Dear Mr. Goldberg:

I’ll repeat, in slightly different form, one of the questions I asked you earlier, for which I’m still awaiting an answer. Do you or do you not support Instant Runoff Voting? IRV, which is being adopted by an increasing number of localities in the USA, will eliminate any objections you or any Democrat has to the so-called “spoiler” issue. If you do not, why do you not? And why should those who do continue working to support a system they want to bring to its knees; a system, mind you, that is so antiquated and rotten that even Diane Feinstein is on board the abolish-the-electoral-college bandwagon.
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David I wonder how closely you read what I wrote. Not only do I support “Instant Run Off Voting” I even explained what it was in case anyone reading was unfamiliar with the concept. But the reason you should continue to support Democratic candidates in elections where IRV is not available is because if you divide the progressive vote you end up with a conservative winner. How many times do I need to explain this? How much clearer can I put it?
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

Instead of simply accepting the status quo as etched-in-stone permanence, as every Democratic Party activist I’ve met over the last thirty years or so has, why not open your mind to the possibility of changing the system? Surely you would agree that it is sorely in need of changing.
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Because your tactics won’t work. The electoral system we have is not set up to work the way you want it to work. I’m 100% in favor of changing that system but unfortunately you have to work with the tools you actually have to get that done. So work for IRV but until you get that when it comes down to voting day you need to support the most progressive candidate who can actually win. That’s why I keep saying take out the Democratic candidate at the PRIMARY stage. And if you can’t do that you don’t have any chance in a 3 way race. You’re just going to put one of those baby raping sociopathic neocon freaks in office.
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

Since the Democratic Party is part of the systemic problem, why would we want to be Democrats?
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Because its easier to change the Democratic Party than it is to get a 3rd party candidate elected. But in order to do that you have to work within the Democratic Party. Again if your candidate wins do you give a rodent’s rump whether he has a (D) or a (G) behind his name? The idea is to get the candidates we want ELECTED. And keep the baby rapers out of office.
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

Your “least worst” logic has brought us……..well, nowhere, really. As Lawrence O’Donnell (who, last time I checked, still had the letter ‘D’ affixed to the end of his name, much like you) wisely points out in the recent documentary “An Unreasonable Man” (which I strongly recommend to you, although I would be surprised if you were even aware of it), you have got to show the Democrats that you are willing and able not to vote for them. That is the only language they (and, apparently, you) understand.
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David do you understand what a PRIMARY is? That’s the election they have within each party to determine who their candidate is going to be. For example in the 2000 election if Ralph Nader had beaten Al Gore in the PRIMARY it would have been a head to head race between Nader and Bush for President. So not only would Nader have gotten all the Green Party voters behind him he would have gotten all of the Democratic Party voters behind him too. As a 3rd party candidate Nader wasn’t even allowed to debate. Now which of those two seems like the more likely to get Nader elected?
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

I shudder to think where the Democratic Party would be today if people like Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, Benjamin Spock, and Victoria Woodhull followed your line of thinking. You’re well familiar with them, aren’t you?
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Seems to me that if the Democratic Party had been dominated by the likes of them the Democratic Party would be more to your liking. I don’t know how you think they were more effective as 3rd party candidates who couldn’t get elected. Can you explain that to me?
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

Since people who support third parties are brain dead, and you are not, I assume you can expound upon these intellectually deficient characters from American history for us.
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No CONSERVATIVES are brain dead. That’s why I don’t want them in office. People who support 3rd parties simply don’t understand how our electoral system works.
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

Instead of running with the tired, arrogant, patronizing, and intellectually lazy position of the Democratic National Committee,
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Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership. Change the leadership.
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

I suggest you find out WHY people support the Green Party at the national, state, and local levels — people who are well familiar with the electoral college, with winner-take-all, and with the propensity of the Democratic Party to use goon squads to take choice out of the hands of individual voters, because they know what’s best, and anyone to the left of them who disagrees is obviously working for the conservative team. Right?
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I guess that just depends on whether you want to get your candidates elected or just piss and moan about things. I would like to actually change things for the better.
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

We don’t need patronizing elementary school lectures.
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Apparently you do because so far your tactics have failed MISERABLY. How many Green candidates are there in Congress? Unless and until you can get IRV pushed through the only thing you will accomplish is to put the worst candidate in office. And unfortunately the way things are set up the only way to get IRV is to get it passed in Congress and then signed by the President. The only way that is going to happen is if you get your candidates elected. And the only way that’s going to happen is if you beat the candidate you don’t like at the PRIMARY stage and then run head to head against the Republicans.
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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

To paraphrase Ralph Nader, I was walking the walk on this issue when you were still in short pants, unless you’re older than I am, in which case I was walking the walk on this issue when you were tossing back your first bong hit in college.
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David how many of your candidates have you helped get ELECTED? Because that’s the only thing that matters. If your candidate doesn’t get ELECTED you can walk from here to the moon and its not going to matter.

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David Gaines said on October 6th, 2007 at 5:23 pm #

A wise old somebody-or-other once said “first seek to understand, then seek to be understood.” You may accomplish this in any number of ways; the one I recommend to you is to watch what I consider to be the best single-source exposition of the current pro-3rd party position. That would be the address Ralph Nader gave in October 2004 at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government – Institute of Politics. It’s important to remember while you watch it (it’s in the IOP archives at their website) that (1) Nader was not even on the ballot in Massachusetts (a safe Kerry state) that year, and (2) various MoveOn.org and DailyKos plants in the audience embarrassed themselves by asking questions that were rendered unnecessary by what Nader said in his address. Obviously they weren’t paying any attention. Not knowing how to pay attention is a big red flag, it seems to me, for people who are trying to convince other people that they should hold the reins of power.
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David, again, how many of your candidates have you gotten ELECTED? I’m not trying to explain why I or any current Democrat should be allowed to hold the reins of power. I’m trying to explain to you how YOU can take them. Because the way you’ve been trying to do it won’t work.

