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Can the Green Party survive?
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President Obama has spent his first year in office retreating from promise after promise to the left, and with the right mysteriously calling him a socialist and a Nazi at the same time. Under the circumstances, small wonder that third parties such as the Greens are pointing to recent gains in Europe and Canada, as evidence that the world is ready for an alternative.
Sadly, however, this is not the world; this is America. Long before we Americans cast our meaningless votes, money and media determine the range of choices -- and Greens have neither. Green Party candidates are impoverished, marginalized even by the marginalized, and ignored by the press.
The GP simply cannot raise funds sufficient to advertise. This is partly by choice: they will accept no campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists or from their Political Action Committees (PACs) -- not even from those companies with whose vision of social responsibility they might agree (one assumes there must be at least some). The practical upshot of this is that it takes the entire national membership of the GP to support a single major political campaign. In Illinois in 2008, there were a flurry of Green contenders for local, state and Federal office. But all national effort, and funding, was dumped into the hopeless presidential campaign of Cynthia McKinney.
McKinney embodies the Greens' second problem, namely, their near-total inability to make inroads with the press. Though McKinney was bright, charming, knowledgeable and committed, the mainstream media dismissed her utterly (the Washington Post pleaded poverty when asked for reasons, yet somehow had the resources to engage in the non-stop Obamafest that was already being carried by every other news source, everywhere). Major online sources chose to dwell on alleged temperament issues and on one particular bad-hair day. Thus, most voters saw her name for the very first time, at the polls in November.
In 2009, the standard bearer is "Reverend Billy" Talen who is running for Mayor of New York City. However, although he has toured packed houses nationwide with a surprisingly credible message of economic reform -- a big issue for a city that endures a major fiscal crisis every ten years -- Talen is unheard of in the NYC press and is treated as a fringe campaign, by those who will address him at all.
In 2010, although a number of solid citizens will likely run for House and Senate seats under the Green banner, total nationwide funding will again be enough to actively support only one of them. And for the 2012 Presidential election, the GP will no doubt be split once again, between those continuing to court McKinney, and those appealing to their old war horse Ralph Nader to return -- which he won't.
So, whither the Greens? Can America's biggest alternative political party salvage any shred of relevance? If so, it could only be through one of the following moves, none of which seem likely:
- Forget about Federal-level politics. If Britain's Liberal Democrats have taught us anything, it is that even under a favorable political structure, third parties are still too, too easy to ignore. In a hostile system such as ours, a surprise win in Congress for the Greens would be a short-lived novelty -- Democrats and Republicans alike would labor tirelessly to make it so. Communications, information and other resources that have always been procedural in nature, would be recast as partisan just to deny access to the upstart. S/he would sit on no committees, be invited to no caucuses, and would only get late-night C-SPAN airtime to address empty chambers. Under these circumstances, why bother with Washington at all? Better the GP should focus on school boards, utilities boards, and council seats at the township level, where they might actually have an impact.
- Forget politics entirely, and switch to direct activism. Even McKinney has made a name for herself since 2008, participating in blockade runs to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, even managing to kick down a few MSM doors in the process. Now that's making a difference.
- Lift restrictions on campaign contributions. If Greens must run for office, they must run to win. And the election goes not to the best candidate, but the most relentlessly financed. The GP should use all currently-legal means to break the (red-blue) color barrier. Once in office, with franking privileges and at least some free media, they can bite whatever corporate hands fed them to seek reform.
- Infiltrate the Democrats. However betrayed the progressives may feel by the President, they will still back him in 2012. Because he isn't a Republican. As dim and timid as that thinking is, that's America. One must learn to play the game instead of griping about the rules. Form a Green Democratic wing with whom the President and other Dems will have to make deals.
- Join with other third parties, such as the Libertarians. Although their social and economic views differ greatly, they share an interest in reforming the political process. They both also share a philosophy: that human rights are the basis of all good government. They may disagree on the full set of those rights, but to place that discussion at the center of policy again is their common aim.
If the Green Party is ever to do anything other than to stand outside, look in, and complain, they must cease to operate as if their America already existed. They must let go of their notions of "fairness", as if anything other than an apex predator lived in a "just" world. They must become as ruthless in righteousness as they claim their antagonists to be in evil. Machiavelli's "Prince" was ironic only to his own place and time; in 21st-Century America his ends-justifying-means is simply fact.
