OBAMA'S CHANGE VERSUS NADER'S CHANGE

From the Boston Herald back during the 2006 primary season, via This Modern World:

Obama rallies state Democrats, throws support behind Lieberman

HARTFORD, Conn. –U.S. Sen. Barack Obama rallied Connecticut Democrats at their annual dinner Thursday night, throwing his support behind mentor and Senate colleague Joe Lieberman.

Obama, an Illinois Democrat who is considered a rising star in the party, was the keynote speaker at the annual Jefferson Jackson Bailey Dinner.

Lieberman, Connecticut’s junior senator, is under fire from some liberal Democrats for his support of the Iraq War. He was key in booking Obama, who routinely receives more than 200 speaking invitations each week.

Some at Thursday’s dinner said that while they were pleased with Lieberman’s success in bringing Obama to Connecticut, they still consider Lieberman uncomfortably tolerant of the Bush administration.

Obama wasted little time getting to that point, calling it the “elephant in the room” but praising Lieberman’s intellect, character and qualifications.

“The fact of the matter is, I know some in the party have differences with Joe. I’m going to go ahead and say it,” Obama told the 1,700-plus party members who gathered in a ballroom at the Connecticut Convention Center for the $175-per-head fundraiser.

“I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf,” he said.

More here.

I've hated Lieberman since Gore tapped him to be his running mate in the 2000 presidential election. The whole point to picking the now independent Senator from Connecticut was to do some major damage control over the Gore team's perception that Americans give a shit about President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. That is, they picked Lieberman because he was a right-wing Democrat. Indeed, Lieberman's been pissing me off since he started riding the music censorship bandwagon that started back in the mid 80s. He supports Israel, no matter what atrocity they've committed this week or any other. He supports fervently the occupation of Iraq. He is an even bigger friend of the corporatacracy than the Clintons. Even though he had to leave his party because power is more important to him than political affiliation, he continues to be the poster boy for everything wrong with the Democrats.

And Obama was strongly supporting him before he lost the primary to Ned Lamont.

To be fair, as Tom Tomorrow over at TMW observed in the post bringing this story to my attention, Obama's support ended as soon as Lamont won. But still. How could the great uniter, the "change" candidate himself, ever tell voters to elect a politician as heinous as Lieberman? Right right, it's all about party loyalty, about supporting the party that's supposed to make all this "change" happen, about being a good soldier.

This, in a nutshell, is why I can no longer support the Democrats, even the liberal "change" candidates: party trumps principles, which is tolerable, I suppose, when the party is actually liberal, but the Democrats aren't liberal; they're in thrall, for the most part, to their funding, which consists of wealthy, white, male corporate barons. I cannot be a part of this.

I mean, look at what it's done to Obama. I agree with my buddy Mark in comments that Obama is probably much more liberal than he's letting on, but that's just it: Obama is working hard to hide how liberal he is, and he's willing to deal with the devil in order to get the lie across. That's really fucked up, but apparently that's how one has to do business within the Democratic Party these days. I have no reason to believe that Mr. Change will remove his moderate-right mask once in office to reveal a more realistic face of change. That is, I fully expect Obama to continue his "I'm not really so liberal" facade as long as he occupies the White House, which means that real and lasting political change is not likely.

So, as you all know, I'm supporting Nader, in hopes that the consumer advocate's upstart campaign will force the Democrats to take a long hard look in the mirror. However, given that this will be his fourth run, and the Democrats seem just as fucked up as they were twelve years ago when Nader first ran, is voting for him going to be worth it?

My buddy Mark again:

I do not care if he "steals votes" from the Democrats. Obama has this in the bag. I care that he is rendering the votes of his supporters moot. He is making his advocates impotent citizens. Mobilize them, I'd say. Organize and demand answers, I'd say. He has a lot of support in this country from some of the smartest people (a lot of which have already backed Obama). To insert himself into this race and single handedly pull it to the left is something John Edwards could do. Not Ralph Nader. There is a better way.

And Tom Tomorrow writes:

Nader’s critique of corporate power and its corrosive effect on American democracy is spot-on. But if the point of these third-party runs is to inject that critique into mainstream discourse — well, we’re way past the point of diminishing returns, and actually deep into some sort of anti-matter universe, in which information is literally sucked out of people’s brains at the first mention of his name. In the way that Dan Rather’s report on George Bush going AWOL turned into a discussion about Dan Rather, the only debate another Nader candidacy is going to inspire is a debate about Nader himself, and I just don’t see the point.

Has Nader lost any ability to change the debate using his classic third party/independent strategy? Would he really be more effective returning to his advocacy work? This great AlterNet essay, which really seems to get to the heart of what's going on with Nader, asserts that getting the right-wing thugs out is paramount right now, which is why changing the debate is not something to do this time around.

These are all very good points. Nader does indeed have the ability to effect some change without running for president. Angry Democrats really have turned the Nader factor into a personality debate rather than an issue debate. And the Nazis in the White House are a very real nightmare.

I understand why intelligent liberals would have reservations about Nader. However, as I'm sure you know, I'm unpersuaded. Nader's organizing and advocacy work over the decades has saved countless lives, and raised awareness about countless issues that would have been ignored otherwise, but such work was utterly incapable of stopping the Democrats' slow reversal of philosophy from liberalism to Republican Lite. That is, we're talking about party culture that seems now to be entrenched. Working with the Democrats, rather than against them, has been wildly ineffective. Along these lines, while it is important to get the trash out of the Oval Office, we cannot ever forget the enabling role the Democrats have played in getting them there in the first place, and then rolling over for them, again and again. We may get them out now, but unless we do something to permanently change Democrat philosophy, they'll be back soon.

As for Tom Tomorrow's point on the relentless ad hominem attacks on Nader, I offer this Gandhi quote: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." Of course, I entertain no fantasies that Nader will win, but the ferocity of the rhetoric, to me, indicates that something is happening within the party. That is, Nader's definitely getting to them; if we're lucky, the Dems might soon feel compelled to actually talk about him in terms of ideas, in terms of issues, and show why they're better for the country. And just as Eugene Debs' Socialist rejection of the Democrats back in the late teens and early twenties eventually spawned the New Deal in the thirties, one hopes the Democrats will again be forced to be a real people's party, instead of the pro-wealth sham we suffer today.

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