Abstract

The Happy Warrior

The article focuses on David Cobb, presidential nominee of the Green Party this year. "I find it exhilarating," he says, notwithstanding the likelihood he will finish behind even independent Ralph Nader, the Green candidate in 2000. Cobb is a 41-year-old lawyer and community organizer who ran for Texas attorney general before moving to Humboldt County, California, the ground zero for green-thinking politics. The Greens' sensibility is still counterculture, but they've become far more inclusive, recruiting union members and urban minorities while also talking about governing issues with less froth, more substance. A provocative comparison of party positions on the Greens' website lists what Greens oppose and both major parties support: war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, Israeli occupation of the West Bank, corporate agriculture, corporate welfare, corporate rules for global trade, bank deregulation, increasing military spending, the death penalty. Greens support and Democrats and Republicans oppose: national health insurance, doubling the minimum wage, full public financing for candidates, strict controls on genetically modified organisms, the landmine-ban treaty, real action on global warming, a new legal doctrine of workers' rights for Americans, electoral reforms that create the political space for a multiparty democracy.