Nader's Wrong Turn
Comment Nader's Wrong Turn At The Progressive, we are more sympathetic than most to third party efforts and Independent candidacies. It's a tradition here. After all, this magazine was founded by...
...But he kissed the Greens goodbye in a December 22 letter that was remarkable for its scolding tone...
...This candidacy is not going to get many Democratic Party votes...
...Nearly half of Kerry's biggest financial supporters contributed more money to Bush than to Kerry himself through January 30," notes the Center for Responsive Politics...
...If you want to vote for Kerry, vote for Kerry," he said...
...But a few could make a big difference...
...If anything, progressive activists were begging him not to run, and he refused to listen...
...He may be able to attack Bush with more vigor than Kerry on corporate issues, but it is unclear to us why that would make more people vote for the Democrat as opposed to Nader himself...
...For some of these reasons, even Noam Chomsky says vote Democratic, as does Jim Hightower, who says, "We've got to stop the pain...
...In 2000, Nader also said he was running because at some point the Democrats needed to be taught a lesson that they could no longer take progressives for granted and could no longer continue to lurch right-ward...
...In conclusion, he said, "Don't automatically assume there's a zero sum game...
...When he announced on Meet the Press this February that he was running for President again, Nader said that the two parties are "converging more and more, where the towering similarities dwarf the dwindling real differences that the Democrats are willing to fight over...
...He was running, he said then, to help construct a durable third party, the Greens...
...Finally, Nader said he was running, back then, because the differences between the two parties were negligible on most issues...
...Last time, Nader had not only the Green Party but a semblance of a mass movement behind him: He was the candidate of Seattle, he was the embodiment of the anti-corporate spirit that infused the efforts to block NAFTA and the World Trade Organization and motivated those in the living wage and anti-sweatshop campaigns...
...We spoke to Nader on March 4 to get his side of the story...
...He promised to "open a second front," raising issues that the Democrats are "not willing, too cautious, or too indentured" to discuss...
...For most people who look in horror at Bush and Cheney and Ashcroft and Rumsfeld and Rove, relaxing is the last thing they want to do...
...By going it alone, Nader abandons the work of building an institution, which is especially odd for him, since he views himself as the Johnny Appleseed of citizen groups...
...It is another thing for Nader to anoint himself to run...
...Nader has occasionally seemed almost blas?© about the risk of helping Bush...
...Left to his own devices, Kerry would return to the center and abandon the progressive base, which he needs to win, said Nader...
...He vowed "to keep the progressive agenda front and center," and he said he would "get more votes out, organize young people, and help citizen groups...
...This time, he risks appearing individualistic...
...But he made that statement in spades in 2000, and, to a large extent, the Democrats heard it...
...But the rationales of 2000 cannot simply be reheated four years later...
...He blamed the Greens for having "an uncertain compass regarding what should be a bedrock, genetic determination to run Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates all out- which is what, after all, national political parties-as opposed to movements-do...
...That was a reasonably democratic process at work...
...I don't have the confidence that the Democrats know how to beat him," he said...
...and on tax policy...
...But this season, we look upon Nader's run for President with profound misgivings...
...We have an open mind, but we don't find Nader's arguments compelling...
...And in 2000, we did the same for Ralph Nader and the Greens...
...Nader also contended that "Kerry will be a better candidate if I keep tugging at him...
...As Al Sharpton said in a CNN debate, "Many of us have said what Nader said in 2000...
...In 1948, we endorsed Norman Thomas for President...
...He said he expected to get only 10 percent of his votes from people who would otherwise vote for Kerry...
...Bush has been disastrous on the environment, on gay rights, on abortion rights, on labor issues (oops, there goes overtime...
...There's nothing that I know of that Nader is saying that Kucinich and I are not saying in the primaries...
...In 1980, we gave a fair hearing to Barry Commoner and his Citizens' Party...
...By contrast, Bush's messianic militarism, his imperial unilateralism, and his assault not only on the Bill of Rights but also on the Magna Carta were more difficult to anticipate...
...After three years of one of the most reactionary governments in the history of the country, this claim is harder to sustain today...
...A Washington Post-ABC poll in March had Nader at 3 percent, with almost all of his votes coming from Kerry...
...Bush has a disdain for democracy at home that is unparalleled, except by Nixon in his most paranoid phase...
...He told us he, too, believes there is an imperative to defeat Bush...
...That's the key," he said, asking: "Who wants to retire Bush more than I?" So why then is he running...
...Nader criticized "the maturity of the Greens as a political party" because it wasn't sure of the wisdom of running any Presidential candidate in the face of the Bush onslaught...
...But don't tell people they can't vote for me...
...citizens...
...In a sense, Ralph Nader won the 2004 Democratic primaries because his message prevailed, as one candidate after another picked up planks of his platform or pasted in snippets of his speeches...
...This time, however, that mass movement has not, in any meaningful way, expressed support for his effort...
...We embrace the fundamentally democratic goals of the Greens and others to improve upon our outmoded method of electing officials and to bring about instant runoff voting or a system of proportional representation...
...It was one thing for Nader to run as a Green with the explicit support of all kinds of progressive organizations," as Michael Albert of Z magazine wrote...
...Ralph Nader To some extent, Nader seems like a Rip Van Winkle who has slept through these harrowing years of Bush...
...Gore slipped on eighteen banana peels, and I was one...
...The rationales for Nader's candidacy last time around simply do not stand up today...
...After all, this magazine was founded by Robert La Follette, who ran for President as a Progressive in 1924, and we supported the Progressive Party in the 1930s...
...Relax and rejoice," he told his critics the day after announcing...
...Have an open mind...
...On the crucial point about whether his run would be helping Bush, Nader insisted, "I'm not taking votes away from the Democrats...
...And the harder he hits Bush from the left, the more difficult it will be for him to attract Republicans...
...And we recognize the need to take on the two party system today and to break free from the corporate paymasters that underwrite both parties...
...We are under no illusion that the Democratic Party represents the be-all and end-all of electoral politics...
...So what does he need to say it in November for...
...There is something peculiar about running as a progressive to get not progressive votes but those of Republicans and Independents...
...Instead, Nader said he is appealing to young people and those he calls "authentic conservatives," who are upset at Bush because of the deficit, the WTO, NAFTA, the Patriot Act, corporate welfare, and big government...
...Norman Solomon...
...We also understand the historic role that challenges to the two party system have played in raising crucial causes that major parties eventually adopt: from abolition of slavery to the eight-hour day, from unemployment insurance to Social Security...
...And Bush's reckless, lawless foreign policy undeterred by the United Nations and with no other great power in his way, places a global obligation on the shoulders of U.S...
...Ralph Nader appears to be politically tone deaf in a year when the crying need to defeat George W. Bush could hardly be louder or more urgent...
...They want to stop the pain...
...We agree that many progressives who went for Nader last time will vote Democratic this time, but in the 2000 election, Nader drew almost twice as many Democrats as Republicans...
...So why focus only on that one...
...Perhaps some, if not all, of this was predictable at the time...
Vol. 68 • April 2004 • No. 4
