Electoral Musings

I was pretty hard on Ralph this past weekend, and I feel kind of bad. It's not like he reads this blog or anything, and to the best of my knowledge, none of my readership comes from the people I lost touch with in the RI Green Party. I'm pretty sure I haven't offended anyone, save for myself. (If that makes any sense.) But I still feel bad because I feel like I've plunged a knife into somebody's back and I'm twisting, twisting, twisting... And I won't stop until November. That's a bad feeling. I certainly don't mean to piss on the political career of Ralph Nader, it makes me feel like too much of a Democrat. Once I've gone that far to the right, please shoot me.

I imagine Ralph, as far as his most important issues are concerned, had very good reasons to enter the race. I think his candidancy in 2000 was far more important, and if the clock were turned back to 2000 and I knew what the future held, I'd vote for him again. Even if I was in Florida. Nobody is willing to admit, since scapegoating is far easier to do then actually assessing all sides of a situation, understanding what happened and thinking about a conclusion, that Ralph did not hand the presidency to Bush. Ralph would have never taken votes away from Gore if Gore wasn't such a fucking hypocrite, if he didn't have a wife who held hands with the far right to form an organization called the PMRC to censor artists, if he didn't pick Joe freakin Lieberman as his running mate. It's important to remember that at this time, Governor George W. Bush of Texas was less far right and centrist enough prompt the candidacies of Pat Buchanan and the Constitution Party's Howard Phillips, both from the far right. In 2000, it was Gore v. Bush, centrist republicrat v. centrist republicrat, both bankrolled by large corporations. Ralph looked at our "choice" for 2000 and he knew that his main issues wouldn't even be brought up in this campaign, and he knew that he had to run just to give people a choice.

There are differences between 2000 and 2004. The Democrats likely choice is Kerry unless Edwards is able to pull off a miracle, but Kerry is still very much a centrist republicrat. But now we know that Bush is a card carrying member of the far right, a neocon. So it's another centrist republicrat v. the neocon, and we can be cleaar about who the lesser of two evils is. That's a great philosophy for this election because it points out the fact that they're both evil.

Today on dKos there was a thread about Nader's candidacy, and one comment from rmelcher caught my attention. It makes me wonder how willing people will be to rally around candidate Kerry.

Democrats had a chance to change the rules of the game. Instead they listened to the media, the Republicans and their own entrenched party establishment and decided to try one more time to win in the same old arena with the same old rules. From an impressive field of candidates representing a fair spectrum of ideas they've whittled the choices to the two rivals who they're convinced play well on network television.

...When I look around at the disappointed Clark and Dean people, I see little that would justify the term energized. At best there's a sense of resignation, bordering on betrayal and resentment. There's resentment of the media, the party establishment, even the front-runner, followed by a fatalistic sigh and a statement of grudging support for whoever the party settles on. When John Kerry is mentioned there's often a curl of the lip and a turn of the the nose that signals borderline distaste. This is the opposite of a formula for winning a presidential election.

...Today Ralph Nader threw his hat into the ring as an Independent candidate, because the choices offered by the mainstream candidates are unlikely to deal with issues that go much beyond superficial questions of style. Since Nader's candidacy will not be backed by a party organization it's unlikely he will make enough of a major difference in the race for Democrats to blame their likely defeat on him this time. I fully support his efforts to bring real issues to public light. Even without party backing Nader will undoubtedly make more interesting news copy than John Kerry.

Think about it. I've been very critical with Ralph's late decision to join the race, I haven't known the method behind his motives. Why decline membership in the Green Party primary and then declare your independent candidacy? It seems counter-productive to getting Bush out of office (which Ralph has said is his goal in this election, which hasn't seemed to get press from anywhere) and to building third parties, since his candidacy outside of the growing Green Party could destroy the footholds it has made by becoming a major party in states and vying for major national party status in the 2008 election. This part I still don't understand, but for Ralph waiting until now to run, he could have been waiting to see if Dean or Kucinich could pull out with the nomination. But they didn't, and the Democrats are running another centrist politician. Could you imagine Ralph running if the Democrats had the balls to nominate Mosely-Braun? Or Dean? Or Kucinich?

If the Democrats are so uncomfortable with Nader's candidacy, then it's worth pointing out that Ralph is probably running because the Democrats still can't nominate a real candidate to provide us with a real choice. Ralph has to run because that's the only way the issues important to him, which he thinks are very important to the health of the nation, are going to get aired. I'll admit that such a stance is very egocentric, but Ralph cares deeply about this country and who runs it for the four years. Since it's nearly impossible for him to build up a grassroots network of volunteers to get him on the ballot in a majority of states to make a difference in November, maybe it's OK for him to run just to get his issues out there, to inform the populace and hopefully get these issues introduced as major issues in the 2004 election.

I still have a beef with Ralph running against the Green Party, it's not like my loyalities are split enough this election. If RI falls into the status of swing state, I'll vote for Kerry. If not, then I'll vote Green so they can get their 5% and keep major party status in this state. In either situation, I'm not voting for Nader.

When it's all said and done, the Democrats may reap the spoils of a Nader campaign which was too weak to make a difference in the presidential election, but was strong enough to tear the Green Party apart.

Twisting, twisting, twisting... My only question now is whose back the knife has been plunged into.