2004: The Nightmare Scenario for Dems

[janekat]

I don't know if this is likely to happen but it could....

If the Greens decide not to have Ralph Nader on their ticket for President (why should they - Nader refuses to even become a member of the Green party?) and has Cynthia McKinney on the ticket we lose votes to her. THEN if Nader also run on his own we have a nightmare scenario:

http://www.votemckinney.org/
Cynthia McKinney: GREEN PARTY Candidate for President!

We are a grassroots committee of active Greens who have a deep and enduring respect for Ralph Nader, but do not take it for granted that he will be our candidate for the Presidency next time around. Instead, we want to see Congresswoman CYNTHIA McKINNEY become a Green and run for President on our ticket. Here's why...

1) McKinney has always been one of the most progressive members of Congress. She has been endorsed by a list of progressive organizations.

3) McKinney is Black, female and from the South. If any political party is going to break the habit of only running rich ostensibly white males for the Oval Office we are the logical ones to do it.

4) Likewise, attracting more people of color to the Green Party will bring our reality closer to our rhetoric, which will have positive reprecussions for years to come. We cannot do that by simply appealing to the voters. We must invite progressive people of color into our leadership if we are to be convincing and to benefit from their wisdom and perspectives.

[LynneSin]

1. I adore Cythnia McKinney but she'll barely make a blip on the radar

Folks are so fed up with Bush that'll we'll get plenty of moderates out there who will go Dem this time. And Cynthia McKinney may be a black woman from the south, but she barely gets name recognition outside the South and progessive websites like DU.

Wake me up when you have a real nightmare. This hardly even counts for an interesting dream

[janekat]

7. She still has a lot of "black" support - especially Chicago, Georgia

http://www.photodude.com/weblog/2002/september/18_political_fratricide.shtml

This month's Congressional Black Caucus conference wasn't exactly a lovefest. " 'People were talking retaliation,' said Ron Walters, the director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, of last week's CBC events in Washington. 'They were saying Sen. Joe Lieberman is dead in the water, and so on and so forth.' "

After working in Chicago politics I have learned that the "white" media organizations have no idea on what is going on in the black communities.

I've worked on more than 1 campaign where all of a sudden, we got blown out of the water by an angry black constituency. We were all in shock when Harold Washington came along "out of nowhere" and won the mayoral election against the Democratic establishment. You cannot take them for granted. That's why I always read the Chicago Defender (the city's black newspaper).




http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1118-04.htm

Cynthia McKinney, the lame-duck representative from Georgia's 4th District, came through town last week and was welcomed as a conquering hero by an energetic crowd heavily sprinkled with political activists but few elected officials.

Speaking at Kennedy-King College on the South Side (of Chicago)

McKinney devoted much of her Chicago address to dressing down the Democrats for failing to speak up for their core constituency. "We probably have about a half-a-million people in the streets against war in Iraq," she said. "But on the war, where are the Democrats?"

[FlashHarry]

2. "ostensibly white males???"

Huh? How can one be 'ostensibly' white––other than by being non-white and appearing white? I can't think of the last time we had a serious presidential candidate who was a person of color trying to appear white... Perhaps you could enlighten me. ;-)

On edit: As a Mod, I try not to take sides––please note that my gentle ribbing is in reference to your malapropistic use of the word ostensible.

[janekat]

8. That wasn't MY wording - I was quoting from an article.....

sorry - guess that wasn't clear.

[ShaneGR]

3. Here's the best line....

Likewise, attracting more people of color to the Green Party will bring our reality closer to our rhetoric, which will have positive reprecussions for years to come.

Yeah, positive repercussions. Like re-electing * and screwing over all those "people of color" for years to come.

[Iverson]

4. try this

A nightmare scenario for Dems would be letting electoral fraud pass without opposition in 2004 because all their energy was reserved for vilifying Greens.

The scenario that you describe seems a long way from a nightmare.

[library_max]

5. Oops!

Obviously I'm logged in to the wrong web site. I could have sworn that this was DemocraticUnderground, but here's a topic plotting the death of the Democratic Party. Did somebody switch addresses when I wasn't looking? Or is this another topic started by "progressives," using the derivation of "pro-gress, n, the act of shooting oneself in the foot or biting off one's own nose to spite one's face."

[ulysses]

6. plotting?

:shrug:

As a once and hopefully future constituent, I'd be surprised if Cynthia ran on the Green ticket.

As a twice and possibly future Green candidate voter, her candidacy on a Green presidential ticket wouldn't necessarily mean all that much in terms of whether I voted Dem or Green. Now, if she ran against Majette as a Green, that's another story.

[janekat]

9. Don't shoot the messenger - I'm just just reporting the news...

http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/newswire/nw03/talonnews/0703/072303-tn-green-party.htm

I think this is something we need to keep in mind for 2004. We were caught unawares in 2000 after Nader promised not to campaign in the states that were close between Gore and Bush and THEN after we relaxed he went out and did the opposite. He spent the last day of the 2000 campaign in FLORIDA - where he ended up handing Bush the Presidency.

She even got standing ovations in Ann Arbor :
http://migreens.org/press/pr030715.htm
For her keynote speech at the 6th annual National Summit of the
Independent Progressive Politics Network (IPPN) this weekend in Ann
Arbor, Cynthia McKinney received three standing ovations -- and a
standing invitation: to run for the Presidential nomination of the
Green Party of the United States (GPUS).

The summit, titled "Building Unity During Urgent Times", brought
together over 100 progressive activists representing 50 member groups and 19 states across the country to discuss and help create a united strategy for 2004.

[library_max]

10. Sorry.

If I understand you correctly, everything below the link in your original post was a quote. If so, it's sure hard to tell that from your original post. And I've seen all too many DUers licking their chops over the demise of the Democratic Party (at their hands, as they imagine it) to just assume that no DUer would endorse this view. Again, my apologies.