The mere mention of the possibility of a Nader run is enough to send some otherwise rational people into screaming fits as they run for their insult dictionaries. Back in July, Michael Tomasky, editor of "The American Prospect," urged Democrats to "cure their Ralph Nader problem by attacking him - immediately and ferociously" (but not, apparently, by trying to appeal to his voters). He called Nader a "megalomaniac" with a "tenuous purchase on present-day reality" before calling the Green Party as a whole "strategically feebleminded" and "psychologically bent on disruption."
On December 5, BuzzFlash said in an editorial that it had a "deal" for Nader - the deal boiling down to "go away." In the same piece, it was suggested that Nader's motives in considering a 2004 race are "sinister" and that effectively he would be an agent for Karl Rove and the Republican National Committee and anyone who thinks otherwise "either has a cabbage for a brain or...have become naive puppets."
On December 2, the usually-insightful Josh Marshall, on learning of the existence of a website for a Nader Exploratory Committee, called Nader "the enemy of any hope of progressive change" and describes the site's defense against the charge that he threw the 2000 election to George Bush "villainy, wrapped up in mendacity, with a little bow of hypocrisy on top."
Okay, then, let's start with that, the argument that Ralph Nader is the reason George Bush is president. The argument is, to be as polite as I possibly can, baloney.
Most important is Fact One: Al Gore won the election. He won it fair and square and it was stolen from him. He won the popular vote by over a half-million and actually would have won Florida had a statewide recount been done, according to a post-election study by a group of newspapers. (Ironically, the Democrats wanted a more limited recount, under which Gore would have lost. It was the GOP pushing for a statewide recount, under which he would have won.) At that, it doesn't allow for the infamous "butterfly ballot" business; even Pat Buchanan, the beneficiary of those misvotes, says most of them were intended for Gore. Nor does it take into account the (it seems all but forgotten) fact that at minimum 8,000 people, overwhelmingly minority, were improperly denied their right to vote because they'd been wrongfully purged from the Florida voter rolls - voters who everyone agrees would have been overwhelmingly Democratic. (For more on the GOP's theft of the Florida election, check out Jews for Buchanan by John Nichols and David DesChamps.) None of that, of course, was Ralph Nader's fault. But challenging it would mean taking on the GOP directly - and Nader was a much easier target.
Fact Two: It was not Ralph Nader's fault that Al Gore ran an astonishingly incompetent campaign in which, as even his supporters admit, he never really defined himself or what he stood for, a campaign in which he deliberately rejected the support of perhaps the most effective campaigner of the last few decades (Bill Clinton) - which also made it nearly impossible for him to run on a claimed record of "peace, prosperity, government reform, and budget surpluses."
Fact Three: It was not Ralph Nader's fault that the "devastating" debater Al Gore blew three chances at a basically unarmed opponent.
Fact Four: It was not Ralph Nader's fault that Gore couldn't even carry his own home state of Tennessee, which would have made Florida irrelevant. (Even with Florida but without Tennessee, Bush could not have gotten more than 267 electoral votes of the 270 needed.)
Fact Five: It was not Ralph Nader's fault that even after Gore knew the press would target him for "exaggerating," he continued to do it - nor was it Nader's fault that Gore seemed unable to respond when the claims of exaggerations were themselves exaggerations, as they often were.
And Fact Six: It definitely was not Ralph Nader's fault that the Democrats treated Nader voters as naughty children to be scolded rather than as adults to be engaged and acted as if those votes were Gore's by divine right instead of something to be earned.
In short, it is not and was not Ralph Nader's fault that Al Gore and the Democrats screwed up big time - especially considering that despite all those screwups, Gore, again, actually won.
But the Dems desperately want to avoid looking at their own failures and fiascoes and instead cast about desperately for somewhere else to put the blame. Nader was just the convenient punching bag. So they denounce him as a "willful eccentric" (Boston Globe, November 9, 2000) and imply he's actually a closet Bush supporter (BuzzFlash intoned darkly that Nader had been "meeting with Grover Norquist") because instead of spending most of this energies attacking Bush, he's been attacking the Democrats' spineless, intellectually-bankrupt submission to the GOP Mean Machine. (N.B.: When the Dems say this, they omit everything in that sentence after the word "Democrats.")
In October, 2000, responding to those who maintained "A vote for Nader is a vote for" your favorite bugbear, I wrote to "The Nation"
"The lesser of two evils is still an evil" is, admittedly, another cliche - but still a valuable reminder. Because as long as every four years we act, argue, vote, on the basis of god-forbids, we are of necessity saying that the best we can offer, the best we can look for, the best we can hope for, the best we can imagine is for things to get worse somewhat more slowly than they otherwise might. That's a counsel of despair I'm not ready to endorse.I voted for Ralph Nader. I did it without doubts and without regrets and frankly I still have none. On November 11, 2000, while the recount was still going on, I wrote to the Boston Globe in response to the "willful eccentric" editorial
One final note for those who still cling to the debris of "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." Some years ago I ran for Congress under the SPUSA [Socialist Party, USA] banner against a reasonably liberal Democrat. He once asked me if I wasn't concerned that I would take enough votes from him that if the election was close his conservative Republican opponent would win.
