I officially changed my voter registration and left the Green Party this past week. Or, more aptly put, the Green Party left me. Actually, they abandoned many of us last summer when they decided not to run a candidate for president.
As of August 31, the Cobb campaign had raised just a little over $100,000 — by far the least of any presidential aspirant. Despite this meager level of support, Cobb contends that he has reached “millions and millions of people.” Yet, the only polls that even include Cobb in their totals say he’s polling at around 0.05% nationwide.
He’s not even trying, is he? But of course, that’s the precise point of his campaign. Do as little as possible. Don’t do anything that might upset a Democrat.
If the Left throws their weight into the bourgeois electoral ring, they better be prepared to come out swinging. That means somebody better be ready to represent the movement. Clearly, Cobb ain’t that guy. It also looks like the Green Party ain’t that party. At least not this election season.
Nevertheless it is not the Greens’ goal this year to challenge the political status quo. As Cobb admits, “I don’t have any goals for votes except for states in which we need a certain percentage to retain ballot access.” So Cobb just wants to register some Greens and maintain ballot lines. Forget challenging the two corporate war parties head on.
Cobb is doing dismally, not even meeting his own way low expectations. Interest in the Green Party has vaporized and that’s in large part due to his non-existent campaign.
In a debate with Peter Camejo on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! , Cobb even went as far to say that the US can’t just “cut and run” in Iraq. Cobb informed me that he now regrets taking the same position on Iraq as both John Kerry and George W. Bush.
Uh huh. I sure believe him. Don’t you?
Meanwhile
The Nader campaign continues its sorry downward slide, losing more credibility every day.
In Pa., fake signatures keep Nader off ballot
Nader needed 25,697 valid names to qualify for Pennsylvania’s ballot; Colins ruled that fewer than 19,000 of the signatures were legitimate.
“I am compelled to emphasize that this signature gathering process was the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this Court,” Colins wrote in a ruling produced after at least 11 judges in four courtrooms pored over the signatures for about two weeks.
Cobb is a Demogreen nonentity, and Nader has become a tiresome cranky old man, spending all his time fuming at the Democrats, and none attacking Bush – contrary to his promises of a few months back. Pennsylvania is just one more state where he’s been claiming to be the purest of the pure, while using sleazy signature gathering to get on the ballot. A sad end to a once great progressive.