Tag Archives: green party

Cheri Honkala Should Win PA’s HD197

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

Democrats deserve to lose #HD197 to Green write-in #CheriHonkala, due to repeat Dem corruption. #MyUnpopularOpinion #papol #p2

I’m serious. The one who comes out smelling like roses in the HD197 race is Honkala.

Campaigners for the Democrat who sought to be named on the ballot but ended up a write-in, Emilio Vasquez, are already being accused of abetting voter intimidation. The two predecessors in office, both Democrats, resigned from office due to corruption charges. The GOP candidate who was the sole candidate on the ballot, Lucinda Little, left the Dems because of their corruption.

Now we know that the GOP lost this race, but Friday 3/31 will reveal which write-in won. I hope the Dems lose this seat to the Green write-in. The Dems deserve to lose this race. Honkala should be the first Green member of the PA General Assembly. #papol

Why Jill Stein is Not My Choice

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I’m a Bernie Sanders primary voter, and I don’t feel that Jill Stein is a realistic candidate for president. It has nothing to do with her being a third-party candidate or being a potential “spoiler” because I don’t believe in the premise that votes only belong to two parties. This has everything to do with the optics and mechanics of Stein’s proposals, as well as with her lack of political experience as an electoral liability.

Jill Stein’s Green Party has never won a single Congressional seat since their foundation in 1992. On the Green ticket, only 7 senate candidates and 1 House candidate are running in 2016, when 34 Senate and all 435 House seats are open for election this year. The Republicans are favored to retain the majority in the House this year while the Senate majority is up for grabs. With a party list being this paltry and dry, if the Green Party leadership intended for this year to be a watershed for a left-wing exodus from the Democrats to the Greens, all seven co-chairs of the Green National Committee are sorely mistaken.

So many of Stein’s policies could pass muster with none but a number of the Democratic minority in either House. That will effectively render about 60% of her platform moot in the face of not only Republican far-right hostility but also moderate Democratic reticence. A president Jill Stein faces far worse hostility to her policies than the current officeholder has faced in 8 years, 6 of which have been lame ducks filled with deft executive self-control against reactionary legislative havoc. Stein could not, under any known or possible circumstances, institute an effective presidency in this oh-so American, oh-so counterintuitive political reality.

With the sole exception of her time as a member of the Town Meeting of Lexington, Massachusetts (2005-2011), Jill Stein does not have any degree of downballot political experience. 40 out of all 44 presidents in the history of the United States have held any combination of at least one of these seats of office prior to their election as president: Vice President, Senator, Member of the House, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Member of the President’s Cabinet. Three other presidents – Taylor, Grant and Eisenhower – had only held military leaderships prior to their presidency, and the remaining one – Washington – was a delegate to the Continental Congress and the leader of the U.S. Army during the Revolutionary War.

So where does Jill Stein fit in that expectation of experience? Similarly, where does Donald Trump fit in that expectation of experience?

By comparison, the person who she has sought to woo over to running with her as a Green Party candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, has held elected office since 1981 as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, representative of Vermont’s at-large district in Congress and Senator for Vermont. Hillary Clinton, who Jill Stein has browbeat for her arguably non-progressive record, served as Senator for New York from 2001-2009 and as Secretary of State from 2009-2013. By comparison to 40 out of 44 other presidents in U.S. history, both candidates for the Democratic nomination are significantly more qualified than Jill Stein, who has never held state or federal level office, and Donald Trump, who has never held elected or appointed political or military office.

Even Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party right-wing candidate in 2016 who previously gained more popular votes than Jill Stein’s last run in 2012, is more qualified for the presidency than Jill Stein or Donald Trump by way of serving as the Republican Governor of New Mexico. Seeing how Johnson browbeat Stein and her Green Party in a third-party debate on RT America, Stein seems to largely be out of her depth when it comes to confronting a cottage industry of the most inane right-wing arguments and rebuttals directed against her policies. If I were to protest-vote without concern to political ideology, I would vote for Johnson over Stein.

