A recent Boston Globe story about the Green Party convention in Philadelphia reviewed the concern that the party’s primary influence is to rob Democrats of needed votes and, in effect, elect Republicans. The Greens make a convenient target for frustrated Democrats, but the conclusion that the upstart party serves as a spoiler is nonsense.

The latest close race that has the Green Party in a key role is in Minnesota, where Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone and Republican Norm Coleman are nearly in a tie, according to polls, while Green Ed McGaa has attracted about 3 percent of the vote. The comparison, naturally, is being made to the 2000 presidential race, where Green Ralph Nader was accused of taking votes from Al Gore.

But the Greens exist as a legitimate party only because Democrats too often have taken their environmental friends for granted. The party shaped in the 1990s by Bill Clinton was afraid of being caught out of the mainstream and many of its candidates added the prefix “conservative” to their party affiliation. When they described a middle path, they were talking about being to the left of Republicans and to the right of the party’s traditional agenda. That left a wide area open to the Greens and there was nothing wrong with them taking advantage of it.

The Philadelphia coverage had a few Green Party members wondering whether Sen. Wellstone was an acceptable choice given the closeness of the split in the Senate and the alternative of returning a GOP majority to further the aims of President Bush. A Maine Green, Tom Fusco, who is the manager of Jonathan Carter’s gubernatorial campaign, had the best retort. “Our responsibility is to the Greens; the broader picture does not matter,” he said. “No one owns anyone’s vote, not the black vote, the environmental vote, the progressive vote or the liberal vote.”

Perhaps Green Party members are too polite to point out that they would have a much better chance of being elected if only the Democrats would get out of the race, but they could make that case almost as easily as the Dems complain about the Greens. And Democrats, of course, would get elected more often if only Republicans wouldn’t run for office.