Colorado Greens, a clusterfuck

Dear truly liberal, left-liberal and leftist Coloradans tearing your hair out over a battle for the U.S. Senate between John ChickenLicker FrackenLover Hickenlooper and Cory Gardner, knowing the Greens have no candidate in the race?

(Colorado State House District 55 was the only non-presidential candidate they have.)

I mean, FrackenLover is responsible for clouds of methane over Colorado. And, as I know from his time as Denver mayor during the 2008 DNC, he's also a First Amendment hater on freedom of assembly. Even if there was nobody lined up before, when ChickenLicker left the prez race and then said he would enter the Senate primary, and there was ANY time still left to get a Green to run, it should have been done. Party execs dropped the ball.

That said?

Never fear, I was going to tell you. Former Green Veronique Bellamy is on the SPUSA line.

Nope, scratch that. I'm not deleting the comment, but I'm saying yes, do fear. Per what could fall out with the Georgia Green Party (didn't happen at the national convention, but who knows about the future), her trans activist angle would be iffy enough for me, given the playout between the Georgia Green Party and the Lavender Caucus (as abetted by two-faced Dario Hunter). But, on Twitter? She's a HARDCORE Zionist, enough to retweet outright lies about Jordan making the West Bank "Judenrein" and such. (On this issue? Jordan did expel Jews from East Jerusalem. But any Jews elsewhere in the West Bank were not affected, other than Jordan being active against any non-Arabs, period. Best estimate on Jewish expulsions is 2,000, far fewer than the Nakhba and the 700,000 who either fled in fear or were expelled.) Her Jordan comment is as close to the truth as anything she's had on Israel-Palestine issues.

Guess the SPUSA was desperate for a candidate itself.

Meanwhile, showing just how fucking dysfuncational Colorado GP is? On the national GP Facebook group, some other Coloradoan touted two other possibilities. NO to both. Stephen Evans is a gun nut, as is the Unity Party in general; national open carry as your No. 1 platform statement? No wonder Andrea Mérida Cuéller pushed you along. Jim Doyle? Constitution Party candidate, aka American Religious Right Party.

And that "Some other person" mentioning these two? Gary Swing, listed as a perpetual candidate. He is, per Ballotpedia. Ran in Colorado in 2012 and 2014, and is running this year; ran in Arizona in 2016 and 2018. (Gary, sorry, but for someone your age to have been running every two years for almost a decade, you are a perpetual candidate. Period.)

Are the defections from the Colorado GP in part Andrea Mérida Cuéllar's part? I think so. I largely, though not totally, agree with her as Howie Hawkins' campaign manager. And, in part, I think the Colorado GP has had issues that Harris Greens and a few other regional GPs within Texas Greens have had on race-related issues. That's the background to the 2018 disciplinary issues. (Guess a fair chunk of old white hippies aren't so enlightened. Or young ones. Swing was one of the people bhreatened with being booted from any position of authority in the party. I think he ultimately was spared. And, per this piece, beyond the rightness or wrongness of any complaints? Being a former Libertarian, then a Green, now a centrist? That much party-hopping at your age, Gary, makes you not only a perpetual candidate, but a third-party omni-whore one.)

As for Restore Green Values' complaints? Whether or not the RGV folks have even a whiff of white supremacy about them or not, I totally support that Cuellar did NOT want to admit "flag of convenience" Berners after the 2016 Dem primary. Too many of them came in nationally this year and thought that Bernie was the God of all. Not even close.

At the same time, the amount of complaints from a number of angles? I think there's some fire behind the smoke. But, no more than one-third of it is legitimate.

That leads to our old friend Idries Shah.

I think Cuellar has done good work in a lot of ways, but it's probably time for her to step aside as state party leader. There's probably a degree of truth to that elsewhere. That said, per David Bruce Collins, even at the regional level, being involved with Greendom is a level of cat-herding that makes' Will Rogers bon mot about being a Democrat and not a member of any organized party look like weak tea.

And, if cat-herding as both Howie's national co-chair and state party co-chair got to be too much, she should have resigned one or the other, especially if it impacted her recruiting Senate candidates. The bullshit about rigging and favoritism is totally untrue. But, it's very possible she overstretched herself. That's on her, and it's also on Howie for not thinking about it. Stein, after all, didn't have any state party chairs as her campaign chairs.