Item: Did you know that Green Presidential Candidate David Cobb was sitting in a Squirrel Hill house—without shoes because that’s the house rules—Tuesday night in an effort to promote Green Mayoral candidate Titus North? I only found out through libertarian Mark Rauterkus’ site. I decided to go pay a visit. Here’s what I came away with:
Subitem: If you’re not aware of this, David Cobb of the Green Party, and not John Kerry unfortunately, is still trying to find out what happened in Ohio. Short version: Kerry probably won but the Republican machine sabotaged the recount efforts and in effect ran out the clock. Cobb confirmed the information in the Free Press article and noted that their next goal was to take a look at the machines through the use of subpoena power. He also darkly hinted that the case could be thrown out because of there being no remedy. I would think the remedy would be sanctions, fines and jail times, not to mention that the Democracy has been thwarted—a minor thing of course.
Subitem: I also wanted to air out my 5/25 plan in front of the dozen or so Green Party members in attendance. I think the goal of a legitimate progressive third party certainly shouldn’t be to help the Republicans. But they don’t have to win every seat to help, they just have to take away Republican majorities. That means 5 senate seats (And yes, if Chuck Penn isn’t nominated then Pennsylvania should be a state that’s targeted—but only if the candidate has a decent budget of 2 million or more.) and 25 house seats. By the way, this would be a serious effort that would require the funding of the Hollywood left and big time contributors like Peter Lewis and George Soros. You would need 2 million to contest US Senate seats and 1 million to contest 25 house seats. That’s a total of 35 million, which is doable. That’s about how much Act was funded. And here’s the rub: you would run against both parties, run on class issues and use Hollywood talent not only to run for some of these seats but to create emotionally powerful ads that are memorable and trenchant—unlike the current dreck usually produced by the DNC campaign elites, who need to be fired and replaced. This requires the Democrats to be smart enough not to run or complain because they know that 30 or more Bernie Sanders types helps the party.
Cobb countered that the DNC really really really doesn’t like the Green party and noted that they spent 2 million in 2000 just to thwart the Greens from reaching that 5 percent threshold in California. I countered his counter by noting that the DNC had legitimate reason to hate the Greens then because their only real result was throwing the presidential election to the Republicans, the most evil party on the face of the planet. Now is different. I’m of the opinion that a fearless well funded outsider campaign would work because, frankly, the democrats have never shown us what that looks like. It would be fun to see. You could run as an independent or as a Green. Again, I’d say the plan got mixed reviews from the crowd but I think that would do more to turn the Greens into a viable national party with control of house and senate committee seats than, say, winning the Pittsburgh’s mayor race. They would get a lot of support from grassroots dems as well.
Subitem: Speaking of the Pittsburgh mayor’s race, Titus North seemed like a decent enough fellow. I liked his platform. The only thing that I would add is that somebody needs to become the party of small business or small c capitalism as I call it. It’s a way to encourage moderate capitalism and provides a nice contrast to the Walmart nation that we’re becoming. He doesn’t think he’s going to win and I’m inclined to agree, unless the democratic nominee is struck by lightening or something and even then…I wish the Greens would go after the black vote. Black voters could use another choice and it can’t be the Nazi Republicans who seem to smile and act ever so slowly when it comes to saving drowning black people—at all levels actually. You can check out North’s site here.
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