An actual path for the formation of a viable, US Green Party

[Virote_Considon]

To completely exaggerate, that would be like getting the Nazis and Bolsheviks to come to terms...

I think this is easier done than said

 

[Murky]

The Tea Party is loony but certainly not as extreme as Nazis and the OWS people are not anything like Bolsheviks. Invalid comparison to say the least.

 

[bombshoo]

I think the Greens would still have a hard time getting adequate media coverage. Even most local papers don't really cover the local elections all that in depth. I suppose if the Greens won a large amount of seats in an election, it might be worthy of being a news story, but the problem there would be that the actual coverage would just be about them getting elected in the first place. The average person would still remain largely ignorant of Green Party candidates and policies.

 

[kochman]

The Tea Party is loony but certainly not as extreme as Nazis and the OWS people are not anything like Bolsheviks. Invalid comparison to say the least.

Hence my use of the phrase "TO COMPLETELY EXAGGERATE" before saying it...

 

[Traitorfish]

I think this is easier done than said

I'm not sure that smashing together Sorelian myth-making with post-modern street theatre is exactly what he's talking about.

 

[downtown]

Argh, the server downtimes ate like, 2 of my big posts. I'll come back to this later tonight.

 

[meromorph]

The main problem with the OP, is that it focuses on votes rather than money, but money is what wins elections in America, not votes. The question for the green party should be "who will be the major donors?"

This page has a pie chart from the national park service that breaks down charitable donations by cause, and it shows that only 2% of the money that Americans donated to charity in 2010 was for "the environment and animals." This shows that, despite what the greens may think is strong support for their causes, relatively few Americans are really willing to shell out the dough to support them.

I didn't vote in the poll, because it lacked the option "a third party could be viable, but it won't be the green party."

 

[mitsho]

When discussing American Politics, I always had the image that what you call parties, we call Coalitions or in German Fraktion. And what we call Parties, you Americans call Parlamentary groups. The Tea Party, the Blue Dog Democrats or Ron Pauls Merry Band of Libertarians are more partylike in that they share the same values, pursue the same goals and coordinate. But because the American system is so strange (or let's say so 1779), these groups have to form in two big coalitions that are not really coherent at all.

The same can be said in Europe, Christian Democrats have all sorts of different goals all over Europe, depending on wether their country is big, protestant, poor, Southern or arrogant. So the question to me is more if there is a need for the Green Party to become big? (In Europe, it seems to me that Green topics have been taken over by all sorts of parties, see Merkel and Nuclear Power, and that there have been more and more splits into Water Melons and Mangos (on the outside green, but in the middle socialist red versus in the middle yellow for rightists/libertarians/liberal democrats/...)

Long story short, instead of trying to be an alternative to the Democrats, wouldn't it make more sense in endorsing candidates, building a profile up within one (or both) parties, supporting certain candidates? This of course does not rule out competing in local races.

 

[Traitorfish]

(Missed this.)

Well, not quite.. but.. in a country with a "first past the post" system, the situation will gravitate towards a 2 party system.

Well, yes and no. Plurality systems certainly encourage the formation of localised two party-systems, but that doesn't translate directly into national two-party systems. In the UK, any given constituency will, nine times out of ten, have only two viable parties, but exactly what those parties are varies. Sometimes it's Labour and Tories, sometimes it's Tories and Lib-Dems, sometimes it's Labour and the SNP. The tendency towards a limited number of parties on a national scale is a distinct phenomenon, and one seen in most stable legislatures- Ireland uses an MPP system, and only has a slightly more varied legislature than the UK- and it's the intersection of these two phenomenon that produce national two-party systems. In America's case, this is further encouraged by the extremely loose way in which their parties operate- as Mitsho says, neither the Republicans nor Democrats are national political parties in the European sense- allowing the national "parties" to tailor themselves far more effectively to local issues. If the US had a stricter, European-style system of parliamentary organisation, then you'd likely see, if not an actual multi-party system, then at least some more pluralistic system emerging virtually overnight.

 

[downtown]

There already is an actual national green party of the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States
http://www.gp.org/index.php

And they actually have helped get statewide representation.



They've been effective at getting people elected at times, however politicians will change their stripes to be more viable (turning independent or democrat as mentioned in the above quote of the wikipedia article).

Yeah, this is a significant problem. Elected politicians would have to remain true to the brand, even though that will make legislation difficult for them to pass. If they don't, there isn't a point in having a Green party.

I do think a union between Occupy and the teaparty could be quite dangerous for Dems and Repubs health in future election. IF someone were to actually facilitate such a union---a generational gap challenge, and possibly a socioreligious challenge, I believe

Even though the two are similar in their "throw the bums out" mantra, they disagree on almost every policy issue of significance. It would be hard for them to coordinate much.

The main issue of course is the fact that people who get involved in third party politics are exactly the people who aren't interested in gradual progress, campaign management, or any of the mechanical aspects of getting people elected.
.

Haha yeah, that's actually a really big problem.

Thinking the Green Party should be to the left of the Democrats is probably the wrong way to look at it. There are a lot more moderate or conservative environmentalist than there are socialist environmentalist in the U.S. Maybe the Green Party should focus mainly on being the "Green" party instead of being left or right of the other party(s). That isn't to say they should be a single issue party, but to declare it to be a far-left party is only going to marginalize any chance it has of winning elections.

Nah, I disagree. I think you'll be hard pressed to find Green Party candidates who are really to the right of your average Democratic Party candidate. You can't just be an environmental party. I bet you could be a pretty competitive urban party if you ran against the local Democratic machine (green politics mean clean government), and became fierce advocates of expanded public transportation and improved quality of life issues (parks, crime, traffic, etc).

The main problem with the OP, is that it focuses on votes rather than money, but money is what wins elections in America, not votes. The question for the green party should be "who will be the major donors?"

Nah, it's still votes. Of course, money is typically the best way to deliver those votes....and you're right, a party that focuses primarily on the environment is not going to get a lot of money. That's why I tailored my scenario to mirror a situation where having a lot of money isn't a very big advantage.

 

[downtown]

Here a link to a great article on the Green Party in Illinois, from a previous thread:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicag...tney-2010-election-losses/Content?oid=2736917