Rank-and-file Democrats on the left should think on their own and do what is really in their interest, politically, strategically, and tactically.
When campaigning for Kerry/Edwards, for instance, it would be much more efficient for rank-and-file Democrats to make sure that all Black voters are registered and actually vote, rather than wasting much time on Nader/Camejo supporters. Let's say a Kerry/Edwards supporter has time to talk to ten potential voters per day between now and the election day. Which ten voters should they prioritize? If the ten voters they talk to are Nader/Camejo supporters, the maximum votes that they can possibly get, after long passionate discussions, would be about four and most likely fewer. If the ten voters they talk to are Black voters, they can probably count on getting seven to nine of them to agree with them without even trying to convince them, so they can simply focus on the most important task of turning them out to vote (e.g., offering them a ride).
After the election day, if John Kerry wins, rank-and-file Democrats should demonstrate on November 3 calling on Kerry to bring the troops home, join the Inauguration Protest on January 20, 2005, and take other actions against the war, the Patriot Act, etc. They should be planning them already.
After the election day, if George W. Bush gets elected in a really close election -- with the margin coming down to 537 votes or so in a battleground state like in 2000, smaller than the number of votes that Nader/Camejo receives -- is it in the interests of rank-and-file Democrats to waste time blaming Nader/Camejo? No. They should be seizing upon any actual and potential suspicions of frauds, irregularities, etc. and organizing protests immediately to challenge the legitimacy of Bush's "election."
After the election day, if George W. Bush gets elected by fairly big margins in battleground states, larger than numbers of votes that Nader/Camejo receives, rank-and-file Democrats should really think hard about the consequences of AnybodyButBush operations, which have allowed Kerry/Edwards to run to the right of Bush on a number of issues, against the interests of rank-and-file Democrats.
In NO conceivable electoral outcome does it do any practical good to rank-and-file Democrats to attack Nader/Camejo.
In contrast, in ALL conceivable electoral outcomes, it's in the interests of the Democratic Party elite to blame only Nader/Camejo, regardless of facts and logic.
>The Nader/Camejo campaign seems to be yet another example of trying
>to have the mountain come to Mohammed. Both men are prominent
>figures and outstanding speakers whose strong views, IMO, would have
>resonated powerfully inside the Democratic party this year from the
>primaries through the campaign, especially with the Dean and
>Kucinich supporters, and way beyond that. I think they could have
>laid the foundations for the strongest organized left in the party
>since Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and probably back to the New
>Deal. Instead, all their perversely independent foray seems to have
>earned for them is isolation from, and the emnity of, the people
>they most need to reach.
In elections for the highest offices, it costs a left-wing candidate more to run in the Democratic caucuses and primaries than to run as a Green or independent candidate in the general election (and I've explained it in detail before: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040315/005922.html>).
In any case, the Democratic Party caucuses and primaries this year were an extraordinarily crowded field, to which it would have been absurd to add one more contender on the left. There were no fewer than FOUR Democratic candidates (Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Carol Moseley Braun, and Howard Dean) who professed to be against the invasion of Iraq (though Howard Dean was as bent on winning the occupation as John Kerry is). Rank-and-file Democrats on the left should have called a national conference before the beginning of the caucuses and primaries and settled on one peace candidate -- then, the peace bloc of rank-and-file Democrats would have at least gotten a better result than they actually did. Why didn't they do that?
On a more political note, unless a left-wing candidate wins the nomination outright (which is as difficult and expensive a task as winning the general election outright), the candidate in question gets heavily pressured to eventually endorse the right-wing nominee favored by the ruling class, without making too much fuss in public lest any commotion gives an appearance of party disunity. That's what Kucinich, Sharpton, Braun, and Dean did. All of them did so unconditionally, without getting anything (commitments to withdraw US troops from Iraq, establish universal health care, nominate Supreme Court justices who pledge to oppose any further restriction of women's right to abortion, etc.) in return from Kerry and the Democratic Party. The function that the four candidates have played in this election cycle (and that others like them also play in day-to-day operations of the party) is to provide multiple safety valves, getting anti-war Democrats to let off steam gently, without jeopardizing the interests of the party elite.
>It makes it easier rather than harder for Kerry and the DLC
>leadership to distance themselves from the party ranks on Iraq and
>other issues. It moves Nader and Camejo's goal of replacing the
>Democratic party with a stronger voice on the left farther away
>rather than closer.
The more distant the Democratic Party elite are from rank-and-file Democrats, the more reasons rank-and-file Democrats have for building an alternative -- provided they actually consult their own interests. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>