With this level of analysis and outrage, I am amazed the author dismisses Greens as `unelectable´ As a voter of integrity, you have no other choice. when I hear that impossible´ or ridiculous dismissal, I hear echoes of programming, pounding home the created reality that we have no choice. Its just that, a program we need to erase. Independents outnumber either democrats or republicans now. A candidate like Gabbard, who appeals to both Libertarians, Greens, Some dems, some repubs, and many simply moral human beings, could take it this time. But you need to believe it. You need to make the path with your footsteps. You need to stop looking to vile TV propaganda, and the perverted fourth estate for signals about what are issues, or what we can say about this or that. Don't let them corral your mind. Ride the swell, waves are coming that are very powerful. We need to stop querulous whining and blaming. Surf it, and believe! We can do better.
Also, if you want to know why the environment is a dead letter with both dying parties, read Chan Thomas, watch Thunderbolt Project and Suspicious Observers. The science is coming out. A cataclysm is coming, as it does every 10 thousand years or so. When our planet crosses through the galactic magnetic sheath, the outer core liquifies, the poles slip down to midlatitude due to the weight of their ice caps, and the new poles will be at the Bay of Bengal and off Peru. Not much has survived past polar shifts. Maybe 1% of all life forms. That's why all the action has been building underground. That's why the looting, so much makes sense in view of this. Some say we have 27 years. Who knows? The poles are accelerating, the magnetic sheild is down 35%
OK, I´ll take my tinfoil hat off now. Have a nice day. Carpe diem.

I can control only my own behavior; my sole vote for Greens (I DID make a protest vote for Jill Stein in 2016) doesn't make a damn bit of difference in a national election.

Of course, as an activist writer I have prospects of making a bigger difference via my writings--something I'm obviously trying to do here. But it's still a question of the type of influence I can have on multitudes of voters. Here one has to make a best guesstimate of where it's most profitable to spend one's energy. I calculate I have far better prospects of improving things by disgusting the climate movement--itself a MUCH stronger influence on public opinion than the Green Party--with Democrats than writing directly on behalf of the Green Party.

As I emphasized to Kevin Zeese in sending him this article, AOC and the Sunrise Movement raised the Green New Deal's profile more in a few hours of protest at Nancy Pelosi's office than the Green Party did in YEARS of advocacy for it. That's NOT a slam against Greens, only recognition of the fact that powerful political movements--and the climate movement is understandably the most powerful we have at present--have far more power to influence public opinion overnight than marginal third parties deliberately repressed by the establishment. The trick is to get the climate movement to challenge Democrats in ways that will publicly expose Democrats' hypocrisy and resistance to climate action. To me, asking for a climate debate is good, but hardly challenging enough; Dems might calculate they can afford conceding a debate, since corporate moderators will render it almost meaningless. But getting the climate movement to demand Trump's climate-based impeachment--as I do in my piece--would publicly expose how unserious Dems are about climate. Greens and climate radicals already might know, but most of the public--including most climate activists--are essentially clueless. That's why Greens need to raise their consciousness if they wish to improve their party's own prospects.

And, AOC wouild not have known of the Green New Deal if it had not been for 10 years of advocacy by the Green Party. Movements have different phases. AOC came along at a different stage of development than the Green Party did with the Green New Deal.

The same is true for single payer healthcare.. Nader was the first to bring it up in a recent presidential election, He did so when he ran as a Green Party nominee in 2000. Sanders brought it up in 2016 but that was a different era, after the inadequate ACA.

Now both the Green New Deal and Medicare for All are litmus test issues for the Democratic Party. This is how third parties have affected the diretion of the country since the Civil War. Many of the msot important transformative police changes that have occurred stated in third party candidates showing they were viable issues in an election. Of course, the roots are always pre-electoral in the work of political movements. That work is still more important than elections as people power impacts everyone in office if it is strategic and mobilized.

I don't think of my vote for Green Party candidates as a protest vote. I see them as voting for what I believe in. The wasted vote is voting for what you don't beieve in. Eugene Debs said it best: "I'd rather vote for what I want and not get it, then vote for what I don't want and get it." Too many voters do the latter, especially when they are controlled by fear of the other party. Fear manipulation is very powerful and will be especially powerful in the Anybody But Trump 2020 election.

Living in safe blue NY State, it doesn't matter who I personally vote for.; the Democrat nominee will win my state's electoral votes.

