Stein clinches nomination with big wins in California, Michigan, Florida, Iowa

How come... (0.00 / 0)

The champions of working people are, uh, never working people themselves?

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by: michael horan @ Fri Jun 08, 2012 at 18:34:51 PM UTC

because working people have to worry about... (0.00 / 0)

survival, making ends meet, and the endless amount of curveballs thrown in your general direction...

And because the only other circumstance that could make things otherwise is an incredibly well-organized grassroots force that could put its resources into nurturing, supporting and fielding working-class candidates. That, or changes to our political system that make it more open to regular Janes throwing their hats in. I'd say the former won't happen until you've got the latter, but I don't see any signs of either of these things on the horizon.

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by: eli_beckerman @ Fri Jun 08, 2012 at 22:44:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

no diff between the two parties is true enough--for some folks (0.00 / 0)

I DO think it's important that we identify and run people who actually have skin in the game. It's very easy to run against Democrats if you don't have kids (i'm thinking in terms of available funding for post-secodnary education, and keeping teachers on the payroll, and the health insurance reform whic has been a veritable godsend to my family) or don't ever  have to worry about collecting unemployment compensation, or EBT, or etc. I still very much share the Green critique, across the board; in many ways, more than ever. But I've learned, over the past few years, the degree to which I really need Democrats to hold the line--poorly as they often do, they do--and that's a fact.

It's easy to call this "politics of fear"--especially when YOU don't have anything to fear, which, alas, would seem to sum up this candidate's position in life. Dr Stein can honestly say that "there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans" because her life really won't much change much no matter who's in power. Mine sure as hell will, and when she campaigns in MA, I'm looking forward to the chance to stand up and make that distinction vibrantly clear. That's what I mean about some skin in the game.

Incidentally, Democrats do run a great many candidates who do hold full-time jobs, and many of whom do in fact have the same worries and fears I do. Which is not to say that you that can run for major office while doing the same; I just watched Marisa try that. YOu do need to be able to take some time off. I guess I'd just like to see some signs of struggle, of trying to figure out you're going to pay the damn bills, some dirt under the fingernails, some sweat when the rent is due, along with some experience in retail and business and maybe on the assembly line or the farm--or even, as per Marisa, sixty hours weeks defending the week among us in the jungle that is the immigration courts. .    

But your other point is more significant. I couldn't agree more. I'm starting to assemble an ad hoc group that will identify ardently progressive candidates early on--no matter what their party affiliation (independent would in fact be best): QUALIFIED candidates in districts where they'd stand at least a real shot--no symbolic runs, no children's crusades, no feel-good stuff, no spoilers--and to commit to working with them early--in other words, they'd have the equivalent of a ready-made staff of folks representing different parties, and who possess some understanding of campaigns and the landscape, to at least get the ball rolling.

You'd be surprised--or maybe not--at how many truly disgruntled Democrats are out there. They're not going to flock to the Greens for what I hope are obvious reasons--that's simply a dead issue. Whatever the value of the Green Party may be, it's not going to be imperative. Many, for reasons of their own, aren't going to abandon the Democratic Party, either--like a lotta Greens, their identities are all wrapped up in it--I don't much cotton to that myself, but there it is. But they ARE open to alternatives. Not all, not even enough, yet, but enough that combined with Greens that are also willing to cross party lines, with progressive independents, and that vast, seething mass of folks who are passionate about change but who feel utterly disenfranchised and disgusted by electoral politics in general-well, we might get somewhere.

Might. There's nothing especially novel about this, except that I intend for it to be determinedly pragmatic.

So that's where I'm at. A post-partisan politics. Without moving in that direction, it's you and I and others, who basically want the same thing, jeering at each others, Greens mocking my hypocrisy, me mocking your ineptitude and candidates, Occupy laughing at both of us for being so foolish as to think politics can ever change a damn thing. But it's like pulling teeth to get folks to see beyond their own identity politics.

