Daily Kos is probably the most-read political blog in the U.S (www.dailykos.com). On August 1, it headlined an item “Pa-Sen: Greens Working for Santorum”, and linked to Pennsylvania newspaper stories that say the only reason the Green Party was able to obtain 100,000 signatures on its ballot access petition was that Republicans donated to the Green Party and its nominees. Underneath the quotes from these stories, DailyKos summarized the story with this sentence, “The Greens Are Now Actively Working to enable Santorum and the GOP Agenda.”
There are three groups of partially or wholly disenfranchised adult citizens in the U.S.: (1) inhabitants of the territories and commonwealths, who are unable to vote for president or congress even though they must obey the laws passed by congress; (2) ex-felons and felons in certain states; (3) members of minor parties in certain states.
DailyKos does not hold itself out to be a blog about election law. Daily Kos seems never to have expressed any concern about the voting rights of any of the three disenfranchised, or partially disenfranchised, groups of adult U.S. citizens. However, when any influential medium attacks a political party for running candidates, on the grounds that such candidacy hurts the Democratic Party’s nominees, that provides fuel for Democratic state legislators around the nation to make the ballot access laws stricter.
Someone needs to tell these losers to get a life. They whine like no other when they lose an election and claim discrimination. Yet, they have no problems discriminating anyone other than Democrats.
In 2004, in a cynical ploy to garner signatures for Ralph Nader’s petitions, I went to one of the most Republican areas in the world, Knoxville, Tennessee.
My thinking was along the lines of the reaction at Daily Kos — and note I said “reaction” rather than “thinking.”
I figured all those Republicans, mindful of the popular view of what had happened in Florida in 2000, would be downright tickled to get Nader on the ballot, “in order to draw votes from Democrats.”
For whatever reason, Republicans were more reluctant to sign to get Nader on the ballot than other people.
Later that year, working on petitions in Texas, mostly for the Libertarian Michael Badnarik but in a cooperative action with the Nader campaign, I found Republicans again most reluctant to sign.
The strangest comment I heard, and more than once, was, “We have enough candidates on the ballot.”
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans couldn’t get on the ballot in Texas … or most other states in the South.
“How a minority,
“Reaching majority,
“Seizing authority,
“Hates a minority.”
“How a minority,
“Reaching majority,
“Seizing authority,
“Hates a minority.â€
Well stated, Michael.
Richard,
You make a good point about Kos failing to mention the enormous obstacles to qualifying a new party for the ballot, especially in Pennsylvania.
But it is a Republican strategy to help left-wing third party candidates qualify for the ballot to split the Democrat/liberal vote. In California in 1972 they helped Peace & Freedom Party candidates qualify, and in New York they qualified bogus Liberal Party candidates. So exposing the GOP dirty tricks is also legit.
If you want to see some “dirty tricks,” wait for next Tuesday, when the Casey campaign will pull out every absurd nook and cranny of election law in an effort to prevent Pennsylvanians from being allowed to vote for a pro-choice, anti-war candidate. I don’t suppose we’ll hear much about that from Daily Kos though.
Romanelli’s website has a quote from the candidate:
“The only wasted vote is one that is not cast with your values and beliefs behind it. Let’s stop wasting our votes on candidates that serve interests other than ours.”
My question is this: whose interests should we infer that the Romanelli campaign is serving, when all but $30 of his funding comes from conservative republicans?
Good-bye Green Party. I used to take you seriously.