Please save your energy and don’t yap at us about how egotistical, futile, etc. Ralph Nader is. Just drop the party line, open up your mind, watch his address, and listen. Then ask questions. Listening and then asking questions is how one learns. Ralph’s mother taught him that; would that she had also parented the members of the Democratic National Committee.

DG

I’ll repeat, in slightly different form, one of the questions I asked you earlier, for which I’m still awaiting an answer. Do you or do you not support Instant Runoff Voting? IRV, which is being adopted by an increasing number of localities in the USA, will eliminate any objections you or any Democrat has to the so-called “spoiler” issue. If you do not, why do you not? And why should those who do continue working to support a system they want to bring to its knees; a system, mind you, that is so antiquated and rotten that even Diane Feinstein is on board the abolish-the-electoral-college bandwagon.

Instead of simply accepting the status quo as etched-in-stone permanence, as every Democratic Party activist I’ve met over the last thirty years or so has, why not open your mind to the possibility of changing the system? Surely you would agree that it is sorely in need of changing. Since the Democratic Party is part of the systemic problem, why would we want to be Democrats? Your “least worst” logic has brought us……..well, nowhere, really. As Lawrence O’Donnell (who, last time I checked, still had the letter ‘D’ affixed to the end of his name, much like you) wisely points out in the recent documentary “An Unreasonable Man” (which I strongly recommend to you, although I would be surprised if you were even aware of it), you have got to show the Democrats that you are willing and able not to vote for them. That is the only language they (and, apparently, you) understand.

I shudder to think where the Democratic Party would be today if people like Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, Benjamin Spock, and Victoria Woodhull followed your line of thinking. You’re well familiar with them, aren’t you? Since people who support third parties are brain dead, and you are not, I assume you can expound upon these intellectually deficient characters from American history for us.

Instead of running with the tired, arrogant, patronizing, and intellectually lazy position of the Democratic National Committee, I suggest you find out WHY people support the Green Party at the national, state, and local levels — people who are well familiar with the electoral college, with winner-take-all, and with the propensity of the Democratic Party to use goon squads to take choice out of the hands of individual voters, because they know what’s best, and anyone to the left of them who disagrees is obviously working for the conservative team. Right?

We don’t need patronizing elementary school lectures. To paraphrase Ralph Nader, I was walking the walk on this issue when you were still in short pants, unless you’re older than I am, in which case I was walking the walk on this issue when you were tossing back your first bong hit in college.

A wise old somebody-or-other once said “first seek to understand, then seek to be understood.” You may accomplish this in any number of ways; the one I recommend to you is to watch what I consider to be the best single-source exposition of the current pro-3rd party position. That would be the address Ralph Nader gave in October 2004 at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government – Institute of Politics. It’s important to remember while you watch it (it’s in the IOP archives at their website) that (1) Nader was not even on the ballot in Massachusetts (a safe Kerry state) that year, and (2) various MoveOn.org and DailyKos plants in the audience embarrassed themselves by asking questions that were rendered unnecessary by what Nader said in his address. Obviously they weren’t paying any attention. Not knowing how to pay attention is a big red flag, it seems to me, for people who are trying to convince other people that they should hold the reins of power.

Please save your energy and don’t yap at us about how egotistical, futile, etc. Ralph Nader is. Just drop the party line, open up your mind, watch his address, and listen. Then ask questions. Listening and then asking questions is how one learns. Ralph’s mother taught him that; would that she had also parented the members of the Democratic National Committee.

DG

Your efforts are going to pull this nation either towards the conservative (dark ages) side or towards the liberal progressive side.

Now apparently you Greens don’t understand how our system of government works. It is NOT representative. Other nations have repaired some flaws that our founding fathers didn’t recognize. They had the US as an example that we didn’t have. So in England if 30% vote for one progressive party and 30% vote for another progressive party and 40% vote for a conservative party they divide the seats up just like that. 30/30/40. In our system of government if the vote is split like that in every race 100% of the seats go to the party that got the most votes. In this case the conservative party.

So if you really want to work for a 3rd party and you really want to move the nation in a pr0gressive direction what you should be doing is weakening the conservative side not the liberal side. Why not see what you can do to get Ron Paul to run as a Libertarian? Or work towards getting a more liberal candidate into the Democratic slot during the PRIMARIES. Because right now you’re working for the conservative team.

And secondly, if you were leading troops into battle would you rather lead a tight, cohesive unit or one where everyone just kind of “did their own thing?” And make no mistake about it. We are neck deep in a class war and we are getting
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Brandy Baker said on October 1st, 2007 at 11:21 am #

The third party movement is not going away and people from PDA and other from “within the DP” will always be sniping at us instead of holding the neo-con Hillary, Al Gore (who yes, would have invaded Iraq if he served the term that he won in 2000; he and B Clinton called for “regeime change” in Iraq in 1998),
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Are you sure you’re a Green? Because you sound more like a Republican. Maybe you weren’t aware of the speech Al Gore gave in September 2002. Yeah, 2002, when it was political suicide to be against the war.

