[Sosfbay-discuss] No great press out of Pennsylvania

[Cameron L. Spitzer]

There's a big difference between a GP candidate taking money
from a GOP PAC and accepting money from individual Republicans.

Most registered voters in the US are registered Dem or GOP.
A GP candidate with broad appeal, getting donations from all
over political space, is going to get most of those donations
from registered Dems or GOPs.  (I refuse to use the brainwashing
phrase "political spectrum."  Politics is not a one dimensional
number line, it's a many-dimensional space.)
What matters more is the size of the individual contributions.
If he gets a thousand apiece from a handful of activist GOPs,
something's fishy.  If he gets hundreds of small contributions
from real individuals, it just means he's a viable candidate.


And because of the ongoing campaign of superstition known as
"the spoiler effect," most Dems have been convinced that Green
candidates, by some mathematical magic, quantitatively harm Dem candidacies.
Belief in this "effect" suppresses donations from registered Dems to GP
candidates, which raises the relative share of donations received
from registered GOPs.  Belief in the "effect" may encourage
some GOPs to donate to a GP candidate just to make mischief,
but I doubt they'd send a whole lot of money to a candiate
whose positions they disagree with.

Notice that the superstition is once again mentioned as if it
were fact, in the first paragraph of the AP story.
The GP candidate "is expected" to "siphon votes."
"Political observers say... draw votes away."
And nobody argues it's nonsense.  It's just another in an
endless stream of horserace "spoiler effect" stories.  That's
become the standard spin for mainstream coverage of the GP.
Reporters don't even have to think of a new "hook" for a GP story,
they've got one ready made.

Many Greens fell for this mathematical nonsense.  Some actually
believe it, despite their inability to support it with valid
mathematical argument.  Others think it will somehow *help*
the Green Party, by scaring the Dem Party into some kind of
electoral reforms involving proportional representation or dropping
out of their gerrymandering deals with the GOP.
Even *smart* Greens like Steve Hill and Medea Benjamin have
promoted it.
The success of the "spoiler effect" propaganda campaign is the
reason the Dems *aren't* scared of us here.

I believe accepting the "spoiler effect" was the biggest
strategic miscalculation in the history of the Green Party.
It's the biggest reason our numbers and our ballot lines have declined
in the US in this century.  We actually *helped* the Dem Party
execute its campaign, based on a mathematical lie, to destroy us.
It was *our* failure that horserace spoiler effect became the
standard hook for GP coverage.
I believe we could have done better to recognize the Dems'
single best weapon against us for what it was, and to confront
it at every turn, head-on, for the dirty lie that it is.


Cameron