Yet, for practical purposes, it drew the Greens into doing a service for the Democrats. I think Ajamu Baraka got it right when he said that the recount was a case of the Greens "carrying water" for the Democrats. Baraka and many other leading Greens signed a petition protesting the actions of Cobb and Stein. The petition got me wondering: Why can't the Democrats do their own recount? Further, if the recount had changed the outcome of the election of 2016, would the Democrats have offered some kind of compensation to the Green Party for the service they had performed? And might some Greens have accepted such payment?
I know it's easy to criticize from the sidelines and hard to be in the game, but still I think it's fair for me to make a few observations. I get the impression that Stein had some doubts about the recount project. But she was probably under enormous pressure to file for the recounts, to --seize this historic opportunity-- and that sort of thing. She plainly was not well-served by some of the Greens advising her. (And I doubt all the advice was coming from David Cobb, who after all is only one person. In 2004, Cobb was simply the public face of a well-organized group of leading Greens who obviously wanted to keep the Green Party small and marginal.)
If the Greens had stuck with Nader in 2003-04, we'd have three major parties in American politics today instead of just two. Many Americans would have welcomed the chance to support a party that refused to sell out to the big corporations. In 2004 and afterward, many people would have been impressed to see the Greens standing with Nader and would have begun to come around to the Green Party. Working people would have had a chance.
Some people might wonder why I am revisiting the events of 2003-04 in such detail. I'm doing so because many progressives have never visited those events at all, at least not the events specifically concerning the Green Party. Activists need to be as well informed as possible if they want to make intelligent decisions going forward. My concerns are more about the future than they are about the past.
Yet at the end of the day, it's not a question of strategy--it's a question of right or wrong. The country does not need a minor party that occasionally does service for one of the two major parties. It doesn't need a force for good that now and then teams up with a force for evil. What we really need now is a Green Party or a People's Party or a party of whatever name, to represent working people exclusively and get completely clear of the stench and corruption of the Democrats and Republicans.
In most respects, Jill Stein ran a great campaign in 2016. But she was in the unenviable position, as the Green nominee, of having to unify the Greens, of struggling to hold together two groups that might sometimes be working at cross-purposes. That's no reason for despair--struggles of this kind seem to occur in all political parties. In any event, what the Greens need to do now is recruit new members on a frank pledge of making the party fully independent. This message has got to be clear, concise, and uncompromising. But if the Greens cannot put together a solid pro-independence majority within their own party, then another rebel party will have to build such a majority from scratch.
3) We draft "Bernie"
Nick Brana was Bernie Sanders' outreach coordinator in the 2016 campaign. In early 2017, he went a step further and proposed establishing a "People's Party," a new political party of working people. Brana made one big mistake, however. He made the whole project contingent on drafting Bernie Sanders as the first presidential candidate of the People's Party.
Sanders rejected the offer the first chance he got, on Meet the Press back in February: "I am working to bring fundamental reform to the Democratic Party," said Sanders. (For some in-depth examination of Bernie Sanders' career, see this excellent article by Howie Hawkins at click here) At the People's Summit in Chicago a few weeks ago, Sanders had some very harsh words for the Democratic Party, calling it "an absolute failure" and so on, but he didn't say a word about Brana's idea for a People's Party. I've never met Brana, but it must be obvious to him by now that Sanders has no interest in establishing an independent party of working people. He wants to "reform" the Democratic Party.
Nevertheless, at this writing there is a conference coming up at American University in Washington D.C. early in September that will attempt to put the "Draft Bernie" plan into effect. There are three organizations convening: Brana's Draft Bernie group, the Progressive Independent Party (PIP), and Socialist Alternative. (I'd never heard of the PIP until a couple of weeks ago. It seems to be brand-new.) The press release announcing the conference leaves open the question of whether this is the founding of a new political party"or an exploratory discussion about the founding of a new political party. Right at the top the organizers ask: "Should progressives continue the fight to reform the Democratic Party or should we launch a people's party independent of corporate money and influence?" They're still not sure.
It's fair to ask the organizers why they think Sanders will suddenly change his mind and abandon the project that he apparently sees as his mission--the "rejuvenation" of the Democratic Party. They must also explain what makes Sanders politically reliable, given his endorsement of Clinton and her close associates on Wall Street. Above all, they need to help us understand how any of this activity will be "independent." With Sanders so deeply involved with the Democrats, the very last thing his 2020 candidacy is likely to be is independent.
It's clear that Brana wants a new political party to come out of this. A little more surprisingly, RoseAnn DeMoro of National Nurses United gave some indication of her union's position on the question by good-naturedly calling out Sanders on the podium at the People's Summit in June. According to a report on the "Summit" by Medea Benjamin in Common Dreams, DeMoro looked out at the Draft Bernie contingent and said, "I'm with you!" Then she pointed at Sanders and said, "I always say, heroes aren't made, they're cornered." Brana later confirmed that DeMoro was openly showing support for the People's Party idea. Whether she absolutely has to have Sanders as the candidate or will support a People's Party or a Populist Party without Sanders is not clear yet. But in any event, the involvement of an out-in-front union like NNU is very significant. The union's predecessor, the California Nurses Association, was one of the unions that helped found the Labor Party in 1996. They also endorsed Nader's Green Party candidacy in 2000. Still, we need to remember that the Nurses were sharing that hall with organizers who are well-known hard-core Democrats, notably Democratic Socialists of America and Progressive Democrats of America.
I only recently came across Kshama Sawant's statement from December 2015 in support of Bernie Sanders' campaign for president. It's very hard to reconcile that statement supporting Sanders-the-Democrat with her earlier, very articulate calls for a new, independent party. I shall never forget the magnificent speech she gave in New York in September 2014, the night before the "People's Climate March" organized by Bill McKibben. That night she respectfully but forcefully called Sanders out as he sat beside her on the panel, urging him to run for president as an independent. Sawant also called for a new party of working people with this dramatic statement: "Only an independent force of the 99 percent--a new party based on workers, young people, environmentalists, and Labor--will be able to fight Wall Street and big business." That vision was a thousand times more inspiring than the prospect of following Bernie Sanders into the Democratic primaries. And with Sanders' campaign culminating in his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, the headlines could have read: --The Old Socialist Leads the New Socialists Back to the Old Capitalists-- After that, why would Brana and Sawant expect Sanders to change his stripes?
4) We launch a massive campaign of non-violent civil disobedience" (etc.)
Journalist Chris Hedges does not exactly blend in with most of his colleagues. How many American news people have written and spoken about "overthrowing" the corporate state? (He's not careless or casual in his choice of that word. I've heard him repeat it for emphasis and to make sure no one misunderstands him.)
Hedges has also stated that he believes non-violent civil disobedience to be the only method, essentially, that can bring about the kind of revolution he is calling for. He doesn't seem to believe traditional democracy will do the trick anymore, and he has been arguing in that vein since publishing The Death of the Liberal Class a few years ago. A while back he published a column stating flatly: "Our democracy is dead."
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