American infrastructure and other crucial spending necessities into utterly wasteful munitions. If we cannot cut back our long-standing, ever-increasing military spending in a major way, then the bankruptcy of the United States is inevitable. As the current Wall Street meltdown has demonstrated, that is no longer an abstract possibility but a growing likelihood. We do not have much time left.

One last thought. My wife was talking to one of her old college friends today. Her friend does not pay much attention to the news. When Rumiko mentioned that the stock market was down 777 points yesterday, that caught her friends attention. "That's terrible. All of my income is from dividends and interest." When anti-capitalist leftist talk about the scuttling the bailout, they need, at the same time, to say exactly what they will do with all of the 401-K plans, the corporate and union pension funds, that just lost as much money as the bailout will cost. That is our money, some of it is my money, and I would hate to see it disappear for lack of intelligent action.

Ralph and Matt

I will give Nader and Gonzales credit for making their position clear regarding the Green Party Presidential nomination.

Message from Ralph Nader to the Greens and the Draft Nader Committee

March 8, 2008

Matt Gonzalez and I wish to restate that we are not seeking the Green Party nomination in 2008 at the Chicago convention.

At our news conference last week, I wished the Greens and their four Presidential candidates good luck, and indicated that progressive campaigns with good agendas and issues can run parallel and forward to help strengthen democracy and subordinate corporate power to the sovereignty of the people.

These issues include single payer health insurance, a negotiated, expeditious withdrawal from Iraq and Iraq's oil fields, an aggressive crackdown on corporate crime, fraud and abuse, vigorous diplomacy toward a two-state Palestine-Israel settlement, electoral and labor reforms, and opening up the Presidential debates.

The savings from reducing the bloated, wasteful, military budge and achieving international arms control, will help rebuild public works and services in our country.

For other initiatives illustrating how the Nader/Gonzalez campaign is on the opposite side of the political fence from the two dominant parties, see votenader.org.

I want to thank the Draft Nader Committee for their encouragement and expect that they and others disposed toward our candidacy, will pursue options either inside their Green Party or with our independent campaign.

On re-reading this, I think back to my original position regarding Nader, offered before the debate in San Francisco. Nader is a one dimensional candidate, railing against corporate greed as he has always done. At the time I posted my endorsement of Kent Mesplay, I noted this about Nader. He did not refer to any environmental issue. If you read the note above, he still does not mention the environment at all. It is as if the Unreasonable Man had never seen An Inconvenient Truth.

There may not be any greater moral issue today than dealing truthfully and justly with the implications of Global Warming. It seems as if Ralph and Matt are living on a different planet that I am.

Have we got the chutzpah?

Ralph Nader's decision not to run for president on the Green Party ticket seems to have paralyzed many of those who should see this as a major opportunity rather than a set back.

First, it is really necessary to keep this all in focus. On this issue, I think that Nader has done this better than his supporters within the Green Party... or his detractors for that matter. His focus is strictly on the problems that Bush and Co have brought to the USA... and the fact that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama offer anything substantially different. Even when confronted by the Audacity of Hope I find only another apologist for the same tired policies that have created this mess. I find myself asking what are these Presidential Qualities?

We have seen, once again, that the presidential race may come down to the nuclear option. I am old enough to remember having seen the famous "daisy" ad that Johnson used against Goldwater in 1964. It worked. So did Walter Mondale in his campaign for the nomination against Gary Hart in 1984. The San Francisco Chronicle seems to think that this is just politics and expects more of the same between now and the Democratic Convention.

As Greens, we need to think about what the current campaigns are telling us about the American Voter. For all the talk about "it is still the economy" it would seem that the ability to be Commander in Chief during a time of crisis is still a requirement for serious consideration by the voting public. It is the paradox of the Bush administration's entering into a perpetual war.

So far, I have not heard any our our Presidential Candidates take on this issue directly. If we really have an alternative, then it should be heard. If we really are the "peace party" then how do we bring it about? How do we move from protest to having policy credibility?

That is no different than trying to deal with our economic conditions (yes, still the economy). Like the Democrats, we chew around the edges of the problems but do not have the chutzpah to deal with them directly. In other words, what alternatives do we really offer?

