ON BEING GREEN
and on the Blaming of Nader

An on-the-fly argument that I posted on Eschaton comments a couple of weeks ago:

An unapologetic Democrat-turned-Green's two cents worth (and I'm probably overlapping some previously mentioned comments; think of it as agreement rather than original thought):

First, the conservative stealth campaign to shift the ideology of the public discourse to the right that georgebob mentions actually began well before 1992. Read Alterman's words about Richard Mellon Scaife and others of his ilk in "What Liberal Media?"

Second, I've got three points that sum up my reasons for being Green (and lemme tell ya, it's not easy being green).

1. Assuming Nader gave Bush the election is to assume that everyone would have otherwise voted for Gore if they even would have voted at all. If I understand correctly, the Greens drew heavily on a disillusioned population made up of sporadic voters at best. Surely, many progressive Democrats crossed the lines to cast a "protest" vote, but, just as surely, some Democrats, myself included, have permanently left the party, believing that it is in its final days. The real questions here are in determining not only how badly Nader hurt the Democrats in actual numbers of "protest" votes, but also in determining how badly the Democrats have hurt themselves by driving away progressives. I don't really know that it's safe or fair to say that the Greens were, in fact, siphoning off significant numbers of voters from the Democrats.

2. Blaming Greens for Bush Triumphant reminds me of the sour grapes displayed by the pro-war demonstrators that spend more time and energy blasting their anti-war fellow citizens than they do blasting Saddam Hussein.

Just who is to blame here?

Let's just assume that everybody here first blames the conservatives; I'll move on to secondary blame. Instead of blaming Nader, who was the only candidate doing what he was supposed to do, that is, addressing issues (Nader was also the only candidate to have appeared on "Sesame Street" but that's another story), it's much more fair to blame the utterly ineffectual gang of Republican-enabling Democrats in the House and Senate. In short, they suck. Beside a very few ignored speeches, Democrats in Congress have seemingly not even attempted to play their role as the "loyal opposition." As a party, they are useless. Surely, they bear a great deal of the responsibility for this fine national mess we're in.

And I am expected to vote for this party? No way.

3. For years, people have been telling me, “Vote for the Democrat, or women will lose the right to choose,” or “Vote for the Democrat, so that the Republicans can’t screw the poor,” or “Vote for the Democrat, so that we can hold on to important environmental protection laws.”

I’m sick of and disgusted with voting my fears.

I’m going to vote my hopes from now on.

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