> 1) In *Cuba*? How is that relevant to U.S. politics? And how many
> Americans - even on the left - would be warmly disposed towards
> anything emanating from Cuba? Don't get me wrong - I'm not
> anti-Castro, far from it in fact - but I'll be most Greens are not
> very fond of the Cuban government.
Well, Cuba is pretty relevant to US politics in my book. And when a prominent left political figure travels there and addresses an audience that includes Fidel I think what is said merits some attention. After all, Ralph is running for office and is on the ballot in Florida and New Jersey. :) But I get your point. I used that article mainly because it offered a shortlist of the usual Nader concerns in an off-year appearance. It was meant narrowly, as a riposte to the idea that Nader only shows up to talk about these things during presidential cycles. Full points to Counterpunch for paying attention to Nader during the off season. But a left press should be able to keep us up to date on such things if it is functioning properly.
[An afterthought -- one of the things I like about Nader is that he'd go to Cuba even if it pissed off a lot of Greens.]
> 2) Of course he's not going to get press coverage (though he'd get
> more of it than you or I would). No serious reformer or radical is
> ever going to get much press coverage, except to smear. You gotta
> work around that. But if almost none of the subscribers to this list
> heard about much of what Ralph did between 2001 and 2003, who did?
> Doug
Regarding the corporate press I completely agree that any coverage is going to be hostile. That is why we need an independent left media. This year we don't have much in a way of an independent media that stakes out a position outside the two parties. That is unfortunate.
You ask, what did Ralph do over the last few years besides travel to Cuba? That is certainly a valid issue. Some would say he should have been doing more to build the Greens, others would say his two presidential runs brought tens of thusands into the Green Party and helped introduce countless others to left third party politics and be satisfied with leaving it at that. The glass is either half empty or half full. Whatever the case may be the big debate is over whether Nader is going to "spoil" things for another weak DP aristocrat. And that starting point usually leads to things like silence on issues such as the ballot access war being waged by DP-aligned 527s -- when "will he spoil things" turns into "should we give him the opportunity to spoil things." That is the line that has been taken, for instance, by Toby Moffitt's Ballot Project. It was Moffitt who warned some time back that he was thinking of legally challenging the status of the Reform Party as a national party in order to keep Nader off the ballot (he also suggested he'd be going after Cobb & the Greens if he had the funds). On the level of the everyday such proprietary claims over which party votes belong or don't belong to gets rationalized via the mantra of 'Anybody but Bush.'
By the way, what has John Kerry been doing since the last election? Mostly he was voting for the Bush agenda. And what's he been doing so far this campaign? Closing the gap between himself and George B on issue after issue. I sometimes find that it's easiest to summarize John Kerry's positions by quoting Bush himself. For example much of Kerry's energies of late have been going into convincing the public that Kerry is a "war president" who "makes decisions with war on my mind." Progressives shouldn't want anything to do with a campaign like John Kerry's.
It's just one of my pet peeves but I don't think progressives should be in the business of selling corporate party presidential candidates. There are exceptions that can be made on the local level if there are no alternatives on offer, like supporting Frank Barbaro's campaign against Vito Fossello out here on Staten Island. [For those who don't know Barbaro has taken strong positions against the war in Iraq and in favor of universal healthcare.] But in general I think they should grapple with all the messiness, frustration and difficulties of staking out positions outside the two parties.
Apologies for the wordiness.
joe