The Green Party candidate for U.S. House in Connecticut’s 4th district announced today that he is withdrawing. Connecticut law permits a candidate’s name to be omitted from the ballot as late as October 24. The withdrawal is motivated by the Green Party’s desire to help the Democratic candidate defeat the Republican incumbent.
That’s just classy.
“Classy”?
Very low classy.
It means the Greens are just another anti- party.
It means the Greens have no position, no philosophy, no principle of their own.
At least in this example.
If I remember correctly, a Libertarian candidate somewhere, possibly South Dakota, withdrew at the last minute a few years ago, to help a Republican.
Both cases help the old party statists and old party monopolists who keep insisting this is “a two-party system”; and they help the media and other dishonest people to defend the position that new parties do not deserve any news coverage.
If the Greens are just an adjunct of the Democrats and the Libertarians are just an adjunct of the Republicans, why bother giving them any attention?
I consider both acts to be shameful.
Even after reading #2, I still think it’s classy and sensible. Let’s be realistic here. This year is no time to be goofing around to risk continued Republican control. We don’t have that luxury.
“It means the Greens have no position, no philosophy, no principle….”
It just means that this ONE Green candidate, in this ONE circumstance, decided to choose pragmatism over idealism. It doesn’t imply anything about the Green Party in general, and it doesn’t even say much about this particular candidate. Presumably, Mr. Duffee would have made a different decision in different circumstances. Standing firm by your Green principles is cold comfort when you’re watching the Republicans destroy the country.
And if Connecticut were to implement instant run-off voting, this situation could be eliminated and people could both run for office and vote for their preffered candidate without the fear of unintended consequences.
It seems that the Green candidate’s pragmatism isn’t very educated. Anyone who expects mainstream Democrats to vote against the war in any meaningful or timely way is sadly misinformed. Liebermann and his opponent are probably much closer than they’d like to admit, and neither of them are likely to do anything to bring the troops home in any timely manner.
Apparently #6 is unfamiliar with the CT Senate race (“Leiberman and his opponent …”). Joe Leiberman has two opponents: the winner of the Democratic primary, Ned Lamont and the Republican nominee Alan Schlesinger. Incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman is a former Democrat who lost the Democratic Senate primary race and is now running as an independent petitioning candidate. The Green Party candidate Ralph Ferrucci is being pragmatic in that a vote by a liberal leaning voter would most likely take a vote away from the Democratic candidate Ned Lamont, and help Joe “Stay the Course in Iraq” Leiberman.
This is not the U.S. Senate race. This is a House race.
#7 is right, I am in the wrong, since I just assumed it was Liebermann when I saw CT. What I’m not wrong about is the Democrats’ propensity to start and/or support wars. IMHO, an anti-war vote for a Democrat is almost as certainly wasted as one for a Republican would be.
Problem is, she is NOT an antiwar Democrat. When the Republican incumbent, Christopher Shays came out last month for an Iraq withdrawal timetable, she attacked him as a “cut-and-run” Republican. On MSNBC’s hardball, she refused Chris Matthews repeated questioning as to if and when we should withdraw troops, and she just kept repeating that “Christopher Shays doesn’t have a plan for Iraq” and that the war was handled wrong so the solution was to fire Rumsfeld.
If I had worked on the Green Party campaign, I would be furious. If I had donated money I would have sued the candidate. I am sure I would have quit the party out of disgust: just another example of how politicians don’t care about their supporters.
#7 Lieberman has four opponents. A Green and a Constitution Party candidate, me.
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