TEXT OF GORE’S SPEECH:

Like all Americans I have been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of intense, focused and enabled hatred that brought about September 11th, and which at this moment must be presumed to be gathering force for yet another attack. I’m speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.

To begin with, I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another.

We are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion.

I don’t think that we should allow anything to diminish our focus on avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists who we know to be responsible for it. The fact that we don’t know where they are should not cause us to focus instead on some other enemy whose location may be easier to identify.

Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that the most urgent requirement of the moment – right now – is not to redouble our efforts against Al Qaeda, not to stabilize the nation of Afghanistan after driving his host government from power, but instead to shift our focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein. And he is proclaiming a new, uniquely American right to pre-emptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents a potential future threat.

Moreover, he is demanding in this high political season that Congress speedily affirm that he has the necessary authority to proceed immediately against Iraq and for that matter any other nation in the region, regardless of subsequent developments or circumstances. The timing of this sudden burst of urgency to take up this cause as America’s new top priority, displacing the war against Osama Bin Laden, was explained by the White House Chief of Staff in his now well known statement that “from an advertising point of view, you don’t launch a new product line until after labor day.”

Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, that action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than outside it. In fact, though a new UN resolution may be helpful in building international consensus, the existing resolutions from 1991 are sufficient from a legal standpoint.

We also need to look at the relationship between our national goal of regime change in Iraq and our goal of victory in the war against terror. In the case of Iraq, it would be more difficult for the United States to succeed alone, but still possible. By contrast, the war against terror manifestly requires broad and continuous international cooperation. Our ability to secure this kind of cooperation can be severely damaged by unilateral action against Iraq. If the Administration has reason to believe otherwise, it ought to share those reasons with the Congress – since it is asking Congress to endorse action that might well impair a more urgent task: continuing to disrupt and destroy the international terror network.

I was one of the few Democrats in the U.S. Senate who supported the war resolution in 1991. And I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield, even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds of the North and the Shiites of the South – groups we had encouraged to rise up against Saddam. It is worth noting, however, that the conditions in 1991 when that resolution was debated in Congress were very different from the conditions this year as Congress prepares to debate a new resolution. Then, Saddam had sent his armies across an international border to invade Kuwait and annex its territory. This year, 11 years later, there is no such invasion; instead we are prepared to cross an international border to change the government of Iraq. However justified our proposed action may be, this change in role nevertheless has consequences for world opinion and can affect the war against terrorism if we proceed unilaterally.

Secondly, in 1991, the first President Bush patiently and skillfully built a broad international coalition. His task was easier than that confronted his son, in part because of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. Nevertheless, every Arab nation except Jordan supported our military efforts and some of them supplied troops. Our allies in Europe and Asia supported the coalition without exception. Yet this year, by contrast, many of our allies in Europe and Asia are thus far opposed to what President Bush is doing and the few who support us condition their support on the passage of a new U.N. resolution.

Third, in 1991, a strong United Nations resolution was in place before the Congressional debate ever began; this year although we have residual authority based on resolutions dating back to the first war in Iraq, we have nevertheless begun to seek a new United Nations resolution and have thus far failed to secure one.

Fourth, the coalition assembled in 1991 paid all of the significant costs of the war, while this time, the American taxpayers will be asked to shoulder hundreds of billions of dollars in costs on our own.

Fifth, President George H. W. Bush purposely waited until after the mid-term elections of 1990 to push for a vote at the beginning of the new Congress in January of 1991. President George W. Bush, by contrast, is pushing for a vote in this Congress immediately before the election. Rather than making efforts to dispel concern at home an abroad about the role of politics in the timing of his policy, the President is publicly taunting Democrats with the political consequences of a “no” vote – even as the Republican National Committee runs pre-packaged advertising based on the same theme — in keeping with the political strategy clearly described in a White House aide’s misplaced computer disk, which advised Republican operatives that their principal game plan for success in the election a few weeks away was to “focus on the war.” Vice President Cheney, meanwhile indignantly described suggestions of political motivation “reprehensible.” The following week he took his discussion of war strategy to the Rush Limbaugh show.

The foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of what may lie before it. Such consideration is all the more important because of the Administration’s failure thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run – even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest that this will be an easy conquest. Neither has the Administration said much to clarify its idea of what is to follow regime change or of the degree of engagement it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.

By shifting from his early focus after September 11th on war against terrorism to war against Iraq, the President has manifestly disposed of the sympathy, good will and solidarity compiled by America and transformed it into a sense of deep misgiving and even hostility. In just one year, the President has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of September 11th and converted it into anger and apprehension aimed much more at the United States than at the terrorist network – much as we manage to squander in one year’s time the largest budget surpluses in history and convert them into massive fiscal deficits. He has compounded this by asserting a new doctrine – of preemption.

The doctrine of preemption is based on the idea that in the era of proliferating WMD, and against the background of a sophisticated terrorist threat, the United States cannot wait for proof of a fully established mortal threat, but should rather act at any point to cut that short.

The problem with preemption is that in the first instance it is not needed in order to give the United States the means to act in its own defense against terrorism in general or Iraq in particular. But that is a relatively minor issue compared to the longer-term consequences that can be foreseen for this doctrine. To begin with, the doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means that if Iraq if the first point of application, it is not necessarily the last. In fact, the very logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements against a succession of sovereign states: Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, etc., wherever the combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction together with an ongoing role as host to or participant in terrorist operations. It means also that if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the Administration it is simultaneously creating the precedent for preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president so decides.

