Greens, Democrats, Blackmail, and Coexistence

Jedmunds, with his blast at Maria Cantwell (and suggestion of support for the Green candidate), has re-ignited the ever-simmering Green/Dem flame wars. Oh frabjous day.

The usual Green platitudes were out in full force; all of the arguments for voting Green amounted to some variation on "Democrats suck". When I posed the question of how a party with a ceiling of (generously) 10-15% can possibly play a constructive role in a winner-take all electoral system, the least frivolous answer I got was: "blackmail". Yes, that's constructive. I've yet to see any evidence that threatening to sabotage everything one believes in actually influences the Democrats, of course, but I suppose being a suicide bomber requires taking certain things on faith.

The reality, as Robert Farley observes, is that third party candidacies are a truly lousy way to advance progressivism:

In the context of the American constitutional structure, third party politics is a terrible strategy for building alternative social movements. It consumes enormous amounts of resources but provides few benefits, fractures coalitions, and has unfortunate side effects (like, say, leading to the election of the most reactionary President in many decades.)....The rise in the mobilization of movement conservatives didn't require a third party. It's true that the left needs to build more of a base outside of the Democratic structure, and conflict will be inevitable. Democratic politics extends far beyond electoral politics. But, especially at the national level, third party politics is actively counterproductive to movement building....

The two-party system isn't going to go away if only people really wish that it will go away, and to pretend otherwise obstructs the potential for progressive social change.

And here's the other thing: it's simply an enormous mis-allocation of resources. Candidacy for national office is an enormous black hole of resource suckage (money, volunteer time, energy, goodwill) that has no payoff whatsoever absent total victory, and (in the case of the Greens) is 100% guaranteed to fail. Those are resources that could be used for standard-issue (but, admittedly, less Exciting! and Sexy! than Running for President!) activism--activism that would actually, you know, accomplish something. Activism that builds on itself, that advances opinion even when it loses on a given cause, that can eke out partial victories even when it doesn't win outright. Activism that can actually make some people's lives incrementally better.

There is, of course, a situation in which Greens can participate in the electoral system without being a purely destructive force: ranked-preference voting. In a ranked-preference voting (or instant runoff) system, Green vote totals are counted (a show of ideological support) but ultimately would benefit (overwhelmingly) Democrats. In fact, I think a lot more people would vote Green in a ranked-preference system because it eliminates the penalty for voting purely on conscience. The relationship between Democrats and Greens could be symbiotic rather than competitive...which would be much more conducive to Green (or generally progressive) influence on the Democrats as a whole.

Unfortunately, ranked-preference voting isn't in effect anywhere above the local level.

So here's what I would propose as a truce between Greens and Democrats: Greens agree not to run candidates in races above the local level (except where there is ranked-preference voting); and Democrats agree to make ranked-preference voting a part of their platform, and push for it in every state legislature in America. Greens win, because they get the opportunity to be more than despised ridiculed bomb-throwers--they get the opportunity to have an impact. Democrats get rid of an ever-potential knife in the back.

I doubt the Democrats have the vision, or the Greens the common sense, to make a deal like this. Still, it would be nice to finally end the fighting.

[That's all, folks]