Nader and the Greens

I have read a ton of email in the last two days concerning Ralph Nader's decision not to run for President of the US as a Green. The internal email lists of the Green Party have exhibited just about every emotional reaction that you can think of and a wide range of commentary about what should be done including some who want to change the party convention rules and give the nomination to Nader anyway.

In general, however, there are two concepts emerging that should be considered. One is that we need to run synergistic campaigns, Nader and the Greens against the duopoly. This seems to be playing off the comments that Nader made on C-SPAN: (emphasis mine)

Q: The caller said you ran on the Green party ticket. Why not run on the Green party ticket again?

NADER: Well, because I think Cynthia McKinney is running, and I think it would be wonderful for the Green Party to have an African-American woman. She was elected numerous times to the House of Representatives, and I think we need several progressive initiatives in this country.

Q: And that was the decision, to not run on the Green Party ticket because she announced?

NADER: Well, there are others as well. You know, the Green Party is only on twenty-one ballots, and we don't want to be distracted. We have to get on fifty - try to get on fifty state ballots. And the
Greens have their way of doing things, and we have our way of doing things.

The other manner of approaching this is to just go our separate ways. Paul Krumm, Green Party National Committee member from Kansas has argued that Greens are better off without Nader because his style of leadership is not compatible with GP values of Grassroots Democracy. His discussion is right out of Eric Hoffer.

Here is the problem as I see it.

1. Ralph has his own agenda. If anybody wants to join his agenda, that is ok with him. If not, he is not interested in working with them.
2. When you look at the kind of relationship this involves between leader and followers, it requires that followers follow the agenda of the leader, in this case Ralph.
3. Upon analysis, this shows Ralph to be a dictator, a benevolent dictator in this case, however a dictator in form and fact.
4. This kind of relationship is inimical to the ten key values of the Green party.
5. This leaves both us, and Ralph between a rock and a hard place. He is unwilling to join a democratic process, and we are left with joining with an actor who has a number of beliefs that agree with ours, but whose process sucks us into the same kind of relationship between leadership and the rest of society as the major parties.
6. Greens who have not grokked the difference in process in their own lives, have no clue as to the existence of this problem. but for those who have, it stands out like a sore thumb.
7. Nader supporters who do not see the difference in process, and see him as a potential leader for our movement are very impatient with those who see differently than they do. They want a leader, and to be followers in a movement. They don't see that what is needed is a movement where a charismatic fuhrer is not necessary, but where leadership comes in little bits from many sides.

my (Krumm's) conclusion: Those who want to support Ralph should join his movement, leave the Green Party, and do so. He is working for good ends, and needs your support. Those who see the inconsistency between Ralph's means and ends should go their way and continue working with and for the Green Party and its ten key values.

This is not an ideal solution, however it is the best that can be done under the present circumstances.

I don't fully agree with Paul. I don't see Nader's intent in the same light, though I see quite a bit of Hoffer's True Believer in those of his followers who refer to "Saint Ralph".
But, I do agree that we are best off putting all of our resources into being the best Green Party that there is. We need to become as adept at organizing as the major parties, especially the Obama campaign this year. To date we have put too much faith in our message and too little work into the organization.

Nader not running as a Green

Well, I guess I had better learn to read all of the stories and not just a few of them. I read the votenader.org report and stopped looking.
I have since see the evidence all over the place.

AP Story at nola.com said:

On Thursday, he said he would not be seeking the Green Party nomination, noting that the party has four announced candidates.

"We think that there is plenty of room in this country for parallel progressive candidates," he said.

Then thehill.com noted that

Nader said he would not seek the Green Party’s nomination this year.

Then, USA Today ran the same AP story as nola.com.

On Thursday, he said he would not be seeking the Green Party nomination, noting that the party has four announced candidates.

"We think that there is plenty of room in this country for parallel progressive candidates," he said.

It is going to be 2004 all over again.

Matt Gonzalez for VP?

Greens now have a real challenge. Ralph Nader has picked Matt Gonzalez to be his VP running mate. There are many who would like to see Ralph Nader as the nominee for the party. There are many others who are working just as hard to make that nominee be Cynthia McKinney. That battle is still being played out and many states have not made up their minds.

Having a recognized Green as a running mate might shut down the talk about whether Ralph truly wants the Green Party nomination, but I doubt it. Though you won't hear the words from McKinney's mouth, some of her supporters will surely play this off as just a political trick, just as Nader supporters rant on and on about McKinney's support of the Reconstruction Party in New Orleans and evidence of her trickery... even though McKinney is a registered to vote as a Green and Nader is not.

