>> >Having said that, there are reasonable arguments to be made against
>> >Nader's candidacy, and I have made some of them myself, to Nader's
>> >face no less. (I will share these with the list, if anyone's
>> >interested.)
>>
>>Let's hear 'em
>
>OK I will, but before I do so, I want to see a good faith effort to
>go through the intellectual exercise I mentioned-one which attempts
>to attribute reasonable, though possibly incorrect, motivations to
>Nader.
He's a smart and thoughtful guy, I don't dispute that, and no less sane than anyone else running for high office.
> The attempts so far have been half-hearted, at best. It is
>possible to have an honest disagreement, believe it or not.
>
>As mentioned, ad hominems-describing Nader as the Harold Stassen of the left,
Frequent candidacies that get only a handful of votes run the risk of drawing attention to the weakness of your cause, don't they?
> crocodile tears, "it's such a shame to see Ralph embarrass himself
>by running" don't constitute good faith arguments against Nader's
>positions. By the way, if attempting to promote marginal positions
>is embarrassing, those participating in a Marxist newsgroup should
>be in a state of perpetual mortification.
Though many of us are Marxists, or something like it, many of us aren't, and none of us are pretending to speak to anyone beyond ourselves.
>>One of the main reasons I voted for him in '96 and again in
>>'00 was that, despite his flaws, it looked like an opportunity to
>>develop a new political party in a country that desperately needs one
>>or two. But he didn't contribute anything to that effort, and now
>>he's rejected even the pretext. The hell with him then.
>
>I'm glad to see that, your record of dismissive and occasionally
>contemptuous comments about the Greens notwithstanding, you are
>concerned about "party building" after all.
I've said this a bunch of times, so it's not really news. I was willing to cut the Greens some slack for years. but Nader went MIA, and the Greens themselves (and how many parties are there now? two? or more?) have never, as an institution, managed to get beyond early adolescence. Underscore "as an institution" - there are many fine people working within the Greens (including your fine self). But it's never cohered as a party - and I'm sure many Greens like it that way, given their taste for decentralization and spontaneity.
> I'll assume that your endorsement of Jonathan Farley, the likely
>Green nominee for president is forthcoming.
Never. I thought for a while there was some potential in the hitching-your-wagon-to-a-star strategy of running Nader for president, but that hasn't worked out. Running for president isn't the way to build a party - it has to start at a much lower level than that.
>Incidentally, my guess is that if Nader does run and does manage to
>qualify for ballot status in a reasonable number of states, he may
>do considerably better than many are expecting.
I don't believe that. I know many people who voted for Nader in '00 - including two members of my own household - who wouldn't do it today, and I think there are many like us. The desire to evict Bush is uppermost in almost every left-of-center American mind today, including many who've surprised me. I've come across very few people who'd vote for Ralph in November, much less any nonentity like Jonathan Farley, whoever he is.
>The reason is that the barrage of anti-Nader propaganda which
>emerged from the establishment left in 2000 probably was successful.
>A significant fraction of Nader's votes came from those who had no
>connection with the establishment left and that's where they'll come
>from again-i.e. not from college campuses, readers of the Nation and
>Zmag, but from former Peroistas at Elks Clubs, as Tarek Milleron
>noted: (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0112-12.htm ). Lots of
>these sorts of people volunteered in our office in 2000, so I know
>they're out there; and remember that Nader's best showing in 2000
>came in Alaska.
Now that's a real future - in a messy, complex society, three quarters of whose population lives in metro areas, the future can be discerned in Alaska?
>Add to that a core of disgruntled Deaniacs who now know how the
>Democratic party works and (not surprisingly) want no part of it,
>Nader might be in a position to surprise a lot of people. Of
>course, on the off chance he gets in to the debates, all bets are
>off. (Would you oppose his participation?)
No.
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