With me, it doesn't have anything to do with authoritarianism, it's a paranoia based upon actual facts. When Senator Casey, who Mrs. Batard didn't feel comfortable with because of his views on abortion, but who I supported, among various other reasons, because I would support almost anyone over Senator Sanitorium, the King of K Street, the Green Party attempted to put a candidate on the ballot here in PA. The Democratic Party argued that many of the signatures were not properly obtained, so a manual look at the signature sheets was ordered by the court. It was my understanding that *someone* paid volunteers a buck a vote to get signatures.
And on the first few days the Green Party had to have volunteers to be there for the signature count (one green party rep and one Democratic party rep looked at each signature). You had to sign up when you came in and there was a sheet that asked for your party affiliation. Many of the supposed Green party workers signed in as Republicans. Apparently they weren't let in on the "secret". Then the Green Party started paying temp workers to show up, and it was kind of funny, because a lot of them were just getting paid by some outfit that they weren't sure who it was they were working for, but they also supported Senator Casey.

Those of us who have a distaste for the Green Party may not see things the way you do in your area because our experience with the Green Party is different than what you may see in SF.

As Buck says, who pays the bills matters. The Green Party is not an independent third party if it takes money from the Republicans to be their tools on the left. I'd like to see a pledge from these candidates to refuse Republican support.

I don't buy it. Should Obama refuse donations from Anybody-But-Clinton Republicans? Should Clinton refuse donations from Republicans trying to game the system by nominating someone they think they can beat? Should McCain refuse the support of Democrats if they're not sufficiently anti-tax or anti-abortion? Who gets to decide which types of donations are acceptable?

As interesting as it might be, however, this is not directly relevant to the point of the post, for at least two reasons. First, Nader and Gonzalez have already announced that they will not seek the Green party nomination, but will run as independents. Second, I wasn't making any pro-Green party claims. I'm rather disgusted with it right now, in my case because of the DLC-ification of the party. I didn't vote for its ticket last time despite being registered Green.

And of course paid volunteers are a standard tool of signature campaigns. I meet lots of them on the streets and near BART stations. All of them are being paid by the number of signatures they get.

This wasn't a case of "a" Republican contributing. This was a case of the candidate contributing a little and Republicans from across the country pouring money into the pot. A newspaper reporter-blogger tracked down the names of all contributors, and the only non-Republican donor to the campaign was the candidate.

I've never heard of or encountered paid signature gatherers before. Maybe you have a lot of them in California because of ballot initiatives? Ours weren't very good and submitted lots of "Mickey Mouse" signatures.

And it's overall the fault of Pennsylvania ballot requirements. A petition for a statewide office has to have a percentage of the highest statewide vote getter's vote in the previous election, and that's too many signatures for a minor party unless they have a hot issue and a good ground game.

Matt is OK. I worked on his 2003 SF mayoral campaign & would vote for him for mayor again.

Nader is another matter. He accepted Republican support too easily in 2000.

Surely not all Republican support is to be refused? What percentage of Republican contributions might one be allowed? And when did gaming the system become a partisan issue, or a surprise? It's not as if one party has a corner on morality.

To me it seems the basic problem people have with Nader is that they believe he took votes from Gore. This is a belief which may be well founded, or may not, but it's not proven. It rests upon a huge assumption, namely that if people who voted for Nader were, through the majesty of our democratic system, prevented from voting for their favored candidate, they would have been forced to settle for Gore, and would have done so. I can tell you, as a Nader voter, I would not have done so, and most of the Nader voters I know feel similarly. I certainly agree that there are some who would have voted for Gore, and I don't claim to know what proportion that would be, but I expect less than half. If Gore had won either Tennessee or Arkansas, or had possessed the cojones to fight for the election he actually won, he would have been President.

Forcing a unwanted choice onto people you disagree with in order to get your wish is likely to produce an unstable situation. Those whose wishes are being repressed are unlikely to exhibit loyalty to something they were dragooned into and continue to disagree with.

Everyone has to design their own voting strategy. It seems to me that if we all chose what we really want, it would take three elections for serious results to occur, which is way longer than Americans can hold their focus.

I propose a continuing discussion of voting strategies on the theory that voting does matter. Perhaps the anarchist adage that it would be illegal if it worked is accurate. In the long run I suspect it is. But it seems to me that we're at a point in American history where the levers of power are still within our grasp, if barely, and we can change things if we take a mind to do so.

Should have added: the majority of signature seekers I encounter are indeed for ballot initiatives, but there are candidate-registering folks on occasion as well as petition presenters.

Might it not be a bit inconsistent to complain that in some cases Nader's candidacy took votes from Gore, and possibly Kerry, while also considering Nader evil for taking Republican contributions? (Perhaps no one's claiming this, and I'm setting up a straw man…) Obama gets some, he's reaching across the aisle. The implication seems to be that some Democrats can be lured away by Republican-financed propaganda to vote for Nader even though no Democrats contributed to his campaign. Does that mean that the Nader voters were too poor to contribute, or just stupid enough to fall for the Republican propaganda?

If you were a Nader voter, how eager would you be to join a party that thought of you in those terms?

First of all, RWA means Right Wing Authoritarians, not Really Wacko Authoritarians. I will, at least for discussion purposes, assume that both Nader and Gonzalez really believe in progressive positions on the issues and that the Democratic Party candidates do not share those views. In the latter belief, they are absolutely correct.

The question here is more tactical, not whether progressive politics are good or whether the Dems support them, but given that they are and they don't, what is the most effective course of action? Is mounting a doomed independent Presidential candidacy outside of any organized party or movement going to accomplish anything? I think not.

An article in last week's Nation magazine, Transforming the Liberal Checklist makes the point that we need to transform the underlying assumptions that people have that thwart progressive goals. "All politicians who seek your support should produce articles, videos, transcripts--anything that demonstrates that they are challenging the conservative assumptions that frame virtually all discussions of public policy among America's elected officials. "

Nader states clearly and forcefully the "right" positions on the issues, but to paraphrase Noam Chomsky, he sounds like he's from Neptune when he does it. If we could change these underlying false beliefs (government is always inept, taxes are always bad, the "free market" is always the best way to solve problems), left-leaning politicians could get elected, and have the guts and support to enact "the change we need".

I would claim that the reason Nader sounds like he's from Neptune is exactly what Chomsky talks about: the framing of the debate by the establishment. When Nader says single-payer health care or end the war now, what he says is both exactly what we want and so different from what we're used to hearing that it's startling. The propagandized reaction is to reject it because it's not within allowed parameters. This reaction exists in everyone to varying degrees; we can't understand society without imbibing some of its views, and we've been taught by every bit of the social structure not to question the parameters of the debate.

I agree, as I've said elsewhere ;] that Nader is not an appropriate leader for a progressive movement. My feeling is that a true progressive movement does not need or even want a leader. If the movement exists, it will probably need spokespeople and examples and representatives.

Nader put together a movement decades ago, and it changed our lives. It's our turn to create a movement. He's just there to keep the most important ideas on the table, which they won't be in a McCain-Obama debate.

Even a deliberate abstention can be a powerful vote, it depends largely on where and when and how and why you exercise your right to withhold authority. I can personally see no value in voting for Ralph Nader, but I will not say it has no value for anyone. There are good reasons to think carefully before voting, and to vote intelligently and consciously, which cannot be reconciled with an automatic vote for any candidate.