Greens fail to purge:

Cobb supporters make themselves liars

*Back to our page on 2004 elections
*See our links page on Greens

Boston, July 27, 2004--The Greens' Nader/David Cobb debacle is the fate awaiting all parties that allow themselves to become subverted in the name of "ideological diversity" and "freedom of expression" within a party. Corporations know how to use that breathing room to spread the oh-so underrepresented corporate point of view.

In the days leading up to the Democratic National Convention and during the DNC, MIM has struggled mightily to do the research to bring the truth to our readers about the foggy Greens and their "decentralized" allegedly "democratic" procedures. To do this we attended a speech by Ralph Nader and have spoken with several Green activists. It is now clear that there is a ton of lying going on in Green circles about Nader, Cobb and Kerry.

In the fog of that sort of politics, the corporations easily carry the day. They are the status quo after all, and it is incumbent on challengers to offer a clear alternative to overcome the status quo. Confusion, fuzz, vacillation and cross-cancellation only benefit the status quo.

The story goes back to 2000 and the Ralph Nader campaign on the Green ticket for president. Reading between the lines in Nader's book, we'd say it was clear that Nader believed Greens had gone soft after the Bush election and were throwing up procedural roadblocks to a future Nader campaign--essentially because as MIM has said, too many Greens are just moonlighting Democrats.


July 27, 2004 art work on the Boston Commons during the Democratic National Convention shows corporate monster with puppets Bush and Kerry. The Greens have allowed their message on political puppets of the corporations to become muddied. Both Nader and Cobb seem beholden to Democrats in different ways--Nader to threaten in order to make a deal and Cobb to work with them directly in "swing states." It won't be possible to come up with an authentically separate "Green" message that way.

Because of this softness and Democratic Party attempts to bribe the Greens, Nader knew he would have to get on the ballot himself and could not count on the Greens to put themselves on the ballot--pathetic indeed for a party interested in the electoral process and which received as many votes as Nader did in 2000.

During the Democratic National Convention in Boston, MIM interviewed a Nader campaigner who contradicted what the Massachusetts Rainbow-Green Party said, namely that they endorse the Cobb campaign and not Kerry in states where the Bush/Kerry result is close. The Nader campaigner also believed that Cobb supporters are supporting Kerry. (.wav format, 700kb)

An example is on the votecobb.org website. On June 25th, the Cobb admin for the website said, "Peter Camejo has said that David's website tells people to 'vote for Kerry.' That phrase does not exist on the this site." Then as of July 27th, the second article on the home page says plainly "Vote Kerry and Cobb," in reference to the strategy of voting for Cobb in most states while voting for Kerry in swing states. It goes to show how dishonest the Cobb campaign is. Anyone involved in politics much can see that this whole result was inevitable from the way the Greens went about their politics.

Purging parties leads to clarity and honesty. Not purging parties results in immediate duplicity as when corporate politicians take them over and claim they have not. These corporate politicians can easily form their own parties; yet the foolish Liberals believe they should allow all points of view in their party instead of purging those who disagree with their main points. The Greens should realize that there is no issue of "repression" yet when they do not hold state power. The corporate point of view is not underrepresented.

The Greens' picking someone like Cobb--who the public has never heard of--is a dream-come-true for the corporate parties. It shows that even a pile of disaffected Democrats can do no better than to put someone forward that is unknown in a bourgeois electoral sense and also ambiguous in response to Kerry. MIM is not the only one to notice this. The mainstream press has also reported it.

Thanks to the lack of purging in the Green Party, there are now conflicting cross-currents.
1) We have the Democrats pushing for Kerry in the Green Party.
2) There are Greens who deny pushing for Kerry out of fear of legal repercussions via campaign laws.
3) There are Greens pissed off as hell that this all happened but who have to put up a solid front for the benefit of their party. They may even find themselves in the position of having to lie on behalf of their party's maneuvers for Kerry.

A party should stand for something. That is how to encourage political participation in the imperialist countries. The clouded politics, lying and corporate maneuvers mean that the Green political spectrum has been disenfranchised by the Greens' own organizational political line. People can dedicate their time and money to a Green party and have it end up supporting Kerry anyway. That is real disenfranchisement of the real Greens.

MIM opposes Kerry, Cobb and Nader. Yet we have self-interests in these contests. The lack of political clarity of Greens makes it harder for everyone else working outside the two main parties. It becomes impossible to draw political lessons from political activity when a party does not stand for anything to begin with. We cannot draw a contrast with Greens when the Greens themselves are all over the political map. Meanwhile, people such as our friends the imperialist-country pacifists have no party to go to.

On the other hand, MIM and its circles do benefit from these ugly and negative Green organizational experiences vicariously. From watching the Greens and seeing what happens without purges and also from seeing what the Democrats are willing to do to subvert their competitors we learn lessons of a universal nature. Anyone reading Nader's book and hearing about his difficulties getting on the ballot who did not realize that the Greens became weak-kneed after Bush's election in 2000--count yourself naive and politically inexperienced.

Note:
Sources saying Cobb won't run in states with close Kerry/Bush races: http://news10now.com/content/all_news/?ArID=24466&SecID=83 ; http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0721-02.htm ; http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/07/27/ed.edit.nader.0727.html ; "When pressed, Cobb admitted that different rules apply in the swing states. 'John Kerry is a corporatist and a militarist,' Cobb said. 'But if you live in a swing state, hold your nose and vote for Kerry.'" http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5518334/site/newsweek/ A pro-Cobb writer believes that Greens are better served by him: http://www.counterpunch.org/reiter07202004.html Nader supporter on how Greens wanted to start to late in 2004. (.wav format, 460k)