The biggest question about Nader has always been whether he is really running as a "Green" or if he is just trying to use the Green Party ballot access as an easy path toward expanding his coalition. Even in some states with an active Green Party, Nader appears to suggest using other methods to get on the ballot. The best example being up in Oregon. Nader's campaign site, votenader.org links to this blogged story in the Eugene Oregon Register Guard which suggests that he will use the Independent Party of Oregon (IPO) for ballot access.

I am told that the IPO was started by Nader supporters and that it very well could be that he appears on the ballot in Oregon with both parties, assuming that he wins the GP nomination. However, calling attention to one party without mention of the other could (and probably will) be construed as a put down of the one ignored.

Having Gonzalez as a running mate does other good things for Ralph. He should be having a full backing from the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, that might pick up some votes for Nader. I don't have any solid demographic information as to how important that might be. At least, MAPA has been showing Nader's photo on it's home page for several months.

Since the convention is not until late July, and with a many states not yet having their primaries, the Nader / McKinney competition for this nomination, especially with Nader's primary win in delegate rich California, may begin to be as contested as Clinton / Obama.

It is not what you say...

The Nader campaign is describing their launch Sunday in glowing terms.

We had a great launch yesterday.

Ralph Nader appeared on Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

Major media outlets throughout the world ran headlines about Ralph’s historic challenge to the corporations that dominate our society.

And the names, the volunteers, the money started to flow.

Now, we’re starting to build a national organization to get Ralph on the ballot so that together we can challenge the corporate political parties in this momentous election year.

There are 2 ways to view this. The Nader Team put the best spin that the can on it However, I have a feeling that these comments by Tom Tomorrow at This Modern World are accurate.

Nader’s critique of corporate power and its corrosive effect on American democracy is spot-on. But if the point of these third-party runs is to inject that critique into mainstream discourse — well, we’re way past the point of diminishing returns, and actually deep into some sort of anti-matter universe, in which information is literally sucked out of people’s brains at the first mention of his name. In the way that Dan Rather’s report on George Bush going AWOL turned into a discussion about Dan Rather, the only debate another Nader candidacy is going to inspire is a debate about Nader himself, and I just don’t see the point.

It is clearly evident that the print media is not paying much attention to what he is saying and doing. I could have written most of their stories before the announcement, they only had to get the right quotes from his talk because they had already made up their minds what the "story" would be before it happened.

In fact, the words used by the Nader Team just underscore that the media assumption was the correct characterization.

Major media outlets throughout the world ran headlines about Ralph’s historic challenge to the corporations that dominate our society.

As long as this is the sole basis for his candidacy, then the prognostication of so-called pundits like ABC's George Stephanopoulos, who characterized the day of announcement as the high point of Nader's campaign, will become the reality.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz subtitled his most recent book. "It's not what you say, it's what people hear." This is not a message that the American Public will hear in this election cycle. A Green Party candidate, or an Independent candidate running with this as their primary message, will not do well. Nader seems to understand that. He opened his comments on Meet the Press with the Health Care issue, arguing for Single Payer. Not a word was heard. A different story had already been written in everyone's minds.

If Nader is going to be successful, he has to find a way change the dynamics of the debate. It is rather like Clinton trying to deal with Obama. If she just goes along, Obama can just move along. If she goes really negative, then it makes her look bad and it legitimizes his stature as front runner. The situation is out of her control because Obama is a phenomenon

The same is true in Nader's campaign. The situation is out of Nader's control, or at least has been so far.

Welcome to the fray, Ralph.

Since I was so direct about Nader's potential campaign before, I need to update that right now.

To begin with, anyone reading the print stories of Nader's announcement who did not watch him with Tim Russert on Meet the Press this morning would not understand what he really said.

I had been worried that his campaign would be based solely on hist long held antagonism toward the excesses of Corporate American and the corporate influence in Washington. His announcement was really focused on a broader range of issues, like Health Care and Waste in the Pentagon and that pretty much persuaded me that he was not going to repeat the 2000 campaign.

Unfortunately what I heard was not what got reported. Most media, print or television, picked only those words that fit the two themes that already defined Nader in their minds: anti-corporate and spoiler. That is what got written about. Donna Smith of Reuters put it this way.