I began to answer but before I got more than a few words out, he waved me off with a grin. "Never mind," he said. "That's my problem, not yours."
Exactly. His problem. If Ralph Nader is in fact taking votes from Al Gore, that's not Nader's problem, it's Gore's. If Gore is worried about losing those votes and those voters, he has to go appeal to them. And if he's not worried about them now, what the hell makes any of us think he'll give a flying damn about them later?
The Democrats have increasingly ignored, at times even disparaged, people who are at least theoretically part of their core support. They have done so at their own increasing risk and now, quite possibly, to their pain. Will they respond by recognizing that and moving to regain the support of the people they've lost? Or will they try even harder to avoid engaging them, preferring to attack those to their left even more vigorously than those to their right? Neither history nor recent events gives me any reason to think the former course will be adopted. Which means the Democrats, and most particularly those to the liberal end of the party, can look forward to more frustration, more electoral pain - and despite the fiercely-wielded righteous indignation, despite the personal attacks, despite the sarcasm and sneers, the grousing and groaning about Greens, they, again, will have no one to blame but themselves.Nothing in the intervening three years, right up to today, has given me any reason to alter that view.
Okay, now let's consider the upside of what Nader accomplished, which I'll sum up in very quickly in three broad statements:
- He got a good number of people involved in progressive political action who otherwise would have stayed on the sidelines.
- Because of the media attention he drew, he forced discussion, even if in only a small and limited way, of issues that otherwise would not have been addressed at all.
- As a result of the campaign, the Green Party achieved ballot status in several places it did not have it previously, strengthening the base for future growth.
So he didn't "throw the election to Bush" and he did strengthen the Green Party while provoking a little discussion. On the whole, sounds like a successful undertaking, even as it fell short of its goal of 5% of the vote.
All that said, do I think Ralph Nader should run for President in 2004?
No.
Not because of anything that's been said about him but frankly because it will be said again. That is, a Nader run would be divisive among progressives to the point of being disruptive, besides offering an easy target for whoever is the Democratic nominee to attack (in line with Tomasky's proposal) to show how they're "not really liberal." Frankly, a Nader run in 2004 would be a tactical mistake that could do more to weaken the Left than to strengthen it. So, no, Ralph, don't run.
However, there is still the related question of whether the Green Party should run someone else for President. I think it should. But I think it should with a particular tactical approach in mind. A presidential run is a good organizing focus, a way for local campaigns to increase energy (and media attention) by connecting them to something larger. However, I think real active campaigning for the top office should be limited to states that are foregone conclusions, states that have pretty much been consigned to the total of one major party hack or the other. In other states, the candidate should make appearances that focus specifically on supporting the local Green slate, even if it becomes necessary to do that overtly: "I'm not here to get your vote. I'm here to get these people your vote."
Simply put, those of us on the Left can't depend on the Democrats to push a progressive agenda without an external electoral threat and those of us who are Green have to reject the notion that the best way to advance our beliefs is to surrender the field to those who have ignored us except to blame us for their own failures. We should pursue a 2004 presidential campaign with those twinned ideas in mind as a means of promoting local campaigns.
One last self-quote that seems relevant here. When Michael Tomasky gave his advice to attack Nader, he actually wrote that if Bush had lost, "What a wonderful world this would be." In response, I wrote
Well, it's true that an "anti-terrorism" bill was introduced in Congress that would empower the President, on his own authority, to designate any foreign group a "terrorist organization." Any support given to it, even for nonviolent, legal, charitable, or educational work of that group would be subject to a penalty of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine if it or any subgroup had at any time engaged in "terrorism activity." Under the bill, the President's designation of a group as "terrorist" could not be challenged in any court.Again, I see no reason to alter that belief.
It would also allow the deportation of non-citizens based on information which the accused would not be allowed to see, allow the FBI to investigate and infiltrate groups without any evidence they were doing or planning anything illegal, sharply expand wiretapping authority in "terrorism investigations," and make actions which are already crimes under all state laws into federal crimes if the Attorney General decides they were done for "political purposes."
However, this bill is not some recent refinement of the Patriot Act. It was introduced in 1995 by the Clinton administration, the same crew that also pushed NAFTA, GATT, and MAI, that bombed Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, whose Secretary of State said the deaths of a then-estimated 500,000 Iraqi children as the result of sanctions was "worth it," that "ended welfare as we know it," signed the infamous "Defense of the Family Act" (that declared, among other things, that marriage is defined as involving one man and one woman), and nominated judges that were, according to a recent study, less liberal than those named by Gerald Ford.
So people will have to excuse me if I'm unpersuaded by claims that none of our present difficulties would have presented themselves if only that mean old Ralph Nader hadn't kept Saint Al from taking his rightful place in the Oval Office.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment