MADISON, Wisconsin — On an oppressively hot August day in downtown Madison, the signs of this famously liberal city’s progressive activism are everywhere. Buildings are draped in pride flags and Black Lives Matter signs are prominently displayed on storefronts. A musty bookstore advertises revolutionary titles and newspaper clippings of rallies against Donald Trump. A fancy restaurant features a graphic of a raised Black fist in its window, with chalk outside on the sidewalk reading “solidarity forever.”
Yet the Green Party, which bills itself as an independent political party that has the best interests of self-described leftists at heart, is nowhere to be found. It has no storefronts, no candidates running for local office, no relationship with the politically active UW-Madison campus, which has almost 50,000 students.
Where it does have purchase is in the nightmares of local Democrats, who are deeply afraid of the effect the third party might have here in November. As one of the seven presidential battleground states, Wisconsin is a critical brick in the so-called Blue Wall, the term for the run of Rust Belt states that are essential to Kamala Harris’ chances of winning the presidency. It’s a deeply divided state that’s become notorious for its razor-thin margins of victory — a place where statewide elections are so close that even tenths of a percentage point matter. Against that backdrop, the Green Party looms very large this year.
They aren’t doing the outreach or work necessary
Greens have to actually work to live, unlike Democrats and Republicans, who are backed by billionaires and dark money. That is why most of what they’ve achieved is at the local level.
That is why most of what they’ve achieved is at the local level.
the Green Party in my state is opposing a ranked-choice voting initiative because it’s not good enough for them and they want proportional representation–when they haven’t even run a non-presidential candidate in my state in at least the past four years despite liberal ballot access laws.
their best performing candidate in presidential history is a guy who thinks mom and pop capitalism is fine, and that the real issue with our country is “corporate capitalism” (“It’s corporate capitalism that I’m against. Not small business, Main Street, mom-and-pop capitalism. And the difference is far more than a difference in magnitude. It’s the difference in the quality of power.”). his theory of change is fundamentally progressive-liberal at best, but indistinguishable from what people like Elizabeth Warren believe.
there are more open socialists in just the New York state legislature right now (8, all caucusing together, will be 9 next year) than have been elected total above the local level for the Green Party (5). even accounting for party switching, this expands to just 9 people in history. this is not a party which is ever going to be a serious vehicle for left-wing organization, and i would argue it is genuinely detrimental to socialist and left-wing organizing to send people to organize with them. i would literally prefer people not electorally organize than organize with the Greens; they have thrown tens of millions of dollars down the drain for absolutely no benefit.
they have thrown tens of millions of dollars down the drain for absolutely no benefit.
As opposed the tens of trillions thrown down the drain by Democrats, conservatively speaking. The Iraq War alone, which Democrats supported almost 100%, estimated to have cost upwards of 20 trillion dollars. The Democrats’ response to the trillions lost in the Great Recession was to ensure that the rich lost nothing and were never imprisoned for their crimes. The workers, meanwhile, had to take to the bread lines.
I think if you look at Democrats’ governance objectively, it’s easy to see why Socialists and Democratic Socialists are hostile to them, as Democrats fight harder against democracy than they do to enact progressive policies. It also becomes clear why so many Americans don’t bother to vote at all, as they get the same results no matter who is elected.
It doesn’t change the fact that in 2016, Democrats lost due to their own choices as elected stewards of this country, and that will be the reason they lose in 2024 if they aren’t elected.
