Dear Ralph

It would be a real crisis for democracy if an actual anti-war candidate runs for president at a time of war!

I’ve never understood why people talk about proportional representation during Presidential elections. Are we going to genetically engineer a President who is 49% Kerry, 48% Bush, and 3% Nader?

“Nor, for that matter, did Ralph Nader go wrong after decades of doing good. The qualities that liberals have observed in him of late–the monomania, the vindictiveness, the rage against pragmatic liberalism–have been present all along. Indeed, an un-blinkered look at Nader’s public life shows that his presidential campaigns represent not a betrayal of his earlier career but its apotheosis.”

…

“‘Ralph could have had a consumer agency bill in any of three Congresses,’ liberal consumer activist and former Nader associate Mike Pertschuk told Martin. ‘But he held out for the perfect bill.’

“The final defeat came in 1978. Again, Nader’s strategy was to impugn every Democrat who harbored any reservations at all about the bill. … He so alienated Democrats that, as the measure went down to defeat, one reportedly said as he voted no, ‘This one’s for you, Ralph.’ House Speaker Tip O’Neill told The Washington Post, ‘I know of about eight guys who would have voted for us if it were not for Nader.'”

…

“Liberals today who anguish over Nader’s insistence that no important differences exist between the two parties should note that this belief dates back more than two decades. … As Nader addressed a gathering of supporters in 1981, according to The Washington Post, ‘Reagan is going to breed the biggest resurgence in nonpartisan citizen activism in history.’

“Of course, that did not happen. But twelve years of Republican rule failed to dim Nader’s conviction that little difference existed between the two parties.”

…

“As Nader embarks upon his fourth protest run against the Democrats in as many elections, there is something slightly ridiculous about the shock of his liberal critics. They still don’t know who they’re dealing with. Nader is not a heroic figure tragically overcome by his own flaws; he is a selfish, destructive maniac who, for a brief historical period, happened upon a useful role.

“In the waning days of the 2000 election, some of Nader’s campaign advisers urged him to concentrate on uncontested states, like New York and California, where he could attract local media without competition from the major-party candidates and win liberal voters who needn’t fear tipping the race to George W. Bush. Instead, he chose a whirlwind tour of battleground states, campaigning in Pennsylvania and Florida, where votes would be harder to come by but more consequential to the outcome of the race. Liberals assume Nader tried to maximize his vote total without regard to how it affected Bush and Gore. The truth is that he actively sought to help Bush, even at the expense of his own vote total.

“It’s therefore both comic and sad when liberals take Nader at his word that he does not believe he affected the outcome of the 2000 race. The website RalphDontRun.net patiently explains how, if Al Gore had netted even 1 percent of Nader’s 97,000 Florida votes, he would have overcome Bush’s 537-vote margin. Like other liberals, the people behind the website seem to think, if they could only persuade Nader that his candidacy might help reelect Bush, it would dissuade him from running. More likely, it would have the opposite effect. The real mystery is not why Nader would do something so destructive to liberalism. It’s why anybody ever thought he wouldn’t.”

(http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040308&s=chait030804 but you know, read the whole thing.)

There is nothing that will persuade Nader not to run. What we have to do is persuade people not to vote for him.

Single transferable vote is the way to go here.

How about we on the left stand on principle and support Nader’s right to run, instead of acting like the talk radio right in trying to find the essential gotcha moment where he is revealed as an egotisical fascist (he’s egotisical? um, isn’t Kerry, just a lil’?) or running him off the ballot in Arizona (isn’t that where the Texas Democrat state legislators camped when decrying the unfairness of getting boxed out on the redistricting issue?). After all, do you think anyone who still wants to vote for Nader now would vote for Kerry under any circumstances?

And, practically speaking, maybe we should hold off on this chant until we confirm that the Dems won’t do everything they can to prove they are best at shooting their own feet by selecting Gephart as Veep?

Yeah, Nader had enough “integrity” to specifically target Gore in battleground states, instead of trying to build a viable Green party in safe liberal states where he’d get more votes but fail to endanger the Gore campaign. Nader doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the people who die or get screwed over by a Bush presidency, because Ralph Nader and his constituency have the comfort of living in a tidy bubble of white upper-crust affluence.