My Green Votes
At the moment of truth, it was tough. I’m a Democrat and I want Democrats to win, so it took a lot for me to punch the button for the Green Party candidates for Congress. But neither John Carney or Chris Coons gave me any reason to vote for them. Since they are both going to win by miles, the old scare tactics, and the “lesser of two evils” arguments don’t seem to apply.
They are such prohibitive favorites that I doubt they will even notice this impotent protest, but I feel better. When they return to Congress and vote along with the Republicans to prove their bipartisanship bone fides on the next heinous trade agreement, or more tax cuts for “job creators” I’ll be able to say, “I didn’t vote for that.”
I voted for Bernie August instead of John Carney. Coons got my vote, though. I feel like he is not yet part of the Carper Machine.
I was wavering on that one. At least Coons sent a mailer in which he identified himself as a Democrat and hinted that Republicans are the problem.
Solidarność!!!
I did it as well. In the gymnasium at Highlands Elementary School on Gilpin and Grant Avenues in Wilmington, DE… I did it! Straight Green ticket were applicable (otherwise Democrat). I put my finger on the button and did the business.
Like I said yesterday, it’ll change nothing today. It’ll change nothing tomorrow. It’ll change nothing in a year. But it’s the only move long term.
I’m going Green with August, Groff and Damavandi.
Leaving Treasurer blank. Barney has shown me nothing; Simpler may have better financial credentials, but can’t give the R’s this one.
Mayrack may be the only D to get my vote, because she is clearly a step up from Wagner. But I’ve seen little to suggest that she would do anything to shake up the party organization’s adoration for corporatist Carper/Carney DINOs.
Denn is the only authentic Roosevelt Dem we have left in the Party. I have zero qualms about that one.
Denn and Mayrack for me.
Greens for the rest.
Even to the end, I wasn’t ruling out Barney. But when his last spot was that Carper endorsement rather than Barney speaking for himself, the decision was easy.
BTW, if you saw the Carper spot, did you hear Carper say that Barney worked with Markell to raise the minimum wage in Delaware? That is/was a blatant lie. Markell did everything he could to emasculate the minimum wage bill, got it watered down, and got it delayed for a year. If Barney ‘helped’ Markell do that, then he’s just what I feared he was: The latest Carper Cyborgenics prototype.
Also voting for Groff so I can say “I didn’t vote for that”—this will be one of the first times I actually vote against someone I’m displeased with rather than just skipping that office. May vote other Green candidates when I actually get to the booth at lunchtime later today!
I simply am not going to yield my progressive vision within the Democratic Party to Tory Democrats by moving “outside” and casting a meaningless vote. I’m going to proudly cast my vote for my Party’s declared vision and then, even as a toothless gadfly, give those Del-Tories some unmitigated shaming and hell if I have to.
I tried collaboration with the Greens when in Texas; their 2004 Presidential candidate was a friend of mine with whom I worked on voter registration as progressive Dem. leader and he, David Cobb, as a Green Party leader in Texas.
David and I were totally on the same page ideologically. But though he claimed to have “given up” on the Democratic Party, frankly, good guy that he is/was, he was nowhere to be found in my earlier days in Party reform work. I attended Green meetings to collaborate and we sent missionaries to their State Convention to collaborate. In the final analysis, they were dreamers, not down and dirty doers. The Democratic party machinery is in place, waiting to be commandeered for progressive change. Building another machine is a pointless endeavor.
A candidate in a tough race properly ties himself to the state’s two most popular politicians and a popular issue. That’s how campaigns work.
@JM: You’re a suck-up. That’s how tools work.
A candidate in a tough race would at least consider the possibility of speaking directly to the voters. OTOH, if you want voters to think you’re a stooge for Carper, you have Carper speak for you.
That’s how Barney’s campaign worked.
If Barney actually thought he had something worth saying, he would have spoken for himself.
stan,
I respect your choice. You and people like Liberalgeek have a point about working within the system to change it. I get that.
Coons and Carney need to feel a little pain though. They need to know that our liberal/progressive votes are not freebies. Our votes need to cost them something.
Today’s 20 or so votes for Groff and August will not do much, but it is a start. Let these 20 votes mark the begin of when Liberals and Progressives put our Democratic officials on notice that we have some basic demands. Maybe that will influence their votes in this next term, and maybe it won’t. If they don’t notice, then maybe they win by 100, or 1,000 fewer votes than expected the next election. What then? Is that enough to get their attention? Perhaps.
