His candidacy, however, has produced an unintended result. It has pushed elected officials like Matt Gonzalez and Jason West to the left, and forced many activists around the country to take a stand. The Green Alliance—a socialist faction inside the Green Party—is growing everywhere and the majority of Green activists in the main bases of the party (California, New York and elsewhere) are shifting to the left. There is even talk of these Greens separating themselves for a few months from the US Green Party in order to put the Nader-Camejo formula on the ballot.
Green activists have become more and more anti-corporate and anti-capitalist. They are organizing against the two party system and are making new efforts to grow in communities of color, among workers, and within the l/g/b/t community. These are all good symptoms indicating a recovery in the left wing of the Green party that will enable its members to reclaim a party that, in recent times, has been going nowhere.
Many Greens are moving closer to the socialist and radical left, and thus developing a firmer spine in the interest of deterring the continous onslaught of Democrats and liberals against their party.
There is talk of reforming the structures and functioning of the party in order to make it truly democratic and avoid a repeat of the embarrassment that characterized the past convention. Meanwhile, Cobb seems to have plenty of problems getting his campaign off the ground and running. Given the enormous odds he faces, does he really want to??
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There have been many such "revolutionary vanguards" and they are often bitterly frustrated because the masses so often fail to appreciate their wisdom and go off in directions uncharted by the learned wannabe leadership of the vanguard. Such is life. More importantly, such is any democratic process.
I see Nader as the hare, Cobb as the tortoise. Let's look at this on November 3. I doubt very much whether any states will be lost by Cobb due to failure to meet the 1% threshold.