Nader called Washington "corporate occupied territory" that turns the government against the interests of the people. "In that context, I have decided to run for president," he said.

Some will blame the media for their overt prejudice. I think it is just lazy journalism and writing the story before listening to the speech.

There is still a lot of concern about whether or not he is running as Green. Note: he said that he is running for President, not running for the Green Party nomination for president. However, those who have supported he candidacy to date, especially here in California where he won over 60% of the vote in the Feb. 5 primary, are putting out the word that he would run as a Green in states where the Green Party has ballot access and work to get on the ballot in others.

What he failed to say was what he would do if Cynthia McKinney were to win the nomination and she has a big advantage in early campaigning. Would he continue his quest knowing that they would split the Green Party vote? We will probably have to wait until after the national convention to know the answer to that one.

BREAKING NEWS: Ralph Nader is In!

On Meet the Press this morning, Ralph Nader declared his candidacy.

If Ralph Nader is the nominee of the Green Party, I intend to support him 100% regardless of what slogans and hacks are being advertised and sold in million-dollar TV ads by the One-Corporate-Party-With-Two-Names.

Alex Walker
Los Angeles Greens

Ralph Nader On Meet the Press



Posted on America Online, February 24, 2008.
Ralph Nader Enters Presidential Race

WASHINGTON (Feb. 24) - Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will "shift the power from the few to the many."

Nader, 73, said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy. The consumer advocate also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly policies under the Bush administration that he said have left many lower- and middle-class people in debt.

"You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized and disrespected," he said. "You go from Iraq, to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."

"In that context, I have decided to run for president," Nader told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Nader also criticized Republican candidate John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for failing to support full Medicare for all or cracking down on Pentagon waste and a "bloated military budget. He blamed that on corporate lobbyists and special interests, which he said dominate Washington, D.C., and pledged in his third-party campaign to accept donations only from individuals.

"The issue is do they have the moral courage, do they have the fortitude to stand up to corporate powers and get things done for the American people," Nader said. "We have to shift the power from the few to the many."

Nader Exploratory Committee

In yesterday's post, I mentioned the fact that I see a campaign based primarily on a genuine distrust of Corporate Greed, Corporate Power, Corporate Control, the anti-corporate message. Yet, that is exactly what Nader is doing. It would appear from the web site of his Presidential Exploratory Committee that this is his only message.

Yet, if you go back to his 2004 campaign site, which is still up, you can see that he has positions on a wide range of issues. The question I would have of a Nader candidacy is "which Nader will we get?", the anti-corporate crusader or a newly energized Ralph Nader who would offer a future of unlimited promise.

Unfortunately, all I see is a one dimensional candidate when he has the ability to be much more. Sadly, also, even some of the news agency press coverage trivializes his serious intent.

He’s baaaacccckkk….Nader forms presidential exploratory committee

An Anti-Corporate Candidate?

I have no problem with Ralph Nader or any other candidate running as a Green. I truly believe, however, that a campaign based solely on the populist, anti-corporate message that we have long heard from Nader will not achieve much this year. I am worried that the rhetoric of the anti-corporate message will become the focus of his campaign, whether he intends that or not. The media will make it so.

Within the past several weeks there has been a major uproar over the question of whether Ralph Nader endorsed / did not endorse John Edwards. (He didn't, in case anyone is confused.) However, he did establish a linkage between the anti-corporate rhetoric of Edwards and his own actions for most of his career. It is worth noting that Edwards message did not resonate with enough of the Democratic primary / caucus participants to become a major factor, dropping to as low as 4% in Nevada and rarely over 20%, despite the fact that he has been campaigning very hard for a long time.

Authenticity Counts. I think that Edwards failed for two reasons. The first is that he never convinced a large number of Democrats that he was authentic. In a real sense, you have to BE the message that you deliver. The images of Edwards and his multi-hundred $ hair cuts and the opulent lifestyle of his mansion undercut the populist message. In many ways, his wife was a much more effective communicator that he was. There is strong evidence that this was also part of Kerry's failure in 2004. That moment when he accepted the 2004 nomination with the obviously contrived act of stepping forward, saluting and saying that he was "reporting for duty" created negative reactions when "test marketed" in a media savvy manner. (ref. "Words the Work" by Dr. F. Luntz) Authenticity counts.