I know this much, they can count. There is an inflection point at which they will pay attention.
@stan… The fact that a Green candidate won’t win doesn’t make the vote meaningless. The fact the Greens are not properly organized doesn’t make the vote meaningless. Like I said, a Green vote will not bear fruit today, tomorrow or next week. However, unless socialists, real progressives, activists, &c. prove that their votes are not in the bag for one of two shitty choices nothing will change.
There are two “independents” in the US Senate. Otherwise every Senator is tied to one of two platforms. This is a disgrace amongst Western houses of representation.
Look at the Bundestag in Germany… look at the diversity and the distribution..
CDU and CSU: 237 (38.1%) including 22 overhang seats
SPD: 146 (23.5%)
FDP: 93 (15%)
The Left: 76 (12.2%)
Alliance ’90/Greens: 68 (10.9%)
That’s representative goverment.
If you think the Democratic machine is ready for somebody to step up and drive the machine in a new direction than you have every right to do what you think is right. I personally think this position is incredibly naive…
ES: You announced in August that you wouldn’t vote for Barney. You’re not the target for last-minute televised ads. Think Bear-Glasgow-Appo-Smyrna-Penn Acres-Green Acres.
By the way, I’m not advocating a change to a Parliamentary system. I’m simply saying that using one of only two vehicles to make your morning commute doesn’t make much sense when one is a M1A1 tank and the other is a penny-farthing bicycle. It simply isn’t good enough.
Well put.
No I didn’t, JM. I asked, over and over again, for someone to provide me with one good progressive reason why I should vote for him. Crickets.
I was almost persuaded by two arguments from D’s I respect who I saw at work: (1) We’re unleashing the new R threat in Simpler; and (2) Simpler will sit on a committee where he could cause problems for state employees.
After seeing his mouthpiece Carper blatantly lie about how Barney somehow helped Jack pass minimum wage when, in fact, he tried to kill the bill, I couldn’t vote for someone so clearly tied to the anti-Democratic mantra, pushed by alleged Democrats, against the interests of rank-and-file working Democrats.
BTW, that will be one of two things I want to see in any prospective D candidate for governor in 2016: (1) A meaningful increase in the minimum wage and (2) a stop to the corporate and centrist-D war on public education.
Wow, at first I thought I was on a Libertarian forum. haha
I’ve been voting 3rd party since I got back from GW’s war in 2004 and have been told for the last 10 years, “you’re throwing away your vote” – well, it’s good to see that the momentum against the status quo 2-party system is building on both side of the political spectrum.
Not all “Green” but
Groff
Gesty
Graham
and Zero Incumbent votes
Here’s a different perspective, jason, on learning about breaking into the system with a third party effort–and what can reasonably be accomplished. Substitute Libertarian for Green because I’m not talking about ideology but process.
First observation is that any “take-over” or “make-over” of existing party has to start in the precincts in the districts and in the smaller offices, from school board to state rep. For a protest vote to be more than a protest vote, the individual does have to be capable of actually doing the job if accidentally elected (see Jesse Ventura).
Second, starting in the precincts means that getting elected is about constituent services rather than ideology. What do Paul Baumbach, Bryan Townsend, John Atkins, Joe Miro, Jeff Spiegleman, and Cathy Cloutier all have in common? Constituent services. It is difficult to impossible to run against a candidate who delivers outstanding constituent services and knows his/her district. I don’t care how many doors you knock on. If everybody knows that you call Cathy to get the curb fixed, or call John to get help with Medicaid, they aren’t trading that out for an unknown quantity. (Ironically, as a union incumbent I always ran on that constituent services record, and as a challenger I suddenly realized how difficult it is to compete with that.)
So what that means is that PDD and ADA, to take two examples, and the Greens would be a third, will become meaningful vehicles for challenging the existing structure when you get sufficient people willing to put in the YEARS of building a rep for helping people with the stuff in their day to day life. And if you’re not the incumbent that means you have to find a way to be useful to those people anyway. Plus, during that time you can’t really talk about national issues because people whose natural gas tank has a problem REALLY don’t give a shit what you think about the social safety network, because unless you can fix THEIR problem now you have no credibility.
