You may be surprised to learn that during the last presidential elections we sponsored one of the leading pro-Nader, pro-Green sites on the web. We called it Nader Watch and it was edited by an experienced, intelligent Naderite with impeccable political credentials. While it was part of the Bush Watch site, its editorial policy and all of its content was controlled by Doris, the Naderite. You might want to check it out at http://www.bushwatch.net/naderwatch.htm . We supported the site in spite of the inroads Nader was obviously making into the Gore popular vote lead. Our rationale was that Nader and the Greens had valid points to make and that it was only fair to represent them on our web site. At the same time, however, our Bush Watch editorial position, was anti-Nader and anti-Green, because we felt that Nader and the Greens could possibly tip the election to Bush. Unfortunately, the Repugs decided that Nader and the Greens were helping Bush win, created pro-Nader/anti-Gore ads, and paid to have them screened on key TV stations. Further, while Nader and the Greens promised not to focus on key states where Nader votes could eat into slim Gore leads, the closer we came to November, the more everyone realized that it was a hollow promise. This, of course, is just politics as usual, and neither Nader nor the Greens should be criticized for their use of the typical and traditional political survival skills, which, as we all know, includes lying, obfuscation, and distortion.

But, as in the WHO song, we won't get fooled again. For the last three months we've been getting Green letters in which we're told that progressives should work together to make the world better, but that the Nader Green progressives would not want to have a vote for the Dems on their consciences, because there's no difference between Gore and Bush. Given our previous experiences with the Greens, we see their argument as the hot air of politics as usual. Like both Bush and Gore, the Greens will say just about anything to win. The true Green position was rationally articulated when Tom Fusco, campaign manager for the Carter for governor campaign in Maine said in July at the Philly convention of the Green Party, "Our responsibility is to the Greens; the broader picture does not matter."

And that's just it, the broader picture does matter. With Bush at the helm of the most repressive and the most conservative government we have experienced in our lifetimes, I don't believe we can afford a Bush-controlled Congress in 2002 or another Bush term in 2004. Bush is taking our nation back to an ideological stone age and, if allowed to continue, we will be spiritually and politically devestated by 2008 and the Green Party will still be blaming it on the Dems with no end in sight. Face it, our political system is governed by a two-party system, splinter groups remain splinter groups, and the nation as a whole is growing more conservative, decade by decade, hence the more conservative New Dems (NDC). (I'm not at all pleased to be the bearer of such bad news, believe me.) Like the SDS in the Sixties, the Greens' only hope is for our nation to be so miserable, so devastated by having the most repressive, most conservative, least progressive major party in power that some kind of political revolution would ensue.

Don't count on it, not in our brain-washed, dumbed-down, media-controlled, repressive, greedy, corporate republic operating under the guise of supposedly democratic principles. When the common man begins to grumble, Bush promises another tax cut, tells a tasteless joke and smirks, or agrees to another half-measure reform that will never really be policed and the electorate goes back to its TV-induced slumber. Even now, with the extensive Repug corporate greed exposed for the social evil that it creates, the Hawkish electorate backs Bush by over 60%. This is the Repug battle plan created in its corporate offices and carried out by money-puppet Bush, and the Green Party's appeal to a union-fueled Progressive past of the last century is not nearly strong enough to cause a ripple in the Repug sea of ill-will, particularly since the traditional groupings of Progressive change, such as labor unions, are being systematically destroyed

We believe the first thing disgruntled voters would want to do is to get Bush and his Repugs off their backs, and voting for the Greens in 2004 will not do it. The Dems control the Senate by 1-one-1 vote and the Repugs contol the House by only 12 votes. There are enough Green candidates and Green voters out there in enough close races to tip the entire Congress to Bush in 2002, and the Greens are interested in one thing, according to their campaign managers, to have the Green Party win. The Greens are not interested in defeating Bush, and their letters to Bush Watch show it. The bottom line, then, is that a vote for the Greens on the national or state level is a vote for Bush. Do the math.How, then, is calling the obvious to our readers' attention an insult to Green voters, as a recent letter writer to Bush Watch suggested? If the truth hurts, do something about it, but don't blame the messenger. --Politex, July 27, 2002