The Bush Administration may now be realizing that national and international cohesion are strategic assets. But it is a lesson long delayed and clearly not uniformly and consistently accepted by senior members of the cabinet. From the outset, the Administration has operated in a manner calculated to please the portion of its base that occupies the far right, at the expense of solidarity among Americans and between America and her allies.

On the domestic front, the Administration, having delayed almost —months before conceding the need to create an institution outside the White House to manage homeland defense, has been willing to see progress on the new department held up, for the sake of an effort to coerce the Congress into stripping civil service protections from tens of thousands of federal employees.

Far more damaging, however, is the Administration’s attack on fundamental constitutional rights. The idea that an American citizen can be imprisoned without recourse to judicial process or remedies, and that this can be done on the say-so of the President or those acting in his name, is beyond the pale.

Regarding other countries, the Administration’s disdain for the views of others is well documented and need not be reviewed here. It is more important to note the consequences of an emerging national strategy that not only celebrates American strengths, but appears to be glorifying the notion of dominance. If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion; if what we represent to the world is empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion.

At this fateful juncture in our history it is vital that we see clearly who are our enemies, and that we deal with them. It is also important, however, that in the process we preserve not only ourselves as individuals, but our nature as a people dedicated to the rule of law.

Moreover, if we quickly succeed in a war against the weakened and depleted fourth rate military of Iraq and then quickly abandon that nation as President Bush has abandoned Afghanistan after quickly defeating a fifth rate military there, the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam. We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

We have no evidence, however, that he has shared any of those weapons with terrorist group. However, if Iraq came to resemble Afghanistan – with no central authority but instead local and regional warlords with porous borders and infiltrating members of Al Qaeda than these widely dispersed supplies of weapons of mass destruction might well come into the hands of terrorist groups.

If we end the war in Iraq, the way we ended the war in Afghanistan, we could easily be worse off than we are today. When Secretary Rumsfield was asked recently about what our responsibility for restabilizing Iraq would be in an aftermath of an invasion, he said, “that’s for the Iraqis to come together and decide.”

During one of the campaign debates in 2000 when then Governor Bush was asked if America should engage in any sort of “nation building” in the aftermath of a war in which we have involved our troops, he stated gave the purist expression of what is now a Bush doctrine: “I don’t think so. I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I’m missing something here. We’re going to have a kind of nation building corps in America? Absolutely not.”

The events of the last 85 years provide ample evidence that our approach to winning the peace that follows war is almost as important as winning the war itself. The absence of enlightened nation building after World War I led directly to the conditions which made Germany vulnerable to fascism and the rise to Adolph Hitler and made all of Europe vulnerable to his evil designs. By contrast the enlightened vision embodied in the Marshall plan, NATO, and the other nation building efforts in the aftermath of World War II led directly to the conditions that fostered prosperity and peace for most the years since this city gave birth to the United Nations.

Two decades ago, when the Soviet Union claimed the right to launch a pre-emptive war in Afghanistan, we properly encouraged and then supported the resistance movement which, a decade later, succeeded in defeating the Soviet Army’s efforts. Unfortunately, when the Russians left, we abandoned the Afghans and the lack of any coherent nation building program led directly to the conditions which fostered Al Qaeda terrorist bases and Osama Bin Laden’s plotting against the World Trade Center. Incredibly, after defeating the Taliban rather easily, and despite pledges from President Bush that we would never again abandon Afghanistan we have done precisely that. And now the Taliban and Al Qaeda are quickly moving back to take up residence there again. A mere two years after we abandoned Afghanistan the first time, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Following a brilliant military campaign, the U.S. abandoned the effort to destroy Saddam’s military prematurely and allowed him to remain in power.

What is a potentially even more serious consequence of this push to begin a new war as quickly as possible is the damage it can do not just to America’s prospects to winning the war against terrorism but to America’s prospects for continuing the historic leadership we began providing to the world 57 years ago, right here in this city by the bay.

I believe, therefore, that the resolution that the President has asked Congress to pass is much too broad in the authorities it grants, and needs to be narrowed. The President should be authorized to take action to deal with Saddam Hussein as being in material breach of the terms of the truce and therefore a continuing threat to the security of the region. To this should be added that his continued pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is potentially a threat to the vital interests of the United States. But Congress should also urge the President to make every effort to obtain a fresh demand from the Security Council for prompt, unconditional compliance by Iraq within a definite period of time. If the Council will not provide such language, then other choices remain open, but in any event the President should be urged to take the time to assemble the broadest possible international support for his course of action. Anticipating that the President will still move toward unilateral action, the Congress should establish now what the administration’s thinking is regarding the aftermath of a US attack for the purpose of regime change.

Specifically, Congress should establish why the president believes that unilateral action will not severely damage the fight against terrorist networks, and that preparations are in place to deal with the effects of chemical and biological attacks against our allies, our forces in the field, and even the home-front. The resolution should also require commitments from the President that action in Iraq will not be permitted to distract from continuing and improving work to reconstruct Afghanistan, an that the United States will commit to stay the course for the reconstruction of Iraq.

The Congressional resolution should make explicitly clear that authorities for taking these actions are to be presented as derivatives from existing Security Council resolutions and from international law: not requiring any formal new doctrine of pre-emption, which remains to be discussed subsequently in view of its gravity.

