Despite our genuine strategic differences, progressives of whatever stripe share many of the same goals -- a clean, safe environment, social justice, peace, and a more democratic society, among others. These goals are not served by simplistic scapegoating of the sort that has recently been engaged in by, among others, County Council candidate Bill Hayden and Herald-Times columnist Mike Leonard. What is called for is calm, sober analysis of the current political scene and a willingness to look in the mirror for answers and talk to each other calmly rather than pointing fingers.

So let's get down to it. As most people know, in the recent election, for the first time in decades, Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress while a Republican was President. Democrats also did not do well at the state and local levels. Locally, the County Council went from 4-3 in favor of the Democrats to 5-2 in favor of the Republicans (although, on the bright side, the Democrats leaving the council are recently self-outed closet Republicans Joni Reagan and Dave Hamilton).

Relatively progressive Democratic County Commissioner Brian O'Neill lost to Republican big spender Herb Kilmer (over $60,000 for a local race!). And local Democratic Mayor John Fernandez (who is anything but progressive) was crushed so badly by Republican Todd Rokita in the Secretary of State race that he could not even win his own county!

A small silver lining for progressives in the recent election results is that Green Party candidates won several dozen races, including a State House race in Maine and the mayorships of several towns, to bring the total number of Green officeholders nationwide to 171. And despite the losses by progressives locally, in general Democrats who were forthrightly liberal did considerably better than right-leaning Democrats.

Most Democrats were taken completely by surprise by their dismal showing. Such party leaders as (former) House Minority Leader Dick Gephart, Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe, and Congressional Black Caucus leader John Conyers were confidently predicting the day before that Democrats would take control of the House.

What happened? Some Democrats, including Conyers, cite the mass media as a significant advantage for Republicans. The mass media have indeed been very reluctant to criticize Bush and the Republican agenda generally, especially since 9/11. Especially when we criticize foreign policy, we progressives have tended to encounter an attitude (aptly summarized in many a Tom Tomorrow cartoon) of: "Either you're with us (Republicans) or you're against us (Americans)." But the media have always tended to be pro-corporate and, hence, to lean Republican.

It is also claimed that Republicans have a significant money advantage. Nationally that was the case in most races, and it was certainly the case here in Monroe County. But again, what else is new? And consider some of the exceptions: John Fernandez could not even win his native Monroe County despite a 2-1 fundraising advantage; Senator Jean Carnahan of Missouri raised $10 million, $3 million more than the Republican, and still lost!

Local Democratic Party chair Don Moore came closest to hitting the nail on the head in a recent Bloomington Alternative article when he attributed the results to poor turnout, not just of voters in general, but of specifically Democratic-leaning voters. He presents convincing evidence that this occurred and that it cost Democrats dearly.

It's easy to understand the low turnout when you look at the electoral strategy of most Democrats around the country. They failed to aggressively challenge the Bush/Republican agenda -- the drive toward war with Iraq, the tax cuts for the wealthy, etc. They also failed to take advantage of the fact that we are in a recession with a Republican President, or of the Bush Administration's deep involvement in the corporate scandals plaguing the country. These issues and others that voters are dying to have addressed simply never made it into most federal-level Democratic campaigns, voters were understandably turned off, and that hurt turnout everywhere.

Democratic candidates who were more progressive usually did better. For example, whereas both Democratic incumbents in the Senate and five of six incumbents in the House who lost voted for the resolution that unconstitutionally granted George Bush the authority to go to war with Iraq, those who voted against it generally won handily, in some cases (e.g., Indiana's Julia Carson) despite being outspent by their opponents.

In his article, Moore makes a compelling mathematical case that County Commissioner Brian O'Neill would have narrowly beaten his well-heeled Republican opponent (instead of losing by 11 percent) had the turnout pattern been the same as in 1998. But, perhaps succumbing to some "fuzzy math," Moore does not apply the same logic to explaining why Democrats Lucille Bertuccio (District 1) and Bill Hayden (District 2) lost their County Council races, even though Bertuccio lost by only 7 percent and Hayden a mere 4 percent.

The reason why is pretty clear. If Moore were logically consistent, he would not be able to scapegoat Green Party candidate Julie Roberts for Hayden's loss in District 2. Scapegoating Greens for their own electoral failures seems to be a favorite hobby of many Democrats. "GREEN PARTY DOES IT AGAIN" screamed the title of a recent column by the Herald-Times' Mike Leonard, apparently referring to the 2000 Presidential election as well as the District 2 County Council race. In both cases, in their effort to find someone to blame, Democratic politicians and their supporters have played fast and loose with the truth.

