Nathan Newman wrote:
>And the fact remains that many Greens said that
>Nader's victory would move the Dem leadership into a more progressive
public
>stance. Instead, we saw politics move to the right.
-I was wondering how liberals would blame Nader for yesterday's -results, and here it is. You just can't admit that the Dems have no -message and no appeal, can you?
Actually I agreed with the statement that this was their core problem. There are lots of internal debate on the failure of Dem leadership that almost every progressive Democrat agrees on.
But that internal debate is pretty irrelevant to anti-Dem advocates, sothe issue is whether they will continue to argue that the best way to change problems in Dem leadership and national politics by running useless third party candidates. The point is that Nader and the Greens are fellow left activists who pursued a strategy for shifting political debate over the last few years. While left Dems can point to some successes, such as knocking off some anti-trade Dems like California's Menendez in primaries (with the result being nearly 100% Dem votes against fast track most recently) and some obvious failures, the issue is what we've gotten from Green activism? I didn't say they caused last night's debacle, but the claim by Nader that his run would help shift politics to the left has not born fruit.
If the loss of the Presidency had been matched by a counterbalancing shift to the left in Congress by Dem leadership, that might have arguably made the strategy worthwhile. But it hasn't happened. Maybe they could argue that an even larger Green vote is needed to accomplish this, but I just don't see the evidence.
And the blunt fact is that having tipped an election to Bush and created the possibility of what we now have-- an undivided government under the control of the GOP in all three branches for the first time since the 1920s -- the Greens need a heck of a lot of evidence of countervailing gains to justify the strategy.
I supported Green strategies in a moderate manner for a number of years until it became clear to me that they do more harm than good. That may be "blaming" them, but so are my criticisms of the Dem leadership. I'm not calling for defunding Nader's organizations as punishment, just asking Green advocates to explain what we gained from the 2000 electiond debacle.
-- Nathan Newman