I have great respect and appreciation for Cynthia McKinney but I said long before the Green Convention in Reading, PA that she would make a terrible Green candidate because she would be written off as a "cop-slapper" and a "conspiracy theorist" by the mainstream media (if they bothered to pay any attention to her at all). The mainstream media virtually ignored her recent visit to Madison, Wisconsin (which only 30 Greens bothered to attend). I googled the event looking for mainstream coverage and honestly didn't find much, if any. Even the blogs and the small local media (see below) opened their pieces with "cop-slapper" and "conspiracy theorist" and dug no deeper. What are we thinking, fellow Greens?
I am very curious what good is to come out of supporting a campaign which, just like in 2004, we are the only ones paying any attention to? I stress that it is not my desire that things work this way, but I know that they DO. A McKinney run may be well-intended but will do nothing to help advance our party at all. In fact, our numbers will drop again. All those on Cynthia's
bandwagon have consistently explained that a young energetic go-getter like her will help us to organize locals with her vigorous campaigning (I guess that they intend their "young" dagger to penetrate the spine of that notoriously "lazy" old white man who gave our party its national legs). I can only say that simple mathematics proves them terribly wrong.
Just to put things in perspective, the Madison Metro Area is home to over 600,000 people. Thirty of them showed up to see Cynthia, a statistically irrelevant number.
I live in a small city in upstate New York (Glens Falls). We are home to about 15,000 people and its arguable that there are about 100,000 people living within about a 20 mile radius. There are no major single pockets of population anywhere up here. I brought Ralph here twice and he spoke to over 300 people each time and we easily sold out ($50 - $100 p.p.) fundraisers for him. The local press hate my guts but we got covered by the local papers and the local indie TV stations and Time Warner and the local public radio affiliate each time, nonetheless.
My Green local is literally a handful of people and I am absolutely sure that we are nowhere near as well-organized and well-run as I imagine the Wisconsin Greens to be. So, what does this tell us about Cynthia's "bankability" and effectiveness at garnering media interest and buzz and getting people interested in our party?
It tells me I was right, regardless of what our internally-produced, seldom read, press releases have to say about it. Please think of the party as we work towards the 2008 presidential elections. Please work for the only candidate who has shown over and over again that he is the only representative our party has ever had who is capable of getting decent, quite often national, coverage. Please help me to save our party by working to help Ralph Nader become our candidate for President. It is the only thing that makes any sense. Everything else is just electoral masturbation.
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/261690 A former U.S. Congresswoman from Georgia, perhaps best known for her scuffle with U.S. Capitol security guards, was in Madison on Tuesday stumping as a Green Party candidate for president.
McKinney? Cynthia McKinney... that Cynthia McKinney? None other. She's the congresswoman who walked around the metal detector at the entrance to the House Office Building, while not wearing her Congressional identity pin, and then got into a shoving match with the Capitol guard who tried to stop her. She's the congresswoman who's made statements accusing President Bush of involvement with 9/11. She's opposed aid to Israel, and anti-Semitic statements have repeatedly come from her campaigns.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/14829074/detail.html
McKinney is seeking the nomination of the Green Party, which gained fame when Ralph Nader ran as its candidate for president in 2000. Kevin Barrett, a former University of Wisconsin lecturer who taught that the U.S. government was behind the September 11th terrorist attacks, attended McKinney's news conference along with about 50 others.
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