Greens wanted for Stop Dean movement/New Mexico

[Gloria]

by Jay Miller--Inside the Capitol

(There is no link for this at the Las Cruces Sun-News homepage, so I'm typing the relevant paragraphs. The piece also discusses possible GOP registrations to vote for Dean because Republicans want him to win so they can run against him.)

Santa Fe--Not so fast, some of Howard Dean's opponents are saying, you don't have New Mexico wrapped up yet. A Stop Dean movement appears to be afoot in New Mexico.

It began to emerge with word that candidate Dennis Kucinich is making an effort to enlist the 11,000 Greens in the state to switch parties so they can vote for him in the Democrat caucuses. (my note, it's not ME using the word "Democrat" instead of Democratic!!) Kucinich's issues look much like the Green platform. David Bacon, the 2002 Green gubernatorial candidate, already has made the switch and is heading the New Mexico Kucinich campaign.

Snip

Former Greens will have plenty of time to switch back from Democrat in time to vote for a Green candidate in the regular June primary election. That is one of the anomalies of New Mexico's early primary system. This is one time it is going to be legal to vote twice.

snip

But the idea of getting to vote twice is enticing. Now that the idea has been broached, there is nothing to stop Republicans from doing it too...So switching parties to vote for Dean would make sense.

snip

According to an Albuquerque Tribune report, Kucinich has more paid staff members in New Mexico than any other candidate except Dean. And he started campaigning in the state before any other candidate.

etc etc

[maddezmom]

1. wow, that's interesting

amazing you can vote 2x.

[revcarol]

10. We used to have our primary for everything in June

and the Presidential nominee had always been selected before we got to vote. So now our Presidential Primary, called caucus, only for registered Democrats, is FEB 3.

Anyone can change their registration in person or at a register-to-vote booth up until Dec. 30. The deadline for mail-in registration was Dec. 15.

And, NO, David Bacon, the former Green candidate for governor, is NOT running the whole Kucinich campaign. He is in charge of getting people of other parties to tune in to DK.And not just Greens.

Wouldn't surprise me a bit if repugs changed to vote for Dean. They know Kucinich is an AWESOME candidate here and would be their worst nightmare!!

[HFishbine]

2. I don't get it

What do the Greens have to gain by "stopping" Dean?

[rucky]

4. Kucinich has much to gain by recruiting greens

NM is an early primary this cycle. he has a chance at a good standing that'll keep him alive that much longer.

Could come off as kinda desperate on DK's part, but he HAS to recruit greens for his niche-campaign strategy. He put himself into the Stop Dean box.

[HFishbine]

5. Okay

I see what Kucinich has to gain, but that still fails to explain what Greens have to gain.

[rucky]

6. a voice

n/t

[HFishbine]

7. Still don't get it

A voice? How so? Will it result in someone being elected who will represent their interests? What voice?

[AntiCoup2K4]

11. What sort of voice would Greens have if Bush Jr is "re" elected?

Hell, what voice would ANY of us have? :scared:

[cryofan]

8. Dean wants to cut social spending, but Greens want more social spending

As you can see from these excerpts from a long, footnoted article printed by a scholarly, left-wing journal, based on what he said and did as governor of Vermont, Dean wants less social spending. Of course, the Green Party wants to increase taxes on those who make handsome incomes, and spend that on social safety net, education, daycare, etc.

I think the quotes below show what Dean is really all about. I found some of the Dean quotes below quite disturbing, and I feel that Dean supporters need to take a good look at these quotes and decide whether this man is really a Democrat. His quotes below indicate that he is not interested in furthering the Democratic agenda.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Throughout the 1990s, Dean’s cuts in state aid to education ($6 million), retirement funds for teachers and state employees ($7 million), health care ($4 million), welfare programs earmarked for the aged, blind and disabled ($2 million), Medicaid benefits ($1.2 million) and more, amounted to roughly $30 million. Dean claimed that the cuts were necessary because the state had no money and was burdened by a $60 million deficit.9
....
Most of the Democrats in the legislature rebelled against Dean over the budget cuts, and he ended up depending on Republican votes to pass most of his proposals. At the time, a local Vermont newspaper wrote, "The biggest items on Dean’s agenda for next year are likely to provoke more opposition from the Democrats than the Republicans. Nevertheless, Dean said he feels no particular pressure to deliver the goods to his party or to promote the Democratic agenda."15

In the mid-1990s, Dean even aligned himself with the likes of Republican Newt Gingrich on his stance on cutting Medicare. He opined at the time, "The way to balance the budget is for Congress to cut Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the states cut everything else."16
....
The Rutland Herald described how one protestor, Henrietta Jordan of the Vermont Center for Independent Living, "said it would be much fairer to raise taxes on people with expensive homes and cars, children in private school and a housekeeper at home than to cut programs that helped the 66,000 Vermonters living with disabilities."17 Dean responded callously, brushing off the pleas of Vermont’s most vulnerable by saying, "This seems like sort of the last gasp of the left here."18"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



The rest of this article is here:
http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/dean.shtml

[HFishbine]

9. This is still hardly an answer

Leaving aside the innacuracies of the explaination, the Green party would have a beef with any of the dem candidates, so I'm sill at a loss to see how the Greens benefit from voting "against" Dean. I'm beginning too get the impression that this hasn't been thought through to carefully.

[Deesh]

3. New Mexico

It seems as if New Mexico is full of surprises. I love that state -- it is beautiful and mysterious to me.

Gore nosed Bush in New Mexico by just a handful of votes. Nader did pretty well. If Dennis Kucinich does well, it's probably because he's worked hard there.

I just have the impression that a lot of progressive voters in New Mexico are not afraid of supporting Dennis Kucinich.