But you did it,in publicly supporting Marisa, as green a Dem as you'll find (unfortunately, her campaign was in many ways redolent of Green campaigns). And if you guys ran a good Green in my district, I might well do the same (I can't support the POTUS run for--well, the list is is as long as my arm).

What I do know is that the Democrats are absolutely vital to holding the line, but that to expect anything remotely resembling "change," or even a tacit acknowledgement of the systemic failures we are and decidely will face, is ludicrous. That the Greens are a top-heavy group with a far too sentimental attachment to old thinking and failed ways of proceeding, far too controlled, in this state, anyway, by a cadre whose leadership resume is nothing but a litany of failure (and recent emails I've been copied on--silly Greens!--demonstrates how pathetically true that remains). Occupy is utterly uninterested in power. Etc.  

Pragmatism

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by: michael horan @ Sat Jun 09, 2012 at 20:04:44 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

i'll lean on Donella Meadows for my response (0.00 / 0)

From Places to Intervene in a System:

People who manage to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.

You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system, and therefore this item should be lowest on the list, not the highest. But there's nothing physical or expensive or even slow about paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a new way of seeing. Of course individuals and societies do resist challenges to their paradigm harder than they resist any other kind of change.

So how do you change paradigms? Thomas Kuhn, who wrote the seminal book about the great paradigm shifts of science, has a lot to say about that. In a nutshell, you keep pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm, you come yourself, loudly, with assurance, from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don't waste time with reactionaries; rather you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded.

It's clear to me that you are stuck in old thinking, as much you think I am, or the Greens are. Whether we like it or not (I don't), we ain't seen nothing yet. The Democrats are a dinosaur, and the line they are holding is receding rapidly, but will soon evaporate. Physically speaking, their entire approach to public policy is predicated on a dying model -- an unsustainable paradigm that will, sooner or later, be majorly disrupted. We have successfully avoided this disruption to this point.

I'm willing to embrace a post-partisan politics, but not a post-ideological politics, because there's no such thing. And I think the political advantage -- the power advantage, if you will -- will go to those who are organized ahead of the curve. That curve just so happens to be an ecological one, so I think the Greens -- despite your mocking or your equating them with a small handful of visible leaders -- actually have a gigantic head start, in a partisan sense. But just as much as the Greens will be corruptible, fallible, etc. you may be right that they will never represent an imperative. But the sooner the ten key values -- on their own merits -- can have life breathed into them and a political platform (in the infrastructure sense) behind them, the better our chances are for sane, compassionate policy to prevail.

Now, back to Meadows:

The highest leverage of all is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to realize that NO paradigm is "true," that even the one that sweetly shapes one's comfortable worldview is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe.

It is to "get" at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms, and to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into Not Knowing.

People who cling to paradigms (just about all of us) take one look at the spacious possibility that everything we think is guaranteed to be nonsense and pedal rapidly in the opposite direction. Surely there is no power, no control, not even a reason for being, much less acting, in the experience that there is no certainty in any worldview. But everyone who has managed to entertain that idea, for a moment or for a lifetime, has found it a basis for radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose one that will help achieve your purpose. If you have no idea where to get a purpose, you can listen to the universe (or put in the name of your favorite deity here) and do his, her, its will, which is a lot better informed than your will.

It is in the space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.

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by: eli_beckerman @ Sun Jun 10, 2012 at 04:43:34 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

In re "Stein's BIg Wins..."--can someone confirm these numbers? (0.00 / 0)

Agree with much of this. But c'mon--the "Greens have a gigantic head start?" I just spotted this in a lengthy (77 comments!) thread on the Green Party FB page, where Stein and Barr supporters are going for each other's jugulars:

"No one here would EVER talk like this to Jill Stein or about her in any way. I had to add that.This is a death knell for this party and probably one of the reasons why we had 6,565 registered Greens in Florida but only 59 voted. That is pathetic."

Is this accurate???? FIFTY NINE Greens voted in the FL primary???

