One thing I am already grateful for
about 2013 is that it will be a non-presidential election year. Greens
typically fare better in these “off-year” elections—including midterms and
odd-year municipal elections—as voters are generally not subjected to the same
level of misplaced and irrational fear mongering of the two major parties. Here
in Portland, Greens have been highly successful at the local and state level,
particularly on the City Council and School Board. So much for the oft-asserted
claim that Greens “can’t win.”
While your town’s municipal elections
this fall are unlikely to draw nearly the amount of frenzied media coverage as
the recent presidential election, they are, in many respects, of far greater
consequence. Representatives of town or city council, water district, school
committee and other municipal departments are instrumental in crafting and
executing town or city policies that directly affect residents.
And even-year midterm elections for
federal congressional representatives are, constitutionally-speaking, vastly
more significant than any vote for president as the majority of political
authority (including the power to start and end wars) rests in the Legislative
Branch. (Of course, the numerous unconstitutional transgressions of both the
Bush and Obama administrations have shifted many of those powers to the
Executive.)
The point is, American voters tend to
have their priorities backwards, placing greater emphasis on the increasingly
vapid presidential elections, when it is the lesser hyped congressional and
municipal races that truly deserve our attention. As a result, midterm and
“off-year” elections routinely generate far less turnout. It also means voters
may be more willing to take a chance on a Green candidate as issues and policy
concerns are not overshadowed by presidential personality contests.
When I was campaigning for my friend
Asher Platts last fall, I found the voters most hostile to our platform were
not conservatives or "centrist" independents, but liberals.
Strange as it sounds, conservatives
would usually at least hear me out before dismissing me. Sometimes we would
even get a lively, yet cordial debate going at their door-step. Not so with
liberals. One woman, who had numerous Obama/Bidden signs on her yard screamed
at me “I don’t vote for Greens!” When I politely informed her there was no
Republican in the race, she simply repeated her first statement and slammed the
door.
Another middle-aged, Democrat urged
Asher to drop his state senate bid right there and then so as not to “steal
votes” from his opponent, Justin Alfond. Again, this was a traditional two-way
race (with no Republican). The idea that Asher would “steal” votes from Alfond
simply by running against him is not only illogical—it is antidemocratic.
But by far the most infuriating liberal
voters responded as the individual I wrote about here. They would tell me how
much they agreed with Asher’s platform—but could not vote for him because all
of his legislative goals are impossible to enact. First off, as I explained in
the aforementioned post, this is simply not true. All of Asher’s five main
policy positions (single-payer healthcare, universal college education,
creation of a state bank in Maine, higher taxes for the wealthy, and removing
corporate money from elections) have been successfully implemented in other
states or countries.
But this reflexive “It’s impossible!”
attitude has become the default position of liberals. They are so preoccupied
with working within the narrow parameters of so-called “political reality,” (the
hallmark of which are the oft-touted themes of “compromise” and “bipartisanship,”)
they no longer fight for actual progressive gains. Rather than making any real
demands of Democratic lawmakers, progressive groups like MoveOn.org, the Sierra
Club, and the local Maine People’s Alliance dutifully champion the president’s
few meager reforms—while ignoring his track record on civil liberties, the
environment and drone warfare, entirely.
Modern day liberals do not believe in
anything other than the Democratic Party. And just look at how far that’s
gotten us. Case in point, a recent issue of The Nation magazine featured a cover-story titled, “How to Save the Democratic Party.”
Democrats threw poor and working class
Americans under the bus decades ago, with President Bill Clinton perhaps
symbolizing the party’s final assault on its traditional constituents. Indeed,
while Republicans generally cow-tow to their base’s every whim, Democrats seem
to hold their supporters in contempt. The notoriously foul-mouthed Rahm Emmanuel,
as Obama’s Chief of Staff, called progressives “fucking retarded,” while former
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs derided them as the “Professional
Left.”
Chris Hedges is right: The liberal class
is dead.
Yet, despite the Democrats’ complete and
utter submission to corporate interests, we still struggle to get newcomers to
join the Green Party. The 2000 election debacle, and the Democrats’ ludicrous
insistence that Ralph Nader, rather than the conservative Supreme Court, threw
the presidency to George W. Bush has forever soured progressives’ view of
third-parties. Americans have ingrained this false notion that independent or
third-party candidates are “spoilers” or electoral “saboteurs.” They have
accepted the equally asinine argument that a vote for a third-party candidate
is actually a vote for a Republican. As long as the left perceives the
Republicans to be just that much worse than the Democrats, we will remain
locked in a perpetual corporate party monopoly.
As a result, I routinely encounter
registered Democrats who assure me they are “Greens in spirit,” whatever that
is supposed to mean. These individuals strike me as Nietzsche’s “falsely dubbed
‘free spirits’,” who, in Beyond Good and
Evil, he calls, “unfree and laughably superficial” (40-41). Nietzsche,
whose proto-postmodernist thinking defies easy political categorization,
believed only those who are fiercely critical and eternally skeptical of
societal institutions can become truly free-spirits (for him the “Ubermensch,”
or spiritual “overman”). Such free-spirits, he conceded, will naturally be
misunderstood—perhaps even mistrusted or met with hostility—by the
mediocrity-revelers of “the herd.”
“The individual has always had to
struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe,” Nietzsche writes. “If
you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is
too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
Truth be told, as a party we have
largely given up trying to convert Democrats to the Green Party. Too many of
them are just locked into their partisan thinking. Last fall, Asher received
far more support from college students, the working-poor, and first-time voters. These groups were far more receptive to his campaign than
the establishment liberals that make up the majority of Portland voters.
Personally, I no longer waste time with liberals.
They are a lost cause.
Well said Adam!
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