So eager were many Democrats to blame Ralph Nader and Green Party supporters in Florida for Gore's defeat at the hands of George Bush in 2000 that they refused to even consider the role played by old-fashioned Jim Crow racism. Tens of thousands of African-Americans and other people of color in Florida were disenfranchised, more than enough to account for Bush's victory. To ignore this and refuse to even investigate electoral irregularities in Florida despite impassioned pleas from the Congressional Black Caucus and thousands of Florida residents, as both white members of Congress and the Clinton Administration did, is itself a display of racism. And why the obsessive focus on Florida anyway? Gore should have won West Virginia, Clinton's home state of Arkansas, and his own home state of Tennessee, any one of which would have given him an Electoral College victory, but thanks to his tepid, "I'm not as bad as George is" campaign, he didn't.

Some Democrats' discussion of the outcome of the District 2 race has taken on a similarly dishonest tone. Hayden himself, for example, is quoted in Leonard's column as saying that we Greens "deliberately put a strategy in place to put in charge people who will make things worse." This is ludicrous. Roberts was nominated as the Monroe County Green Party's County Council District 2 candidate - our only local candidate this year -- almost two months before Hayden, and had decided to run (and started regularly attending County Council meetings) well before that.

Hayden and other local Democrats knew this. If anyone could be accused of deliberately risking losing the District 2 seat to a Republican, it is Hayden and his supporters. At the time Roberts decided to run, we thought her opponent would be incumbent Joni Reagan, a real estate developer's friend if ever there was one. Reagan wound up quitting the race and, eventually, endorsing the Republican candidate for her seat!

Meanwhile, as soon as they got wind of Julie's candidacy, local Democrats started trying to convince her to run as a Democrat. When that didn't work, some of them started telling Roberts, the Green Party's only local candidate this year, that it would be her fault if a "green Democrat" won the Democratic Party nomination but lost the general election. This started taking place even before Hayden became a candidate! Then, of course, progressive Democrats decided to run Hayden, knowing full well that Roberts had been seriously committed to running for the office for months.

"Green Democrats" had Bertuccio to run in District 1 and incumbent Mark Stoops in District 4. Especially given that, as they themselves conceded on election night, they were extremely strapped for cash compared to their Republican opponents, was running Hayden in District 2 when there was already a solid, progressive candidate in the race a wise decision? Why didn't they concentrate their time, energy and resources on winning Bertuccio's race and trying to shore up O'Neill? This would have left Julie with a good shot at District 2, given that the Republican and the likely Democratic primary winner would have split the vote of those who seem to think Bloomington needs still more sprawl.

Most local progressive Democrats, however, seem insistent that there is one and only one "right" way for progressives to run for office -- within the Democratic Party. They played "chicken" with Roberts, entering Hayden in the primary knowing full well of the potential for splitting the progressive vote in the general election, yet claiming that if Roberts didn't cave in and drop her efforts to run for office it would somehow be her fault if the Republicans won. The premise underlying such behavior and claims seems to be that progressives only have a realistic chance to win if they run as Democrats. Given that Greens DO win local elections (and in this election also won a State House seat in Maine), this premise is quite obviously false.

Progressive Democrats need to stop insisting that they are the only progressives who should run for office. The Green Party is here to stay. We are not going to pack our bags up and stay out of the electoral process, and progressive Democrats need to figure out how to accommodate themselves to this reality in a more constructive way than pointing fingers and crying "Spoiler!" every time a Green decides to run for office.

We are willing to do our part to make sure that the number of elected officials in local government with pro-environment and generally progressive views is maximized, because that is certainly one of our goals. Contrary to the false impression given by Mike Leonard's Herald-Times column, we did not run any candidates in races where we knew there was already a progressive incumbent or a strong progressive Democratic candidate, and we don't plan to do so in the future. But it has to be a two-way street. Democrats have to be equally willing to cooperate with us.

So what should we do to achieve our shared goals? First, we need to directly address the main cause of the Nov. 5 debacle -- poor turnout and enthusiasm among those who might have supported progressive candidates. We need to work together to knock on every door in Bloomington and make sure our message -- a living wage, a serious effort to address Bloomington's growing traffic and sprawl problem, a strong commitment to a healthy environment, and whatever else we can agree on -- gets out.

We need to mount a serious voter registration drive, and make sure those who register have every encouragement and opportunity to go to the polls. We need to respect each other's right to run for office while balancing it with some plan to minimize the chances of Greens and progressive Democrats competing for the same office in a general election. Ideally in the long run we need to enact some sort of change in the voting system - instant runoff voting, for example -- that will eliminate the "spoiler" possibility altogether.

Above all, we need to stop bickering and start talking. Although I have made what I consider to be necessary criticisms of Democrats' tactical decisions and public statements in this article, my purpose in writing is also to strike a conciliatory note and encourage greater cooperation among progressives of all political affiliations in the future, and for the sake of our community's future, I hope that will happen.

Jeff Melton was the 2002 Green Party Congressional Candidate, District 9.