Patrick, then, if I may be so bold:
"(M)ore idealistic" was my way of trying to be nice about what I saw as my Green-voting friends' greatest weakness: their lack of realism.
I still don't see how you're going to sort out all us "good" greens -- who voted Gore, and have your back -- from those who voted Ralph, but are now effectively indistinguishable. Lots of both filled the streets of Portland today, and there's no way to tell the difference that I can see.
What changed in the enviro-Democrat relationship after '00 was that the sense of betrayal has come to cut both ways. If you're going to nurse your Florida resentment so carefully, you at least have to grant that the kids who were radicalized by Clinton's signing the Salvage Rider have some resentments to nurse as well.
But just for a thought-experiment: what if Al Sharpton had gotten the "killer slice" instead of Ralph? Would grassroots Dems now be vindictively snubbing black activists?
The big question ain't about excuses, or the consequences of past actions. It's about winning, and taking our future back. Bashing potential allies by casting differences in judgment as character flaws shows a dangerous lack of political and emotional imagination. I think you can do better than that. I know we, collectively, have to.
Check out orcinus' part 12 on fascism for a pungent slice of what I'm coming from here.
the above ought to be read following PNH's following post. Time-travel again. (I always figured it'd be more fun than that. Life is never what the movies make it.)
and "my more idealistic brethren". And sistren, of course.
The problem, Mr Hayden, is you can't sort out the "Naderites" -- those who actually voted Green in '00 -- from the larger set of those who agreed with them about everything except whether the risk of a W victory was worth it. I should know; I'm in that larger group.
I'm a lifelong D who's worked electoral campaigns in the Pacific NW. I'm also first and foremost an environmental activist, and thus have a keen understanding of the legitimacy of the sense of betrayal and outrage that moved many of the most passionate Ralph-advocates in '00. Even though my Gore vote counted for nothing in Montana -- which Bush carried easily -- I still nearly voted Nader but just couldn't bring myself to do anything that might, even symbolically, bring W to power. But I was damn close, and don't begrudge my more idealist brethren their anger.
I have to agree strongly w/ C. Kahlil and even more w/ Robert West. Certainly the Democrats are not going to return to full electoral vigor without the energy, the idealism, and the burnin' yearing for change NOW that the Nader campaign captured. Nor should they assume they can get along without the dynamic core of the enviro-political organizers, as mainstream Dems have tried to do for the last twenty years out here in Green-land. (I'm writing from Oregon, just to complicate things.)
One way bitter Ds could bring bitter enviros back into the party would be to start to recognize -- as Mr Taylor utterly fails to do in the article referenced at the top -- that W's regime has been as great a disaster for environmental concerns as for any other issue area. The notion that "Nader voters aren't suffering" under this administration is not just petty-minded and mean, it's stupidly self-defeating.
Rove is pushing for a quarter-billion in Dem-bashing power next round: at this rate, Ds are going to need every voice, every penny, and every keyboard potentially available. It really doesn't matter whether we Ds think we want the Green voters back. We have to have them, and we have to have the larger group that shares their concerns. Thus, Ds must act to embrace their causes.
Luckily, as the NYT has recently pointed out, even the GOP's pollsters recognize the fact that environmental issues are the missing scale on the loathesome worm that is the Bush administration. What remains is for the Democrats to figure out how to thrust the "Naderite" spearhead into that opening.
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