We simply cannot afford to make the same mistake again of thinking that a campaign virtually ignored by the media can also be a success for our party. A campaign that fails to be noticed is a failure for our party as it does not help us to build. Party-building is the main reason we run presidential campaigns in the first place, right?
We need to focus on the very real media blackout that exists and how to break it. A candidate who can get national media attention will yield us more membership and more resource and the possibilities of eventually gaining more ballot lines, the fabled 5% and access to the debates.
Lets all keep our eyes on that prize: NATIONAL MEDIA ATTENTION. The common ground here is that we all want the Green Party to grow and become the legitimate and credible alternative to the two corporate war parties, right? Is there anybody out there who disagrees? That said, no one person is even contemplating running with us who will get us the media attention that Ralph Nader will. That is simply a fact and we all know it to be true no matter our whims, desires, moods or strategies.
We need to stop arguing about the "who" immediately. If Nader seeks our nomination, he will get it. Saturday night in Reading was proof positive that the grassroots and their representatives know exactly what we need to do in 2008. We love Ralph, we respect him and we want him to run. The energy is there. The only pertinent question is, "Are we able to show a credible candidate (like Ralph) that we are a party deserving enough that legitimate candidates would seriously consider seeking our nomination?" We need to convince Ralph to run with us. Waiting for an under qualified or lesser-known candidate to beg for our nomination seems to suggest a secret desire for our party to fail.
Running a Green who no-one knows is always going to be a serious mistake. We already made it once and we all seem to agree that it was, at the very least, not a party-building experience. As such, lets not do it again. Most people I know who are not Greens think that Ralph Nader was our candidate in 2004, anyway. They have no idea who our actual candidate was because he (and our party) didn't get any media attention.
Running a Democrat who garners only small amounts of very negative media would be a huge mistake, as well. Cynthia McKinney is a wonderful, brave and articulate woman who deserves our support BUT she is also a Democrat and she also has the rare distinction of being thought of as a loose cannon and a conspiracy theorist by both the Fox News crowd AND the NY Time's crowd, as well. She is not anywhere as well known as Ralph and her resume is considerably shorter. Running her would be a terrible mistake (and it will split our party again).
Run her for Congress as a Green and run Ralph for President. This is a no-brainer. I don't know about you, but I'll throw my resource behind both campaigns, enthusiastically.
I am not holding up a gun and saying "Just do what I tell you". I'm not threatening to "take my ball and go home". I'm just predicting what will happen (again) if we proceed slowly and without common sense. I am stating the obvious. 2008, with Bloomberg in the race, is our year. This is the year to run Ralph and grow our party again. If we start planning early enough, we can make this our best national campaign ever. I am not proud to say that I predicted 2004's disastrous result perfectly, but I did. I believe that 90% of the grassroots Greens I know did as well. For the good of the party, we need to go with the positive.
Ralph for President. Cynthia for Congress. Both with our full support. This time around, I would love to predict that we're going to stop all the infighting and announce our intent early and do something that makes sense. We owe it to our grassroots and we owe it to ourselves. We can do it. I predict that we will!
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