[lbo-talk] Nader, again

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Thu Jul 10 19:14:12 PDT 2003


"By early 2000, opinion surveys were reporting record satisfaction with the performance of the administration. Against this background, the Democratic and Republican candidates for the White House waged their campaigns in the autumn. In the event, Gore won a narrow popular majority-a margin of less than 0.51 per cent, on a turnout of 50.7 per cent of the electorate. About a quarter of American adults voted for him. It is possible that he would have won a majority of the Electoral College as well, had a manual recount of all counties in Florida occurred. He was not, however, confident enough of the outcome of such a recount to demand one, preferring instead to mine only his own strongholds for extra votes, a decision that may have cost him the Presidency. The courts at all levels followed partisan preferences without compunction, but a request for a full manual recount after the second mechanical recount on November 8 could not have been blocked. What is clear, however, is that Nader's substantial Green vote in Florida-a hundred times the margin of difference between Democratic and Republican tallies-denied Gore the Presidency. Rarely has a third party in a first-past-the-post system been so decisive in settling the result of a national election..."

"What, then, explains the failure of the Democratic succession? The answer is obvious enough. Clinton, though his poll ratings were high at the end of his term (when voters knew they would see the back of him), was an albatross in a way that Reagan was not [in 1988]. Partly this was because, unlike Reagan, it was plain that Clinton had no particular convictions, beyond the desire to stay in office-he attracted no broad or dedicated following. More acutely, however, the scandals that surrounded his Presidency made it impossible to convert into any kind of a rallying-point. He was plainly guilty of the charges-molestation in Arkansas, perjury and obstruction of justice in Washington-against him, which were fully impeachable: the Constitution calling for the removal of a President culpable even of 'misdemeanours' short of such breaches of the law, which in other fields of office would have swiftly led to resignation or dismissal. Widespread resistance to this logic, strong enough to block it, comprised a number of elements. Partisan loyalties were affronted among Democrats and the academic following attached to the Party. Cultural susceptibilities were aroused by fears of Grundyism. Popular aversion to impeachment, however, rested on a much more powerful bedrock of sentiment-attachment to the quasi-monarchical status of the Presidential office itself, as embodiment of national identity in the world at large, a late-twentieth-century fixation foreign to the Founders. But if popular opinion did not want impeachment, instinctively seeking to protect the Presidency, for the same reasons it did not relish Clinton's conduct, an indignity to the office not easily forgotten..."

--from Perry Anderson, "Us Elections: Testing Formula Two," New Left Review 8, March-April 2001



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