Once more into the breach, dear friends....

Ezra at Pandagon has one of those posts attacking Ralph Nader for considering a run in 2004. I have to quote it extensively for my later comments to make sense.

Nader's Gone Nuts

Does this not sound like extortion to you?

"I would say to Democratic voters the following: If you think that a third party candidacy is going to take away votes and cost the Democrats the election, you've got the power entirely within your own franchise when you go to the voting booth and vote for the Democrats," Nader added.

It would be terrible if anything happened to this beautiful party you have here, just terrible. But I don't think anything will, not if you make the right decisions and take the right positions...

One can argue that Nader is right to run if he feels that the Left doesn't represent him. But what he's doing here is different, he's threatening to run in the hopes that the Democratic Party will listen to him. That's an altogether different, and unseemly, position. It's sad to see a man who was a public crusader fall so far - far away from those he purports to serve, far away from those ideals he purports to uphold. This run is about Nader and what Nader wants. He's become the Jesse Jackson of the Left, he wants power, access, and control or else he'll demagogue and bring down those he wants to join. I anxiously await the inevitable Sister Souljah moment; I hope it comes soon and I hope it hits hard.

P.S - If you haven't already, check out Jesse whacking Nader with funny. He gets sarcastic when he's angry.

(The "funny" consisted of a fictional press announcement featuring Nader accepting financial support from RNC chair Ed Gillespie, who can't contain his malevolent giggling. Sister Souljah was a black rapper who Bill Clinton denounced for her lyrics in what was supposed to be a dramatic and bold declaration of his independence in which the DLC still revels and which probably made no flipping difference one way or the other.)

In a further comment, Ezra adds "divisive, egotistical, and wedded to a narrow agenda at the expense of America" to Nader's supposed sins and says

[h]e knows his capability as a spoiler and is attempting to extort concessions from the Democrats. If he just wants to run, let him run. If he wants to influence the party, let him do what Kucinich is doing. But this is different and altogether distasteful...His whole vision here is negative...."

So here we have another round of the same, already tired ad hominem attacks that ignore the actual experience of 2000 in order to regurgitate blind anger. What's sad about this Psych 101 demonizing of Nader is how often it comes from people who should know better, who are usually much more adept at analyzing politics and people. What can be driving this? An outgrowth of the suppressed guilt of people who, pathetically believing with Michael Tomasky that it now would be a "wonderful world" if Gore had won, can't face up to the fact that it was their own failures that brought them to this turn and so tie themselves ever more strongly to the Democratic Party hierarchy in a bizarre variation of the Stockholm syndrome? (And before you even begin to remark on Psych 101, let me say that you have a point. But at least I'm offering it as speculation, not as established fact.)

I replied this way:

Necessarily preliminaries: Do I think Ralph Nader should run in 2004? No.

That said, I think Ezra's post is just silly. (And, for the record, I found Jesse's neither funny nor original.) The knock on Nader used to be that he was an independent instead of trying to influence the Democratic Party. Now, apparently, the knock is that he is trying to influence the Democratic Party. And oh yeah, in either event it's just a big ego trip; it's not like he actually believes in what he's doing or anything.

If indeed Nader "knows his capability as a spoiler" (a capability that even Al From of the DLC notes didn't exist in 2000) then what he's doing by Ezra's own description is using that position to advance the political agenda he supports. That's just plain, old-fashioned power politics and how that becomes "extortion" is beyond me. It is, in fact, the same sort of power politics the far right used to pull the GOP further in their direction. (And before anyone pulls out the "they worked inside the party" line, remember that it was the Christian Coalition's repeated threats to bolt the party and go independent that got a - to them - favorable response from party leaders.)

As for "doing what Kucinich is doing," I think we just need to ask ourselves which of them, based on the reaction each has generated among the Democratic hierarchy, has a better chance of actually influencing the party.

Whether or not you think Nader is being tactically wise here (I don't) is irrelevant. What he's doing may be foolish but it is neither "extortion" nor "unseemly" (except to the extent all politics can be) nor "nuts."

More on this, if anyone cares, at my blog here.

Footnote: Pandagon also links to what they accurately call a disgusting ad attacking Howard Dean. It consists of panning over a photo of Osama bin Laden with a voiceover condemning Dean's lack of foreign policy experience. Turns out the organization that did it features a press secretary who worked for John Kerry's campaign, a treasurer who was a fundraiser for Richard Gephardt's campaign, and a president who was one of Gephardt's early big financial supporters. The group's ads will attack Dean on the same issues Kerry and Gephardt have raised.

Since this kind of eat-your-own behavior among the Democrats is exactly what will in reality (as opposed to Pandagon's fantasies) get Ed Gillespie chortling, I have to ask: Is it really Ralph Nader's ego that's at issue here?