THE GRAVITY OF NADER:

Ralph Redux? (MICAH L. SIFRY, November 24, 2003, Nation)

"The top priority should be to defeat Bush," Nader insists. "Obviously, the Democrats are having trouble showing how they can do that." With palpable frustration, he cites the Democrats' failure to make more headway from the corporate scandals and their timidity in the face of Republican appeals to war fever and patriotism. Growing more animated, he declares, "The real issue for Democrats beating up on the Greens is, can the Democrats win without a third-party effort to launch the issues that the Democrats are too dense or cautious or too indentured to raise themselves, which they'll then pick up?" Arguing that some kinds of poison can make a body stronger, he insists, with a touch of his own schizophrenia, that a third-party push could cause the Democrats "to say and do things that would get them more votes than they would lose to the third-party candidate."

If Nader and the Greens sound like they're contradicting themselves, it's because they're trying to bridge two conflicting goals: the long-term need for an independent political force and the short-term imperative of defeating Bush. In my opinion, 2004 is not 2000 and the "Gush-Bore" similarities I once wrote about don't apply now. I love Ralph and respect his legendary accomplishments and example, but another Nader run as a Green or independent without an explicit and binding agreement to concentrate on safe states would be a terrible mistake. Apart from risking the re-election of Bush, it would only hurt Nader. Barring an unforeseen shift in the contours of next year's election, he would do far worse than the 2.7 million votes he got in 2000. This is not his year.

As for the Greens, as long as the two-party duopoly misrules America, third-party efforts will percolate and independent voters will proliferate. But that doesn't mean that a particular party like the Greens is fated to have a long life beyond the margins. If the party is to grow outside of the progressive venues where it already has a foothold, it has to control its strong taste for self-indulgent symbolic statements and focus on where its opportunities are greatest, in local races in the one-party cities and counties where many of America's most alienated and disenfranchised citizens live. Nader and the Greens made their point about Democratic decrepitude in 2000; now they should make their own demonstration of good judgment or face their own decline.

There's a real problem for Democrats in that if their candidate is not at least as liberal as an Al Gore (as he ran) or Howard Dean (as he's running) they create a situation in which the genuine Left has to consider a third party option. Joe Lieberman is a nice enough fella, but if he won the nomination how could any "progressive" vote for him and respect themself in the morning?

Meanwhile, the only Democratic non-incumbent to win the presidency in a two-way race without running to the Right of his Republican opponent in the past century was FDR after the Depression hit. seems like a bad strategy to bank on Depression.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 7, 2003 6:16 PM