Ask any liberal to identify the force in American politics most intent on destroying progressive prospects and causes and you're sure to hear that it's the Bush administration or the Republican right or some such reactionary power. Let me gently suggest, however, that a very different force has wormed its way onto this list, and may indeed be right at the top: the Green Party.
There's something so very pure about the Greens' destructiveness. The Republican right, after all, isn't committed to stamping out liberalism purely as an end in itself; it is also a means to advance its own agenda of more power and wealth to the powerful and wealthy. When the Greens run a candidate against a Democrat, however, neither their campaign nor the effect of their campaign advances their agenda one whit. Their goal is simply to defeat Democrats, even the most liberal Democrats. Especially the most liberal Democrats.
Consider the appalling farce now unfolding in Minnesota, where the Greensrecently endorsed a candidate to run against Paul Wellstone. As you may haveheard, the two-term Democratic senator is in the race of his life againstRepublican challenger Norm Coleman, and many political handicappers think thatthis is the contest that will decide which party will control the next Senate. Asyou may also have heard, Wellstone is the most unflaggingly progressive member ofthe Senate, a dynamo who can be counted on not just to vote right, but to knockhimself out for such otherwise unchampioned causes as single-payer healthinsurance and workers' rights in the third world. He was elected by an allianceof enviros, peaceniks, unionists, et. al., which he organized and has sincenurtured into the only genuine statewide left-liberal grass-roots organization inthe land. In short, Wellstone is the single most effective proponent oflower-case-g green politics in America.
All in all, a perfect target for the Green Party! When delegates arrived attheir state convention last month, some wanted to teach Wellstone a lesson forhaving voted to authorize a military response to the 9-11 assault. Others wererankled that the Wellstone camp had endeavored mightily to keep them from runninga candidate against him. (Da noive!) As a result, Green spokeswoman Holle Brian told The Progressive's Ruth Conniff, "People came to the convention with the goal of endorsing a candidate come hell or high water."
But they hadn't come to the convention with a candidate. Demand-side politicsdemanded one, however, so they nominated Ed "Eagle Man" McGaa. Eagle Man "was notfamiliar to a majority" of delegates, Brian Kaller, co-editor of the Greens'Minnesota newspaper, told Marc Cooper in the Los Angeles Times. "But there were at least some people from the Native American community who ... vouched for him. ... He is a member of a historically disenfranchised people. He's a feminist. And an environmentalist." What he's not, the Greens were to discover just after the convention, is an opponent of the war on terrorism. McGaa supports the Wellstone position on this question, though the Greens call this position the very basis of their challenge to Wellstone.
What could possibly explain this idiocy? Natural selection? Ever sinceWellstone built the most vibrant left-leaning organization in the nation, anyMinnesota progressive with the intellect to tie his shoes has been a Democrat --leaving the Greens with the sandaled, the shoeless, and the slow. This could justbe some Minnesota exceptionalism.
But it's not.
The race against Wellstone, in fact, is not an exception to Green strategy,but its quintessence. Already the Greens have tipped congressional races to theRepublicans in Michigan and New Mexico, and there was that unfortunate outcome ofthe presidential race about 18 months ago. In fairness, Ralph Nader warned usthen that even a Democrat who brilliantly advanced liberal causes would meritGreen opposition. When asked at the June 2000 Green National Convention to namethree things he liked about America, for instance, Nader listed DemocraticCongressman Henry Waxman of California as thing number two. But when David Mobergof In These Times interviewed Nader that October, the candidate said that come 2002, he'd unhesitatingly back a Green against Waxman. Nader added, however, that the Greens would focus chiefly on the close races. Where the Democrats "are winning 51 [percent]-to-49 percent," he said, "we're going to go in and beat them with Green votes. They've got to lose people, whether they're good or bad."
Even Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold? Moberg asked. Even Paul Wellstone?"That's the burden they're going to have to pay for letting their party goastray," Nader answered. "It's too bad."
Indeed, and not just for Wellstone should he lose. Workers in Chinese laborcamps, Africans dying of AIDS, homeless children on the streets of St. Paul wouldall pay a price for this piece of Green folly. But then the Greens have alwaysbelieved that they are charting the true progressive course, no matter the damagethey may do to the actual progressive cause.
Beware this party. At the heart of Green politics is a novel -- and ruthless-- ethic: The means justify the end.