California Green Party: "The Sanders Campaign Is Absolutely Destroying Us!"

[AgingAmerican]

California Green Party has lost 30% of its members since Bernie announced.

"The Sanders campaign is absolutely destroying us."

Those are the words of California Green Party spokesman Mike Feinstein, who, in response to an inquiry from Mother Jones on Friday, visited the website of the California Secretary of State. He discovered, to his consternation, that his party has lost 30 percent of its members in the months since Sanders launched his presidential campaign. "I am apoplectically mad right now," Feinstein says. "I am so disgusted with this."

"They intentionally went after our voters because they are low-lying fruit on the issues," he adds, citing mailers the Sanders campaign sent to Green Party members.

The steep drop in Green registration underscores how Sanders has energized California's far-left electorate.
The party's steep decline in registration—from nearly 110,000 voters in early 2015 to 78,000 now—represents a tiny fraction of California's 18 million registered voters. Yet it underscores how the Sanders campaign has made deep inroads into California's liberal electorate, tapping voters who may have never before considered voting for a Democrat.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/bernie-sanders-destroying-green-party-california-primary-hillary-clinton

[onecaliberal]

1. They didn't "go after" anything. His policy speaks to what this country wants right now.

Go get some cheese to go with your whine. People have free will to register and vote for whomever they choose.

[beachbumbob]

5. Obviously it doesn't..No matter how berniemath works ......he lost....

[Lord Magus]

13. Speaks to what a segment of the country wants.

Not an insignificant segment clearly, but not a majority either.

[SheenaR]

2. If they are so outraged

They should stop reaching out to his people to get him to run Green

[tularetom]

3. Well, Mr "Feinstein" (if that is your real name), you can tell your members to support Clinton

and see how that goes over. If you are so pissed off at Bernie Sanders.

Shame on Sanders for making an appeal to environmentally concerned voters.

[Skink]

4. I vote Green all the time and I am a registered dem

Open primaries would stop this kind of thing from happening. One person one vote

[Txbluedog]

6. Pray tell what's the difference between an open primary and a general?

[Skink]

7. I'll be voting green this time.

[hrmjustin]

10. Oh!

[mike_c]

8. this is absurd....

First, many of us who changed parties to support Senator Sanders will certainly return to the Green party in the general election if he isn't the democratic party nominee or isn't otherwise on the ballot in November. Second, Sanders policy positions are far more closely aligned with Green party values than any other candidates', so he is currently the best hope for real progressive reform in line with the GP's broader objectives. Jill Stein seems to understand this.

[Jim Lane]

9. Instead of grousing, he should learn the lesson that third-party politics can't accomplish anything.

The vast majority of voters realize that, barring a fundamental and currently unforeseeable change in the rules, almost every election (including every Presidential election) will be won by a major-party nominee.

Bernie Sanders is running in primaries and caucuses, which get less turnout than the general election, and still hasn't gotten the benefit of California and the other states (plus D.C.) that vote in June. Nevertheless, he has already received more votes than ALL the Green Party candidates for President in that party's entire history, combined. He has also, through a series of nationally televised debates and the other aspects of a campaign that gets more than fleeting public attention, done more to bring progressive ideas into the political discourse than all those Green Party candidates combined.

And I'm most definitely including Ralph Nader in that calculation.

If, over the last 20 years, all the energy that went into the Green Party had instead been directed within the Democratic Party, what would have happened? Would it have been enough to enable Sanders to overcome Clinton's enormous initial advantages? We can't know. But it's not completely ridiculous to think that Greens could have made the difference in Iowa, turning a narrow Clinton win into a narrow Sanders win. With Sanders winning the first two contests, he gets more media attention. Maybe that and the increased credibility of his candidacy give him the few percentage points he needed in Nevada. Then he comes out of February having won three out of four instead of the reverse. OK, that's a lot of "ifs", but Sanders as nominee and then as President is surely a much more realistic scenario than the Jill Stein inauguration.

[Jitter65]

11. Not to worry. They will be back in November. And therin lies the rub. nt

[Barack_America]

12. Oh CA Greens, don't you worry. Those members will be back soon...with friends.

[marlakay]

14. Very true

I may be joining them soon.

[BobbyDrake]

15. LOL, nice way to set Green Party progress back by a few decades.

Bravo, Bernie. Bravo.

[AgingAmerican]

16. Yes, giving them a viable candidate is terrible!

[BobbyDrake]

17. He's not their candidate and they can't vote for him on Tuesday. D-E-R-P

[AgingAmerican]

18. They can vote for whomever they choose

Zero of them will vote Hillary, hence your befuddlement.

[BobbyDrake]

19. Dem ballots (the one Bernie is on) only go to Democrats and NPPs.

You can't be a registered Green Party member and vote in the Democratic Primary.

And as usual, the insult the Sanders supporter attempts turns out to be nothing but desperate projection.

[AgingAmerican]

20. Read the article

They have been LEAVING the Green Party and Joining the Democratic party to vote for Sanders.

Hillary supporters don't want new members in the party unless they march in lockstep with Clinton/DWS.