Even Gayle McLaughlin, the former two-term Green Party mayor and current councilwoman of Richmond, California who has been lauded for her progressive, far-left-to-the-Democrats policies, is somewhat more qualified to run for higher state or federal office of some type, if not president, than Jill Stein. I would vote for Gayle McLaughlin over Jill Stein in any state or federal office if I were a California resident. Unfortunately, it seems that the Green Party only runs a decent ground game in California, and only in local races. Outside of California, the Green Party seems to mostly attract politically-aware but ill-tempered, non-serious malcontents as candidates. I wish the Green Party were a more serious, more self-aware rival for left-wing votes at all levels, seeing that they are the largest left-wing political party in terms of membership which is not named the “Democratic Party”.

Finally, to pivot back to the separation of powers, so much of Jill Stein’s agenda (and Bernie’s and Hillary’s) is not accomplishable by one person or by the executive branch as a whole. About 60-80% of Stein’s platform is the remit of Congress. About 60-80% of Stein’s agenda cannot be accomplished by executive order and would be slapped down by the courts if tried through EO. Separation of powers guarantees that the Congress will always act to hold the executive to account. Even under the G.W. Bush presidency, a Republican Congress held his presidency in check on the Real I.D. Act, which scared many libertarians of the left and White-right varieties over the usurpation of state-level privilege over identification.

Why do we demand so much of the presidency that cannot be realistically accomplished by the presidency? Why have we lost so much of our cognizance regarding what power Congress has in the implementation of federal government? Is this a popularity contest over who can be the bigger strongman or strongwoman? I don’t think so many of us, especially Democrats, care about Congress and its powers anymore (to our peril), and we set ourselves up for massive disappointment when we treat one person as the leader of a political cult of personality as so many of us have done with Bernie Sanders. I believe in competent presidencies, not strong presidencies, and no matter how progressive or liberal a platform can be, it has little to no legitimacy if it is not backed by a legislative mandate. Jill Stein does not have a legislative mandate by way of her party having no members in Congress, or even a progressive majority to consider and pass her proposals.
That is how woefully inadequate Jill Stein seems to me as a candidate. This is why I backed away from Bernie Sanders after I voted for him. This is also why I’m conceding to voting for Clinton in the general, in that she has the votes, the basic experience as an officeholder that at least 40 other presidents have had prior to their elections, and the legislative mandate to carry so many of the policies that Sanders supported in his candidacy’s platform.

But whether Democrats, or progressives and liberals in any party, even care about getting a majority in both houses of Congress anymore remains to be seen.

The Big Tent Sucks

Politics, Rants, To Export, , , , , ,

Watching last month’s general election in Sweden, I was once again treated to the non-majoritarian nature of proportionally-representative election systems like Sweden (although the Feminist Initiative barely missed the 4%). It is not as zero-sum as ours: a total of 8 parties are now represented in the Swedish parliament (Riksdag), encompassing a range of variably-compact ideologies in a variety of portfolios.

I favor proportional representation due to its ability to better reflect the political diversity of the voting population, as well as its ability to let candidates be more honest and thorough about their ideologies.

In this year’s election, the Social Democrats gained the largest vote share and is tasked with forming a coalition that can back the next prime minister and cabinet; possible partners include the Left Party and the Green Party. On the opposite end, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats gained more seats from the free-market parties of the outgoing Alliance coalition, such as the Moderate Party, Liberal People’s Party, Christian Democrats and Centre Party.

In the United States, potential candidates and their supporters at the federal level would be grouped into just two parties – Democratic and Republican, Blue and Red, Liberal and Conservative, etc.

I contend that the sheer forcing of multiple ideologies together under two roofs is stifling. It forces all of the partisans who may not be predisposed to a whole-hog ideology to adopt such an ideology for the benefit of an unwieldy party unity. As a result, reasonable-minded people may find themselves trapped in an unpopular party because of the words, policies and actions of fellow partisans.

If you need to switch to another party, it shouldn’t have to make the news as some sort of epiphany or “I’ve seen the light” moment, whether it is the Charlie Crists, Lincoln Chafees, Gary Johnsons or Cynthia McKinneys of American politics. The candidate or voter shouldn’t have to feel like some sort of “traitor” for switching or creating new parties.

