Listening to news reports early this morning on the failed and ineptly engineered attempts in the U.S. Senate to push through energy legislation that looked meaningfully toward the future, I shook my head as I drove my VW TDI diesel into town. So often it seems like our country has two major political parties - the We Fuck Up EVERYTHING We Put Our Hands On! Party (The GOP), and the Enablers of the We Fuck Up EVERYTHING We Put Our Hands On! Party (The Democrats).These past seven years of devastation of public comity, and respect for basic rule of law, by the Bush administration have clearly shown major differences between Bush's hegemony over the GOP, and the basic ideals of the Democratic Party. You know what I mean.
But this past eleven months since the Democrats have had control of Congress have shown us a leadership of the Democrats that fails time and again to push a progressive agenda past the point of being able to say to the folks back home "We tried, but the nefarious Republicans stymied us." Again, you know what I mean.
Every day, at blogs like DailyKos or firedoglake or atrios, you can read hundreds of comments by committed progressives who are so fed up by this they ask "why not go out and start our OWN party?" Or express some similar thought.
I usually write back, if I'm in the mood or it is somebody I know, saying, "We tried that with the Green Party. It didn't work."
It didn't. But we tried. When the Green Party USA and Green Party of Alaska started, it was because the original members were sick and tired of year after year of the growth of corporate influence over politics. Most ideas put forth long ago by prominent Greens in the lower 48 and Alaska are now part of the platforms of any progressive Democrat. But, even with that progress on the individual candidate level, many longtime Democrats seem to hate those who wanted something better, for having abandoned something early Greens saw as corrupt.
If I had a quarter for every time I've read a comment somewhere about how Ralph Nader cost the Democrats the 2000 election, I'd be a millonaire. But the reality of Florida 2000 is that Al Gore won that state. If he had gotten himself a legal team half as good as the prosecutors of OJ Simpson, he'd be winding down his second term now, instead of picking up statuettes and prizes.
Locally, the most irrational examples of Green Hatred Disorder, are statements that diss Diane Benson because she briefly left the Democratic Party to run as a Green Party candidate. Therefore, so goes the meme, she isn't good enough to run as a Dem against solid candidates who never left the fold. That argument just doesn't hold any truth.
Benson was a solid Democrat when the Sheffield administration scandals unfolded. She was still a Democrat when the Exxon Valdez scraped its guts out over Bligh Reef. She was a Democrat when Tony Knowles put Bill Allen in a prominent position on his gubernatorial transition team. She watched over the years, as our state's Democratic leadership were too often enablers of the Corrupt Bastard Club.
Democrats who are hostile to ex-Greens and current Greens are helping assure the continued decline of their party in Alaska. Young people, Veterans and seniors identify more strongly with stances currently taken by the Green Party of Alaska than with any information one might find on Ethan Berkowitz's issue-free campaign page, for instance. Young people, especially, want to see the corrupt corporate paradigm thrown aside, not tinkered with and tweaked.
Tony Knowles only became governor through incredibly inept gubernatorial campaigns by the Republicans. He couldn't even win a three-way race against a Republican AND a quasi-Republican this past election. The last time a real Democrat, willing to stand up to big oil, won statewide office without the GOP shooting themselves in the foot was when? 1974?
If Democrats don't build a bigger, younger, more open, more forward-looking, less oil-enthralled party over the next ten or eleven months, even Lyda Green will be able to take Don Young's place.
one of my artichokes from last summer
