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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Monday, May 06, 2002
Ralph Nader responds at length today in Slate to a devastating critique by a poster in the Fray (the Slate comments area) of Nader's claim to be responsible for the current Democraitic majority in the Senate, citing the close victory of Maria Cantwell of Washington. The most interesting thing about Nader's response is that it exists at all. This is, after all, Ralph Nader, one of the most prominent leftist voices in US politics for a generation, answering at length a critic who is not even identified by his full name. The fact that Nader even felt called upon to write it is remarkable. Although Slate itself is obviously run by one of the most powerful corporations on Earth, this exchange indicates the power of independent voices on the Net, and says something also about the rising popularity of blogging. As a self-declared advocate of all things good and decent, one would expect Nader to welcome the Brave New World where an unknown with nothing behind him but a strong argument can force a legendary figure like Nader to an answer. In principle, I suppose he does, but as the victim of this particular Fisking, Nader shows plainly that his affection for real-life empowerment is highly limited. Especially when that real-life empowerment is exposing his own dishonesty and shabby arguments.
Nader: The anonymous RonK's extravagant exaggerations in the Fray deserve a reply only because they are communicated to the unwary. As far as anyone knows, RonK was not in the room with my associates, Sen. Harry Reid and his staffer, unless he has access to some secret technology. So, RonK, my response to your prefatory "unless I am very much mistaken" is that you are. After starting with a gratuitous insult to RonK and his 'unwary' readers (how dare we doubt the truth of Saint Ralph), Nader attacks RonK and again cites Senator Reid as allegedly agreeing with Nader's statements about the Cantwell election. But Nader cites only a private conversation to this effect, not any public statement. RonK is also a pop psychologist. He aspires to reading minds, Jim—a trait that should provide him with a lucrative avocation. He probes the question of "what is the meaning of us?" "Us" I meant to mean "us"—me and my two associates who responded to Sen. Reid's invitation to meet. I was not claiming responsibility for Cantwell's win; I was merely referring to the numbers and the conditional "If the Democrats want to play the selective what-if game, then. ..." RonK then becomes the political statistician slipping on his premises and sprawling to his conclusions. According to exit polls, about one of three of our votes said that they would not have voted at all if the Green Party slate was not on the ballot. Cantwell wins by about 2,300 votes, loses none to the Greens because there is no Green candidate, and the Nader/LaDuke ticket received about 103,000 votes. Go figure. Another ad hominem shot at RonK, folllowed by laying out the statistical basis for his claim that the Green vote was responsible for Cantwell's victory. In laying out that argument Nader simply assumes that Green presidential voters, with no Green senatorial candidate on the ballot, must have voted for Cantwell. Neither here nor elsewhere does he address a single one of RonK's 5 specific arguments showing that the spillover from Nader to Cantwell was probably less, perhaps much less, than these numbers suggest.
Whatever happened to political competition, diverse agendas, a focus on the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands undermining our modest democracy, and voter choice? Does America belong to just two parties? He should read the history of 19th-century third parties, only one of which won the presidency (the Republican Party in 1860) and view their many contributions that alerted and aroused both citizenry and politicians and pressed for needed reforms and changes (abolition of slavery, women's right to vote, the right to form trade unions, the populist-progressive farmers' revolt, and more).
Nader cites historical examples of reforms championed by minor parties, ands suggests, improbably and without the slightest show of evidence, that his critic is unaware of this history. (Nader's Olympian presumption that if RonK or anyone else really does believe in truth, justice, and the American Way without supporting Nader, ignorance must be the explanation for that contradiction is repeated several times.) But look at the changes Nader himself cites. The only one actually accomplished through a third party was the abolition of slavery. In that instance, the Republicans had little choice but to field their own candidates - both major parties were firmly opposed to abolition. The other reforms listed were all accomplished through the established parties; although they were advocated by outsider parties, they weren't carried out until major parties adopted them.
Nader supposedly ran to build a strong progressive movement. Where exactly is the recent evidence that the effective way to do this is a media ham rushing around the country running a third party campaign? Only 3 such campaigns since WW II have drawn really substantial votes. The most successful one in terms of votes was the Perot campaign of 1992, and a decade later the Reform Party is pretty much dead. The only ones that actually won states and electoral votes were the campaigns of George Wallace (1968) and Strom Thurmond (1948), both run to support a cause which has since deservedly landed in the garbage dump of history. The progressive movements of the past 40 years which were real successes (civil rights, anti-war, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism) were all built from the ground up without running their own parties. None of them except the civil rights movement even had one dominant national leader; none had a dominant national organization. All owe their policy successes primarily to building up sufficient popular support that the Democratic Party adopted their cause. (The key civil rights bills were supported crucially by liberal Republicans back when that phrase wasn't an oxymoron.)
The crux of this confusingly-worded argument is whether the "election" of Bush over Gore makes a difference. But of course, it is Nader and not RonK who is being dishonest here. Obviously Gore is cautious and the need to raise huge campaign chests means that almost any serious candidate will avoid a direct attack on corporate power, but there is still a large difference between the parties. In fact, the differences are larger than was shown by the campaigns. Both parties promised a tax cut and new Medicare improvements. There was enough money available in 2000 to do both, and Gore probably would have. Bush focussed on passing a tax cut, actually larger than the one he campaigned on, which has eaten up the entire surplus, leaving no money for the Medicare package he campaigned on, which hasn't been heard from since the campaign. At the same time, the intensely regressive Bush scheme delivered no real tax relief to the vast majority of Americans. On the positive side, at least Bush's tax cut did leave no money for his harebrained Social Security proposals.
Nader feels that the current Democratic Party is too timid and has too little interest in the needs of the poor. This is, of course, substantially true. He claims to believe that the huge number of Americans who don't vote would rush to the polls to elect any candidate who put forward a traditional liberal agenda, which is clearly false, and I suspect he knows it. To justify his desire to run, he put forward the claim that there is no real difference between the parties, another obviously false claim. And knowing that this claim draws the widespread skepticism it deserves, he put out after the election the story that he didn't actually throw it to Bush, which is even more obviously false. And he does all this while loudly announcing that what separates him from other politicains is his fearless truthfulness, even bragging about it in the subtitle of his new book.
Nader's hypocrisy and dishonesty were well covered in a recent book review by Matt Welch
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