Last week President Bush added a troubling new element to this debate by proposing a broad new strategic doctrine that goes far beyond issues related to Iraq and would effect the basic relationship between the United States and the rest of the world community. Article 51 of the United Nations charter recognizes the right of any nation to defend itself, including the right in some circumstances to take pre-emptive actions in order to deal with imminent threats. President Bush now asserts that we will take pre-emptive action even if we take the threat we perceive is not imminent. If other nations assert the same right then the rule of law will quickly be replaced by the reign of fear – any nation that perceives circumstances that could eventually lead to an imminent threat would be justified under this approach in taking military action against another nation. An unspoken part of this new doctrine appears to be that we claim this right for ourselves – and only for ourselves. It is, in that sense, part of a broader strategy to replace ideas like deterrence and containment with what some in the administration “dominance.”

This is because President Bush is presenting us with a proposition that contains within itself one of the most fateful decisions in our history: a decision to abandon what we have thought was America’s mission in the world – a world in which nations are guided by a common ethic codified in the form of international law — if we want to survive.

We have faced such a choice once before, at the end of the second World War. At that moment, America’s power in comparison to the rest of the world was if anything greater than it is now, and the temptation was clearly to use that power to assure ourselves that there would be no competitor and no threat to our security for the foreseeable future. The choice we made, however, was to become a co-founder of what we now think of as the post-war era, based on the concepts of collective security and defense, manifested first of all in the United Nations. Through all the dangerous years that followed, when we understood that the defense of freedom required the readiness to put the existence of the nation itself into the balance, we never abandoned our belief that what we were struggling to achieve was not bounded by our own physical security, but extended to the unmet hopes of humankind. The issue before us is whether we now face circumstances so dire and so novel that we must choose one objective over the other.

So it is reasonable to conclude that we face a problem that is severe, chronic, and likely to become worse over time.

But is a general doctrine of pre-emption necessary in order to deal with this problem? With respect to weapons of mass destruction, the answer is clearly not. The Clinton Administration launched a massive series of air strikes against Iraq for the state purpose of setting back his capacity to pursue weapons of mass destruction. There was no perceived need for new doctrine or new authorities to do so. The limiting factor was the state of our knowledge concerning the whereabouts of some assets, and a concern for limiting consequences to the civilian populace, which in some instances might well have suffered greatly.

Does Saddam Hussein present an imminent threat, and if he did would the United States be free to act without international permission? If he presents an imminent threat we would be free to act under generally accepted understandings of article 51 of the UN Charter which reserves for member states the right to act in self-defense.

If Saddam Hussein does not present an imminent threat, then is it justifiable for the Administration to be seeking by every means to precipitate a confrontation, to find a cause for war, and to attack? There is a case to be made that further delay only works to Saddam Hussein’s advantage, and that the clock should be seen to have been running on the issue of compliance for a decade: therefore not needing to be reset again to the starting point. But to the extent that we have any concern for international support, whether for its political or material value, hurrying the process will be costly. Even those who now agree that Saddam Hussein must go, may divide deeply over the wisdom of presenting the United States as impatient for war.

At the same time, the concept of pre-emption is accessible to other countries. There are plenty of potential imitators: India/Pakistan; China/Taiwan; not to forget Israel/Iraq or Israel/Iran. Russia has already cited it in anticipation of a possible military push into Georgia, on grounds that this state has not done enough to block the operations of Chechen rebels. What this doctrine does is to destroy the goal of a world in which states consider themselves subject to law, particularly in the matter of standards for the use of violence against each other. That concept would be displaced by the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States.

I believe that we can effectively defend ourselves abroad and at home without dimming our principles. Indeed, I believe that our success in defending ourselves depends precisely on not giving up what we stand for.

I agree that the public doesn’t pay much attention to the politics which impacts their lives the most – local. But that is due to our lack of democracy. Democracy in the US is almost non-existent – in fact, honesty would say it’s merely a word used as a pretext to invade other nations rather than a way to live our lives here.

While you note important challenges, they should not deter us if they are the right challenges; and I submit they are. The dynamics of national politics cannot be directly changed. To do so would require a revolution (ala French). To partake of the national body politic is to be inculcated by that process and thus be swallowed up by it if not first destroyed.

The change, than, should be at the local level. Why? Because I think more people want the kind of alternative GP can offer if it stays true to a new model of social and ecological justice. If applied it touches all aspects of life and governance, economics and culture. That kind of transformation will not happen top down. Instead it reflects the biological and physicial emergence we see in quantum physics (complexity theory) and molecular biology. In a word it is a network of self-organization which is not hierarchical in nature but horizontal and best attained at the local, community level. In political terms it is a movement.

It is a powerful force because it mimics nature. National politics reflects empire and domination, top down, hierachical organization; anti-nature. The GP has a better chance if it avoids the machine altogether and patterns itself on sustainability. It will be true to its basic principles and avoid the death trap of DC politics as we know and understand it.

It is important to also note that most municipalities have a great deal of unused power to make real change. That does not mean there are not significant challenges. How best, for instance, to move toward a fair and sustainable land value tax if the State has not provided for it? But, again, this is not an insurmountable, simply an identifiable problem to be solved. There’s still many tools available at the municiple level which are largely unused. Go there first and then fight the good fight to add to the toolchest. As we weave this web, I’m betting the transformation will follow. It’s a start and it can make the lives of many so much better while we defang the empire from the bottom up.

Max Shields submitted some very intelligent thinking on this. But I do have to question: should the Green Party be focusing on the local level? I am not so sure that it should. Here’s why:

The public does not pay much attention to local politics and local politicians are limited as to what they can do (espcially one Green amongst many Dems, which is what would be the case here is Baltimore City). I believe that the only way that local GP races can be effective is through having the campaigns grow out of local movements for housing, municipalization of services, etc. Also, the local races seem to be left to the local/state GP apparatus, which, with some exceptions, comprises of individuals who are more conservative than the Greens involved directly with movements. The apparatus, which mostly goes to meetings and chats on listservs day in and day out, is (with some exceptions) not really involved in the movements. So when candidates who have no business being nominated come forward (whether they want our ballot line and do not believe in left politics; or they were once good activists decades ago, but alienation has made them nuts, etc), the apparatus will nominate them no matter how inept these candidates are or how inept the political outlook of these canddiates truly is. It takes a strong political consciousness to stand up and say, “Know what? This person may have good intentions, but he has no business in this race.” These candidates that have no business running, if they were ever elected, would fold in a heartbeat once elected to city council, state house, etc. They, like the state party apparatus, are too timid to stand up for what is right.

Also, all GP candidates, local, state, and federal, need to be emphasizing the growth of a movement through action, “Join the GP, fight for your rights through activism, direct action, agitation of the elites and by the way, vote” not, “Okay, on this date, go to the polls and vote for me.” The emphasis needs to be taken off of the individual, which we saw too much of in our 2006 Senate race.

So to return to my point: I see limitations to the local focus that so many Greens want us to employ. Also, coming back: most of the public do not follow local races. They do not even know where their local and state districts. So if there is not at least one strong local movement keeping the local GP candidates left, the culture of local politics will grow conservative as the only types of people the candidates will be surrounded by at these forums are Democratic Party (and Republican Party) hacks who believe in nothing but their own desire to move up in the ranks of either one of the two major parties.

The ballot access that I referred to was hypothetical. If we were to be a major party, then we should support all parties having easier access to the system. Unfortunately, Democrats, and Republicans, are notoriously opposed to participatory democracy by denying people the right to have their party recognized for election purposes.

Democrats who oppose easier ballot access for other voices oppose ‘democracy’ as well as show their antipathy, anger, and sometimes outright hostility towards voters; especially of voters who don’t accept the DP position that it owns their vote.

I don’t forsee the GP having such electoral strength in my lifetime, but to see the DP whither away in a short time is a near certainty. Whenever you get rid of a broken down old table, you go and get something new.

Myles Hoenig,
former GP candidate for Baltimore City Council and campaign manager for Ed Boyd, GP candidate for Governor of Maryland.

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Not much chance of the Greens becomming a major political party when they can’t even get in the debates. And just exactly what is your plan for getting them to “let others have easy ballot access”? Are you gonna beg them to let you in? What color is the sky in your world? Because you obviously aren’t living in this one.

I don’t understand why you Greens would think the moderates and progressives (the majority) can’t take back the Democratic Party when a handful of religious lunatics have clearly accomplished that with the GOP. Its too bad. You could have been part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

The real changes need to be at the local and state. The DC world cannot be transformed from within unless there is a great turnover to a Third Party (GP) which is not likely (make that NOT going to happen).

Concentrate at winning at the local level. Begin to change the dynamics there. The problem cannot be met head on. Today the centers of power will destroy all attempts at real change. Focus where that center is not. With time, DC may become irrelevant or at least less relevant.

But by all means GP must win as many local elections as possible. There can be great power in municipalities to make real change on a human-scale. Even at that level we are dealing with complexities which cannot be simplified if we are to be effective.

Mr. Frank, have you actually run a campaign or been a candidate? If not try it some time and then, let’s talk.

Should the Greens run against a Democrat if the outcome could be a conservative Republican? Why not. It’s unfortunate that Shehan is not registered as a Green. What if a Pelosi-type were to lose to a Republican because of a Green or Independent challenge? For the last several decades they have sold out or co-opted every movement that had fought for social change.
Labor: a minimum wage only maximizes poverty. GP supports a Living Wage. Where are they fighting pension theft? Where are they fighting anti-unionism by companies like Wal-Mart whose income is greater than many nation’s GDP. Oh, yeah, they’re on their board of directors (Hillary with Wal Mart, or John Kerry with a $million in stocks with them).
Health care: Dems support an insurance based health care system. Only the GP supports Single Payer. More than half of all bankruptcies in America is due to health crises. Labor should never have to fight to protect health care. That should be a given for all citizens regardless of employment status.
Peace: with rare exceptions, the Democratic leadership and their representative toadies all support this war or its continuing and permanent occupation. Funny how the first high profile Senator to really challenge the war was Chuck Hegel, R of Neb.
Middle East: No Democrat would dare challenge the unequal treatment the US gives to Israel.
Democracy abroad: D or R admin., when have the Dems ever challenged a war to overthrow elected governments before, or as it was happening?

It should be the goal of the GP to become a major political party. Let the Dems become a 3rd party, or merge with the GOP and let others have easy ballot access.

Myles Hoenig,
former GP candidate for Baltimore City Council and campaign manager for Ed Boyd, GP candidate for Governor of Maryland.

As an active Green, I have learned in the past few years to work with those who are on board and focused on the mission. Ignore the rest.

Let’s move the fuck on and give a hard Sunday Punch to the two party system in 2008.

The Socialist Party went through all this sniping, snipping, he said/she said, blah blah blah nonsense 75 years ago and disintegrated because of it. Well, that and the end of the depression, but let’s keep things simple. The far left in America, going back to the 19th century, has historically been unable to keep from splitting, fracturing, and bickering, and thus self-imploding. It’s really fascinating to watch it happen over and over again, proving the whole saying about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result each time.

