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Flirting with disaster (Continued)

BY SETH GITELL

THERE’S NO question, then, that selecting McKinney for their presidential or vice-presidential candidate would be risky for the Greens. But it also wouldn’t be without benefits. McKinney has experience as a "real" politician adept at campaigning — historically a weakness of Green candidates. She knows how to get press coverage and could run a bare-bones campaign propelled largely by free media. Most important, however, is that there’s a palpable hunger on the part of Green activists to run a candidate for president in 2004 who unequivocally opposes Bush’s war on terrorism and who has the credibility to rally the antiwar crowd to his or her side. There can be no doubt that McKinney fulfills both qualifications.

"A candidate like Cynthia McKinney, who has an extremely attractive progressive record, may in fact galvanize a segment of the population that has given up on the political process," says Nancy Allen, a spokesperson for the Green Party of the United States. That said, Allen makes it clear that the official party apparatus has not yet endorsed any candidate. (The Green Party, like both major political parties, does not officially endorse candidates until its nominating convention.)

Michael Feinstein, who helped organize Nader’s 2000 presidential run, is a media-savvy Green currently serving as a Santa Monica city councilor (he was formerly mayor of the city). He says he’d like to see a Nader-McKinney Green Party presidential/vice-presidential ticket in 2004. For Feinstein, who is Jewish, a McKinney candidacy helps the Greens’ chances of establishing a permanent electoral coalition. Unlike the Greens’ last vice-presidential candidate, Winona LaDuke, who gave birth to a child just prior to the 2000 campaign, McKinney would be able to go out and stump energetically. She is an effective speaker and a relatively skilled campaigner. She is a woman of color from a part of the country where support for Greens is relatively weak. And then, of course, there is the free media.

"Her candidacy would make a strong statement that we’re a party that truly represents the full progressive social-justice agenda and that we’re not simply a Humboldt County [California] tree-hugging party," Feinstein says.

He allows for the possibility that McKinney might be a controversial candidate and alienate potential Jewish supporters, but adds that the controversy could be worth it. "It’s important for me, as a Jew, to say there are Jews that don’t feel that just because she has been critical of some of the policies of the Israeli government that she is anti-Semitic," says Feinstein, invoking the "opportunity" that a McKinney candidacy would offer to make just such a point. He calls the statements made by McKinney’s father "an embarrassment." "It’s going to hurt us," he says. Should McKinney agree to run and the Greens decide to nominate her, Feinstein says, it is imperative that Green activists get out in front of media outcry and make the case for her: "The reason we need to do some of the preliminary work is [so] we can mitigate some of that damage." Getting Jewish progressive Greens to do that, Feinstein believes, would help repair wounds that have existed between blacks and Jews since the end of the civil-rights movement and the early anti–Vietnam War effort — wounds that have bedeviled American progressivism since the late 1960s, and that a Green presidential run by McKinney, who’s been at the center of several African-American/Jewish blow-ups during the last decade, would bring to the surface.

Adam Eidinger, a member of the DC Statehood Green Party’s steering campaign and a former candidate for DC shadow representative, once shared Feinstein’s optimism about the healing opportunities that could arise from McKinney’s candidacy. Like Feinstein, Eidinger is Jewish. He accompanied a group of some 50 Greens to Georgia to work for McKinney during the last week of her 2002 campaign. "I gave up on Cynthia McKinney," says Eidinger. "After the election and after having numerous conversations with her, I ran into a brick wall. She has not been responsive."

Eidinger says he was disappointed by some of the things that happened in the campaign’s final days. "It’s sad for us," he says. "Some of the things said by her father about Jews." But he’s quick to add that he didn’t really oppose Bill McKinney’s blaming the defeat on Jews. "As a Jew, I took it in stride," Eidinger says. "I didn’t think it was racist. But I didn’t think it was good politics. It wasn’t a smart idea."

The idea that McKinney’s campaign for Congress was ultimately done in by pro-Israel Jews is an article of faith among many Greens. "We’re talking about thousands of Jews from New York State [giving campaign donations to her opponent]," says Eidinger. Adds former Massachusetts-state-representative candidate Jonathan Leavitt, who is not Jewish: "McKinney has been one of the few national politicians willing to stand up to the very strong Israeli lobby. Traditionally, anybody who stands up to the Israeli lobby gets called divisive, anti-Semitic, whatever." As an example, Leavitt points to Jewish support for McKinney’s opponent. But, he says, "[McKinney’s stance] is what the Green Party is about. Taking on the unpopular issues."

What role the "Israel lobby" played in McKinney’s demise remains a contentious and inflammatory issue. It’s certain that many Jewish Democrats opposed McKinney and helped her opponent. The Washington Post reported that Majette, her opponent, attempted to "tap campaign contributions from Jewish donors." The story quoted one local Jewish activist saying: "There has been an overall exasperation with Cynthia McKinney’s insensitivity to issues that are important to the Jewish community." Forward, a Jewish weekly, reported in June that "Jewish contributors have already begun supporting Majette." An update on the Web site of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) stated that Majette, whose position it praised, "met with AIPAC staff last spring and maintains close ties to local and national pro-Israel activists." But whether any of this amounts to Jews, as a group, targeting and eliminating McKinney as a candidate is something else. Besides, as Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman pointed out in an August 25 letter to the New York Times, "support [from outside the African-American community] was vital in furthering the civil rights movements, and Jews played an important role." He added that "McKinney went out of her way to attack Israel, causing much pain to supporters of a beleaguered democracy. It is also clear that her constituents turned her out of office for many reasons, including her extreme comments about Sept. 11."

One thing is clear from all this: any presidential or vice-presidential run by McKinney will end up as a referendum on her position on Israel in general, and on Jews in particular. It’s not possible to separate a candidacy by McKinney — who was effectively rejected by the Democratic Party in August, although she remains a Democrat in name — from the ugly events of the summer, such as her father’s anti-Semitic comments and her campaign affiliation with Farrakhan. That the Greens are even considering nominating her suggests the extent to which things have shifted since 2000, when Nader ran on a platform chiding the two-party system, big business, and globalization. Since the explosion of violence between Israel and the Palestinians in October 2000 and the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington almost a year later, the political climate has changed. Greens seem eager to provide a drastically different foreign-policy vision than that of either the Democrats or the Republicans.

But that impulse could move the Greens toward the political fringe — particularly as activists feel the urge to denounce those who supported McKinney’s opponent. It’s easy to envision what historian Richard Hofstadter has termed "the paranoid style in American politics" infusing the Green presidential campaign in 2004.

THE SAD THING about the boomlet of Green support for McKinney is that the party can choose from a number of potential candidates who share McKinney’s basic views, without much of the controversy. There’s California activist Medea Benjamin, for instance, and Jill Stein. Benjamin is Jewish and opposes a preemptive strike against Iraq. As an organizer of the "Code Pink" Women’s Peace Vigil, she’s planning to lead a delegation of 20 women to Baghdad at the end of the month to emphasize opposition to the war. Stein, of course, was the Massachusetts Green Party’s candidate for governor in 2002. She ran an appealing campaign that exceeded all expectations. "It’s not to say we wouldn’t lose some progressive Jewish money [by running McKinney] that we might get if Medea Benjamin ran. Both Stein and Medea would make Greens proud all over the country," says Feinstein. He adds, however, that McKinney’s well-known name would bring more to the ticket.

Asked whether she had any interest in running for national office on the Green ticket, Stein says, "I haven’t given it any thought." (Although the Green Party has refused to release the list of 35 names under consideration by its exploratory committee, it did confirm that Stein is not on the list.) When asked her opinion about a Green presidential effort in general, Stein demurs, wanting to focus on state matters. "In Massachusetts, we clearly have one-party politics," she says. "There’s a desperate and urgent need for a voice of opposition on the budget. We’re seeing this marriage made in heaven and getting the living proof that Democrats and Republicans in Massachusetts are doing fine by each other. Politics is a lot more complicated on the national level."

What Stein doesn’t talk about is what effect a national ticket that focuses on controversial issues, such as Israel and McKinney’s congressional-seat defeat, would have on the state level. Queried directly about any possible negative impact that McKinney’s candidacy might have on the state level, Stein says, "I have to confess I am not following national politics so carefully that I can comment on that." She adds nonetheless that "McKinney is saying very important things somebody needs to say." But, while Stein might not say it, a Green candidacy that lurches into extremism could undermine the good work that the party has achieved on the local level.

No matter whom the Greens pick — Nader, McKinney, Benjamin, or someone else — that person will run as a vocal antiwar voice, and the Greens could become the national address for peace candidates. If, for example, the Democrats nominate a hawk, such as Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, or a moderate, such as Massachusetts senator John Kerry, North Carolina senator John Edwards, or Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt, those Democrats who bitterly oppose the war with Iraq and the direction of the war on terror will look for a place to go. If the Democrats mistreat the Reverend Al Sharpton — who, as a strongly antiwar African-American, will likely play a role in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary similar to the one McKinney would play in the general election as the Green Party nominee, and who was the only Democratic candidate to show up for this weekend’s antiwar protests in Washington, DC (see "Antiwar Sentiment Strong," page one) — the result could be an angry constituency looking for a home.

Such a scenario drives progressives who oppose the Greens crazy. Todd Gitlin is one of them. Gitlin, a former 1960s antiwar activist and author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (Bantam, 1987), is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. His well-reasoned brief against Bush’s foreign policy, titled "America’s Age of Empire: The Bush Doctrine," appears in the current issue of Mother Jones magazine. "Why don’t they just donate directly to the Bush campaign?" Gitlin asks about the Greens, calling a decision to put McKinney on the ticket "the self-defeating idiocy of a sectarian clack whose grasp on political reality is worse than nil."

The more centrist elements of the Democratic Party are not concerned about a Green presidential ticket — with or without McKinney. Al From, the founder and CEO of the center-right-leaning Democratic Leadership Council, says McKinney and her like will lead the Greens into irrelevancy. "Cynthia McKinney didn’t win her own congressional district that was gerrymandered for her," says From. Asked whether the Democrats’ unwillingness to break from Bush’s foreign policy more vigorously might hurt the party in the 2004 election, From says, "It would be a terrible mistake for the party to move to the left in 2004. We can’t go in the direction of the left or the peace candidates. There’s no question we have activists in our party who would lead us to stunning and sure defeat."

For Greens, the interest in McKinney — and the wait for her to say if she will run or not — seems counterproductive. A lightning rod, a candidate who can generate a great deal of publicity very quickly, but who nonetheless could set the party back for years, McKinney represents nothing more than a quick fix. Perhaps the Greens’ effort to attract her to their ticket represents an admission that the way the party has been proceeding — running local candidates on incremental missions to increase the party’s visibility — is too small in the post-9/11 world. Or it may indicate that the temptation to confront both parties in a more dramatic way is too great. September 11 seems to have given immediacy to the Greens’ issues. The war on terrorism has lent any Green candidate’s arguments far more heft than that carried by Nader’s vague arguments about NAFTA and the Republicrats prior to the attacks. But this dynamic is fool’s gold. A glib but controversial candidate is a false messiah, someone who will draw an immediate and passionate group of supporters and repel everyone else. If this is the direction the Green Party travels in, it will march the party away from the legitimacy for which it has been struggling so hard for so long.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com

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Issue Date: January 23 - 30, 2003
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