DON'T FORGET THE GREENS. Rick Perlstein's piece from Friday is right to caution that just because Democrats squeaked out a victory in the midterms, progressives should not ignore or forget the fact that Republican chicanery very nearly turned the tide the other way -- and that it might do so the next time. Along these lines -- of stressing certain points that victory might threaten to obscure -- I think it's worth pointing out that the Independent Green Party candidate for Senate from Virginia, Glenda Parker, received 26,106 votes, 1 percent of those cast. Had George Allen won by the same thin margin that Jim Webb did, Democrats would complain that yet again a marginal, lefty third party cost them control of a branch of government. And understandably so. The Independent Green Party, while a distinct entity from the Green Party, also clearly belongs in the same spoiler category. The Independent Greens' signature issue is mass transit. As an avid supporter of mass transit and opponent of America's disastrous automobile-centric transportation policies, I sympathize with their feeling that the Democrats have failed to adequately address the issue. But the Democrats have a better track record on the subject than do Republicans, and the way to pull a major party to your position on a pet issue without throwing power to the other major party is to mount primary challenges and movements for platform incorporation on the topic within the party. Progressives should be as vigilant in convincing the pubilc that third parties are simply counterproductive in a winner-take-all system such as ours as they ought to be about fighting back against Republican dirty tricks.
--Ben Adler