Third–(and I get to say this because I just ran as hard and well-organized and decently financed a campaign as a third-party candidate as I could put together)–major change is going to occur (God I do hate to say this) through rebuilding the outlying wings of the two major parties. The Democrats need a geographically housed (i.e. Massachusetts, Connecticut, wherever) progressive wing that can actually get mid-level candidates elected to state legislatures and then into the House and Senate. Elizabeth Warren could be a precursor, but she could also remain only a token.
Fourth–the current power structures at the state and national level are in the hands of people who (a) control the wealth and (b) love doing this stuff day in and day out. They are not theorists, they are practitioners. They go to every meeting, they eat the rubber chicken, they become the treasurers and secretaries of civic leagues and trade associations or unions. In short they do what most of us here as bloggers don’t want to do: they give over a huge percentage of their lives to politics for years on end.
jason, you flirted with the idea of a protest candidacy and ultimately didn’t have the time or inclination even to meet that requirement. I’ve just done a campaign where I have come face to face with what I will do or what I am temperamentally unsuited to do to try to win a campaign. On at least two occasions I knew what I SHOULD do to maximize my chances in a particular venue and I could not bring myself to do it. I then got to watch other people who had brought guns to the knife fight go home with the prizes.
I’m stubborn, and I’m learning some difficult lessons the hard way with my forehead against the brick wall. And one less is this (cribbed from THE SECOND CIVIL WAR and I can’t remember the author)–from the 40s to the mid-70s both major parties had conservative wings as well as liberal wings. There were liberal Republicans and there were conservative Democrats, and neither group voted in lock step. You had to make deals. Today we don’t have those functional distinctions within the parties, although there are signs in Delaware that the Democrats are trying to grow one.
Too long. Sorry.
All good points Steve.
Spoken like someone who has lost some skin in this game.
Good stuff Steve, and good luck. If not the voters, your students are lucky to have you.
ES: Indeed, two very good requirements for 2016.
Thanks, Steve. That’s interesting information from an excellent perspective. Unfortunately it doesn’t get to the heart of the issue for most people like me.
I can’t run for office. I don’t have the proper personality traits. I have no financial backing. I smoke quite a bit of marijuana on a regular basis and I have a personal history that won’t stand up to the scrutiny of the 21st century. (I am proud of all this, by the way, which is exactly why I don’t have the political mindset.) Plus I’m far too radical to sit on some civic board. I have no background in labor so the union thing is out as well.
All I have is my opinion and my vote. So although I think your description regarding how to build a viable faction outside the current two-party catastrophe seems accurate I suppose I’m just shit out of luck.
Unless someone is ready to argue about zoning easements every other Tuesday to make a name for herself or she’s sitting on a personal fortune there is no feasible way out of this I can see.
Bernie Sanders ’16!
Dorian there is a way in for you–it’s just what Scott Adams of Dilbert would call a “one-off.” Things you can do: help a desirable candidate handle social media; be willing to do research for that candidate. I only used civic organizations as example–also trade, education, professional networking.
But there is this: if you only have yourself and your vote then you are screwed no matter what your politics are.
A parable: once upon a time there was an Historically Black University in the capital city of a small state. For many years its only interface with “politics” was to come before the Joint Finance Committee and make a budget presentation. Everybody else who came before the JFC had spent the last fiscal year building relationships with the committee members, making sure each of them saw their causes as important and become real people to them–and guess who got more appropriations?
So guess what? Until that HBU got a President and a Provost willing to go out and engage ALL YEAR and become valuable to the people making the decisions, that poor little university got the scrapings and leavings from the table.
You have to play in the game. @Terry: I don’t consider it as having lost skin over the past six months–I consider it as having been an investment. Win or lose the voters in my district now know me, they speak to me when they see me out at meetings (whether they voted for me or not), and sometimes they even bring me problems to help get solved (usually with education, which is our family thing). And I will win them over to thinking about me (regardless of party–and I make no promises there) as a potentially effective future Rep, one person at a time, all year long, even when there is no election.
Because that is what Howard Dean meant about rolling up your sleeves–how do you think he became Governor in the first place? It wasn’t just commercials and speeches.
I usually vote straight Democratic, but I know how gratified Bernie August will be to get some votes. Bernie is straight up one of the nicest folk it has ever been my pleasure to know.