One of the reasons I found the article in The Village Voice interesting was not that it chronicled Ralph the Revenger, but that it showed that the Nader campaign realized that the election of Bush would be worse for working-class, poor people and Blacks and did not care
I have always believed that part of the Nader vote could be explained two ways:
1) The Angry Vote: Conservative Angries has Bush to vote for. Progressive Angries had Nader. The only difference was that Bush might actually win.
2) A backlash against Clinton for his rep as the "first Black President." Again for Republicans it was easy; most anyone they would nominate would pursue racist policies. But for progressives (many of whom are as attached to skin privilege as their Republican counterparts), the choice of whom to support was trickier.
Enter Nader.
Here was a man who dismissed racial politics as divisive and tiptoed around racial issues in his campaign:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/082100-106.htm
http://www.thegully.com/essays/america/001002nader.html
Nader was the perfect front. The Republicans had Bush and now progressives had their own Angry & anti-Clinton/Gore choice. The stroke of genius/lunancy was to declare that was no difference between Bush and Gore. This sweeping statement was trotted out every time objections were made. This mantra was repeated so often that some even came to believe it, thereby absolving themselves from responsibility for helping to elect Nader.
But in fact the "no difference" theory was just a lot of bunk. Each man would have appointed very different people to fill cabinet positions both high and low-level), judgeships, et cetera. Take for example the current flap over Section Housing. Bush appointees are reading the budget in such a way as to shortchange houisng authorities around the country:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Housing-Vouchers.html
Would Gore appointees have come to the same conclusion/reading? I think not. But such a reading does help destabilize poor and Black communities even more, allowing white, monied interests to infiltrate Black and Latino communities and grab up housing stock previously deemed unworthy. But heck, space is tight (at least here in NYC) and Harlem and Red Hook are now looking pretty good to white folks (if they could only remove the current Black and Latino population and bring in a few more Starbuck's).
So there defintiely was a difference between Gore and Bush. To say otherwise is disingenuous at best, downright dishonest at worst.
And unfortunately, four years later we are in the same place. Maybe more than a vision, the left needs a collective trip to the opthamologist so that it can have its eyes checked.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister