On Friday, April 2, 2004, at 02:34 PM, she wrote:
> I have yet to hear you explain why voters in New York, Texas, and
> other one-party states need to vote for John Kerry, nor do I think
> that you have any explanation.
On March 15, she wrote that the important Nader vote was going to be in the "battleground states," and the key constituency would be Arab- and Muslim-Americans:
> Lastly, Nader and the Green Party may fare best in the battleground
> states (= the "purple states" in the Gallup parlance, where the margin
> of victory for either candidate in 2000 was five percentage points or
> less):
>
> "In the red states, Bush leads among likely voters by six points, 51%
> to 45%, but he trails badly in the purple states (52% for Kerry, 39%
> Bush, 4% Nader) and in the blue states (55% Kerry, 43% Bush, 1%
> Nader)" (Moore, <http://www.gallup.com/content/default.asp?ci=10942>).
>
> The segments of the US voting-age population who are the most likely
> to vote for Nader are Arab and/or Muslim Americans, whose votes are
> concentrated in the battleground states but for whom John Kerry and
> the Democratic Party cannot make any policy concessions: "Nader Courts
> Latino, Black Vote + Muslim Political Muscle,"
> <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040315/
> 005683.html>; and "Nader among Arab, Black, & Latino Voters,"
> <http://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu/msg86819.html>.
A couple of weeks ago, at least, it seems that she expected (and I suppose wanted) Nader to be a serious threat to Kerry's chances, and was arguing that it would be the Arab- and Muslim-Americans who would be the backbone of that threat. She has also stated, I believe, that she was confident that Kerry would win. Now she is saying, if I understand correctly, that voters in safe-for-Kerry states ("blue states") should vote for Nader, but she would understand if voters in the battleground ("purple") states went for the big K.
Of course, if the point of Nader's campaign is to seriously threaten Kerry's chances, as she seems to hold, then voting for him only in the blue states would be a toothless threat. Therefore, it seems that she has taken about three positions just in the last couple of weeks. The problem with her asking us Nader opponents to answer her arguments is that we don't know which ones we are supposed to answer. If it's her most recent position (vote only for Nader in the Kerry-safe states), then I suppose we don't have a disagreement with her. If it's the one that says that Bush should be put back in office by Arab- and Muslim-American voters in a handful of states, I would say that I would be awfully sorry if that happened, because it is they, among other people of color, who will probably suffer more than white folks like me in a second Bush administration.
> Or maybe you are expecting others to build an organization while you
> are carping about those like Paul Felton who are trying to do so.
I don't want to be in the position of answering for Doug, so I'll assume that she would also consider me a "free rider." I find this a rather strange charge; apparently she is arguing somewhat as follows.
1. If the GP were to become a strong organization, this would bring great benefits for all leftists. 2. Anyone who benefits from a state of affairs, but has not helped to bring it about, is selfish. 3. Therefore, leftists who do not help to make the GP a strong organization are being selfish.
One problem with this argument, for some of us, at least, is that we are not so sure that the GP is all that beneficial to leftists, so we have our doubts about Premise 1. Another one is that Premise 2, while correct in some cases, is not universally true.
We could approach this point by unpacking the "rider" metaphor. What it suggests is a situation in which someone hops on a bus through the back door, without paying; this person obviously benefits unfairly compared with the passengers who pay their fare. But it seems to me that the political situation could be much more accurately described this way: the ultimate goal is a more humane, just, etc., society, and various progressive activists have different ideas of how to get there. Some take busses, as it were, some bikes, some taxis, some shoe-leather. If the only way to get to the destination were by taking buses, sure, we'd all need to pay the fare.
Also, even if the argument above were a good one, linking it up with the Nader campaign requires some further connections. For example, one would need to show that this campaign will also have great benefits for the U.S. Left, either because it is an important step in making the GP a strong organization (thus linking this argument with Premise 1 of the argument above), or because it is in itself a great good for the U.S. Left, such that leftists who don't support Nader will share in that great good unfairly.
Given what happened after the 2000 election (as Doug has argued in more than one post), it is at least doubtful that Nader is really interested in making the GP a strong organization. Be that as it may, we don't think his campaign is in itself a great good for the U.S. left because of:
A. The risk of a Bush victory B. His lone-wolf style (what has he done for the Left except found some useful consumers-rights organizations in years past?) C. His ideology (all problems with U.S. society are traced to "big corporations")
among other reasons.
The argument about A comes down to whether one thinks that Bush is a lot worse than Kerry would be, or that Bush is really not that bad compared with Kerry. We've been over and over that ground, and I think we just have to agree to disagree at this point. On B, we also seem to have a difference of opinion -- Nader fans think he is a great asset for social change, while his detractors don't think so. And on C, some of us think he would be a much greater asset if he had a somewhat more adequate analysis of the system. Looking at his web site, I see that even a lot of the planks that are in themselves reasonably good proposals don't have very persuasive arguments appended to them. Perhaps whoever wrote them (I don't suppose Ralph himself wrote all of them) would defend them as a necessary dumbing-down for general public consumption, but I'd feel better about them if they were a touch more sophisticated, perhaps.
All of this is merely scratching the surface of the Nader-Kerry controversy. These political arguments are like Mandelbrot sets -- the deeper you get into them, the more questions you uncover which are just as complex as the one you started out. Which is why people end up writing books, not e-mail posts, about them. (Maybe I will, too, if I ever get the spare time.)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax