[lbo-talk] Nader and his detractors

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Sat Oct 9 14:32:54 PDT 2004


Doug:

replying to my comment


>If the Greens are amateurish, does that arise from a political bias,
>or just not getting their act together?

says

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

Well, of course, I'm not, I am trying to get to the political difference, as opposed to the 'you're spoiling Kerry's chances' differences.

I did say


>It would be interesting to see if anyone had any political
>criticisms of Nader, as opposed to arithmetic ones.

And Doug replied

"I've written up some":

But on following the url I get this:

"Whether you're inspired by a real enthusiasm for Nader, or merely want to lodge a defensible, effective protest vote, pulling the lever for Ralph where you can, or writing in his name where you can't, is probably the best you can do in 1996."

Whereas in 2004, the retrospective judgement on Nader is

"It was individualist adventurism and little else."

Doug says

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

So why vote for him on the 2nd, I ask? Of Clinton, you wrote

"how many people will he have to impoverish, stigmatize, surveil, and jail before it's just too much, before the "lesser" evil becomes indistinguishable from the greater?"

Is Kerry to the left of Clinton?

Forgive me if I miss the nuances of the US political debate. But this does sound very like the British left's reasons for lining up behind Tony Blair.



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