RALPH RUN/RALPH DON'T RUN

From CounterPunch, 2000 Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader responds to a Nation editorial demanding that he does not run as an independent this year:

It doesn't seem that The Nation would disagree with the conclusions of George Scialabba, who wrote last year in The Boston Review, "Two-party dominance allows disproportionate influence to swing voters, single-issue constituencies, and campaign contributors; it promotes negative, contentless campaigns; it rewards grossly inequitable redistricting schemes, and it penalizes those who disagree with both parties but fear to 'waste' their votes (which is why Nader probably lost many more voters to Gore than Gore lost to Nader)":

"Don't run."

The Nation's open letter does not go far enough in predicting where my votes would come from, beyond correctly inferring that there would be few liberal Democratic supporters. The out-of-power party always returns to the fold, while the in-power party sees its edges looking for alternatives. Much more than New Hampshire in 2000, where I received more Republican than Democratic votes, any candidacy would be directed toward Independents, Greens, third-party supporters, true progressives, and conservative and liberal Republicans, who are becoming furious with George W. Bush's policies, such as massive deficits, publicized corporate crimes, subsidies and pornography, civil liberties encroachments, sovereignty-suppressing trade agreements and outsourcing. And, of course, any candidacy would seek to do what we all must strive for-getting out more nonvoters who are now almost the majority of eligible voters:

"Don't run."

The Nation wants badly to defeat the selected President Bush but thinks there is only one pathway to doing so. This approach excludes a second front of voters against the regime, which could raise fresh subjects, motivating language and the vulnerabilities of corporate scandals and blocked reforms that the Democrats are too cautious, too indentured to their paymasters to launch--but are free to adopt if they see these succeed:

"Don't run."

The Nation has rarely been a hostage to prevailing dogma and electoral straitjackets.

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Having posted this, I must admit that I've bought the Nation's argument for the most part, at least as far as my own voting is concerned. That is, I'm going to bite down and vote for the Democrat this year: I agree that Bush is so absolutely awful that he must be removed as soon as possible--the eventual Democratic nominee (probably Kerry, as most will agree), I'm sure, will annoy me a great deal, not to mention give me a great deal to write about here at Real Art, but a donkey-headed President will certainly be less destructive than what we've got now.

Of course, once a Democrat is in the Oval Office, it's going to be much more difficult to get the general party to oppose his kinder, gentler, more "liberal" brand of national and international destruction. After all, the party's going to want to support their President. Ironically, it may be harder to advance the causes of progressivism, at least on an ideological level, without Bush than with him.

But this does not change my mind that Bush needs to be removed, the sooner the better. This does not mean, however, that I think that Nader is evil for running, if he chooses to. I believe in democracy; in America, anyone who is eligible can run for public office--this is one of our strengths as a nation.

The kind of bullshit below, however, is evidence of the prevalent weird, liberal power of politically correct intimidation that got a lot of feminists tagged (fairly or unfairly) with the moniker "feminazi" by drug addict Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s. From Eschaton:

Ralph's Gonna Run

And, well, if people are stupid enough to vote for him either because they believe "BUSH=Democrat Nominee" or because they believe voting for him will help build a third party movement even though he's running as an independent or because they believe it will force the Democratic candidate to pretend to move "to the Left" during the campaign in order to get their votes even though they've already decided to vote for Ralph or because they believe Ralph could actually win...

well, go ahead. Nothing I can say is going to change your mind.

Click here to see the quote in its blog context and to access reader comments.

Actually these arguments, taken by themselves, without the loaded language, changed my mind--in fact, such a condescending tone was an impediment to my thinking at first, but, I generally try to be swayed by analytical arguments only, so I'm gonna vote for the Democrat this year. I really love Atrios and his Eschaton blog, but the whole anti-Nader wave that he and seemingly most of his commenters have been riding for a while now is just paranoid sour grapes: try to persuade people to vote for your favorite candidate, but trashing Ralph just for running is unAmerican and anti-democracy.

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