Aspirations. The other failure in Edwards message is that it was not aspirational. It was all about the things that he was against, on our behalf, of course, but still, it failed to show what real vision he had for this country, where he would lead us. All that he could offer to close the deal was just about the same laundry list of policies as the other two except on climate change where he was clearly the strongest. In contrast, Obama is all about the vision thing and one might question the substance... but his campaign has been much more successful.

Lesson for us. Whoever wins the Green Party nomination must not fall into the trap that Edwards built for himself. A campaign that is only about the evils of corporate America and how they conspire to keep good people off the ballot is a campaign that will fail. Conversely, a campaign that is
about the power of a united people act on our own behalf, freeing us from the constraints the media consolidation that has silenced the voices of the public, making us owner of our own future. will re-establish Greens as a party with something to offer this country.

There is much the Green Party needs to accomplish. We must aspire to lead towards a new future. We need candidates who reach back to the core of their life experiences and find the path to that future. Authentiic. Aspirational.

Choose Your Future: Vote.

Green Party Presidential Debate

The 1st Green Party Presidential Debate has come and gone. It did not get much media attention. The only major print media coverage was in the San Francisco Chronicle.

In some ways, this was a refreshing example of what Grassroots activism is all about. The committee that put this together was just a group of Greens who thought this needed to be done and so they did it. Some, but not all, had positions in the party. All were dedicated to making this as good as they could make it. Score on for the Grassroots.

Still, in my opinion, the debate brought to the forefront some of the real problems that we have as a party.

Candidate Status: All political parties have a problem when candidates pull out of the race late in the game. One might ask what will happen to the voters in Iowa who cast a ballot for Richardson, Dodd or Biden are going to do and how any delegates they might have acquired will be voting at the Democratic Nominating Convention.

The Green Party has the same situation with Elaine Brown who pulled out too late to have her name removed from the ballot. But, we confounded that problem by including the name of Ralph Nader on the ballot. There is no indication that Nader is going to run. While I understand his hesitancy to participate in the debate as if he were running, it does the party no good if this continues right down to our own convention. I can see nothing good coming out of a situation where, going into the convention, Nader has not yet declared. That will be a repeat of 2004 and a disaster for the party.

The Green Party has very few primaries. Only a few states (California, Arkansas, Illinois, DC and ???) We depend on the State Parties to deliver delegate votes that represent the real preferences of their members. I hope this happens. Because if it does not, then it leave the door open for a continuation of the intercine warfare that has gone on since Milwaukee.

Only Ralph Nader can control this. It is up to him what happens. But, I personally will not be voting for a candidate on the hope that they run.


Narrow Focus: While we are scrambling for candidates, the question on farm policy opened up a failure for all of them. I don't think that any Green Candidate has a grasp of the range of policy issues that they need in order to win votes all across this land. The solutions are clear. Most are in our platform and those that are not will be in the national platform by the time the convention comes around. It is just not very high on the priority list for anyone, but it had better be if we want to continue growing the party in Illinois, in Iowa, in Minnesota.

I would include in this list the fact that environmental questions: those dealing with global warming and energy, were not very prominent in the debate. The Peak Oil question was not well thought out and combining it with the one of "what would be your first act" allowed McKinney to dodge it entirely.

The only response to the Peak Oil question video at YouTube was decidedly negative. "Looks like nobody here is really prepared...".

If we are to make headway as a party, we need to allow for no excuses in terms of being prepared. We have to be ready every time we open the door, or open our mouths.
At least, you could tell that Jesse Johnson and Kent Mesplay had thought through the issues and had something worth saying.


Celebrity Factor: Greens continually criticize the Republicrats and Democans for choosing candidates who do not represent the people, who do not have the right position on issues. Yet, when we come down to choosing our candidates, we do the same thing. So far, I have seen no sign that Cynthia McKinney has any better grasp on the issues than most of the other candidates do. So, we have to ask on what basis do those who support her candidacy make that decision. The rationale that I hear generally comes down to her national name recognition and her ability to articulate a contrarian message, to "speak the truth to power" as it were. It sounds much like that rational given by Democrats for choosing Obama over Clinton. I guess that we are not so different.