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by: michael horan @ Mon Jun 11, 2012 at 02:12:59 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Green Party Watch recapping state results (0.00 / 0)

Not that I'm following this closely, but the best reporting I've seen on state results has been from Green Party Watch. But their Florida update didn't mention the votes. Apparently they had a nominating convention with a ranked choice ballot.

So 59 votes at a statewide event doesn't sound too far off from what a Green-Rainbow convention would generate, at least at this point in time. Generally speaking, I have noticed some abysmal numbers via Green Party Watch's reports.  

The GPUS page on state results seems to be incomplete.

The Greens' head start is decidedly not an infrastructure head start, or an organizing head start. And personally I think the party is at a low point -- and the bad taste in my mouth from the 2010 Detroit convention has not gone away. But I think the 2012 presidential election will actually put the party back on the map, and help get it back on track. I think Jill & co. are running the best national campaign the Greens have run since Nader 2000, and while that's not saying all that much, it's starting to do something about those lingering doubts from the 2010 GPUS convention.

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by: eli_beckerman @ Mon Jun 11, 2012 at 04:37:12 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Can I jump in here real quick? I just have a question for Michael . . . (0.00 / 0)

Did you say there are 6,565 registered Greens in Florida and only 59 voted in the FL primary??  

Obama Extends The Patriot Act
http://www.latimes.com/news/na...

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by: Republican Ram Rod Radio @ Mon Jun 11, 2012 at 14:23:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

it DOES look like a campaign w/ some substance (0.00 / 0)

I'm seeing double-digit numbers from a number of states. Admittedly, they are hard to come by--the Stein campaign notes percentages, but doesn't appear to be all too transparent when it comes to actual votes. But calling Florida a "big win" is disingenuous. Voters will see trhough that kind of horseshit instantly

I haven't gotten the bad taste outta my own mouth from the GRP 2010 Convention, myself.

That said, this IS looking like the best Green presidential campaign I've seen, too. Smart staff, etc. Imagine if this kind of energy and money were being expended on a race a Green could potentially win, or one that didn't stand a soemwhat real chance of fucking things up for a whole lotta people if the spoiler effect comes into play. I don't think it will--the numbers of Green participants active in selecting delegates is down in the states reporting, so I don't expect Dr Stein to do any better in the presidential than she did in her last run here in MA, and a good GOTC effort in swing states will, I think, cause any wavering voters to go with Obama rather than Stein in those states. Even Greens are capable of recognzing that what's best for the party isn't necessarily what's best for the country.

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by: michael horan @ Mon Jun 11, 2012 at 16:36:38 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

That said, this IS looking like the best Green presidential campaign I've seen, - Michael Horan (0.00 / 0)

Oh really?  How many votes will Stein pick up this time around 4 maybe 5 percent?

I got 50 GMG bucks that says Stein will come in with less than 3.3% of the popular vote.  Any takers?  Anyone want in on this action?  Maybe Horan wants in?


Obama Extends The Patriot Act
http://www.latimes.com/news/na...

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by: Republican Ram Rod Radio @ Mon Jun 11, 2012 at 18:22:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

This is what happens when Eli posts after midnight on a Saturday night! (0.00 / 0)

It's clear to me that you are stuck in old thinking, as much you think I am, or the Greens are. Whether we like it or not (I don't), we ain't seen nothing yet. The Democrats are a dinosaur, and the line they are holding is receding rapidly, but will soon evaporate. Physically speaking, their entire approach to public policy is predicated on a dying model -- an unsustainable paradigm that will, sooner or later, be majorly disrupted. We have successfully avoided this disruption to this point.  - Eli

Eli!  It doesn't look like the dems are going anywhere in our lifetime.  But if you are convinced that they are dinosaurs ... maybe you can tell us when they will go extinct?

Obama Extends The Patriot Act
http://www.latimes.com/news/na...

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by: Republican Ram Rod Radio @ Mon Jun 11, 2012 at 18:47:12 PM UTC

[ Parent ]