As opposed the tens of trillions thrown down the drain by Democrats, conservatively speaking.
we’re not talking about the Democratic Party here. we’re talking about whether the Greens are a vehicle for electoral success, and even a basic evaluation of the facts is that no, they aren’t. they lose 99.8% of their races above the local level–none of their ostensible local success, which itself is fleeting, translates above the local level.
again: there are more elected socialists in New York’s legislature currently–who caucus together on a shared radical platform–than there are Green Party candidates who were elected to a legislature total in the party’s now 30ish years of existence. those eight socialists got the Build Public Renewables Act enacted into law (which “will require the state’s public power provider to generate all of its electricity from clean energy by 2030. It also allows the public utility to build and own renewables while phasing out fossil fuels.”) and they’ve pushed for things ranging from the the Clean Futures Act that would “prohibit the development of any new major electric generating facilities that would be powered in whole or in part by any fossil fuel” to the All-Electric Building Act that would prevent “infrastructure, building systems, or equipment used for the combustion of fossil fuels in new construction statewide”. what do the Greens do that come anywhere close to this? where is their equivalent of the BPRA being signed into law?
Uhm, the Green Party’s primary donations are Home Depot and other Republican donors. Talk about billionaires and dark money.
Speaking of Green Party at the local level, I have only been able to find a very, very small handful of Green Party members who have been elected.
In fact, I can only see 3 since 2020.
Most local candidates have to work to live, and making outlandish statements to these effects weaken a person’s rhetorical standing. From the article you posted:
While they have little infrastructure in the county, within the last decade, Madison has nevertheless elected 10 Green candidates to different sorts of local office, more than almost any other city of its size in the nation.
Across the country, the Green Party barely has a footprint. It has little money or political organization, no members of Congress or statewide officeholders and just a few local ones. Every four years, though, the Greens run a candidate for president
In fact, they’ve [the Greens] pursued the opposite tack — they’ve directed efforts toward close battleground states where the party is sure to get more attention.
The Green party could clean house in Maine where we’ve actually got Ranked Choice Voting and they could win seats, but we’re not a swing state and the greens don’t act like they’re interested. Neither does the Socialist party, or SocDems for that matter. But I do see their campaigning in battleground states, promising things out of their presidential candidates that are squarely the purview of congress, in which they’re clearly not interested in having representation.
The Democrats could, as a party, elect not to rule as conservatives too, but they never seem to do so. They’ve had the power several times over the last 16 years to make life better for the working class and the poor, and they seem to always elect to protect and promote the lives of the billionaire class.
They make promises they have no intention of fulfilling and people suffer. Then they repeat those promises every four years, but eventually, they turn to excuses, and the Green Party is a convenient one.
You can’t blame the Green Party when Dems shoot themselves in the foot. The number of people who vote Green is far outweighed by the number of people the Democrats have convinced, by the way they choose to wield power, that voting is a pointless exercise.
They’ve had the power several times over the last 16 years to make life better for the working class and the poor, and they seem to always elect to protect and promote the lives of the billionaire class.
Someone took the time to politely correct this misconception a few days ago, their reply from then is pasted below:
In the past you have stated that the Democrats had control of Congress and the presidency under Biden and Obama, yet they were unable to do things like get a public option in the ACA or codify roe v Wade. However this continues to be a misunderstanding of the situation.
While I can agree I am disappointed in the inability to get these things done, and Obama saying it was no longer a priority, I don’t see how you can pin this all on the Democrats as some kind of monolithic entity.
The fact of the matter is during Obama’s terms, there were anti abortion Democrats. These Democrats were enough to keep abortion access out of the ACA and prevent roe being codified.
Fast forward to Bidens terms, and we now have a filibuster rule that requires 60 senators in order to pass stuff in the Senate. There were not 60 senators who supported roe codification when the Democrats “controlled” the Senate.
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The fact that there are still anti choice democrats in our legislatures is a failing on the part of all the left-leaning voters in their districts and states (myself included) to organize and replace them with people who will advocate and vote for our policy goals. Alternative parties could capitalize on those races by representing the wants of those left leaning voters in off election years but choose not to.
I, and many others, do not blame other parties when the dems shoot themselves in the foot, we blame the dems for their poor decisions. Likewise, we blame the green party for running a quadrennial grift on the disaffected leftists who know enough to be upset but who wrongly believe the extent of their voting power is only this one race.