Note: While I welcome letters in response to the above, I've read enough political rhetoric by the Greens to last me a lifetime, so please don't be redundant by discussing the last election as being the Dems' fault, the lack of difference between Bush and Gore, Dem corporate greed, attempts at diversity in the Green Party, or any other topic that does not discuss the matter at hand: how to stop Bush from getting control of Congress in 2002 and how to defeat Bush in 2004. To praphrase the Green manager noted above, my responsibility is to the bigger picture, not to the Green Party. --Politex

Greens Say Bush Is A One-Man National Emergency And It's Time To Vote Dem To Get Rid Of Him In 2004 , talbot | www.bushwatch.com 04.29.03 |related stories

Why A Green Vote Is A Bush Vote , politex | www.bushwatch.com 04.29.03 |related stories

Are "Overwelmingly White, Middle-Class, College-Educated Nader Voters" Willing To Let Poor And Minorities "Do The Dying" For Them? , taylor | www.bushwatch.com 04.29.03 |related stories

How The Greens Have Helped The Republicans Take The Center

by Robert E. Crawford

Regarding the struggle to persuade Green Party members that they should help save our country from the radical right wing, even at the expense of their political "purity," the only "purity" I see in Green Party politics is the sort which expresses itself as naivete and immaturity.

While Green voters may very well decry the corruption of "the system," and think themselves great cynics accordingly, they apparently believe at some deep level that "the system" still operates as it was represented in the old Norman Rockwell magazine covers. Good will prevail, they seem to think, if only the average Joe stands up at town meeting, clears his rusty public-speaking throat, and expresses his opinion of the issues in the simple language of the working man... then votes honestly for the candidate of his choice, rather than corrupting himself by engaging in the realpolitik of voting for the lesser of two evils.

The Rockwell vision is deeply attractive, but naive because it relies on unwarranted assumptions: first, that Joe's vote will be counted honestly; second, that the people Joe is voting for are telling Joe what their real agendas are if elected; third, that for all parties involved, the system itself is the most important thing--that advocates on the losing side, however disappointed, will peacefully accept the majority will rather than endanger the integrity of the system.

Any reasonably watchful citizen will recognize that none of Rockwell's assumptions are valid in present-day America. Joe's vote (if he's allowed to cast it) may only count if there's a high statistical probability that he's a conservative, especially in some of the more southerly states. Joe's access to information, unless he has the time, energy and inclination to pursue truth through the labyrinth of the internet, is tightly controlled by corporate-owned media--and Republican efforts to "focus on Iraq" and avoid the word "privatization" suggest that not all politicians are really telling Joe what they're planning to do if elected. And from the Supreme Court on down, conservative forces have been so very willing to corrupt the system for their own political ends in recent years that one has to wonder if the fix is in for the foreseeable future--if there is any real risk of a liberal victory on the horizon, how can conservatives justify destroying the checks and balances that will protect them in turn? The integrity of the system itself seems irrelevant to them, and the presence of George W. Bush in the White House is powerful evidence that this is so.

I support many Green policies and share much of their disappointment with the national Democratic Party. I could even support the Green Party itself, if it seemed to be pushing reforms that changed the ugly realities of the American "winner take all" system--such reforms as the Instant Runoff voting system being tried out in California, which allows voters to rank their preferences and ultimately compels a majority rather than a plurality to win office. A system of that sort would allow Green Party votes to be political statements rather than suicide notes--it would get attention on the left without giving the right a blank check. But I see little Green energy devoted to reforming the all-or-nothing electoral process. Instead, I see lots of energy devoted to splitting the far left away from the centrist left, which effectively leaves the field to the smaller but more unified right.

The theory seems to be that by "punishing" left-leaning moderates with defeat and allowing the right wing to run rampant, the Greens will force centrist politicians to the left--thus ushering in a new era of environmental sanity and fiscal fairness, or something. There are several problems with this theory, of course--the first and foremost being that it won't work.

