Apart from the nominations, the best news of the day is that the Credentials Committee and the GPUS Steering Committee reviewed and rejected the challenges leveled against the delegations of four states and one caucus. As mentioned previously in this space, the challenges, mostly filed well after the deadline for such things, alleged that our delegates (yes, including those from Texas) were chosen using fishy math. Second-best is that, at least for delegates, this was the most stress-free Presidential Nominating Convention ever, in my view and that of several longtime Greenies of my acquaintance.
@DrJillStein is speaking to the Green Party US Convention. Catch the livestream of the convention on Twitter, FB, or YT.
— David B. Collins for Senate □☮ (@dbcgreentx) July 11, 2020
On the plus side, 2020 presidential nominee Howie Hawkins, two-time nominee Dr. Jill Stein, and most especially Maine senatorial candidate Lisa Savage added some much needed fire. I would rate Savage's speech the best of the bunch. VP nominee Angela Walker took a couple of minutes in her acceptance speech
And fire is what we need. The best addresses gave my enthusiasm for the Green Movement a much-needed jolt, reminding me that the two major parties are fiddling while the world burns, and they don't even fiddle all that well. I envision myself committing more time and money than I have to get the word out for Hawkins/Walker. I'm much more jazzed about supporting the presidential ticket than my own campaign for US Senate. However, despite my uncertainty as to whether I'll even be on Texas ballots, I am ready to start properly campaigning. Campaigns shouldn't last more than four months anyway; in most civilized nations, they don't--by law.
What I didn't mention in the Twitter thread is that there was no shortage of technical problems, including a loss of connectivity on the production end for about 15 minutes and far too many state delegation reporters who started their spiels before they remembered to unmute their mics. Once they unmuted, we got treated to the usual litanies of which socialists/abolitionists/indigenous nations were connected to the various states (with the phrase "stolen land" worked in at least a half-dozen times).
There were also innumerable references to the COVID-19 crisis, including candidate David Rolde's insistence that the whole crisis is manufactured—not the virus itself, but the world's response to it, a diversion that allows our government to let millions of surplus humans die of what is reported to be a coronavirus but is actually other stuff and shovel trillions of dollars toward Wall Street while we're busy fighting over who needs to wear a mask and where. I know too many health care workers who have been in the trenches with SARS CoV-2 to buy what Rolde is selling. I'm cynical enough to believe that both major parties in Congress have used the crisis to enrich the top 0.01%, but not to believe that this is all made up specifically for that purpose.
As I reminded Kayleen as she fumed over Rolde's five-minute speech, all political parties have their Tinfoil Hatties. However, mainstream traditional and social media will seize on such rhetoric to make the case that the whole Green Party is a bunch of David Roldes.