Taking Nader seriously one last time

A friend of mine who is a Ralph Nader supporter (he and his wife are the only Nader supporters I know) called me yesterday. He's committed to supporting a noble but hopeless cause. I told him I would blog one last time about Nader, because there is just one last thing that I would like to say about him.

Nader's relationship with the Democratic party is a classic example of the insider-outsider dynamic. The outsider accuses the insider of selling out to a corrupt system; the insider regards the outsider as a naive, pretentious, self-righteous nag, lacking either the ability or the fortitude to participate in the game of politics. There's some truth in both allegations.

Nader and others of his ilk make the argument that one reason they are not more popular is that the mainstream media exclude them from their coverage. Again, there's an element of truth in that. The mainstream media replies that their readers are not interested in fringe candidates, and they have only so many resources.

But new media should have solved that problem for Nader. The fact that he has a Website means that his message is available to anyone. More voices on the radio, like Air America, mean more opportunities for him to be interviewed in person. God knows there is a wealth of airtime on cable news channels and talk shows.

To say nothing of all the political blogs out there with all the bandwidth they want to let the world know about third party candidates.

And yet, Nader is much less of a phenomenon than he was in 2000. I think part of this is his fault; when you tell most of your supporters that they need to get a grip, they tend to no longer be your supporters.

But a big part of Nader and others' problem is that new media has, if anything, rendered him even less important than he was before, because it has opened up both the mainstream media, and, in particular, the Democratic party, to a much wider range of voices and influences. Daily Kos is both a source of analysis and commentary, and a clearinghouse of information about specific candidates. It also fundraises for some of those candidates. The party itself does not control Daily Kos or sites like it. Nor does the party want to. The DNC is perfectly happy to let a thousand (or a million) Websites bloom, if it means more opportunities for people to get involved, and yet less work for them.

Nor do corporations control Daily Kos or Talking Points Memo. Both are for-profit, which I think is a good thing. Their relationships with large news organizations is symbiotic; they rely on the NY Times and Washington Post for stories, but they also criticize them, and occasionally scoop them.

So Nader's campaign is one of those odd success stories of politics; his message has been so successful that other people have taken it and created organizations that address the problem. He'll never admit that. I think he has too much ego invested in his status as outsider to let himself take credit for actually changing the system.

Taking Nader seriously, Part 1

I have an old friend who is a Nader supporter. We've been discussing everyone's favorite Lebanese American presidential candidate. As far as I am concerned, 2000 campaign is over and done with. My take on Nader is simple: I think he's an incredible activist, but not such a great politician. But, since I have been talking about him, I figured I should at least check out his Web site, and take him at least a little bit seriously.

At the outset, I think it's important for Obama supporters to acknowledge the groundwork that Nader laid, in terms of setting up organizational structures for organizing, that paved the way for the Obama campaign. Obama has run an incredibly well-organized campaign, and a large part of that is due to his background as a community organizer. Nader was instrumental in developing an infrastructure for community organizing, for legitimizing it. In that sense, Obama is Nader's heir in this campaign. That has to be acknowledged.

Votenader.org is a decent Website. It has a lot in common with barackobama.com: Sign up here, contribute here, etc. I suppose that's the nature of the beast. I'll comment more later.

My friend called me tonight because he had heard about a radio show on Democracy Now! that had an interesting twist on the presidential debates. The ran the audio for the last presidential debate, and then invited Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader (Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin were invited, but couldn't make it) to respond. That's cool.

The only problem was that McKinney and Nader didn't have a lot of time themselves to respond. I noticed a couple of things: McKinney said something about nationalizing the Federal Reserve. Huh? That makes no sense, and it's the kind of comment that can say a little too much about why someone is a third party candidate for president, instead of still being a member of Congress.

Nader talked about a securities tax, which I think is an interesting idea. It's the kind of thing that would usually arouse rather serious opposition from the financial industry, but might get passed today, given the unpopularity of Wall Street. But then he threw in a soundbite that threw me for a bit of a loop. He mentioned that this year, the total value of derivatives transactions will be $500 trillion, and that a tax of of 1/10 of 1% would raise $500 billion. This is the kind of thing that sounds too good to be true. If it were that easy to raise $500 billion, we would have done it by now. $500 trillion? I think he might be talking about the total value of all transactions, but that is very different from the total value of all derivatives. For example, if someone has an insurance policy on their house with $1 million of coverage, that does not mean that they have paid the insurance company $1 million. It means that they pay the insurance company a few thousand dollars every year. So that comment did not do wonders for Mr. Nader's credibility on economic issues.

Cynthia McKinney brought up the death penalty, and for that I am grateful, and for that alone I am thankful that she is in the race, in whatever capacity.

Nader also wants more debates, obviously including him. I'm uncommitted on that score; I think it would certainly make things more interesting, but there also was not a shortage of debates during the primary. Three presidential debates was just about enough for me. I would, however, be interested in seeing the presidential candidates mix it up with some third party candidates next time around. That could be fun. I've also heard that, contrary to John Kerry, Obama did not try to persuade Nader not to run, and did nothing to block him. So Nader is on the ballot in 45 states. I think that's healthy, but I have to admit that, this time around, Obama is running a much better campaign than either Gore in 2000 or Kerry in 2004. Also, and this is a little sad, Nader just is not that much of a threat this time around. So maybe I can afford to be gracious. But if I can afford it, then I think I have a responsibility to be that way.

ACORN came up. I interviewed with ACORN once, in Philadelphia. I could have worked for them while I was taking time off of Swarthmore. Instead, I went to Oberlin and took a couple of classes. I'm glad I did. It was at Oberlin that I came up with the first half of the motto of this blog: Art before politics.

