Why don’t Greens and other modern socialist parties start by running down ballot candidates that can actually do some good in local politics instead of putting all their effort into repeated failed attempts at the highest office in the land. That’s proved itself to be a dead end strategy. Do what DSA is doing but in a new party.
Here's what Scott McLarty said about that on FB:
I
posted the following on Green Party FB pages (I'm former media
director of the party):
Surviving
Point Two Percent
Green
presidential nominee Howie Hawkins got .2% on Election Day. This
was predictable. I predicted it in an article published two
weeks ago.
The
Green Party needs to stop making the Green presidential
nominee's numbers on Election Day the main measure of the
party's progress.
There
are some years in which the enthusiasm for defeating the
Republican nominee is so strong that voters who might otherwise
vote Green instead feel compelled to hold their noses and vote
Democrat.
That's
what happened in 2004, when both David Cobb (Green nominee) and
Ralph Nader (Independent and a nationally famous public figure)
received under half of one percent. It happened in 2008 when
Barack Obama was so popular.
That
was the dynamic in the 2020 election. "Dump Trump" meant a vote
for Biden. (And who can argue with Dump Trump?)
The
race for the White House is a multi-billion-dollar spectacle.
It's necessary for the Green Party to run presidential campaigns
for a list of reasons I don't need to rehearse here. But the
Green Party should never invest its future in a presidential
campaign.
It
shouldn't matter if the presidential candidate gets a small
fraction of one percent if the Green Party can rack up important
wins in down-ticket races, like mayoral candidate Emmanuel
Estrada's victory in Baldwin Park, California on Tuesday.
The
party's top priority should be to get at least a half dozen
Greens seated in state legislatures. In my opinion, too many of
our best Green candidates mount unwinnable campaigns for
Congress when they should really run for statehouse, county
commission, and municipal council seats.
The
party needs to build up a real base of power -- as opposed to
imaginary power that comes with participating in a
multi-billion-dollar spectacle -- and that means winning lots of
seats at state & local levels. The Green Party will only
have a future when we achieve that.
