----- Original Message ----- From: "Nathan Newman" <nathanne at nathannewman.org> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 4:27 PM Subject: Re: Nader Goes Buchananite (Re: [lbo-talk] Vote Nader/Camejo 2004!
----- Original Message ----- From: "R" <rhisiart at charter.net> \Explaining "Nader-Hating", as you call it, is pretty simple. He's opposing \our candidate, just as George Bush is. He's an opponent, so we oppose him.
-nathan, please. even you know better than that. your party began its -passion of nader bashing in 2000 when it scapegoated him for its own -mistakes in cowardly throwing the 2000 presidential election. transparent -attempts like yours to minimize your party's irrational foibles simply don't -wash.
|Again, what's irrational?
what didn't you understand about the above paragraph?
|Nader and the Greens were opposing Gore. Gore
|supporters bashed Nader, just as they bashed Bush. If Nader, as Carroll
|says, was dedicated to destroying the Democratic Party, why shouldn't those
|supporting a different strategy within the Democratic Party see him as an
|opponent?
they didn't see him as just an opponent. they saw him as a pariah, and the cause of all their own failings. scapegoat, nathan. there's a difference.
|If you are attacking the Dems, you just sound sort of whiny when you
|complain about a pushback by those same Dems.
is this this the singular or plural "you"? i guess you mean me. by your biases, everyone who voices any criticism of the democratic party is a complainer, whiney, sobbey, or any other form of vapid perjoritive you can come up with. no matter what they say, you go into ad hominem mode. give it a rest.
\The weird thing about third party folks is that they run against the \Democratic Party, and then whine and sob that Democrats are being mean to \them.
-isn't "whine and sob" rather condescending? or are you looking for an -emotional response that mirrors your own frustration with events you don't
-understand?
|No-- I want you to suck it up and have the courage of your convictions.
sure. labeling someone as whining and sobbing is always a perfect way to get them to suck it up and have the courage of their convictions. wow, how reasonable.
your premise is even more condescending than your original statement: that these people you want to change? don't already have the courage of their convictions.
|If
|you are trying to destroy the Democrats, expect those who still support
|working within the Democrats to try to destroy your strategy. That's
|politics. I used to think that lefty Dems could work with lefty third
|party types in an inside-outside strategy, but the third party folks have
|generally demonstrated that this is impossible. Which was the conclusion
|from the 2000 election by a lot of left Dems who were once more favorable
|towards third party strategies.
>let me make it as simple for you as i can: the democrats treat nader
>exactly the same way the far right treats clinton, passionately and
>irrationally; obsessively and viciously. this is called prejudice,
nathan,
>in case you're not familiar with the phenomenon.
|No they don't, or at least I don't.
Yes, they do. Is this about you? No. it's about your party. what's interesting about you, since you brought you up, is that you can't see the foibles of your own party.
|I continually have said nice things
|about Nader as a political leader in many areas (check my blog and search
|for Nader if you want examples), but I think his strategy is misguided and
|he's crawled into bed with anti-immigrant thugs in his most recent
|campaign.
for the purposes of argument, i'll conceed this point. of more concern to me is the fact that kerry backs the invasion of iraq.
|There's nothing irrational in seeing Nader as a threat. Take it as a
|compliment. Nader is effective enough to possibly cost Kerry the election.
i don't recall your writing that nader is a "threat" in your previous posting. i recently posted a copy of a poll to the LBO list indicating that nader was drawing votes from both the democrats and republicans, almost equally. no one on the list commented on this posting, so i assume no one found fault with the news -- maybe.
since he's recently "crawled into bed ....," as you state, and his cozying the pat buchanan, this is potentially bad news for shrub. let's be clear. nader is a wild card, and evidently chooses to be for reasons unknown to me, and reasons i'm sure you can't possibly grasp. this should scare the you-know-what out of both parties if, indeed, your paranoid statement about nader being a "threat" has any meaning.
|I at least can respect third party types who revel in their power to cost
|Democrats elections. Those who claim that Nader is irrelevant, then say he
|should despite this be taken seriously, are just the ones sounding
|irrational to me.
going by the way you incessantly characterize them, i doubt you respect anyone who criticises the democrats, be they third party or anyone else. let's not end on a self-serving, self-righteous note.
the only time i've ever read (or heard) anyone state nader is irrelevant, then say he should be taken seriously, is in the sentence you've written above.
what has ended, nathan, nader or no nader, is the democrat party's being able to glibly and arrogantly take the left/liberal vote for granted. it no longer represents this block; a fact becoming more and more apparent to more and more people over the years. nader is a symptom of this fact, not the cause. the sooner democrats, including you who speak with such niceness on his blog, understand this, the sooner your party will mean something. assuming, of course, your party remedies the problem rather than continuing its present arrogant, ignorant, destructive course of conduct to oblivion.
i'm not saying this because i want you to "suck it up." and i'm still unimpressed with your alleged "convictions." i'm just pointing out a fact. what you do with it is your business.
R
|-- Nathan
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