It won't work because most Americans are pretty determined centrists. Democrats moved toward more centrist politics in the first place because the right wing successfully took control of national political dialogue--and Congress, by the way--in the mid-90's. Overtly left-leaning politicians, sneered at as "tax-and-spend liberals," were voted out of office in droves--not because America had become more right-wing, but because Republican propagandists had persuaded great numbers in the center that Democrats had wandered too far to the left. The Republicans had learned a winning strategy from Johnson-era Democrats--claim the center for themselves, regardless what their real intentions were, and demonize the opposition as extremists.

Does it work? Well, look at the 2000 presidential election. Al Gore, decried by the right as a dangerously extreme "leftist" and by the far left as "not left enough," got squeezed out between the two--and lost the White House to a right-wing influence merchant and ideologue who successfully presented himself as a centrist. At present, he is busily doing damage to the Green agenda that will take decades to undo if it ever IS undone.

Meanwhile, there's no indication at all that the Republican propaganda machine has lost either its momentum or its effectiveness. Despite the many grotesque failures of Republican policies where the GOP has won control--collapsing state infrastructures and economies, the wasting of the federal budget surplus, and so on--and despite the profound unpopularity of Republican policies when they're clearly and unequivocally expressed, that machine still produces enough confusion and disinformation to keep the centrist core of the electorate from pointing the finger of blame where it belongs.

Many a laid-off worker--slamming his underbuilt and overmarketed automobile over deteriorating streets, in order to get from his over-mortgaged home to the understaffed office that issues the unemployment checks he needs to pay his criminally inflated utility bills--still fervently believes it when Rush comes on the car radio and tells him that all his problems are caused by liberals. The reality is that when we've blown the last of the world's resources to heat our last few trillionaires' jacuzzis, the guys from the local Rush Room will stand weeping in the rubble of our civilization and spew curses against the stupid liberals and the stupid regulations--you know, the ones that stop them from cutting trees and burning gasoline, even though trees and gasoline don't exist any more. Meanwhile, they're just coherent enough to Spread the Word--a word carefully designed to make neo-conservative politics palatable to centrists who aren't actually wearing chains or starving to death just yet.

Do the Greens pour energy into counter-propaganda, to make sure our jobless, self-pitying, Rush-loving friend gets bombarded from both sides with the message "they're screwing you," rather than just from one side? Not at all--instead, they surrender the right and the middle ground and nibble at the left edges of the established Democratic voter base, hoping to lure a few more liberals into extremism, hoping to make themselves a "factor" that mainstream parties have to take into account.

Are they a factor? To be sure! They're the fondest delight and the private laughing stock of the Republican Guard--and the despair of liberal Democrats who know they're between a rock and a hard place at election time. If they ignore the Greens, they'll lose by the few percentage points the Greens pull away; if they accommodate the Greens, they'll lose by a landslide. In either case, they'll lose, and Republicans will win.

It's naive of Greens to imagine that any of this will change--that somehow their leverage play is going to result in anything other than total Republican control. It's naive to imagine that the Republicans are not going to make a serious grab for absolute power if it dangles close enough--or that they'll be willing to give that power up once they have it. They're well on their way now to controlling all mass media and all branches of government, even though they're a distinct minority of the population--do Greens really imagine the Republicans are such babes in the woods that they'd risk free, fair, and fully informed elections once they had uncontested power? Do they really imagine that once that power finds full expression, the moment will ever arrive at which everyone finally recognizes the corruption of the system and goes Green--or are they smart enough to realize expert misinformation and the burying of truth will keep that crystallizing moment from ever seeing the light of day?

To persist in naivete even after it's been clearly exposed as petulance is, of course, immature--and in this regard, the Greens could take a lesson from the Christian Right, which grew up politically after some hard lessons in the 80's and 90's. That party recognized long ago that its message was unpalatable to the vast majority of Americans--so they went to great lengths to disguise that message and to seek backdoor avenues for its realization. They recognized that as an independent voting block, they were only successful in drawing critical votes from Republicans, who were generally "not quite right enough," and awarding office to the liberals they despised--so they devoted their energy to quietly taking over the much larger party. Now they're arguably in control of America, even though their core message is no more palatable to most Americans than it ever was.