[lbo-talk] Nader and his detractors

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Oct 9 11:35:56 PDT 2004


James Heartfield wrote:


>Doug:
>
>"What do you mean by "national politics"? The presidency? That seems
>hyperambitious for a party that can barely tie its shoes, and has
>shown no sign of having grown from a series of presidential runs."
>
>My difficulty with the anti-Nader criticisms is that they are all
>couched in technical rather than political terms.
>
>If the Greens are amateurish, does that arise from a political bias,
>or just not getting their act together?

They're inseparable. Their disorganization and amateurism come from their political philosophy, which is all about decentralization and spontaneity. Organization is boring, man.

James, you'd hate their platform <http://www.gp.org/platform.html>. I'm surprised to see you defending it.


>But when you invoke claims like 'not credible' what you are doing is
>subordinating your thinking to what is credible within the given
>political arrangments.

At the present moment, yes. After a serious period of organizing municipal, state, and congressional campaigns, things could be very different. After Nader's high-profile runs of 1996 and 2000, there's almost no organizational or ideological residue. It was individualist adventurism and little else.


>You think that you are making a tactical move to 'get rid of Bush'.
>
>But even if you succeed you have not 'got rid of Bush' but saddled
>yourself with Kerry.

You're not telling me anything I don't know. If Kerry won, he'd become the enemy on Nov 3.


>The list was almost entirely sympathetic to Nader (except me and
>Nathan), Doug was sceptical, but supportive.
>
>It would be interesting to see if anyone had any political
>criticisms of Nader, as opposed to arithmetic ones.

I've written up some: <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Nader.html>.

Doug



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