[lbo-talk] What Makes Ralph Nader Tick?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Oct 31 13:47:26 PST 2004


Lance Murdoch wrote:


>On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 12:35:42 -0500, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> If Ralph
>> polls under 0.5%, as the almost-final ABC tracking poll suggests,
>> what will this iteration of the quadrennial ritual have accomplished,
>> other than make the left look marginal and childish?
>
>Is the Democratic Party left wing? The organized left is marginal.

No the Democratic Party is not left wing. I think I've typed this phrase a thousand times, but one more time won't hurt: it's a party of capital that sometimes has to pretend it's not.

But I don't get why righteous leftists are setting up the Nader vote as some kind of census of "us," when it is almost certain to be very tiny. The old trick of the advance man was to reserve a room smaller than the expected crowd, so your candidate looks like an overflowing success. Advance persons of the left are now reserving rooms larger than the likely crowd - the MWM, the election - to make us look even more marginal than we are.

Doug



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