Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 15:26:50 +0000 From: Katha Pollitt <kpollitt at thenation.com> To: M-Fem at csf.colorado.edu
I might vote for Nader after all, or not vote. I guess I don't get exactly what a vote for nader is supposed to accomplish. Some people I've talked to think it will move the Dems left -- a view nader himself seems to endorse when he says that "four years in the desert might be good for the dems" (not exact quote, but gist). Some people think it will build a left third party, put the Greens on the map.
In my more skeptic mode, I doubt it will do either. jesse jackson's campaign didn't move the dems left, why should nader? Let's say Nader gets five-six percent of vote--but Bush gets 52%. If you were the Dems, where would you look for votes -- to the tiny left, or the huge center-right? I know Doug thinks electoral politics is played on the margins, so the Dems would try to recoup the Nader voters -- but how? If the Dems adopt naderite proposals, they'll lose votes on the other end. Let's say for instance they come out for taxing SUVs -- we'd all love that, but millions of SUV owners would flee the party. Let's say they come out for less imprisoning -- that would put "being soft on crime" back on top as a campaign issue--it worked agasinst Dukakis, why not again? I totally oppose welfare reform, but as an election issue, it worked. Clinton understood this -- playing to the center-right may be morally evil, but he won the Presidency and dukakis, mondale, mcgovern lost.
As for the second alternative, vote for nader to build the Greens -- I don't see how the greens will ever be a significant political force, capable of winning elections above the city-council level. Only 11 percent of people in this country describe themselves as "liberals" (and that's what the Greens are -- not socialists). In a winner-take-all electoral system like ours, third parties are always marginal.
so then there is the question: nader gets his five percent or whatever, the Greens are on the map -- and then what? People spend the next forty years struggling to elect maybe one or two congresspeople. Remember, the communists, with a whole lot more moxie and discipline than the greens elected exactly one person to congress, vito marcantonio -- and keeping him in office was one of the main things the CP did! Bernie Sanders is a socialist -- so what.
I just think there are some things you can get from electoral politics, and some you can't. rolling back capitalism is not something voting is going to get you.
I guess it bothers me too that people would vote for nader as a protest against "corporate capitalism" -- as if there was, or could be, another kind in the twenty-first century!what, are we supposed to go back to mom and pop stores? Not buy japanese cars?
To me, Nader has too many nostalgic positions -- of which "populism" is definitely one.
but of course gore is horrible.
katha