Nader advocates scrapping NAFTA and the WTO. Not a healthy approach. Those are treaties that the US has signed. Once they are signed, we have to oblige by them. Ignoring the demands of international law is one of the great problems of the Bush administration. Bush trashed the ABM treaty when he first got into office. Arbitrarily and unilaterally voiding treaties does not engender respect for democracy, either here in America or abroad. So while I agree with Ralph that labor and environmental standards should be part of free trade agreements, I think his approach could be more diplomatic. Which is supposed to be part of what differentiates him from Bush.

I recommend reading the transcript, as opposed to listening to it, because that way you can skip the Obama-McCain parts.

Ralph Nader on Red State Update

I love Red State Update. It's two guys playing rednecks and offering political commentary. Part of the joke is that, underneath the accents and attitude, they're usually pretty dead-on and actually rather intelligent. In this clip, they interviewed Ralph Nader. Props to Ralph for having a sense of humor and talking to them.

Nader for President?

Ralph Nader has announced that he is running for President. I'm not going to bother to link to a story, because it's everywhere.

And yet, a couple of days later, it's nowhere. Talk about 15 minutes - I think most people are already bored. So I just have one comment.

Ralph Nader is a great activist. But he is a terrible politician. He's great at motivating people to work with him, but only as long as they already agree with him.

OK, that's enough.

On Nader

A friend asked me what I thot of Ralph Nader's exploratory committee. My first reaction is that I look back on his run for President in 2000 from the perspective of 8 years' distance. Nader made the argument that there was no difference between the Republicans and Democrats, between Gore and Bush. After 7 years of Bush, that argument is hard to take seriously. Bush leads a party that tries to deny the existence of global warming - Gore has made that his raison d'etre. I think we can safely assume that Al Gore would not have invaded Iraq or used torture.

But, again from the perspective of 8 years away, I can better appreciate Nader's position. To me, the argument that there was no appreciable difference between Dems and Republicans was hard to understand - I can see lots of profound differences. But I'm a total political junkie, and I pay very close attention to politics, so my perspective is different from a lot of people's.

But the key point that I think Nader missed is that Clinton had to deal with a Republican Congress. The President does not propose legislation - he takes what Congress sends him. In his first term, Clinton fought Republicans successfully on some key issues, particularly on the budget. He raised taxes to balance the budget, and did so despite fierce opposition from the GOP.

In 1994, the Republicans took back Congress. They had not been in control of the House for 40 years. The Democrats were completely blindsided - they had no idea what hit them. Clinton had no plan on how to deal with a Republican Congress. He had to fight them, and did, sometimes successfully - he won the showdown over shutting down the government. But Newt Gingrich set the agenda for a large chunk of Clinton's presidency.

So when Nader claimed that there was no significant difference between the Democrats and Republicans in 2000, I think he was ignoring the fact that the Republicans were setting the agenda. If one party controls one house of Congress and the other party controls the other, each party has a chance to pass their own legislation and force the other to deal with it. A Democratic House can force a Republican Senate to compromise. The Republicans controlled both - Democrats could do nothing but fight back. Sometimes they fought back successfully, sometimes they lost, sometimes they gave in.

Nader is right about one thing: sometimes the Democrats caved because they were just scared of Republicans, and were unwilling to fight on principle. A great example is the Defense of Marriage Act, which was an anti-gay piece of legislation. Clinton signed it because he didn't want to be defined as "anti-family." Politically, it was expedient. But as a matter of principle, it was horrendous.

Ralph Nader's campaign for President in 2000 fits into one of the basic templates that define American democracy: the eternal conflict between compromise and principle. There will always be people who prize ideological purity above compromise, and there will always be people who compromise too easily. Nader does not believe in compromise. But he has the luxury of not being an elected official. Clinton compromised because he had little choice. But Clinton also had to compromise, in part, because of his personal failings. He never had a strong mandate. He never won a majority of the popular vote (Ross Perot helped him out there in both elections). And, particularly after Monica Lewinsky, he did not have much moral authority.

I didn't agree with Ralph Nader's decision to run for President in 2000, and I still think it was a mistake, although now I have a better understanding of why he did, of why he was frustrated with Democrats. I think he took away enough votes from Gore to make Bush President, which has been an unmitigated disaster. This time around, I think he has even less justification for running, essentially because Obama has two qualities that Clinton lacked. First, Obama has the moral authority that Clinton lacked. Second, Obama is not afraid of Republicans. Obama understands that if he is not afraid of Republicans, that he can set the agenda, and force Republicans to react to him. Hillary does not understand that. She still reacts, often out of fear, to Republicans, and does not try to set the agenda on her own terms. Obama claims that he can change the terms of the game. I get the impression Hillary isn't even sure what he's talking about.

Finally, I have one particular issue with Ralph Nader. As I said above, I think he has some responsibility for Gore losing. Not complete responsibility - Gore did not run a particularly good campaign, and, let's face it, the man is not a great politician. What bothers me about Nader is that he refuses to take responsibility for Bush being President. Doesn't even seem interested in discussing the possibility. This strikes me as arrogant and self-righteous. I have a great deal of respect for Ralph Nader's career - he's done a lot of good for the world. But taking a position of ideological purity carries its own risks. That kind of position gives someone like Nader a license to pass judgment on other people. Passing judgment on others is an exercise of power. As such, it is subject to the laws of power. Specifically, it can corrupt. Ralph Nader has a great deal of moral authority as a result of his long career. He deserves it. What he doesn't seem to appreciate is that that moral authority, like any kind of power, carries with it a certain amount of responsibility. I think his ego has gotten in the way of his ability to affect real and substantive change.