You asked me for my thoughts regarding your plan to change your party registration from Green to Democrat, so that you can vote for Bernie Sanders in next year’s DNC presidential primary. Here is what comes to mind:
My first thought is that I want to build a Green Party where our members feel confident they are contributing to the necessary project of building independent political power. And feel in their bones that, no matter how un-sexy and un-celebrated that project may be, it is more important and will inevitably take us further than “strategic” voting and party-switching ever will.
I believe that party switching is indicative of a political culture where even some of the most politically aware and engaged citizens still relate to their political affiliation more as a kind of consumer or customer instead of something that they share ownership and stewardship over.
To put it another way, I want to build a party where Greens would find it unthinkable to give up their voice and representation in their local, state and national organization in exchange for voting in a Democratic Party primary.
I understand that the GP is very far from achieving that relationship with the vast majority of our members. Much of that is due to our own limitations, some of it just a product of the way politics has been arranged in this country to estrange voters to the greatest degree possible.
I don’t think I can convince you with words that what we are doing is necessary, and that the Sanders campaign doomed its potential for a lasting contribution the moment he entered the DNC primary (and if not then, when he pledged to support the eventual DNC nominee). I would be asking you to believe in something that right now only exists in sparks and flashes of kindling, and I understand that is a hard sell when there is a tidal wave of enthusiasm and cheer-leading going in the other direction.
But I do believe our political system relies on granting endless mis-directions and false means of escape to dissenters: the nonprofit industrial complex, mobilizing instead of organizing, the DNC’s seduce and abandon strategy, fusion voting, and on and on.
Anything that looks like a shortcut or a savior is exactly the opposite. Only we, a very big and involved We, can change things. And we–you and I and countless others–will have to be involved in ways we cannot yet conceive of, commit to and achieve things we never thought possible.
I think the GP can only make this argument by continuing to build what we aspire to, member by member, brick by brick, action by action. We need to invest in deep, ongoing popular education about some political ideas and strategies that have been aggressively marginalized.
Whatever you decide for this election, I hope you will be there for that and find the kind of party and movement that we are dreaming and fighting for.
Also, it is critical that everyone who cares about anything resembling democracy supports the fight to open the presidential debates, which is partly controlled by the party in which Sanders is seeking nomination. The national Green Party and Jill Stein have joined the Libertarians and others in a major lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates and this might be our best chance in decades to crack them open.
And those are my thoughts! Ask and ye shall receive, in spades.
