[Sosfbay-discuss] No great press out of Pennsylvania

[Larry Cafiero_Liaison]

Cameron L. Spitzer wrote:
> There's a big difference between a GP candidate taking money
> from a GOP PAC and accepting money from individual Republicans.
>   
Good point, Cameron.
> 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.
>   
That's true. But what seems to be fishy here is that they contracted 
with JSM from Florida to do their petition collecting after having 
collected this money. Why they didn't get a local firm or pay local 
volunteers in Pennsylvania is a mystery.
> 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.
>   
Another good point. The fact that Greens are in the race to raise issues 
and, if we can get voters behind us, to win. Further, it's our right to 
be there, and the Democrats have to earn people's votes, just as we do, 
and just as other parties do.
> 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.
>   
What do you think can be done to stop this, Cameron? We have a flier in 
Santa Cruz County about the so-called "spoiler" effect, but what else is 
there?

Larry Cafiero
Liaison to the Secretary of State
Green Party of California