Oh knock it off Dan. The Greens or other progressive parties are here to stay and play a positive role. The dems and reps cannot be allowed to play their shell game forever. If democrats win in 2006 and 2008 there will not be any significant change espically in foreign policy. I guess it will take a President Hillary Clinton or President Gore starting anogther war befor you see the folly of throwing away votes on Democrats.
My money is going to support Aaron Dixon of the Green Party for US Senate in Washington. If Cantwell is voted out of office it is no big loss for progressives

That's right, Janet, because if the last six years have taught us anything—beside what idiots Green Party candidates and apologists are—it's that it really wouldn't make much difference if Dems controlled, oh, the Senate. Or the White House. Or some branch of the federal government. Just let the Rs run the show—no big loss to us, our democracy, women's rights, gay rights, immigrants rights, reproductive rights, etc.

Janet - you need help. you are delusional. what positive role to Greens play exactly (i'm asking you in the context of REALITY)? wait, i don't want to know. I don't want to engage you because you are a complete and utter MORON!

Why, God, why??????

I don't think Greens need to go bury themselves in hidey holes, but please. A truly progressive Green would never blithely accept huge sums from hostile Republican donors. Besides which, why doesn't Mr. Never-Been-a-Political-Candidate before run for city council, or perhaps the school board? I hear Pennsylvania is awash with wackjobs who favor the teaching of intelligent design in schools. Hate to see what their sex ed policies look like. In that kind of role, a Green might actually have a hope of instituting positive change, not just playing spoiler for kicks.

Greens for School Boards? All you have to do it is look at the Seattle School Board to see what that will do. No leadership, wacky policies and no vision for budgeting or the future of our children.

In my 17 years in politics in this area I have never seen the Greens do anything except ruin any real chance of progressive reform.

Like Annie, I'm most struck by Dan's
observation that this fellow and too
many other Green candidates run for high
office with no experience as an elected
official. As one who has voted Green
before, I'd agree that if a positive
contribution is to be made by this party
to the political process, some
ground-floor and grassroots level work
needs to take place first.

I would vote for Greens if they seemed even the tiniest bit interseted in building a viable third party.

Dan, the candidate you tried to give money to oppose Santorum is not a friend of women when it comes to reproductive choice. Just who much are you willing to subortinate to the cause of electing Democrats? The leading Democrat for 08 still supports the war and opposes gay marriage.

Also I am glad that The Stranger's influnce is very limited. Just what does calling somebody "asswipe" contribute to the discussion?

Oh my god Dan, i vote democrat but your attacks on the Green party are fucking stupid and narrow minded. Did it ever occur to you that the party of Lieberman (and name a dozen other very conservative democrats) does not represent the views of many liberal voters? I think a strong argument can be made that the longterm benefits of a real third party in this country out-weigh the short term cost of having a few bible thumping morons in office giving their party a bad name. I agree that in this particular race, the greens may be doing more to help Santorum then to further their own cause, but to dismiss the idea of a truly progressive 3rd party all together (and label it as a bunch of morons) makes YOU part of the problem and not the solution. The republicans are thrilled that our country has two parties, one conservative and the other VERY conservative, so by joining their chorus of condemning anyone slightly to the left of center as whack job you are doing their bidding. Congratulations on being a part of the movement to drag the political spectrum in this country further to the right. Pat yourself on the back and please don't bitch when future democrat politicians continue to trample on fundamental liberal values like not going to war for shits and giggles (thanks Maria) and re-defining traditional marriage (thanks Clinton) and so on. At the least a functioining green party does not allow democratic candidates to steer too far from their liberal base.

As I wrote in Savage Love...

Yes, yes: Bob Casey is opposed to abortion. But electing Casey will take out Rick “Frothy Mix” Santorum, a much more rabidly antichoice senator. Frothy Mix doesn’t think you should be able to choose masturbation, for crying out loud. Moreover, electing Casey could help Democrats take back the Senate, which will go a long way toward protecting choice, abortion rights, and other sexual freedoms—despite Casey’s stance on choice. Electing one or two pro-life Dems is the price we’re going to have to pay to put reliably pro-choice Dems in positions of power all over the Senate. So casting a vote for Casey, or sending a contribution to Casey, is a pragmatic, progressive, pro-choice bankshot.

And it looks like the pro-lifers are on to us:

https://papundit.wordpress.com/2006/06/29/dan-savage-at-the-village-voice-explains-why-electing-casey-would-hurt-the-pro-life-movement/

The problem with Greens is that they have no concept of the big picture. Politics is a game, and Greens deny that in favor of their own all-important self-image. But denying that means you lose; for example, it means you drill in the ANWR. So, Casey is pro-life. If the people of Penn. elected Santorum in the first place, then Casey is a moderate choice for them and could actually get elected. And he gives the Dems more numbers so they can vote to actually have hearings on whether or not the Bush admin. lied to the American people when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. See? Big picture!

