I hope you don't think I'm one of the "defensive" (much less "offensive") ones. I was a Nader voter, not a Nader supporter. In other words, since I live in a "safe" state (CA), I could cast a vote to signify my disgust with the Dems, and at the same time not castigate anyone who chose to vote for Gore. Purely a private and essentially meaningless existential choice. "Meaningless" because the DLC, as feared, interprets Nader's tiny clump of votes as no significant threat. In that sense, I might have been better off voting for someone closer to my ideological orientation (although that begs the question of who), but didn't do so b/c Nader was the official "protest" candidate. And you're right, purely from the point of view of maximizing his totals so as to constitute a heavier check on the Dems (not to mention getting the 5 percent for the Greens), Nader could have probably run a better campaign. But the fact that he didn't doesn't upset me, either, since I don't really believe in the whole "pressure the Dems to be more progressive" approach. I'm a social movements guy, not an electoral politics guy (i.e. in terms of strategy, not neccesarily in terms of intellectual interest). Or at least not an electoral politics guy until I find some kind of red-green party w/potential for mass membership (i.e. not the Greens).
Anyway, the Dems aren't that much less progressive than they might otherwise be, given the global political-economic context. It's no coincidence that labor and social dem parties the world over have all become "Third Wayers." And I don't think Gore did as badly as many here on that list seem to think he did. The Dems scare tactics certainly worked to bring out the core constituency in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and -- whatever the eventual outcome -- Florida. He's going to win the popular vote. If the electoral college was weighted according to population (i.e. didn't include Senators in addition to Representatives) he would've won the electoral college without Florida or Oregon. There was no Perot to peel off Republican voters. He had no chance in the Rocky Mountain states, the Great Plains states, and the South -- right-wing populist cultural conservatism, augmented by Gore's undeserved reputation as an environmentalist, gave him no chance in these states, whatever the condition of the economy. He actually pulled off a delicate balancing act pretty well. None of which is to say that I don't find the strident exasperation of Dem elected officials, party hacks, middle-class feminists, the NAACP, etc., truly pathetic.
On the one hand, I'm hoping that Gore will win b/c over the last 8 years the various and sundry tendencies on the left have started to master all the political weak points of the corporate liberal ideology of which Gore is emblematic, and who wants 8 years of hard intellectual and organizing work to go down the drain ? Who wants to fend off Lynne Cheney's attacks on "political correctness" from a liberal point of view when we should be attacking "multiculturalism" from a left point of view ? Who wants to dissect and oppose Kissingerian imperialism when we should be dissecting and opposing "human rights" interventionism ? From my own point of view, I'd rather be diagnosing and critiquing Gore's managerialist approach to "sustainable capitalism" than defending the ANWR from petroleum exploration and drilling. I think you get my drift.
On the other hand, with four more years of Dems in national office, the Sagebrush Rebellion Part II, militias, Christian Identity, etc. in the U.S.' outback will only intensify -- per the post that Pugliese just sent out. It'd be nice to have Bush in office if only these hard-pressed rural folks come to recognize that fed agencies specifically under Clinton-Gore (agents of globalism, the UN, Jewish bankers, etc.) are not the problem, but something more structural and less conspiratorial is. But fat chance of that, anyway.
Sorry to all LBO'ers for the length of this post.
John Gulick
Nathan Newman wrote:
>Every candidate has to make decisions about which voters to mobilize and if
>mobilizing one group of supporters will alienate other potential voters.
>All I am arguing is that I think Nader could have won more than 3% of the
>vote, but he made a strategic mistake. If he had conceded the swing states
>(yes), he could have mobilized more in the safe states. Maybe that's an
>inaccurate assessment and 3% was all Nader could have managed in this
>election. But I would note that Nader barely campaigned in the South or
>other areas where there was no chance of endangering Gore, so he seemed to
>forego mobilizing a lot of potential voters.
>
>That's a strategic decision, but my point was that just as I agree that Gore
>made strategically bad decisions that cost him a lot of votes, so too did
>Nader.
>
>For all people taunt me for being a slavish Gore supporter, I am completely
>willing to note Gore's political shortcomings and his strategic mistakes.
>Most of the Nader supporters seem unable to admit Nader might have
>contributed in any way to his poor showing and to treat any criticism of
>Nader's strategic choices as evidence of neoconservative leanings.
>
>Let me be clear- Nader is one of the great political figures of the last
>forty years and he continues a vital role today. My first political
>experience was in the Naderite PIRGS and in my more recent work against
>Microsoft, I worked closely at time with Nader's people, who with Nader did
>outstanding work. I don't think Nader was running his campaign as an ego
>trip but as a real expression of his political convictions. But I think it
>was a misguided and disasterous strategic decision to campaign as he did, a
>disaster in contributing to Gore's possible defeat and disasterous in
>alienating Nader's allies at a time when non-electoral movements partly led
>by Nader were achieving greater unity on the left.
>
>This is not a personal insult to Nader but a criticism of his strategy. I
>have been equally free with my criticism of Gore. Hell, don't people
>remember that my criticism of Gore was so severe that I bet Seth that Gore
>would lose because he was such a lousy candidate, despite all the advantages
>of peace and prosperity he had to run on.
>
>So I continue to be bemused that my strategic criticisms of Nader evoke such
>strong defensiveness (and occasional offensiveness) by Nader supporters.
>Any movement whose candidate failed at his stated goal, in this case the 5%
>threshhold, should be able to engage in a discussion of the strategic
>shortcomings of the campaign.
>
>-- Nathan Newman