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Monday, February 23, 2004

In all seriousness

All right, a few serious words about Nader.  I didn’t vote for him in 2000-- on the contrary, I signed the last-minute petition circulated by liberals and progressives urging people not to vote for him (me and Toni Morrison and most of the writers at Dissent).  But yes, of course, I agree that Gore was a terrible candidate.  Tell me about it.  When he picked Lieberman as his running mate in August 2000 (a Monica prophylactic, sure, but also a move that took the Democratic ticket to the terrain of Eisenhower Republicans with a bit of Lynne Cheney culture-war hectoring thrown in), I turned to my wife and said, “that’s it, I’m voting for Eugene McCarthy.” (Not Nader-- after all, he was also a terrible candidate, if you’ll recall.) And after the second Bush-Gore debate, I got into the habit of defusing every family argument with Janet and Nick by tilting my head and intoning portentously, “I agree with the governor.” Finally, Gore blew everything about the Florida recount, everything.  I don’t even want to begin to relive it.

Still, the argument worth having in 2000 was not about Gore.  It was about Bush, and what he and his far-right friends would do to the country.  So when, over the past few years, I’ve read Green activists like Medea Benjamin saying (in an April 2003 Salon article), “I’m stunned by how extremist the Bush presidency has become on foreign policy. We never could have predicted this,” I’ve tended to reply, “Actually, yes, you could have predicted this-- by paying attention, for the love of God.  By reading that 1998 PNAC memo and realizing that the project of keeping its authors from wielding state power was far more important than the ‘project’ of voting your conscience.  Voting your conscience?  What is this, Pinocchio? We’re supposed to listen to the small still voice of Jiminy Cricket?  We’re faced with lunatics like Richard Perle and Dick Cheney, here, people-- it’s time to vote for the only guy who can prevent them from taking over the country.” In retrospect, I find it weird that only two groups of American voters were deluded into thinking that there were no substantive differences between Gore and Bush:  (1) the “swing voters” who started paying attention to the race six weeks before election day 2000 and didn’t like what they heard about Gore claiming to have invented the Internet and being the model for a character in Love Canal (this is more or less what my neighbors in Champaign County, Illinois took away from media coverage of Gore) but did like Bush’s “conservativism that is compassionated,” and (2) the Nader voters, who, being reasonably well-informed and well-educated people, really should have known better. Yes, including you, Medea, though I appreciate the fact that you’ve come around since.

As for whether Nader cost Gore the election, please, I don’t want to wade one more time through the thickets of Naderite denial on this.  Nader deliberately tried to throw the election to Bush (even going to far as to say he would vote for Bush in a Bush-Gore race), and then, having succeeded, began to backpedal, saying, in effect, “I didn’t cost Gore the election, and what’s more, I’m glad I did.” (This being the counterpart to the coherence of his position that (a) there were no substantive differences between Democrats and Republicans and (b) his candidacy would help Democrats.)

This time, the man doesn’t even have the Green fig leaf to hide behind-- he’s not trying to build a party, or a movement, or an alternative.  He’s just running as Ralph qua Ralph.  No, I know, he’s not truly LaRouchean, because being “truly LaRouchean” involves believing that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s candidacy for governor of California was masterminded by Jacob Rothschild, among other things.  But I do mean to suggest that despite his lifetime of heroic service to-- and leadership in-- progressive causes, Ralph Nader in his senescence has dropped off the edge of the map of political positions that responsible liberals and progressives can respect.  It’s time for responsible liberals and progressives to file him next to LaRouche in the mental rolodex.

UPDATE:  Max says it better.  As a former Barry Commoner voter (1980) and New Party member (1996-demise), I tip my hat to the sage Mr. Sawicky.

UPDATE UPDATE:  Did Nader really say he would have voted for Bush in 2000? Yes, Nader really said he would have voted for Bush in 2000.  In fact, he said it in June 2000, as you can see for yourself right here.

Posted by Michael on 02/23 at 07:52 AM
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