This isn't a representative democracy. We vote for one winner. If 10% of the populace likes Greens, they'll always be screwed, until we get a truly represenative government, where 10% of legislators are Greens. As it stands, Greens will never be a viable third party.

But maybe the Dems can get it together and get some religious nut job to run for Senator and siphon votes away from Santorum. What's Ellen Craswell up to these days?

Like Randi Rhodes says: We can't afford the Green Party right now.

It is true. As with Ralph Nader when he ran for president, we like him, but cannot afford him. Since his presidential campaigns, Nader has done nothing to support Green candidates in state legislative or even Congressional elections. I would hope that someday a viable third party will enter the political process, but they need to start from the ground up.

Nader did help Cantwell beat Gorton in 2000. I doubt that many of the 103,000 people in WA state who voted for Ralph also voted for Slade.

Longball - your disclaimer... "I vote Democrat, but..." makes me think that if you want the people you are voting for to win (the democrats), then the Greens need to chill out on running for offices where all they do is help the Right winger win! - yes, a 3rd party someday would be great, but here and now, the real fight is happening in a totally different ring - the real fight is against people like Santorum and senators from Oklahoma. We need to get in touch with the rest of the country and find moderates we can all agree on.

Friends don't let Friends vote Green, especially when:

a. It does matter;

b. One vote or one seat may mean the difference between Nazi Germany in the US and a divided government which won't turn into a totalitarian state.

I would be happy to vote for Greens - or another third party - if they had any idea whatsoever about how to go about running for local office before running for Big Kahuna status. If they had any idea how to build a party structure from the ground up. If they had even the remotest clue about fundraising, doorbelling, canvassing, getting out the vote, etc., etc., etc.

I'll believe in a viable third party when I see one recruiting PCOs, having legislative district meetings, having county and state conventions, and getting candidates elected to city councils, fire commissioner seats, school boards, etc., BEFORE running for statewide or national offices.

Until they have PCOs in at least half of the precincts, the third parties will remain completely impotent.

Actually Audrey, I want the greens around to keep the democrats honest. Without the threat of actually losing progressive votes to a real liberal candidate, the democratic candidates will just pander to get votes right of center by abandoning traditional liberal values. The democrats are mostly a bunch of chameleons, changing their colors to match the climate they're in regardless of their values. If they feel like they have the liberal vote safely locked up they'll abandon issues like free speech, seperation of church and state, humane foreign policy and reproductive rights faster than you can blink, just to get more swing (moderately conservative) votes. That's why they are correctly labled as spineless toothless ninnys. The republicans can impeach a very popular president for getting a blow job, but the democrats don't even mention it when a very unpopular president is taking a crap on the law and wiping his ass with the constitution.

I can't imagine an artificial (propped up by conservatives) Green candidate in Santorumville is going to get a whole lot of votes to begin with. But in places where a green candidate gets on the ballot with genuine support the democrats need to stop crying about it and go out and reclaim their base. Dan and other's suggest those votes are going to the Greens because the voters are stupid, but i think it's also because the democrats have been completely useless.

First of all, the Republicans impeached Bill because of a blow job, yes. But how did they do it? Because they had the majority in congress and thus voted to impeach him! Let's try to get the Democrats the majority in congress, so they'll have the votes to impeach Bush on any number of issues. If they talk about impeaching him without the votes to carry it through, then they'll be further sidelining themselves in a congress that barely functions as is.

Second, the Democrats need to work on getting moderate voters, rather than fighting a Green candidate for extreme left voters. Democrats need to appeal to moderates in order to win. If they go too far left in fighting for Green voters, then even if they get those Green voters, they lose because the moderate/Independents went with the Republican.

We need to work with and not against the moderates, because the fact is that people in this country are in a conservative phase right now and their votes prove it, and nothing the Greens do in the way of running for the Senate will change that. On the local level, if a Green candidate has the support, and I mean real support, not Republican trickery support, then by all means, go for it.

The Greens are a bunch of shit-eating retards who can't do math. And, they can't raise money to get themselves on the ballot, which is why they TAKE MONEY FROM CONSERVATIVES.

Greens are big, big prostitutes, and they don't have the dignity to admit it.

please note the above Will is not me, but some other will. although it is a sin to take money from conservatives.

Greens are "progressive?"

What is "progressive" about Senator Rick Santorum? What is "progressive" about Senator Mike McGavick?

You're full of shit, Longball. Greens are not the "base." They are the fringe.

I stand with my brother in arms Greg Rodriguez on this one. All the Greens do is ruin any chance of reform.

We are trying to reclaim our country and cannot afford the politics of self-indulgence.

I would urge folks to Google Aaron Dixon and read all about him. If that's the best candidate the Greens can dig up in a city as progressive as Seattle, then their party is just as pathetic and irrelevent as I've long believed.

oh, come on, Dan, at least he had experience, being a Black Panther and all.

Aaron Dixon is the only candidate being paid to run for office by a political party.

I wonder where the Green Party of Seattel (and of WA) get their money? Republican donors who are looking for some useful idiots to swing elections?

Greens: How does it feel to take dirty money, Republican money? Qualms?

This is a classic example of why Democrats have failed to retake Congress or the White House. Get this, Green Party Supporters, if the Dems don't win, the Republicans do and we all lose.

This country really don't have time for anyone to work out all of their hopes and dreams about a viable third party until control of any government branch is taken from the Republicans and some semblance of checks and balances is restored. We're uncomfortably close to a totalitarian government as it now stands.

Bush the first lost because Republicans were split between he and Perot. Since then, the GOP has worked to do the same thing to as many Democratic candidates as possible using inexperienced Green Party candidates.

Y'all wank too much. Dems have won the popular vote in 3 of the past 4 Presidential elections. More people voted for Democratic Senators than Republican Senators in 2004. The future of the Democratic Party ain't all that dire. We can handle the Greens.

Why don't the Greens run as Dems?

In a winner take all system like the US, the Green Party candidates allow the right to divide and conquer the left. You need proportional representation and coalition building (e.g., like the rest of the Westernized world) for the Green Party to make a positive difference.

You can't be a true green and act in ways which undermine the party's commitment to social justice and sustainability, which is precisely what third-party challenges in the Federal election system do.

I love Green values, but in our system, GREEN = Getting Republicans Elected Every November

I'm tired of people calling greens "well intentioned." They aren't. They know full well that their work gets republicans in office. My theory is that deep down they are Republicans, in fact very conservative republicans but they are fashionably liberal. So they can look liberal and still get right-wing nut jobs in office.

Ahura: what about Ralph Nader? Do you really think that in his heart of hearts he's an R?

Lisa my dear:
I believe Nader is a sad confused old man. I don't think he is conservative but I do believe he's been manipulated by Green Harpies. It's like one of those scams where the old couple get's all their money taken away on a real estate venture, except in this case the scam is taking away his reputation.
Very sad. The Greens should go to jail for what they've done to Ralp Nader. What a great move by the R's. Pure Judo. Ruin an old confused big time lefty and win an election.
You Greens are sick, cruel bastards.

I voted for Nader. Notice my name isn't on this post.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

So OF COURSE it was hardcore Dems like Dan who are sabotaging the outside parties in this country by insisting they undercut efforts by the D's.

Let me ask you, Dan: if the Democratic party is so great, and has all the answers and blah blah blah, then why are people voting for 3rd party candidates?

Also, didn't an old oil tycoon named Ross Perot help siphon some rightwing votes in the 92 and 96 presidential election and help your boy Bill win those respective elections?

Seriously, though, if you look at the numbers, you see that the votes for Nader and his respective Green party candidates don't make much difference in their respective races. Your efforts to sabotage anyone who dare challenge the red-blue status quo have been validated.

So give the party line a rest, plz. Tell the Dems to field a candidate that isn't a sock puppet, and maybe Santorum's efforts won't matter.

"Seriously, though, if you look at the numbers, you see that the votes for Nader and his respective Green party candidates don't make much difference in their respective races."
If that's true then it appears that the real "sock puppets" are Green candidates.

Dan,

As far as getting help from the Santroum people, I don't like that either. But Pennsylvania required Santorum to gather 2,000 signatures to get on the ballot. Romanelli had to get 67,000. I can understand his jumping at the offer of help, even if the offeror was doing it as a cynical political ploy.

At the end of the day, Romanelli will be lucky to have the 100,000 people who signed his petitions vote for him. Casey is still going to win walking away (as long as Casey doesn't blow it). I don't think a Romanelli campaign is going to be a problem here.

A side benefit of having Romanelli around might be to move Casey a little to the left (which would be towards the Center for Casey).

You call Romanelli an amateur, and perhaps he is. It may indeed be true that he has never run for office before, but he is state chair of the Green Party, so he's got some familiarity with the political process. But, perhaps he is still an amateur.

But you also call him a liar.

I'd like to know what he has lied about.

I've followed this race from the beginning. I am pretty familiar with his issues statements and what he has said over the last year or so that he's been in this. I'm not aware of anything that he's lied about.

ABFS

Um, Ahura, I'm also referring to how many votes the Greens allegedly siphon from the Democrats.