Talk of the town

So Ralph is running. (Big shock - did you really think he was going to go on Meet The Press to say he wasn't running?) I think I can guarantee - I haven't checked yet - that this is going to be the big hot topic on the blogs today with almost everyone screaming about how evil he's being and how all he's going to do is throw the election to Bush "again" (with some, like Buzzflash, implying that's what he actually wants to do) and how they've "lost all respect for him," and so forth and so on, all adding up to a sounding board for the official Democratic Party meme that for Ralph Nader it's all about "his ego."

People, chill out.

First, the charge that Ralph Nader is now a closet George Bush supporter and "a creature of Karl Rove" is unmitigated crap. Calling him foolish is one thing, calling him a conscious hypocrite and liar is another. In fact, just by mentioning it I've given it more credit than it deserves. So enough of that.

As for throwing the election, I've already expressed my views on that on December 7, where I also laid out my own reasons why I thought Nader should not run in 2004. (With something of a reprise on December 13.) So I'm just going to give a quick summary here. Simply put, Ralph Nader did not cost Al Gore the election in 2000. He couldn't have, because Al Gore won the election. He won the popular vote and would have won the electoral vote if there'd been a complete recount in Florida - and that's with the scrubbing of thousands of likely Democratic voters from the voters' list and the infamous "butterfly ballot" that even the beneficiary of which, Pat Buchanan, says cost Gore a few thousand votes.

Beyond that, it wasn't Nader's fault that Al Gore and the Democrats ran an incompetent campaign in which Gore blew the debates, failed (as even his supporters admit) to define himself and what he stood for, and couldn't even carry his own home state. Nader didn't cost Gore the election, Gore did.

So clean slate. The question is, what effect will Nader have on the race in 2004?

Now the truth be told, if the Green Party wasn't on the ballot in Massachusetts and he was, I would likely vote for him. Yes, I know all about John Kerry; I suspect more than a lot of you. Hell, I even remember Dewey Canyon III. I like some things about him (he would be much better on civil liberties than Bush), dislike others (he's very establishment and corporate-friendly), and am suspicious on yet others (he talks a better game on trade than he used to but his voting record doesn't reflect it). But the bottom line here is, let's face it, friends, Massachusetts is not going to be a tossup state. Even Joe Lieberman would have carried it handily.

But what about other places? How much impact will he have? I think very little. Nader himself suggested he'll pull more votes from libertarian and conservative types who want to express dissatisfaction with Bush. Personally, I doubt that but the facts remain that he doesn't really have an organization and that so much of the left side of the spectrum is focused on Anybody But Bush that I can't see him (or any other leftist third party or independent candidate) getting much support from there from anyone except the genuinely ideologically committed who otherwise likely wouldn't vote at all. His support will be clearly less than in 2000. Overall, Nader's effect on the outcome will be negligible. I actually think he'll get more hostility than support, as he already has.

That hostility may have been counterproductive for those who wanted to convince him not to run. It came in desperate waves of anger and paranoia mixed with piles of scorn. I began to think several weeks ago that if people really didn't want him to run, they should just shut up about it. As it was, it came to appear that a decision not to run would not have been a tactical choice or a personal decision but a capitulation to a form of intellectual mob rule - and as others have pointed out, that's not the way to get Ralph Nader to do something.

And for those who say that just proves that for him it's all about his ego, I have two things to say: First, whatever candidate you're supporting, are you telling me they don't have a big ego? That anyone could do what they're doing and not have a big ego?

And second, you have attacked Nader's motivation, judgment, sincerity, honesty, even his intelligence. Frankly, folks, you're the ones that made it personal.

Update: I've now checked, and I was right on both counts. It's all over the blogs and most comments are nasty and personal. I think a good tactical argument can be made against a Nader run (in fact I made one, linked above) but what I read rarely went beyond spittle-covered venom and vituperation.

Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo was perhaps the worst of the lot; somehow, when Nader comes up, he loses all sense of proportion and flops over into irrationality. He called Nader a "latter-day political narcissist," "an enemy of progressive change," "a cat's paw of the Republican party" (which he then said was too generous because "a dupe at least doesn't know he's being used," meaning Nader not only is, but knows he is, helping the GOP), and a "pied piper of political oblivion" running on "a platform of vacuous moral posturing and self-aggrandizement." All in eight sentences.

The one thing most (not all, but most) seem to agree on is that he will garner much less support than in 2000 and will have little if any impact on the race. Why, then, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth? Is this really about Nader or about, as I suggested in that same earlier post, a stubborn refusal to face up to the Democrats' own failings and spineless refusal to stand up to the GOP slime machine? The fact that everyone seems so delighted - and astonished - that Kerry is not rolling over under Rethuglican attacks suggests to me it's the latter.

Update: Edited to correct typos and for grammar.