That’s why I support the Single Transferable Vote. I support having more options in Congress and state legislatures, including more equal representation for the six most-popular parties in the United States: Democratic, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Working Families, and Constitution.

I could see Rand Paul as an LP senator, Bernie Sanders as a WFP senator, at least a quarter of the House Republican caucus being Constitution Party members (including the likes of people like Louie Gohmert), a quarter of the same caucus being LP members (including some of the Tea Party-backed members like Justin Amash), most of the Congressional Progressive Caucus being members of the WFP or Greens, and so on, while center-right or center-left candidates would stick with more uniform, less-problematic Republican or Democratic parties.

Maybe after all the libertarians and socio-conservatives left for their own parties, the GOP would revert back to its image as the “Party of Lincoln”, or even to the pro-civil rights stance of the Radical Republicans of the Reconstruction era, or even to the likes of Eisenhower. I could imagine people like Rob Portman and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen remaining in this incarnation of the GOP.

Maybe after the progressives of the CPC left to join the Working Families Party and Greens, the Democrats would get much more pushback against their acquiescence to pro-MRI policies. Centrists like Dianne Feinstein, Kay Hagan and Harry Reid would still likely remain in this incarnation of the Democratic Party.

Maybe after the far-right Republican Study Group joins the Constitution Party, that party would be marginalized in their socially-far-right politics by the other parties in Congress through a sort of cordon sanitaire.

Any of these possibilities would perhaps prevent people from associating “fright-wing” politics with a plurality of the voting population, and allow voters to make a better distinction between the candidates for whom they would vote, as well as the issues on which they would campaign.

I just want more diversity of party labels to choose from, not this frustrating, debilitating duopoly in which we’ve been stuck for so long. And to have more diverse party choices in our politics, we need to dispense with the idea that anyone has to win a majority to be part of the political process.

We just need to win 4%.

Young Greens of America

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They just formed at the Green Party convention in Chicago last week.

Unfortunately, they don’t have a website or a wiki….and they’re nowhere to be found on the Green Party site, nor on Google.

Which is kinda surprising and disturbing. You’d expect the Green Party to have at least some mention of what is carried on at their own convention on their own website.

In fact, the only messages which I’ve received from this group are through email. No listserv for this organization or anything.

I’ll begin publishing the messages I’ve received soon, at least to see if there’s anyone who’s willing to discuss it in public.

The Green movement and sub-Saharan Africa

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OK, I don’t know how to put this down correctly, so this post will look a bit bleh.

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I don’t think that the Green movement will get that much foothold in Africa, at least not in the near future.

Right now, the dominant political parties in the countries’ parliaments and executive mansions espouse (at least on paper) some common threads: Pan-Africanism, religious conservatism, nationalism, and populism.

Also, most of these countries’s demographies, because of the history of cross-continental dialogue between Africa and Europe, tend to be averse to any political ideology or social cause of a supposed Western origin: anarchism, environmentalism, civil rights for LGBT citizens, etc.

The only case of an African “Green party” that is enjoying any publicity is the Mazangiri Green Party of Kenya, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, who is an ally of the current (disputed) president Mwai Kibaki.

Heck, even the Green political movement in South Africa has taken a turn for the worse in the post-apartheid era. From the Wikipedia suggestion, most Greens in South Africa are currently allied with either the ANC or the DA, primarily because of how the most outstanding  (token) environmental excesses of the apartheid regimes, including nuclear weapons and power, were cleaned up or scaled down by the Mandela government.

Perhaps the most outstanding issue, however, in South Africa and most of sub-Saharan Africa, is the rise of AIDS/HIV, something that no national Green party has similarly incorporated to the very top of their political agenda (except for this; see if YOU can find the reference to AIDS/HIV in all that text). While Africa is scared as hell about this epidemic and its effects on their populations, livelihoods, and media images, most Green parties are more concerned with the prevention of nuclear power, whaling, or other matters which are of less populistic appeal to the electorates.

I would like to see that change, as I will either vote for a Libertarian or Green in November, but the lack of Green participation in national and local government in Africa is worrying to me.