Isn’t anyone in this movement interested in NOT repeating the past? The current dregs of what’s left of the Socialist Party is going through the exact same thing, and what they say to each other makes what you folks are throwing around look like polite chit chat.

I don’t give a rat’s ass whether David Cobb was a right-on dude or not, or whether Joshua Frank has every single one of his facts straight. I didn’t support Cobb and, frankly, don’t much like the guy, but I made sure to keep on working with my GP allies who stayed behind and supported that campaign, and when 2004 we kissed and made up and moved on like grownups.

I’ve been working on the third party bandwagon since before Nixon resigned, before — I daresay — many of you were born, when it was pretty damn tough to walk around sidewalks and parking lots trying to get people to sign petitions to put totally unknown radical wackos on a ballot. And the one thing I’ve learned is that, when you insist on engaging in a fight over who’s the most self-righteous, the whole party loses. Great, you win your ad hominem turf battle, and then you get nowhere on election day (or, more importantly the day after election day….something our Democratic Party mole here doesn’t understand) because you can’t get everyone united enough to focus on the things we in the Green Party all have in common, which ABSOLUTELY TOWER over the things on which we disagree — to paraphrase a certain rumpled acquaintance of mine with some practical experience in this area.

Let me repeat this point. Kwitcherbellyaching, focus your energy on our shared goals and the important issues on which we all agree, and grow up. This is a sorry spectacle and worse than having to watch televangelists argue with each other over who’s a better Christian.

And to the DailyKos mole with the tiresome and snotty attitude about third parties and an obsession with grade school politics, I have four questions: (1) Can you name one significant social reform that was initiated by the Democratic Party and NOT by a third party? [hint: the correct answer is somewhere south of "one"] (2) Do you really think that Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman, and James Traficant are “better” (whatever that means) than Chuck Hagel, Christopher Shays, and Olympia Snowe? (3) Why don’t you support our efforts at educating people about instant runoff voting and range voting, which would completely do away with what it is about the current system that dissatisfies you? I doubt you support IRV, simply because virtually no prominent Democrats do, when pressed on the issue. (Why? I have no earthly clue. What are they afraid of? Maybe Ann Coulter’s right when she says that Democrats haven’t come up with an original idea since…….well, I forget, but it was something Eugene Debs came up with decades earlier anyway.) Of course, these are people who think that voters will “become confused” when presented with a ballot that has (gasp) more than two names on it. Never mind that, in many countries around the world, masses of people who are ILLITERATE somehow manage to cast ballots with literally dozens of parties appearing on them. In any event, if all IRV does is keep the Democratic Party of Virginia from having to send goon squads to Richmond to prevent the people of that state from deciding for themselves whom they wish to see on their election ballot, then it’s worth it (4) Were you happy when Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota was reelected last time out because a Libertarian candidate was in the race? At least one Democrat is in the House now because a Constitution Party candidate was in his race, too. Was that okay? It must be, because any Democrat is better than any Republican, so will you be maxing out this year when you send your contributions to the Libertarian Party and Constitution Party?

“BTW Cindy Sheehan has announced that she plans to run against Nancy Pelosi if Pelosi doesn’t work a little harder to end the war.”

She’s running as an independent. Before you repeat your condescending lecture, the Republican got 11% against Pelosi last year. It’s basically a race between Pelosi and Sheehan.

Marq Goldberg, please calm down and, please, please ease off the gaseous self-righteousness. People have been trying to “take back the Democratic Party” for decades. Did you think it never occurred to anyone? Are you aware of all the energy that’s been put into trying? Your instructions are fatuous and useless.
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I guess basic math isn’t your strong suit huh? Let me guess. You’re a Green aren’t you? The instructions I gave are the ONLY way it will work. Quit dividing the party. It only gets the other guy elected. I would have thought you would have learned that in 2000.

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Blyden writes: And to the guy saying that ANY Democrat is better than ANY Republican – there are things a Democrat can do that a Republican could never think of. Ending welfare for one. Or bringing back the draft. Bubba accomplished #1 (Reagan and Bush knew how much opposition there would be if they even tried), maybe Hillary will be able to do #2?
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That’s why you get rid of them at the PRIMARY stage. And BTW the Clintons are DINOs. Democrats In Name only. Hillary was a Goldwater Republican. But a Goldwater Republican is still vastly superior to the freaks they have in their party now. First we get the Dems in control and then we replace the Dems we don’t like with the candidates we do like. And there’s no reason you can’t raise hell about a Dem leader who is doing wrong. Why do you think only a Dem could get away with certain things? Have you been asleep the last 7 years? Bush could literally rape babies on the White House lawn during a live press event and the only thing we’d hear from his constituents is what a brave right to life statement he had made. At least the Dem party isn’t made up of bathroom lurkers and child molestors.

Scott accuses Josh of making “baseless and uncorroborated personal smears of Green leaders against whom Mr. Frank’s informants hold obvious vendettas”.

I saw no “obvious vendettas”. I saw no “uncorroborated personal smears of Green Party leaders”. What I saw, and I am National Delegate and member of the Steering Committee of the Green Party of Pennsylvania as well as a Green Party candidate for House of Representatives, was an objective presentation of the facts. But then, I’m NOT a fusionist, I actually oppose the duopoly.

