Well, Cynthia McKinney has defined victory as getting five percent of the vote. She understands she is not going to be walking into the White House on January 20, 2009.
So declared supreme loser Ted Glick on Democracy Now, April 23rd. It wasn't quite a Don McLean "Bye-Bye, Miss American Pie" moment. That would come the next day when the McKinney campaign declared "Glick Speaks for Cynthia in Radio Forum"!
Loser.
Loser who better not whine, "I'm being excluded from the debates" if she gets the Green Party nomination. She's a loser.
And we never intended to say that about Cynthia McKinney. But you don't enter a presidential race for 5% of the vote. If that's "victory" to you, you gave up your right to stand on stage with other candidates. See real candidates run to win. They give everything they have to winning. Candidates who define "victory" as 5% of the vote aren't real candidates.
Glick said it and we rolled our eyes. He's a Natural Born Loser and always has been. But then the McKinney campaign linked to those statements, thereby endorsing them.
So Cynthia McKinney, if she gets the nomination, is not running a real campaign.
She's running a campaign not for the presidency but for 5% of the vote.
Supposedly this election is 'important.' You keep hearing that from Panhandle Media. Well then Cynthia doesn't belong on the stage in any presidential debate if she gets the nomination because, by not running for victory (that would be the White House), she's wasting everyone's time.
In The Common Ills community, there's no support for Barack Obama. The bulk of the members are Democrats. They have stated they will not vote Democratic in November if Barack's the presidential nominee. These voters were up for grabs. They don't favor McCain. So if Barack gets the nomination, there choices were:
1) Don't vote in the presidential race
2) Vote for Cynthia McKinney
3) Vote for Ralph Nader
Cynthia actually had the lock on them. She's been brave. She's been fiery. She's someone they know very well. She lost them all when her campaign endorsed Glick's statement. That says she's not a presidential candidate. She's a 5% candidate.
Like everyone else, we have lives. We don't have time to follow every issues and every niche movement in the world. We need to use our time wisely. We're not using it for a 5% candidate. We have better things to do.
5% is not unlike the 2004 "safe state strategy." It's not a real campaign. In 2000, Ralph Nader gained ballot access for the Green Party with his run and the 'leadership' destroyed that in 2004 by electing to run what they called a 'safe state strategy' that was nothing but a party killing strategy.
At best, Cynthia's campaign appears to be an effort to take the Greens back to 2000. Why? So in 2012 they can run another 'safe state strategy'?
Nationally they have just demonstrated that they aren't a real political party. (We'll note Green state races if they're brought to our attention.) That's really pathetic.
Ralph Nader doesn't know how many votes he's going to get. He's running a presidential campaign. Could he become president? We think it's likely and we don't hear him limiting himself.
A race for the presidency that starts out -- and McKinney's not even been declared the nominee yet -- by defining the ultimate success as 5%, by stating "We have no chance of winning the White House," isn't a real run for the presidency.
So we won't be covering her campaign. And we don't think anyone in the media should. She's turned it into a joke.
When she was first considering it, before she got cold feet and had to be reassured, Cynthia was making noises about how the Greens could win the presidency and after she declared her run for the nomination she was saying how she was going to run a real race. Yet before she's even gotten the nomination, a surrogate is saying that she knows she can't win the race and is really only after 5% of the vote and her campaign then does a "Ted Glick Speaks For Cynthia" endorsement of the statement.
That's pathetic.
It is sad when real candidates are shut out of the debates. But in Cynthia's case, we will not shed any tears for her because she's not planning to run for the presidency, just for 5% of the vote. So there's no reason for anyone to shed tears when she is not invited to the debates (assuming she's the party nominee). She's not a real candidate.
And until the Green Party learns to act like a national party, there's really no reason for anyone to consider it to be one.
The Green Party alleges that it wants to break through the two-party monopoly in this country. We support that. But we don't support stupidity or faux runs. And declaring that your campaign will be focused on a 'victory' of 5% of the votes relegates you to the margins and fringes. Some people will actually be running to win. Those are the real candidates.
We have no idea how important the election is. We're fully aware that 2004 was supposed to be "the torture election" if you believed The Nation magazine. We're not sure what issue would be more important than a nation illegally practicing torture but we're sure that trashy magazine will find some way to hype the 2008 election through the roof with more sensationalistic headlines. We're equally sure that life will go on for those lucky enough to live through the next White House occupant's tenure.
We do know a real candidate when we see one and that's not a person who defines 'victory' in a political race as 5% of the vote. We know how important our own time is and we won't waste it by treating this fringe run as a serious one when covering the presidential race.
We drove our Chevy to levee and, yes, found the levee was dry. Bye-Bye Cynthia.