Green Party Watch

Sam Smith, editor of the Progressive Review, has a piece on Counterpunch called When Green Matters. It focuses on the relative success of Green Party candidate Fred Horch in Maine and the past success of John Eder in Maine and why we should pay attention. Please read it all, but I have to reprint the conclusion:

Horch and Eder are examples of backyard Greens, whose influence spreads virally through human contact and experience and not through the mass media. It’s the way every great drive for social change has worked in America – the abolitionists, the populists, the early socialists, and the civil rights movement. Unfortunately, too many Green leaders have read too much Marx and not enough American history.

The big parties gave up human relationships long ago. Which is why we have such a hard time relating to them. But you can’t text your way to the presidency, you can’t Facebook a revolution and you can’t save the planet with Twitter. At some point real people have to join with, talk to, and help other real people.

Which is why a Green small business owner in Brunswick did so well and why so many others could learn something from the story.