10-NOV-2000
Idea of the Week: Ignore Nader
Into the political news vacuum created by breaths held during the unfolding drama events in Florida, here comes Ralph Nader, failed presidential candidate of the Green Party, scolding Al Gore and Democrats for failure to renounce their centrist ways, and implicitly taking credit or blame for putting George W. Bush a state away from the presidency. In fact, Nader is getting nearly as much media attention now as he was when he was actually, if marginally, affecting the election outcome.
Let's be clear about this: Ralph Nader got 2.6 percent of the presidential vote, just over half of his stated goal of 5 percent, the percentage necessary to qualify the Greens for matching funds in 2004. To put the Nader vote in historical perspective, it's a lot less than Ross Perot got in his marginal 1996 campaign; a whole lot less than George C. Wallace got in his neo-segregationist 1968 gig; and about half the percentage Socialist Party candidate Gene Debs got in four straight elections from 1900 to 1916. Since so many parallels are being drawn between this presidential election and the Benjamin Harrison-Grover Cleveland squeaker in 1888, it should be noted that the 2000 Nader percentage was roughly equaled by 1888 Prohibition Party candidate Clinton B. Fisk.
As for the claim that Ralph Nader kept Al Gore from winning the presidency on election night, the facts speak otherwise. The Nader vote in states carried by George W. Bush exceeded the Republican candidate's margin over Al Gore exactly twice: in New Hampshire, and in Florida (Oregon is still up in the air, but Gore has now taken the lead).
As for Florida, sure, Nader got more votes than George W. Bush's 1,800-vote election-night margin. But so, too, did Reform candidate Pat Buchanan (even without his extra help from inadvertent voting in Palm Beach County), and Libertarian candidate Harry Browne, and Natural Law candidate John Hagelin, and even Workers World Party candidate Monica Moorehead. By the logic of the Nader-as- Kingmaker story line, Al Gore would be planning his Administration today if he had snared a big chunk of the Hagelin vote by engaging in a little transcendental meditation on the campaign trail, or seized the Moorehead vote by quoting Karl Marx.
The point is that in very close elections, all sorts of factors can theoretically be cited in retrospect as the crucial difference, from paid media strategy to campaign scheduling to get-out-the-vote efforts, right on down to the weather. Pulling the Nader vote out as the deciding factor makes no sense at all.
It's pretty clear from the sharp downward trajectory of the Green vote between pre-election polls and the election itself, that the Gore- Lieberman ticket did indeed succeed in gaining a large percentage of the Nader vote that was susceptible to mainstream politics or reasoned appeal. Much of the remaining Nader vote, to be perfectly honest, is the kind of fringe vote that no major party can really attract without betraying the interests of much broader segments of the voting population.
Those who say the Democratic Party should tilt a bit to the left in the future to win the Nader vote are not paying much attention to what Ralph Nader really believes and stands for. He favors the virtual abolition of international trade and investment; the virtual dismantling of the U.S. national defense system; a major increase in federal regulation of the private economy; an enormous expansion in the scope of lawsuits in our society; and most recently, decriminalization of drugs. As the Washington Post's Tom Edsall observed on November 4, Nader's view of the American economy as a nightmare of worsening poverty and inequality is "out of date and incorrect," and certainly out of step with how most Americans feel about it.
Some people like Nader because he's strongly for campaign finance reform and protecting the environment. But there are plenty of far more creditable advocates of those causes in the Democratic Party, who do not carry with them the baggage of Nader's extremist views on the economy or his pulp-novel conspiracy theories about shadowy corporate string-pullers.
Worst of all, Ralph Nader contemptuously dismisses anyone who does not share his views as by definition a tool of multinational corporations. In a November 8 National Press Club speech, he said this about the Democratic Party: "The party's been seized by its conservative, reactionary pro-corporate wing, and the leadership of that group [hint: he's talking about the DLC] produced a candidate and a platform that simply did not excite the voters. And I've said on many occasions, Joe Lieberman is the quintessential corporate Democrat -- he is the 'real Al Gore.'"
Anyone who uses Joe Lieberman's name as a term of abuse doesn't have anything constructive to say to Democrats. As for the question of how Democrats can build a majority coalition in the future, it makes a lot more sense to figure out how to peel off some of the 48 percent of the popular vote won by George W. Bush -- including nearly half the vote of political independents -- than to lurch off the left side of the road in a futile pursuit for a share of Nader's 2.6 percent, which would cost Democrats a lot more votes in the Center.
Ralph Nader has received far more attention this year than is normally devoted to fringe candidates of cranky views. It's time to let him return to his fever swamps, and ignore him for a while.
Related Material:
"Where Nader Has It Wrong," by Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, Saturday , November 4, 2000 ; Page A23: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=85&subid=65&contentid=2560
"Nader's Trial Lawyer Populism," by Harry C. Boyte, Front & Center, Progressive Policy Institute, September 8, 2000: http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=115&subsecid=145&contentid=22 31
"Nader and Buchanan -- Out on the Margins," New Dem Daily, September 21, 2000: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=2291&kaid=131&subid=192