Official Vermont Green Party Position on the 2004 Presidential Race

Green Party of the United States Nominates David Cobb; Many Vermont Greens still support Ralph Nader

[via Vermont Green Party (VGP) Website]


Just before I was about to get off-line, I checked the VGP Website and found the below item and link, so I wanted to blog it up prior to my finally calling it quits for the evening.

Even though I am an Independent and therefore not a member of their political party, none-the-less as well as for obvious reasons, I am posting the entire official Vermont Green Party position concerning the 2004 Presidential race (here) in full as follows:

VERMONTERS: FOR THE SAKE OF DEMOCRACY,VOTE GREEN IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

There will be two "green" presidential candidate teams on the Vermont ballot this November and you should feel safe in voting for either team. The Green Party of the United States has nominated David Cobb and Pat LaMarche to be its candidates. In addition, Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo will be on the ballot on another line. You can learn more about both teams from their web sites at www.votecobb.org or www.votenader.org

The Vermont Green Party will be making its decision about which team to nominate or endorse at its state convention to be held on September 12. Both teams are expected to campaign in Vermont. You can learn about their campaign visits by joining the Vermont Green Party list serve by sending a blank email to vermontgreens-subscribe@lists.riseup.net, and by participating in online discussions with other Greens and progressives by sending a blank e-mail to vermontgreensDISCUSSION-subscribe@topica.com.

Voting for a third party candidate can be a difficult decision for some because of the fear of the "spoiler issue" promoted by Democrats and mass media, especially in the "Anybody But Bush" environment. However, the Vermont Green Party advocates voting for one of these two teams for the following reasons:

1. Vermont is a "safe state" and not a "battleground state." That means that Kerry is projected to receive a strong majority of the votes. In 2000, Nader received 7% of the votes and Gore won Vermont by a large margin. With the strong anti-Bush feeling in Vermont this situation is clearly going to replicate itself. Voting your conscience makes sense.

2. Kerry is really Bush-lite. The differences between Kerry and Bush on issues are minor. The difference cited by Kerry supporters is the chance of appointing federal judges, and we expect Kerry would only nominate judges who would be ratified by a Republican-majority or even-split Congress. On the major issues, such as the war on Iraq and Afghanistan, close ties to corporate interests, trade policies, livable wages, the bloated military budget, the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the USA PATRIOT Act, Kerry is indistinguishable from Republicans. In some cases, such as the occupation of Iraq, Kerry is as bad or worse.

3. We must think long term. The two major parties are both so beholden to the power of wealth that there is little or no hope of changing the Democratic Party to return to its roots of serving middle and low income people. The only way there is going to be significant change is through the rise of a strong third party. This is going to take several years. The effort has to begin now.

4. We must improve voting opportunities such as the adoption of Instant Runoff Voting. The Democratic Party is doing everything it can to prevent the rise of a third party including trying to keep the Green Party off the ballot in many states and through the gerrymandering of legislative districts to protect Democrat strongholds. This is not democracy. We absolutely must have Instant Runoff Voting so people can vote their conscience and not for the lesser of two evils. Only strong public support as evidenced by third party voting will bring about this change. The Democrats had four years to champion IRV and did nothing about it, and blocked IRV legislation in Vermont. To his credit, even though it is not part of the Democrat platform, Governor Dean has come out in favor of IRV. For more information on IRV go to www.votesmart.org

5. We need to build the Green Party in Vermont. Vermont needs a strong Green Party that will advocate for the four Green Party Pillars of Ecological Wisdom, Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, and Nonviolence. There is no other political party in Vermont that has a political platform based on these important values. By supporting a "green" candidate you will be helping to build the viability of the Vermont Green Party. Nationally the Green Party is the fastest growing party in the country as more and more people realize that something is seriously wrong in our democracy and that major change is needed.

If you would like to help promote the candidacy of either team in Vermont, contactexec@vermontgreens.org

This is an interesting turn of events, for Vermont anyway. Yet we will have to wait and see what happens once the VGP begins the process of making their minds up about which team to nominate or endorse at its state convention to be held on September 12.

For my part, I will try to make sure I remember this upcoming event so I can attend in an observers role, as I did previously earlier this year; although this time with advance warning ahead of time, instead of simply happening upon it by accident.

Change in Progress

As previous visitors to this particular blog can tell, changes are well in progress, as far as the template design goes anyway.

And, yes, this is otherwise the same old Unofficial Vote4Nader Blog. Though maybe there will be some changes there as well, as noted in my previous post this evening: i.e., Not Dead Yet!

Anyway, it is getting late and I am really tired, so I am ending my blogging work for this day. When next I can, I will be find tuning and improving on the look, feel, accessibility, readability and overall design of the blog as well as doing other such blog-related housekeeping chores.

Stay tuned, as there will be more to come ...

Not Dead Yet!

No, this blog and its lone blogger are not dead yet -- to borrow a phrase from a disability community organization, of which I am also a proud member (i.e., I am a person with a disability, however I am not officially a member of the Not Dead Yet organization) -- not by any means.

So, please know that not only am I alive and well, almost anyway and it is my hope and desire that this blog will be alive and well once again too.

Not to make any excuses, while I have managed to do some blogging on my personal blog the last month or so as well as some others I have created here and there up until a month ago, the fact is that I have not been able to update this particular over the last few months due to poor health, my fluid circumstance related to a lack of permanent housing, plus a serious lack of energy, time and online access.

Then there also have been times when there is a lack of much news to report too. However I expect this to change, especially after Labor day, once campaign really begins to heat up.

Yet there is certainly enough interest and excitement growing out there already, from the various sides, concerning the 2004 Presidential campaign.

In addition, I expect to change the layout (i.e., template) of the blog soon, whenever I can anyway. So a blog makeover should be forthcoming. As part of this change, I will be switching to using the comment feature now available via Blogger.

This will mean that the www.haloscan.com comments will disappear and the former ones will no longer be available. For this I apologize, but it is unavoidable. Using the Blogger comments will improve things, especially so I can keep up with them better and will be self-contained.

Though I have no idea if anything will come of it, I am also hoping that a few people (here) I have recently contacted would like to become part of a blogging team of contributing bloggers to this blog, so they can report directly from the field when they can via the blog.

Have long wanted this blog to be a team blog and it would be great if it included people doing the work they are for Ralph Nader's 2004 Presidential campaign, the sooner the better, so maybe I can get this blog up and running again, as I cannot do it all myself really.