The last word on Ralph Nader, from Michael Berube:
Posted by DeLong at April 14, 2004 08:11 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postI'll say at the outset what should go without saying: of course Ralph should run if he wants to. So should everyone else who wants to, including LaRouche and Perot and David McReynolds and John Hagelin and Alan Keyes. But you shouldn't vote for any of these guys.... [I'm accused of]"fatuously allud[ing] to a conspiracy theory: apparently Ralph Nader intentionally tipped the election to Bush, for reasons known only to him and his wacky co-conspirators."...
All I did was quote from this June 2000 issue of Outside magazine:
If California tips Green enough, Bush could win the state and the whole damn election. Which, Nader confided to Outside in June, wouldn't be so bad. When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: 'Bush.'
Let's start with some very basic points. Thing one.... To have a conspiracy--or to allege that people like me have alleged a conspiracy--you need more than one person. I never said that Nader conspired with anyone to put Bush in office; I said merely that he tried to swing the election to Bush. Those of you who were actually paying attention in 2000... will remember that Nader initially agreed not to campaign in "swing states" in the weeks preceding the election if it looked as if his candidacy would hurt Gore– and then he betrayed that pledge, campaigning almost exclusively in swing states in October and November. Why? Because like many of his supporters, he despised Gore more than he disliked Bush.... [Did] I [quote] Nader out of context? The man said he would vote for Bush, I quoted him saying he would vote for Bush. Exactly how much context do we need here?...
Ralph subscribes here precisely to the Leninist "the worse the better" thesis for which progressives like me criticized him in 2000: Bush should win because he will heighten the contradictions and further shred the welfare state, yadda yadda yadda, thus leading to a renewal of the American left once people realize how bad things can get. As many (but not quite enough) serious progressives argued four years ago, this line of thinking didn't work in 1980-84 (or in 1968-72) and it won't work now. Second, what's all this about the parties diverging, anyway? Isn't Ralph running today on nothing other than the argument that they have not diverged enough? How can Ralph have been "prescient" about this in such a way as to require him to run for President yet again? And third, "divergence" in and of itself is not a value; it needs to be supplemented by the possibility that the newly divergent Democrats will actually beat their opponents. What’s the point of fostering "divergence" if the result is a feral Tom DeLay GOP that controls the entire country and a feeble liberal-progressive Democratic party that controls a few cities and college towns? "Ah, yes, we're completely powerless, except for that tough new recycling law in Madison, Wisconsin... but at least we know now that our opposition is truly oppositional."
Oh man. If Kerry wins and the Democratic party is indeed re-invigorated with leftish enthusiasm, will we have to listen to Nader going around for the next umpteen years saying everything went exactly according to plan?
Nader made a campaign stop in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. Only about 400 people showed up. Since 2000, Nader is despised in Seattle. I don't remember the last time I saw one of those sea-foam green "Nader 2000" bumper stickers.
As 2000 showed, a vote for Nader was against one's self interest. The lesson for democrats and Nader supporters is that as a matter of strategy and of controlling political power, in a winner take all system, it is better to be pragmatic in your vote for president than to vote your conscience. Duh.
Someone in the press will have to pose the same hypothetical situation to him in 2004. This time, let's hope he takes the bullet.
Matt, I wouldn't mind. It'd be a small price to pay, compared with the rest of the Bush Bill.
Posted by: Barry on April 15, 2004 04:12 AM"Nach ihm commen wir" has had a bad odor since the 30s, if not before. The strategy hasn't gotten a whole lot smarter.
Posted by: Jonathan Goldberg on April 15, 2004 04:28 AM" a vote for Nader was against one's self interest" Forget your self-interest. It's a vote against the interests of the American people. BTW, what is the definition of a liberal nowadays?
Posted by: Luke Lea on April 15, 2004 04:52 AMRalph is a pretty smart guy. He's convinced me to vote for Bush because I always feel that the government has a gun to my head.
Posted by: Lawrence on April 15, 2004 05:36 AMHow would things be different had Gore been awarded the presidency? Would the U.S. now be occupying Venezuela, where the Gore family is reputed to have their oil interests? I see no evidence of leftish enthusiasm in the Democratic Party? Am I missing something?
Posted by: Bruno on April 15, 2004 06:00 AM
Nader can make compelling speeches which is the reason he tempts so many people. John Kerry, by contrast, has to play Mr Twister in order to find a bare majority. That's how the process works. It tends to make politicians cautious and uninspiring. Surveying the damage of the Bush Catastrophe, most Naderites will probably choose the more prosaic Kerry this time.
" Would the U.S. now be occupying Venezuela, where the Gore family is reputed to have their oil interests"
Is this in the same universe where Governor Bill Clinton was a cocaine smuggler hiding an airport in Menlo, Ark., from the feds?
Posted by: Paul on April 15, 2004 08:39 AMThis is what happens on the extremes - you get these almost relativistic distortions out there. Especially on the left, where for some reason a so-so friend is far more reviled than one's outright enemy; the guy who's trying to kill you is somehow to be preferred to the guy whose sin is that he isn't doing enough to fight off your would-be killer.
From a radical lefty POV, Kerry will hardly be a savior. But that hardly equates him to Bush, whose crew is dead set against pretty much everything they stand for.
Maybe Nader will have a stroke or something. Or maybe he already has.
Posted by: RT on April 15, 2004 08:51 AMLet's hope Kerry wins. Then let's see how great the change is before we judge Nader.
As Kos asked a few days ago, why does Kerry want to be president? Kerry isn't saying what he wants to do, and we don't yet know how different his policies would be from Bush's.
There's this reoccuring nightmare that the same people who control Bush control Kerry...
Posted by: Karlsfini on April 15, 2004 11:02 AMNader tried to short-cut the Oregon ballot process here recently, using a little quirk in our state law that lets someone on the ballot if they hold a nominating convention with at least 1000 in attendance. In Nader-crazy Portland, he got about 700, and waited around until he had to face facts. This is one swing state that just told Ralphie-boy to fuck off!
Posted by: peejay on April 15, 2004 01:41 PMDo you have the link to the Berube story? Great stuff...
Posted by: Scott on April 15, 2004 02:11 PMI always suggest that people not vote Nader, even if they don't want to vote Nader.
His behavior towards unionization among his employees makes Wal Mart look like the tooth fairy.
Http://www.realchange.org
Posted by: Matthew Saroff on April 15, 2004 03:11 PMSorry, Paul. Gore's oil interests are not in Venezuela; they're in Colombia, Ecuador, and maybe Peru.
The DOE (Energy Department) received a total of 22 bona fide offers but decided to sell this "crown jewel" of oil and gas fields to Occidental Petroleum Corp. By selling off this resource the Clinton/Gore team eliminated the U.S. Navy's primary source of emergency crude oil. They argued that this field "no longer serves a national security purpose...The sale of this government oil field to Occidental Petroleum may have directly benefited Al Gore through his ownership of Occidental stock. "
From the Occidental website:
"Occidental has been the leading multi-national oil company operating in the Andean region of Latin America since discovering more than 500 million barrels of oil beneath the jungles of northern Peru in 1971. We currently have exploration and production operations in Colombia and Ecuador, and are evaluating exploration opportunities in Peru."
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