[lbo-talk] Re: Ralph Nader, Suicide Bomber

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Wed May 5 13:47:38 PDT 2004


Today's NYTimes had an op-ed column by a Yale professor that puts a decisive challenge to both Nader and the ABB anti-Naderites. The idea is seemingly very simple: since the return of Ubu and his Bushits is generally agreed to be the worst possible outcome, let the two leading anti-Bushit candidates continue to run and to argue for their programs *while placing the same names on the ballot as presidential electors*.

Could this be done? There may be legal obstacles in some states, but these could be removed by legislative measures that Republicons could block only at decisive political cost. The problem is political: to get agreement between the Nader and Dumbocrat campaigns.

Whatever marginal influence leftists have should be exerted wholeheartedly to this end. Nader should be told that rejection of such an anti-Bushit alliance of convenience would mark him as indeed a revenge-motivated spoiler and cost him any hope of leftist support. And Kerry should be told, in no less certain tones, that rejection of united elector nominations would definitively mark him as no different from Ubu since he would have chosen the return of Ubu and his Bushits as preferable to opening any electoral space to the left of the Republicon/Dumbocrat duopoly.

Would this amount to offering support to the Dumbocratic faction of the imperialists? Only in the sense that the famous rope supports the famous hanged man--once the debate between Nader and Kerry were focused on issues like military withdrawal from Iraq, cutting war spending in favor of all sorts of social and environmental initiatives, universal single-payer health care, repeal of Taft-Hartley, etc., with no room allowed for ABB "spoiler" demagogy, the Nader vote would undoubtedly soar--perhaps even enough to win a majority of the anti-Bushit vote. And so Nader should be called on to suggest one condition for agreeing to the anti-Bushit united front: the electors nominated could all be Dumbocrats if Kerry insists, but they should be pledged to vote for whichever candidate wins the majority of the anti-Bushit majority in the *national* vote.

At this point, such a proposal seems to me to merit general support from professed leftists (yes, I know that getting leftists to agree on any strategy is somewhat harder than herding cats). What Nader's response would be I don't know, but I believe Kerry's rejection to be all but certain. So be it.

Shane Mage

"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.

When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)



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