Green Party: Headed closer to a crack-up?

On Friday (actually, Thursday, June 8, per Tweetgrazer, per an update) the Green Party tweeted a report saluting Jill Stein's recount.

It sure seems that way.

First, a couple of weeks ago, the national party gave Chemtrails Bob Fitrakis a platform to tout Jill Stein's recount of last fall, even though it was Stein's private recount, not the party's recount, because the executive committee never approved it. Left hands, right hands, and lack of knowledge, eh?

Updates, June 6, 2018: And, since Mark Lause posts to public on Facebook, I can identify Michael Trudeau, a Stein campaign staffer, as being nitpicky about every claim related to the recount, per June 5, 2018 update. Trudeau was state coordinator for Stein, as in, I presume, coordinator of her campaign with state Green parties. He's probably an AccommoGreen. He says the GP steering committee doesn't control either the Twitter account or the paper. Especially on the paper, I ... find that interesting. But not surprising. He also says "who cares" if somebody writes an opinion piece, as Fitrakis did, in Green Party Pages.

That, in turn was part of a larger post about how the Green Party is still having trouble distinguishing itself from Berniecrats. Why? Probably in part because both Stein and her campaign manager, and 2004 party presidential candidate himself, David Cobb, are both AccommoGreens. (And, per exchange with Trudeau, probably also because of organizational issues. Again, I'll blame decentralization and the GP national being the 51st state party, in part.)

Then, there's the Texas Greens, with an even bigger cracking up at this year's state convention. Friend Brains has the intro, on a post talking about how voting options seem to get worse and worse. (Hold that thought.)

One of his links is to Texas Greens stalwart David Bruce Collins, who was at the convention and reports his thoughts. There were apparently a number of rifts at the convention, some of them driven by troll-like personalities, at least one of whom Brains has had a run-in or two with in the past. Brains also links to Kat Gruene, who apparently was a target of multiple shitstorms at the state convo, some driven by personality animus, others driven by old white dudes who continue to give the party a bad image in more ways than one at times.

Collins does note one good thing. Apparently, 2018 candidates will actually have professional websites, which was one of my main complaints at the state level in my 2016 post-mortem. Now, let's see if Greens get some more professional candidates next year. (Brandon Parmers need not apply.)

That was just one of my plaints, though.

Although Stein herself is not anti-vaxxer, she did play some political footsie on the issue.

And, although Greens are very willing to "follow the science" on climate change, they generally refuse to do so on GMOs, even though their safety has at least as high a degree of scientific consensus as does the idea of anthropogenic global warming.

Hey, I'm OK with questioning (with factual knowledge) business matters of Big Ag. And food safety. But, again, with facts. (Oh, on the financial side, Monsanto of GMO "infamy" has, and has had, a smaller market capitalization than Starbucks. Just saying.)

That said, in a closed Facebook Green Party-affiliated group? I can't quote, or name names, but, my ethics will let me make several observations. Neither anti-vaxxerism nor anti-GMOism have been huge. But, I've blocked multiple 9/11 Truthers. Several of them believed in other conspiracy theories, most notably the chemtrails of Chemtrails Bob Fitrakis.

Like Mark Lause, who had a great post in North Star late last year that I blogged about in detail, if the Green Party has reached the end of its tether, it then has done so.

To riff on Brains, I seriously considered voting Socialist Party USA's presidential candidate Mimi Soltysik last year. He was available by write-in here in Texas. Unfortunately the "reveal" about Stein having Big Oil stocks and Big Military stocks, just like Ralph Nader, came after I had early voted.

BUT ... Soltysik has said that the SPUSA will look at its platform. On GMOs, it's currently where the Greens are, but he supposedly wants to move it in a more science-friendly direction.

If that happens before 2020, especially if Greens don't up their game nationally, and get some of the state parties, like Fitrakis' Ohio, to stop being private fiefdoms, etc., then that's my tipping point and I move on.

If SPUSA does NOT improve, and keeps a platform that I noted was worse in some ways than Greens, and Greens slouch further toward Gomorrah, than at least a selective non-voting is also possible.