[Sosfbay-discuss] "Dare to Win"

[Cameron L. Spitzer]

>Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2006 10:55:11 -0700
>From: Tian Harter <tnharter at greens.org>
>User-Agent: Debian Thunderbird 1.0.2 (X11/20051002)
>To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
>Subject: Re: [Sosfbay-discuss] "Dare to Win"

>Cameron L. Spitzer wrote:

>>>From: Andrea Dorey <andid at cagreens.org>
>>
>>>At the risk of repeating myself, anyone who runs with the admonition  
>>>that he will not run in any state (county, city) that a well-known  
>>>major party does not have a big lead over the other major party, does  
>>>*not* "dare to win,"
>>
>>I often hear an allegation that David Cobb ran only in
>>"safe" states, or at least said that's what he was gonna do.
>>The facts don't support that allegation, though.
>>
>I think that safe states strategy was a brainchild of
>John Rensenbrink of Maine. He's good enough at
>putting a message out that people took up the call.
>There was plenty of demand for the idea.

Rensenbrink couldn't be talked out of it.  I believe he
got my mathematical argument that the spoiler effect
isn't real, but he thought the risk of being accused
of spoiling was too great anyway.  And he waved away
my point, perhaps the most persuasive in that physical
consensus session, that we would be accused of that
no matter what we did, so it didn't matter.

Once you start considering effects of superstition,
the biggest factor compelling Safe States is that
hardly any vovers actually believe they live in a
"safe state" or district.
There's ego invested in the liberal's belief that
his vote counts and is counted, and that only
happens in swing states.
The belief that they live in a swing district conflicts
directly with their understanding of gerrymandering,
but it's superstition, not rationality, so the
contradiction doesn't dissuade.

The other Green proponents of Safe States that I saw
were Ted Glick and Steve Hill.  Glick has been
working for a grand progressive coalition for so long
that he believes in the imaginary "progressive Democrats."
Hill has been using Spoiler Effect as a boogyman to
motivate his argument for IRV for so long that he
just can't consider that it might not be real or
even destructive to talk about.

But I don't think Ted and John and Steve had much of
anything to do with publicizing the Big Lie that
Cobb was doing Safe States.  I think it came out of
the corporate press and its punditocracy, and its
satellites at progressive but hardly radical
outlets like Mother Jones and The Nation, reinforced
by opinion leaders like Medea Benjamin and Noam Chomsky.
Being terrified of the Spoiler Effect and imagining
progressive Democrats, they wished so hard that
Cobb was doing Safe States that they started believing it.

The shameful thing is that so many Greens believed
the Big Lie, which was nothing more than a persistent
rumor promoted by our adversaries, with no direct
evidence, instead of checking for themselves, that
it caused a paralyzing rift in the national party
and many state parties.  We need to learn to trust
each other, and to distrust the people who wish to
destroy us.  Or at least distrust what they say
about us.


Cameron