The Green vote will not go away

Baltimore Sun Letter to the Editor March 8, 2003.

Vincent DeMarco’s letter “Wasted votes prove costly to liberal cause” (Feb. 23) argued that Green Party voters “need to come to terms with the stark fact that without the votes [Ralph] Nader took away from the Democrats in Florida and New Hampshire, Mr. Gore would be president right now, and we would not have to be planning desperate anti-war demonstrations.“

With respect, I think this analysis is wrong on a number of counts.

Most of the Green Party support in 2000 was not “taken away” from Democrats, but instead came from first-time voters and from voters (like me) who would not have voted at all if there was no Green candidate on the ballot.

And I suspect that even if Mr. Gore had won the court battle for the White House, al-Qaida would have attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and a Gore administration would have struck back militarily.

On the other hand, imagine what might have happened had the Green Party candidate won the election. In 2000, Mr. Nader proposed a 50 percent reduction in military spending, including the removal of U.S. troops stationed around the world.

With an Arab-American as president, and U.S. troops out of the land of Mecca, it is possible to imagine that Sept. 11 would never have occurred, and the U.S. attacks against Afghanistan and Iraq would have thus been unnecessary.

I have these final thoughts for Mr. DeMarco and other liberals: The Greens are not going away – we are the fastest-growing party in the United States. And politics is not a zero-sum game – Greens and Democrats could both be growing by recruiting membership from the majority of citizens who don’t vote at all.

And let’s remember that, Green Party activity notwithstanding, had Mr. Gore won his own state of Tennessee, where the Green vote was not decisive, he would be president today.

Dave Goldsmith
Woodstock
The writer is coordinator of the Green Party in Baltimore County.