----- Original Message ----- From: "Lisa & Ian Murray" <seamus at accessone.com>
>Could also be viewed as a remarkable failure of opportunity to get out of
>the pathetically small playpen the Dems. have built for those groups.
It's amazing at the inability of those supporting Nader to engage in any analysis of that failure, feeling compelled to blame every other group for Nader's failures. All of this while denying that left Dems should in any way be able to blame Nader for his effect on Gore. i.e. Gore is responsible for all his failures and Gore is responsible for all of Nader's failures..
And having run an incompetent campaign that failed on its most basic goals of getting matching funds AND screwing up pragmatic success of the Dem candidate, those progressive orgs should see a failed campaign as an "opportunity"?
Folks are in a bit of denial here. Whether you support third party efforts or not, the objective failure of Nader's campaign on both points means that any future third party efforts will get even less support in the future. Unless third party advocates can analyze why it failed and what could have been done better and present a plan for a successful campaign, no will even take a third party campaign seriously in the future. They will just say, "look at Nader's failure - great progressive leader running against a pathetic loser like Gore and he could only get 2.5%. If that's all we can get, why bother?"
And blaming everyone other than the folks running the Nader campaign is not going to cut it. At least Micah Sifry had some good analysis of some things that might have been done differently - a better use of matching funds through a later convention, more paid media in the last week or so, possibly avoiding swing states. His analysis may be wrong but at least he is trying.
Activism without ruthless self-criticism is doomed to failure.
-- Nathan Newman