Sunday, December 19, 2004

David Cobb and Medea Benjamin: Losers of the Left

By the Glorious Revolutionary Federation of Fortune 500 Killers

In its ongoing attempt to place deserved blame for the epidemic of Anybody But Bush (more like Nobody But Kerry) that plagued the left and resulted in one of the most disastrous electoral outcomes it has ever experienced, the Federation will continue to identify the foulest specimens and boosters who spread this idiotic ideology.

Here to inaugurate the first installment are Captain David “I steered the Green Party into an iceberg” Cobb and Medea “I hog the limelight but in fact am useless” Benjamin. We hate you.

David “The Face of Sex” Cobb

At the beginning of the year, as the two mainstream parties’ candidates mobilized their campaigns and coffers, those searching for the only principled anti-war alternative looked to the Green Party for guidance.

They found nothing.

As the months wore on, prominent Green Party leaders (cough, cough, David Cobb, cough, cough) could not decide whether the party would run a Presidential candidate (regardless of whom). Frustrated, Ralph Nader, the Party’s 2000 Presidential candidate contended he could wait no longer. In February 2004, Nader announced his independent candidacy for President.

Meanwhile, a handful of state Green Parties—the ones in which the Green Party is heavily concentrated—held nominating primaries. Their selection? More than 70% for Peter Camejo, who aside from Nader, had run the country’s most prominent Green candicacy, including 10% of the vote in the 2000 California governor’s race.

Democracy posed a problem for Cobb’s ambition. It also marked the start of Captain Cobb’s drive to sink the Green Party. First, he packed other states’ nomination meetings, which traditionallly have been poorly attended (as most Greens are concentrated in a handful of states), with Cobb delegates. Second, he endorsed the anti-democratic Green Party nomination system, which bears resemblance to the Electoral College, and whereby small states have their delegates totals multiplied, supposedly to ensure the voices of smaller state Green Party (even with virtually no members) are heard. By exploiting this latter feature via delegate packing, Cobb secured the Green Party nomination over Ralph Nader (who by then had chosen Camejo for his running mate and sought the Green Party’s endorsement). Thus David Cobb, who had only 12% of the delegates’ support, still walked away with the nomination.

Captain David “Charisma” Cobb announced that he was “running to build the Green Party.” But did he? Maybe if your idea of “building” a party means not voting for your own party. His running mate, Pat Lamarche, suggested at one point that she might not even vote for her own ticket. Maybe if your idea of “building” a party means not getting votes. Cobb announced to ABB-er Michael Albert: “I am not very concerned with my vote total.” Elsewhere, he declared: “And the way that I think we can accomplish both my primary goal and as well as the secondary is to target the very finite resources of candidate time and money into those states which I call the ‘safe’ states, or the states that are not in play.” This “safe state” strategy, endorsed by the ABB crowd, in effect represented an endorsement of the pro-war Democratic Party and withdrawal of any pressure on it to take better positions. Cobb also uttered hardly a word about the Party’s multi-million dollar campaign to drive from the ballot Ralph Nader, toward whom Cobb seemed to have junior high-levels of jealousy.

“Hierarchical, individual-centered movement—a cult of personality,” sniped jealous little Davie Cobb at his former buddy Ralph. So much for thanking people who singlehandedly earned the Green Party more than a dozen ballot lines Cobb would squander, and who raised numerous funds for local Green parties between the elections.

Cobb didn’t make most national polls. On ones willing to squeeze him in, he earned .05%. As one astute writer remarked: “Last time I checked, such a number didn’t surpass the threshold for bragging rights.”

Cobb’s campaign barely raised $100,000, even with 600,000 Green Party members. As another writer pointed out, in other words, if every Green Party member had given $1, Cobb would have had six times more money. The figures suggest the pathetic support his campaign roused even from the faithful.

When all was done, Cobb’s anemic campaign cost the Party dearly. It earned a little more than 100,000 votes, enough for a stunning sixth-place finish behind Nader, the Libertarian Party, and the Constitution Party. Yes, you read that right. Cobb has been bested by the Constitution Party. Goodness.

What four years ago seemed like one of the country’s most exciting political forces now has the stench of a political corpse. Thanks to Captain Cobb, the Party now has LOST most of the ballot lines it earned in 2000, meaning that it will have to waste thousands of dollars and resources on earning them back in 2008, should it even exist and run a candidate then. Meanwhile, Cobb’s candidacy has caused much bitterness within the Party between the minority faction that hijacked the convention to support him, and the majority who preferred the puritanical veteran consumer advocate to a non-entity from Texas.

