Green Party Convention Isn’T Crowded

Ron Myers had some mighty fine training when it comes to chasing lost causes.

The retired 64-year-old said he spent a good portion of his childhood learning humility and patience by rooting for the old New York Giants baseball club.

Year after year, the Giants flamed out bigger than the Challenger space shuttle.

Then came the 1951 season. As young Myers cheered, the Giants broke their jinx by beating the Brooklyn Dodgers for the National League pennant. Three years later they won the World Series.

So anything can happen, right?

Maybe in baseball.

Unfortunately, the political cause Myers now chases is more lost than Atlantis, Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart combined.

Myers is one of the Green Party members trying to put consumer advocate Ralph Nader in the White House.

“It’s going to be a tough sell,” conceded Myers, who turned out Tuesday night for a Green Party get-together at Spokane’s Manito Park.

“But I think Nader’s going to pick up a lot of votes.”

If this Manito gathering is any indicator, Nader will have better luck trying out for the Yankees.

Spokane’s ragtag Green Party will never be mistaken for a well-oiled political machine. This is more the rusty lawnmower variety of grass-roots movements.

The Spokane Green Party’s so-called “nominating convention” consisted of pamphlets piled on a few tables and a rumpled bedsheet spray-painted with the blurry words “Green Party Vote Nader.”

Sounds like something Tonto might say.

“We were hoping for a bigger turnout,” one young Naderite observed glumly.

It’s not as if the Greeners have a new product to peddle.

Nader is as fresh as month-old meatloaf. He failed at running for president four years ago and this go-round is equally doomed.

As far as candidates go, Nader is as appealing as an IRS audit. He makes Al Gore look animated. Nader’s worn the same constipated expression since the 1960s, when he made a name for himself by maligning the Corvair.

A perfectly fine automobile, by the way.

Just once, wouldn’t it be great to see Nader crack a joke and then double over with a belly laugh? The poles will melt before that happens.

You see this guy grin, and I guarantee it’s just a gas pain.

To his supporters, however, Nader’s Old Testament grimness underscores the weightiness of the issues he carries on his slight shoulders.

Issues like the environment and universal health care and “getting the people back into power,” said Green Party member Dave White, 19.

“We want to get rid of corporate welfare and make it more difficult for large corporations to oppress people,” he said.

When pressed, however, most Green Party members concede that Nader doesn’t have a snowcone’s chance in the Gobi of actually becoming president.

Greeners may be idealistic, after all, but they’re not completely idiotic.

They see the Nader campaign as step one in establishing the Green Party as a legitimate third party.

According to a recent Green Party press release, “If Nader gets 5 percent of the vote, the Green Party qualifies for federal matching funds of at least $1.5 million in 2004.”

But the left-wing Green Party must know that every vote cast for Nader this election will be one less vote for Gore.

So Nader ends up playing the spoiler who helps Republican George W. Bush the way fruitcake Ross Perot helped Democrat Bill Clinton in ‘92 and ‘96.

“I think Bush is scary,” says Green Party member Derrick Knowles, 25, “but I think the two-party system is scarier.”