Spoiler?
Okay, so Ralph Nader announced on NBC's Meet The Press this morning, that he will, indeed, be running for President this year. This, of course, immediately brings back the election of 2000, and the recriminations that followed, as Al Gore won the popular vote but ultimately was judged to have lost in terms of electoral votes. Worse, in the final battleground state of Florida, all indications were that the votes for Nader, had they instead gone to Gore (as the presumed candidate closer to what they wanted than Bush was) we'd have had a different president over the past three years.
Saturday, when we knew that Nader was going to be announcing yeah or nay on the question of another presidential run today, Mark Gibson invoked the above and expressed that those like Nader should be working within the two party system, not outside of it.
As with so much in life it's a gray area for me.
Nader and his camp, much as was the case with other third party candidates, including Pat Buchanan, at least suggested that their constituency was formed of a combination of new and disaffected voters - those for whom the two-party system had appeared to hold nothing, and so wouldn't have bothered to vote for either Brand R of Brand D, both of which they feel are owned by many of the same corporations. Consequently, they took the stance that they "took" votes from no one. I honestly think there's a great deal to that idea, though certainly the Bush side was hoping to scare more people who went with Buchanan into thinking that Al Gore was going to take away their guns and God, while the Gore side hoped to scare the prospective Nader voters with the mess that Bush would likely lead this nation into. It's all a matter of when one considers those votes as existing. Would those people have voted if Buchanan or Nader hadn't reached out to them, specifically?
When Bill Clinton swept into office in 1992 he was often credited with re-energizing the Democratic Party as a "New Democrat" -- which we largely learned meant he was in may ways moving the Dems closer to the GOP. It helped move the perceived "center" much farther to the right as kowtowing to Big Business, among other things, became more of a focus.
Coming back to the present, presented with another Nader candidacy, one has to look at what Nader's alternatives were.
At this juncture, he could have simply sat this one out. However, the man has to be able to sleep at night, and he can only do that if he knows he's done his best. His races for office have never been about winning that election. The man's an idealist, but he's also a pragmatist, and knew he never had a chance of getting into office. His political fights, as candidate Nader, have been to bring a sense of power back to all the people who realize that the aims of a modern GOP or Dem presidential front-runner are likely not in their best interests, as the game is so heavily weighted towards the candidate with the most well-stuffed "war chest."
Rewinding to a point late last year, he could have run a campaign as a candidate within the Democratic party. This might not have felt like a viable option to him, though, as he knew that the Democrats have long since gotten into the same channels as the Republicans have in terms of what interests they've had to appease in order to get the money to buy the image of "electability." He may also have looked at candidates Kucinich and Dean, working within the Democratic Party, and seen one ignored and the other trampled into the ground. The media, whether blatantly owned by huge corporate interests or simply too narrow in their perspective, quickly turned the Democratic Primary into a horse race that had nothing to do with issues - merely a vague sense of "electability", much of it derived from questionable (always) polls and who "won" each of the early states in the primary races. The fact that each of those races provided split numbers of delegates, and that even now Dean (though officially not campaigning, he's still keeping his name on the ballot) is ahead of Edwards in terms of pledged delegates, was all but ignored in the media coverage. The simplest of simpletons in the audience was played to in horse race coverage where the misperception of these races as "winner take all" was reinforced. Every dimwit and simpleton who allowed himself to be led by the nose by this, not to mention the out of context "anger" shots of Dean and the yell he gave in Iowa should be ashamed of themselves.
It remains to be seen how much of an impact those people who were mobilized by Dean's campaign will have on the eventual Democratic choice - how many will opt for Edwards, how many for Kerry, and once the primary decision is made, how many will get behind the annointed one.
Unfortunately, the issues were leap-frogged over, and the thrust of the Democratic Primary race became "who can beat Bush?" It's assinine. The rush to push someone, ANYone into office without having much of a substantial idea of what they aim to accomplish once there is almost as irresponsible as Congress rolling over on its back and handing Dubya the runner stamp authorizations for so much in the wake of September 11, 2001.
The biggest problem I have with Nader's move is the timing.
He's interested in reform, and he's become convinced that this likely won't come from within the current, two party system. Unfortunately, he's doing this now, when it mostly just threatens to mobilize groups that would in a two-party system be more likely to vote for the Democrats. My expectation is that this late in the race he's not going to have a great deal of impact, but it may be telling.
The force of his campaign message will have to be much as it was in 2000: The GOP and Democratic candidates are largely the same on issues pertaining to standard of living issues for most US citizens. His attacks on the Bush regime are built in, expected, and anyone who's going to vote to elect Dubya isn't going to listen to Nader about any of that. So the audience Nader will be speaking to will be those the Democrats want to woo, and the only part of his message that will get through will be that Kerry (or, still conceivably, Edwards) isn't going to represent the people much if at all better than Bush does. In effect, he becomes a sniper for the Bush camp, firing at the Democrats. The result may not be that Nader will bring himself votes, but that he may end up giving people one more reason to view the system as one where the fix is in, and they won't bother to vote. As no one backing Bush will be listening, the self-disenfranchising voters will be ones lost to the Democrats.
This will also mean that the Democratic candidate will be likely to become more stridently anti-Bush as a means to countering both the GOP and Nader's independent candidacy (he won't be running as a Green this time, as I understand it), which will allow Dubya's enourmously well-funded organization to go to work. Bush will make all of the high-minded, moral and "fun" appearances he can in office, while his hatchet men will have an easier, all-negative target to hit in the Democrat's choice. It could easily become like the way the Bush camp led the Gore campaign around by the nose in the 2000 elections, keeping Gore reacting to specters of his ties to Bill Clinton (which makes for an absurd topic, considering all of the non-issues Clinton had been vilified for) rather than on a positive message.
I understand Nader's choice, however inconvenient I may find it, though. He saw what happened to Dean, so getting in the pool earlier wouldn't have likely even helped him to influence the Democratic party. Then there's the cost of getting noticed for more than 15 minutes in any controlled fashion. So, if he was going to have any impact he had to wait as late as possible.
The best I can hope for is that Nader will run as purely an issue-driven campaign as possible. Keep attacks to a minimum, and just let people know what important things AREN'T being discussed in what's otherwise become a Bush or Not Bush tug of war.
On the drive towards a multi-party system, the difficulty remains having enough of them, representing a varied enough group of voters, that there's some balance. Having Nader's party be the "third" one gives the GOP two places to point from their perspective: Left (the Democrats) and Far Left (Nader.) [Keep in mind that the whole Left/Right matter has become ridiculously skewed to the Right. The "Center" being pushed is still much farther to the Right than I believe it really is.] At least in 2000 Buchanan represented a somewhat balancing splinter from the GOP side.
Another potentially interesting race ahead.
Is it too much to hope for that Nader will raise more of an issue than endless rehashes of whether or not his 2000 candidacy opened the door for Dubya?
Comments