Long postponed, the "put-up or shut-up" moment has arrived for the Greens.

Yesterday a memo began circulating penned by Jeff Weaver, a former top Bernie Sanders adviser who now heads a Super PAC named "America's Promise", which is staffed by former Sanders aides ready and willing to fund-raise for Joe Biden.

In the memo, (a sales pitch, really) Weaver outlines Biden's rocky path forward if the former VP cannot attract Bernie Sanders' voters to the cause. Weaver warns the Democrats that young progressives are not feeling Joe, but good news! Weaver's organization of fallen angels are happy to place money over their former principles and rescue the Democrats' mummified standard bearer.

"The path to victory runs through Bernie's base," the memo reads. "Unlike anyone else, we have the direct experience engaging, persuading and mobilizing Sanders supporters."

And who knows? Biden's campaign, uncomprehending as they are of the politics that brought so many people to Bernie's movement, may just be idiotic enough to believe that a money-grubbing PAC can actually lure Bernistas to their side. Not withstanding the fact that Bernie forced America's Promise to change it's name in order to distance itself from the Senator, Weaver and Co. could soon be raking in loot from those big money donors that were the hallmark of the Sanders...

Oh, wait.

Jeffrey Weaver

Weaver's memo arrives just as the Green Party has launched its own grassroots effort to begin consolidating Greens for a march down a rocky path of our own: the path to becoming a voice in this election. In a way, our goal is more fraught than even Jeff Weaver's fantasy of convincing bright-eyed leftists to place their bets on the corpse of a right-wing Democratic. Just as the entirety of the left in this country is divided and rudderless, so too is the Green Party itself, which is odd when you consider that as a party we represent one of America's few large, organized left wing political platforms.

But despite our size and our presence, we lack a center of gravity, to say nothing of our deficit of leaders with name-recognition.

Correcting both those issues is what our March to November is all about. As we elevate the stature of our nominee for President (as well as other offices), we must begin the heavy lifting that will allow the Green Party to make an impression in this vital election year. But to do that we must take stock of why, after our decades-long history, The Greens have barely moved past "Go".

There are four qualities that a political party, must have to make any of its goals achievable: Heart, Will, Imagination and Spirit. Without these, no political party can hope to generate the ambition within itself to bring about the changes it wants.

The Green Party is fundamentally committed to the worker, the vulnerable, to the equality of all races and ethnic groups in our nation, to the rights of voters in a democratic system and to the health of the very world in which we live. Therefor, the Green Party has Heart.

The Green Party has dedicated members and strong, intelligent candidates for office who are capable of leading and who, cycle after cycle, maintain the health and structure of our party against great odds. Therefor, the Green Party has Will.

However...

The Green Party is over-concerned with the norms of traditional politics and follows a status-quo model of electioneering. Because of this, and because we put money last, we keep waiting for the world to catch up with us rather than luring in new members and new donors. The Green Party lacks Imagination.

The Green Party has no elected leaders at the federal level, and has a pitiful handful of politicians serving at even the state level. We run candidates for President to keep our sense of being a "real" party alive, but in fact, the most these runs do for us is keep us on life-support in those states that require x-amount of votes for us to maintain our ballot line. Under these conditions, hopelessness gnaws at us daily, and keeps us from striving. Therefor, the Green Party lacks Spirit.

The Green Party has allowed itself to proceed for too long without the creativity to test new forms of messaging, seek out new members and to fill its coffers. In so doing, we have been jogging in place, growing our identity and our worth to voters by scarcely an inch, while in the process losing faith in our own purpose.

We can all see that three years ago, the Democratic Party should have performed an autopsy on itself and discovered that they lacked what the Green Party has always stood for. Then they might have found a candidate to back in this cycle who had a real chance against the criminal they helped curse us with.

Likewise, the Green Party should also look inwards and recognize that we have refused to draw ourselves up to our full height as a political party and make ourselves competitive.

The departure of Bernie Sanders from the presidential race has created a political vacuum that has yet to be filled. It cannot be filled by another likeable leftist candidate-- not this year, not one with enough strength to take the presidency. The Jeff Weavers of the world know this, and so they instead hope to trade on Bernie's name, leaving his movement in the dust while raking in a personal fortune for themselves.

But that vacancy can be filled by us. The Green Party can take over the Bernie Sanders movement by letting it take us over. We can find the missing pieces of our own political needs in that base of demi-Green Sanders supporters who are looking to fulfill their "political revolution". Unlike the dolts that Jeff Weaver is pandering to, we know that Bernie's base will never turn out for Biden. But we can unite to transform their rejection of the politics of cynicism into true leverage for all of us.

In order to do this, we must embrace the beautiful ugly truth that the Green Party cannot prosper without paying its dues to the political realities of money, impishness and getting our hands dirty in the pursuit of actual power. The poverty of our own household has made us forget this, but now that the people with the motivating spirit to renew our own goals are looking for a home, how can we fail to act?