Conclusion: Given the seriousness with which I take the issues around Climate Change and energy, given the fact that Nader has not yet announced if he is running and still does not mention ecology issues in his latest "critique" of the duopoly and their platforms, given that Cynthia McKinney seems to think that buying pollution credits is a Green thing to do, I found not reason to discontinue my support for Kent Mesplay. He is the only candidate who is clearly articulate on the one issue that means the most to me.

Green Party Presidential Candidates Debate

A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE THAT MATTERS

SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2008 AT 2:00 PM

HERBST THEATRE

VETERANS MEMORIAL BUILDING

401 VAN NESS (Opposite City Hall)

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

(Public Transit: 3 blocks from Civic Center BART station, or by MUNI streetcar or bus)

(Parking available at Performing Arts Center Garage, 360 Grove St., 11 am to 7 pm, $12)

For More Details See Alameda County Greens Web Site At:
http://www.acgreens.org/debate

Debate Questions

With the Green Party Presidential Debate now scheduled for Jan 13 in San Francisco, I am interested in giving the organizing committee some input on the questions that we, the grassroots of this party, would like to have answered by our candidates.

This is not a time for cheap shots, trick questions that might have come from the mind of an Ann Coulter or a even of a nice guy like James Carville. These should be serious questions that I would want to see any Green Party candidate answering so that I know, when I vote, that they will be representing me.

I will start this off with three question of my own. They represent several of the top concerns from a recent poll of likely voters. I would really like to have them all but I am limiting myself to only 3 for now. I have already solicited some questions from a few others and had a response from a 2004 Green Party candidate, Lorna Salzman. So, I will also list her's here.

After that, I hope that you all will use the comment capability on this blog to register your own.

My Questions:

• There is no longer any doubt that the world is warming and the we are the cause. As Pogo said, We have met the enemy and they is us. As President, what steps would you take, what changes would you make in energy policy to reduce our contributions to Global Warming.
• Immigration, trade policies and agricultural are all linked together. Changing one affect the others. Is there a way to achieve a satisfactory solution to all three? If so, what is it?
• The effect of the Iraq war and the way that the current administration has pursued it's reckless war on terror, has lost America the moral standing that it once had. How would you restore this country's soul?

Lorna Salzman's questions:

• Will you work for a universal single payer health care system?
• Will you work for a carbon tax on fossil fuels?
• Will you work for a revival and expansion of a government-run, national passenger rail system, including a high-speed passenger rail line on the east coast?

That is two takes on the debate. What do you want to hear about?

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.

The Third Party Argument

The PBS showing of "An Unreasonable Man" kept Ralph Nader and the discussion of the "spoiler" issue in the spotlight. The opinion expressed by many in the film is that the Democratic Party tries everything it can to stifle dissent once they choose a candidate.

“When people say, ‘Why’d you do this in 2000?’ and so on,” Nader explains in AN UNREASONABLE MAN, “I’d say, ‘I’m a 20-year veteran of pursuing the folly of the least worst between the two parties.’ Because when you do that, you end up allowing them to both get worse every four years.”

(Note: PBS has an online poll on with the following question: "Ralph Nader's candidacy in 2000 is the reason that George W. Bush won the presidential election." As I write this, the poll responses are running 92% "No.")

Last week, Op Ed News specifically requested articles, Op Eds on the issue of ""progressive" Democrats not running in the primaries and taking on the "corporate" Democrats that they frequently castigate in other media... e.g. DailyKos, Calitics, etc.

California (now) Green, Martin Zehr responded Monday with something that was the same argument that Nader made in 2000 and which was repeated in An Unreasonable Man. This is that you can never pull the Democratic Party to the left unless they perceive that there will be a penalty (like losing a constituency) if they do not act. Zehr changes the question.

Why are progressives so marginalized in campaigns and fail to come forward with significant constituencies capable of making an impact?

Maybe because it fails to examine the unstated premises of the resolution: that the Democratic Party is capable of being the agent for change in America and that the progressive agenda is a vibrant trend that is capable of exercising influence in the political arena in the electoral process. Does this make me on the negative side of the resolution? I would have to say so. No debate can proceed without agreement on the definitions and I for one cannot agree either that the Democratic Party is capable of presenting significant policy changes and structural reforms before the American people or that the Democratic primary system and candidates lie at the root of the failure to redefine the opposition in a manner to make it more relevant to the American people. [my bold emphasis]

Zehr took a lot of words to say the obvious. Nader would have been more direct. The result would have been the same.