* On the one hand: "One thing is clear: Nader's unlikely charisma – think Jimmy Stewart as Ichabod Crane – has transformed ... [a] chaotic coalition of progressives into the most powerful alternative to the two-party system. As a result, the Democrats are sucking up to the left for the first time in perhaps 30 years. Not that Gore is humming the Internationale, but his speeches are peppered with rhetoric the Republicans call 'class warfare.' And it's working. In the industrial Midwest, his newfound solidarity has blown away the Prince Albert image. If Nader accomplishes nothing else, he will have pushed Gore to act like the people's alpha male. In a more fundamental sense, Nader has shattered the myth that liberalism can only survive by co-opting the right. Like Joe Hill in the old union anthem, he's proven that progressive politics never died. And he's shown the centrist Democratic leadership that the left can bite."
* On the other: "... under [Nader's] ... Green veneer lurks the same old white man's populism. Ellen Willis, whose new book, Don't Think, Smile!, is a critique of social conservatism on the left, calls this blue-collar fixation 'an identity politics of class. It is its own cultural nationalism, and it's a substitute for real class politics, because if you're really interested in doing away with the class system, then you have to realize that it's cultural as well as economic.' Sooner or later, the contradictions in Nader's strategy are bound to show. Some shop steward will notice that he wants to abandon the combustion engine and raise the wages of auto workers. Some Green will wonder about marching behind a leader who wants to clean up the culture. And someone will draw the obvious conclusion from the profile of Nader's supporters in the latest Gallup Poll. They're the most highly educated Americans, not the hard hats. Then there's the Nader gender gap. Men are twice as likely as women to back him – a margin that pretty much matches Bush's."
Full text is at http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0037/goldstein.shtml
Carl
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