I caught Ralph Nader (he of ”duopoly” fame) on Countdown the other night wherein he expounded on how he and a group of “progressives” intend to come up with a primary challenge to Obama. The thing is, Nader noted that the movement wasn’t meant to actually defeat Obama, but to push him to the left.
Uh huh.
Somebody please tell me what the point of this would be? If the goal is not to run a viable candidate who can defeat Obama and resuscitate the Democratic Party, what is the fucking point?
Honestly, do they not get that if in 2008 he told them what they wanted to hear to get their money, time and votes, and then turned around and did precisely the opposite, that 2012 will not be any different? In 2008 he faced the the most competitive primary ever, and look what happened once he secured the nomination.
Head-desk.
This is not the Nader who ran on his own, back in the day.
Maybe too many people just let him know how much they hated him for that.
Maybe it cowed him.
He used to be willing to run an outsider campaign with no holds barred against both the major parties, unlike the Greens.
He used to insist we needed to rebel against the strangle hold of the duopoly and the loser logic of voting always for the lesser evil.
This is sorry stuff.
I still have an old Nader t-shirt, somewhere.
I just viewed the clip.
He even responded to the claim a primary might hurt O’s chances as a dreadful charge he needs to deflect.
Heaven forbid he or any progressive acceptable in polite society do anything, now, to hurt the Democrats!
He really did get burned, didn’t he?
Once upon a time he would have insisted he was and needed to be running against both parties of the Duopoly and ensuring the lesser evil wins was not his aim or his problem.
In those days he spoke of a dime’s worth of difference and of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee, and was willing to stand by the consequence that the lesser evil argument is way over-rated, anyway, the difference between the two major parties in practice being much less than the two parties as advertised.
And Shuster is roughing him up with personal attacks, too, and an unfair hit at him saying Obama was “talking white,” at one point.
I guess we should have seen this coming when, back in the day, after 2000, he didn’t respond to the accusations of splitting by saying it was never his job to ensure the lesser evil won and it was no part of his concern.
Instead, ever since then he has tried to argue that he did not take the election away from Big Al (it wasn’t close enough in 2004 for anyone to be that mad, that time).
He didn’t even have the nerve to say something like, “Yeah. That was great. I hoped it would teach the Democrats a lesson. I hoped it would teach them to stay true to their progressive past and their progressive base. It just didn’t work. And that’s what I’m sorry for.”
But they were furious at him and have shit all over him at every opportunity since then and it didn’t teach Democrats a thing but how to shit on liberals who go off the reservation.
All the more reason, of course, not to run a liberal campaign in a minor party with the intention of giving the Democrats a much needed nudge to the left.
You can forget that.
We have already seen that it doesn’t work.
Ralph is the proof.
And a living witness to the price.
Better to run frankly as an outsider with no loyalty and no responsibility to the Democrats and no wish to ensure they don’t come in second.
Because second worst is just not good enough.
Nader is 77 years old. You can’t expect him to tilt at windmills forever. The sorry thing isn’t that he isn’t up to charging into battle anymore, it’s that we haven’t produced anyone to take his place.
I’ll agree with you there, but the point of my post isn’t whether or not Nader is or isn’t up to it, and I got from his interview with Schuster that the challenger would not be him (in fact, he notes that the only reason he is on the show is because Countdown called him). The point of the post is that Nader himself made a point of saying that the primary challenge was specifically not intended to defeat Obama, but to push him to the left.
Again, what is the point of that?
So do you still think the Democrats can be saved and are worth staying with?
No.
Unfortunately, I can’t see the Greens stepping up.
An odd association of people who are too Marxist for the role and other people who prefer that educational, nudge-the-Democrats leftward role Ralph Nader nowadays in retrospect ascribes to his past presidential campaigns.
And dominated by too many who are even more terrified than post-2000 and 2004 Nader of the accusation of splitting and causing Democrats to lose to Republicans, at least in connection with presidential elections.
If I recall correctly, he was actually accused of taking money from the right.
(In a thread of comments at another blog I was accused of being a secret supporter of Romney! And a spammer!)
And I don’t see anybody else out there who could be the germ of what we need.
Still, I’d vote for the Greens for lack of better, I think.
Any thoughts?
BTW, a vote of conscience is never wasted.
And it actually counts in favor of such a vote if enough such votes scuttle “the lesser evil,” the Democrats.
The Democrats are the ones who make progressive votes futile, even when they win, and deserve to be sunk.
Not real progressives running outside candidacies that make Democrats lose.
As far as I can see, the Greens have had thirty-plus (40?) years to get their collective act together and have not done so. While there is much that appeals to me in their platform, there is also a lot that turns me off.
So, here I am, without a political home once again.