As I said above, no matter how you slice it, no matter how the fusionists like Scott (often called demogreens derisively but deservedly) try to spin it, no matter how they try to blame what happened on “outside circumstances”, Greg Gerrit and the current leadership supervised the single largest national electoral collapse within one election cycle by any political party in American history, as totals fell an unimaginable 96%, and ballot lines built for the race fell 50% (even though not a single state ballot line was challenged by Democrats in 2004).

There were a bunch of third parties running in 2004. All of them performed better than in 2000. The Greens were the only one that fell. And we fell by an amount so huge as to defy any explanation beyond the near-complete abandonment of electoral activity, which is what occurred, by Greg Gerritt’s own admission.

And what else exactly has been happening since 2004, for all the work the fusionists say they have been doing? Candidacies in all races fell another 30 to 50 percent annually. At the rate we’re going, by 2012 there will be hardly any GP candidacies at all.

The treasury remains bankrupt, as old donors continue to decline to renew, undoubtedly due to their impression that we’ve become a very poor investment, and new donors prove elusive, primarily due to the state of near-invisibility that the fusionist’s efforts have generated.

We have had the same person in charge of media and we get no media coverage at all; not in 2004, not in 2007; the same person in charge of fundraising and we are still bankrupt year after year. And if you criticize these people you get removed from the discussion listserv and are called “divisive”.

Many of the people who supported David Cobb realized sooner or later that they were misled by the hard-core fusionists and now realize what the formulators of that strategy really have planned for the Green Party. Make no mistake about it: the fusionists, those who hung David Cobb around our neck, are seeking fusion with the Democrat Party. The fusionists are Democrats; if they are not registered that way, they are nevertheless philosophically joined at the cerebrum with the Democrats.

When the 2008 election is over and we have realized tremendous gains thanks to the life-saving infusion from Ralph Nader we will nevertheless still have the following 2004 fusionists holding the following positions:

Greg Gerritt, still chair of the PCSC, despite having admitted that in 2004 he allowed his belief that the Greens should pull dramatically back in 2004 to guide the recommendations he made to candidates. This man should be run out of town on a rail but I will settle for his immediate resignation. Do the Green Party delegates have the courage to do it? Do they have the brains to do it?

Phil I-never-ran-against-a-Democrat Huckelberry, who recently submitted a phonied up resume in order to become one of the cochairs of the GPUS should have been hanged, drawn and quartered for his role in the strategy failure of 2004. Promoting a man who has shown himself to be completely incompetent has now placed the Green Party in the same category as the worst corporations who promote managers who have caused the loss of customers, closed plants and crashing revenues. Huckelberry is now a co-chair of GPUS instead of being with Greg in the “strategists-who-failed-spectacularly” retirement home.

SCOTT MCLARTY, is still “Media Coordinator”, despite having been the Media Coordinator who attracted no media in 2004, and has still managed to attract absolutely no media attention to the Green Party. Why is this man still in place? Does the Green Party have a death wish? Do we have the smarts to get rid of this guy?

Jody Haug, who managed to extend her SC term limit by being switched to Treasurer, a position for which she had no qualifications, and in the course of which narrowly avoided a significant ethics violation only due to last-minute intervention by a concerned person outside the party. Jody Haug, third time, for being chair of Fundraising, and no major changes or innovations are coming from there to create any faith that GPUS will ever emerge from bankruptcy. This is another example of the organization-wide death which we seem to have for our party. Do we lack the courage or the brains to get rid of people like this?

Jody Grage, second time, for being co-chair of Fin Com, yet GPUS is still bankrupt, and no reorganization plan to emerge has been undertaken. Can you imagine this woman leading the campaign for Ralph Nader in the state of Washington? She must go. How do we make it happen?

Greg Gerritt (failings already described) and Nan Garrett (Good God) chairing the Coordinated Campaign Committee. We have seeded our political pond with piranha! Does anyone seriously think we can stay afloat very long? Let’s get the net!

Julia Willebrand, still co-chair of the International Committee, despite having failed to follow her own bylaws and seek the input of international Green Parties when GPUS proposals could have an impact on them. Are you starting to get the message folks? We have booked passage on the Titanic. Is anyone going to tell the captain to change course or are we going to continue heading for what we know lies ahead?

Howard Switzer the fellow who just gave us a breathtaking banking proposal based on the thinking of the racist Franklin Sanders who chairs the Tennessee chapter of “the League of the South” (which was approved by the majority of delegates) heads the Platform Committee! Get serious! Here’s a guy who wants to arrange our financial matters using the thinking of a libertarian and a racist and he’s in charge of our platform committee! We are playing Russian roulette with all chambers fully loaded. How long are we to put up with people like Howard? Let’s send him back to Tiny Town, Tennessee with his barefooted buddy Katey Culver where his damage will be minimalized.

Jim Coplen, the hero of Indiana! There are approximately 12 Greens in Indiana after all of Jim’s hard work and we have promoted him to the Steering Committee. Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid; we gotta being freakin nuts to have this guy on our Steering Committee!

Holly Hart: do I really have to say anything; apparently not because she was overwhelmingly reelected? I think the reason she was reelected is not just because of the fusionists. There is a third faction that goes by various names. Sometimes they’re called the “kum by yah” Greens. These are the Greens that would actually like to do the right thing but haven’t got a clue as to what it is. They think since these people are in charge, they must be okay. These are the Greens that need to be hugged twice a day in order to function; these folks think we can deal with Dick Cheney by loving him to death.

Scott, generally, there is nothing wrong with having nothing worthwhile to say – unless you insist on saying it.

John Murphy