"Nader's current run makes no real pretense of party building. Kerry would have to loose for Nader to be blamed as a "spoiler," otherwise Nader's electoral pull has been far to small to be read as anything but irrelevant. Wasn't this part of the reason for the Labor Party's hesitance to run candidates, not advertising the party as an impotent fringe?"
Yes, that's one way to describe the Labor Party's electoral position. The '98 LP national Convention in Pittsburgh decided to run candidates, but only as LP candidates (no fusion) and only if it could be demonstrated that the candidate may likely win, and thus avoid the "impotent fringe," image that some charged the Greens with being. Severe electoral criteria were imposed (organization, money, union and community support, etc.) that required serious party building to meet. Some LP loyalists called it top-down micromanagement. I thought it was rational, and one of several ways to build the party. Some LP chapters set specific, but long-range, electoral goals, and began to think electorally. This required serious strategic planning, a very tough job.
Then in 2000, Ralph Nader and the Greens came along and helped to stultify the LP's electoral thrust by raiding some of the best LP activists. Nader was where the action was. Tony Mazzocchi and Nader were radical buddies for years around corporate, environmental,and other issues, so it's not surprising that Tony was a keynote speaker at the Green national convention in Denver in 2000 when Nader became presidential candidate. Nader accepted the Labor Party's economic justice program, which was compatible with his own, and pushed it into the Green platform. Class suddenly became part of official Green wisdom for the first time, a step forward in Green party building.
But the Nader-Green phenomenon emerged at a delicate point in LP development and contributed to its decline. The electoral question was always internally contentious, but by 1999 the national LP and a few of its community bodies seemed to have come to terms with it. Shaky bridges had been built to some unions and community groups, only to be undermined with unfounded generalizations that left-leaning third parties are automatic spoilers of "progressive" Democrats. The LP wasn't able to put into play some logical alternative strategies, like avoiding campaigns against truly progressive Democrats while retaining its independent working class character. Of course, there's more to the LP decline than this, but that's for another time.
Bob Mast
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