But for climate activists like me, another four years of Trump is the worst imaginable outcome. Four more years of Trump's climate policy will virtually guarantee (if we haven't guaranteed it already) that the death and refugee totals due to climate will dwarf those of both world wars, the Holocaust, and Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot combined. So if Trump is reelected, all we can hope for is massive street revolt, Extinction Rebellion style. Since I doubt that will happen on a large enough scale, I think we'll just have to accept that the biggest genocide in human history is on its way.

It's hard to get enthusiastic about organizing for Greens--or any other party--when facing such a grim prospect.

I am not very impressed with this piece and its weak metaphor. Especially with the conclusion, that what the climate movement in the US needs to do is spread this essay around, and that if the climate movement doesn't start acting like Russiagate was a rape, it's time to--WHAT?!--abandon the US climate movement. This is nuts, insisting that the author's approach is the only acceptable one and if others disagree then we should just give up--because abandoning the US climate movement means giving up, the global climate movement desperately needs US activists to succeed. So while Walker is right that Russiagate was counterproductive bullshit, right that the DP leadership can't be trusted, right that the stupidity of Russiagate is likely to hand another four disastrous years to Trump et al, his metaphor is not effective.

You don't think that handing another four years to climate-incendiary Trump is tantamount to rape of the climate movement!!?? If not, I'm not sure what other metaphor of IRREPARABLE damage you'd find appropriate. Obviously, if I said MURDER of the climate movement, there'd be no room for movement outrage at all, since the dead neither feel outrage nor join political movements (among their MANY shortcomings!). So pray tell, what superior outrage-provoking metaphor would you have supplied?

Let's go further. Whatever metaphor we choose, the climate movement acting with the outrage of a party grievously wronged by Russiagate makes a REAL difference for action. Not realizing how much Russiagate has crippled the climate cause has deprived the climate movement of HUGE leverage, substituting servile begging for righteously outraged demanding. Consider the climate debate. Instead of saying, "PLEASE give us (any old) climate debate," Sunrise et. al. could be saying, "You've colluded in Trump's climate genocide, and we're going to go on saying that loudly and endlessly until you give us the climate debate we DEMAND. Here's our list of acceptable moderators."

Obama proudly told Texas oil men that it was him who made the US number one in oil and gas production. He laid in thousands of miles of fossil fuel infrastructure. I guess with your metaphor, he also raped the planet. He just did not do it with Russiagate -- well neither did Trump, Russiagate was a Demcoratic creation.

And, if Dems lose to Trump again, we'll probably have Chinagate to blame it on -- in addition to those of us who vote for what we believe in by voting Green.

I think you realize that I'm no Obama fan and found his "all of the above" energy policy dismally inadequate. But Obama didn't design his whole energy and climate policy around aggressively attacking climate science, and he put us in--rather than pulled us out of--the Paris climate accord. Granted, that accord had little real substance, but at least it was a framework for potential global climate cooperation. Trump wishes to cooperate only with fossil fuel Visigoths.

And, the Democratic front runner, Joe Biden, is already a climate criminal. So, should he be supported if he is the nominee?
Biden’s Complicity in Obama’s Toxic Legacy <https: www.counterpunch.org="" 2019="" 08="" 20="" bidens-association-with-obamas-toxic-legacy=""/> KZ

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Obama stopped the Copenhagen summit from being successful. China was negotiating with other nations to put in place mandatory reductions in carbon emissions. He and Hillary barged in and stopped them. In Paris, it was the US that stopped mandatory reductions.

And, Obama put in place policies through his FERC appointments that resulted in a massive build-out of fossil fuel energy infrastructure and fracking.

So, while Obama did not say he did not believe the climate science, he did everything the science said should not be done. Which is worse, believing the science and ignoring it, or not believing the science and doing the wrong thing?

We don't know who the Dem nominee is going to be but the DNC reversed itself and is taking fossil fuel energy contributions, Pelosi refused to set up a Green New Deal Committee. and the House Climate Committee has no power.

I'm not sure why you think the Dems will be better? Their history and current actions show we have a two-party problem when it comes to climate. That is the reality. It may be a difficult reality for people stuck inside the two parties to face. Voting for either Wall Street Party is bad news for the environment and for many issues.

I think the Sanders wing of the party would undeniably be better, As to other Democrats, they must in fact pay attention to climate movement pressure in a way Trump doesn't feel obliged to. The climate movement DID in fact force Obama (major hypocrite that he is) to nix the Keystone XL pipeline; Trump approved it without a second thought. Climate movement pressure has prospects of success under even the worst of Democrats (say, Biden) that it TOTALLY lacks under Trump.

Of course I agree with you that we have a two-party climate problem; my entire article is to that effect. However, acknowledging that we have a two-party problem by no means implies that the two parties are EQUALLY bad.

Note that it took years of actions, 1400 arrests, enormous amounts of activist time and energy to get Obama to nix the pipeline--and it took Trump approximately six seconds and a pen to reverse it. This is the unfair situation we face. And it's just more evidence that Zeese is right here, in what he hasn't actually quite said--the DP may be "not equally bad" but this is a good cop/bad cop show. I've come to suspect that the Democrats don't WANT to win all three Houses, because then they'd have to take turns voting for the policies the funders demand, potentially angering constituents (if the constituents pay any attention). Whereas now they can vote against the bad stuff, secure in the knowledge that the Senate and White House will give corporations what they want. Sometimes I even think that the animosity toward Trump on the part of well-placed liberals and Democrats is fake--that they WANTED him as President because he may be a loose cannon who will say crazy things at any time, but he can be absolutely relied upon to keep the spotlight on himself--it's probably his only real agenda. I saw a great cartoon, wish I'd saved it, in which, on the left side, a circus act is performing under a spotlight. Dimly on the right side, you see men tossing bags of cash out the windows of a two story house while their henchmen catch them and load them into a getaway vehicle. So we have one bright spectacle after another--currently the amusing one about Denmark and Greenland--to capture all the public attention and discussion. Meanwhile, in the dark: a global police state of unimaginable power is being rapidly constructed; net neutrality is dismantled; a NEW generation of nuclear weapons is ordered--by Obama, but continued under Trump and expanded to to a $1.7 TRillion price tag--and most importantly, as you discuss, the last years in which might avert catastrophic climate change (as opposed to the merely disastrous level already locked in) are not just being wasted but somehow it seems under this administration the goal is to INCREASE emissions as much as possible.
I don't think there is a chance to change anything via politics, because you are right that the Demublicans and Republicrats have the game rigged (largely through their control of/collusion with corporate media) so that third parties can't win, and Kevin is right that the Democrats are not genuinely on our side.

Here's my metaphor: I think I'll steal and repurpose one I heard during the Teach-in in Seattle just prior to the WTO "Battle in '99: We're on a bus, the driver is drunk, we keep careening out of control. The passengers need to stop being so passive and drag the drunk out of the driver's seat, put someone else in there, and save the day. Okay, but in this case, there is another driver on the bus, who isn't drunk, and passengers are saying, "you've got to take over, this guy's dangerously incompetent!" And what the alternate driver does instead is play an exciting movie from the 1950s called the Red Menace to distract the passengers. Many of the passengers are so caught up in the silly movie that they forget about the danger but that doesn't make it any less.
To step away from the metaphor question, I have to mention that the Russiagate bullshit isn't entirely something thrust at the public by the Democratic Party insiders--a whole lot of liberals totally ate it up. Separately there is the problem that something close to half the public is happy with Trump and climate denial. You can't call it rape when the victim is so willing. Although maybe that confuses the metaphor since I presume the victim is supposed to be liberals/Democrats/people concerned about climate...but it IS a problem that we're a minority of the public. Quite true that we made a mistake if we looked to the Dems to do something.

First reaction: too complicated--how do you make that a headline or soundbite conveying outrage?

Further reaction: the Red Menace movie-showing driver isn't a striking image of something morally culpable and repulsive. My rape-under-drug-influence metaphor economically conveys BOTH annulling of attention AND moral culpability.

Finally, note that my choice of "rape" victim is very precise: the climate movement. While liberals ARE willing victims of Democrats bullshit--and so, as you correctly say, NOT rape victims, being a climate activist at least implies not being a standard liberal and therefore hunky-dory with whatever the Dem establishment does. Feeling special activism on behalf of climate is needed implies that NEITHER party is doing its job. Not being standard Dembot liberals, climate activists CAN be Democrat rape victims.

You deleted my previous comment (and video link) pointing out the fact that Howie Hawkins is a Russiagate Nut, and I suppose you will delete this one also. But Howie Hawkins is STILL a Russiagate Nut, and deleting my comments doesn't change that.

Hawkins retracted a lot of what he said in that interview which occurred when he was exhausted and low blood sugar. Here are his views on Russiagate. https://howiehawkins.us/the...