Let’s give a hand to David Cobb. What a person. Thanks for ruining the Green Party and steering it straight into the iceberg of Democratic Party ABB death.

Medea Benjamin: Famous for Being Counter-Revolutionary and Useless

One of Captain Cobb’s chief cheerleaders deserves equal scorn: foundation dole Medea Benjamin.

Medea Benjamin is a faux-radical who first came to fame in 1999. While at the famous 1999 WTO protests in Seattle and mouthing anti-globalization rhetoric, Benjamin chastised protestors who took to the symbolic destruction of NON-CIVILIAN targets like Nike Town, while avoiding destruction of local businesses—clear evidence that this was far from “mindless” property destruction. After defending the property of multinational corporations, Benjamin subsequently issued pronouncements to the mainstream press that assisted in the creation of the “good protestor"/"bad protestor” dichotomy, later used successfully in years following by mainstream political groups to sedate popular protests and make them as planned, unsurprising, reflective of “good protestors,” and in truth, futile as possible.

Benjamin became a lead booster of the disastrous ABB strategy. In a widely circulated letter and in a petition, she denounced the candidacy of Ralph Nader and spread lies about his campaign’s alleged bankrolling by REPUBLICANS. But in truth, as a study by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics showed, Republican donors only made up 4% of the Nader campaign’s money, and such funds came from individuals, as the Nader campaign was the only one not to accept money from any political action committees or corporations. This 4% figure contrasted with the 25% of Nader voters in 2000 who were registered Republicans, and was less than polling data indicating how many Nader 2004 voters were Republicans. Moreover, according to the Center, Nader’s funds from registered Republican donors gave more money to Democrats than Nader.

Meanwhile, Benjamin embarked on a tour of hypocrisy and silliness. While embracing an ever hawkish pro-war candidate in her petitions and denouncing Evil Ralph Nader, the only high-profile anti-war candidate (David “.05%” Cobb doesn’t count), Benjamin simultaneously engaged in anti-war prank activity at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions that had little effect other than to invoke pity on the part of some observers and contempt from others for their showboatish, inconsequential nature. At the Republican National Convention, for example, Benjamin unwrapped an anti-war banner on the floor of the convention. Oooooooh. Medea, between anti-war banners versus NOT SUPPORTING A PRO-WAR CANDIDATE and HELPING BUILD A GENIUINE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT; we’ll take the latter.

Benjamin’s actions indeed helped demobilize the anti-war movement, which in February of 2003 had reached historic levels. But as its “leaders” increasingly succumbed to the ABB epidemic, they found the credibility of the movement severely hampered by their support for a pro-war war criminal. Rather than rectify this contradiction, they instead shut the movement down entirely. Thus there was not a single major anti-war march between the spring of 2004 and the election, and an anti-war, anti-occupation position, now supported by the majority of Americans, remained off the table during the Presidential campaign.

As for Benjamin’s showboating, Kevin Zeese had the following to say: “She can keep dropping her anti-war banners and playing her anti-war pranks. They’re entertaining, but people should remember that when it came to elections she urged people to vote for a candidate who said we have to win the war. She supported a candidate who said he would send more troops and could manage the war better Kerry’s mantra was the complete opposite of a peace message. The bottom line is this: when it comes to elections don’t follow Medea Benjamin, follow peace advocates who refuse to support war candidates.”

On the anti-war movement for which Benjamin served as a “leader,” Zeese added: “People like Medea Benjamin did great damage to the peace movement and I’m not sure it can recover. Her misleadership led them down the path of being taken out of the presidential race. How do you recover from that? The direction of the country is set during the presidential debate—especially on issues like war and peace. Half the country wanted our troops home, more than half thought the Iraq invasion was wrong, yet the peace movement, thanks to misleaders like Benjamin, was led into the Valley of Death for all movements, the Democratic Party.”

Recently, after the disastrous election results stemming from Kerry’s inability to provide any positive economic or political alternative to Bush, Benjmain expressed regret in the pages of the liberal-bourgeois ABB rag, The Nation, for her Kerry support. But rather than issue an apology to Nader, Benjamin instead promised to build the Green Party for the future.

Good luck trying to “build” from ruins, Benjamin. And as for your apology, well, thanks, two months afterwards, when it has a total meaning and influence of precisely zero.

Medea Benjamin, thanks for killing your political children and people who
looked to you for leadership. You make us all want to puke.

The Glorious Revolutionary Federation of Fortune 500 Killers is a Columbia University-based anti-capitalist, anti-racist student insurgent group. To learn more about the group, e-mail ceodeath@ceodeath.org, or visit its site at www.ceodeath.org.

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