Support the Right Wing Agenda: Vote Ralph Nader
Feb 06, 2007 Filed in: Politics
Perennial candidate and presidential spoiler Nader
says he may be back; Republicans breathe a huge sigh
of relief
With George W. Bush’s approval ratings hovering in the low 30s, the Iraq war grinding on with no end in sight and costs spiraling into the stratosphere, and a field of Republican Presidential candidates as inspiring as corned beef, the Republican base finally has something to cheer about: Ralph Nader is back. This is the same Nader, you may remember, who handed the 2000 election to Bush on a silver platter. If not for Nader, there would have been no recount, no Katherine Harris, no 5-4 Supreme Court decision, and no Iraq war.
The 72-year-old activist, self-promoter, and multimillionaire, rose to fame with his 1965 work Unsafe at any Speed, a very poorly-conducted study of automobile safety that purported to show how horrible many cars were, heaping gratuitous abuse on General Motors. Rather than argue the safety of their vehicles or dispute the study, GM foolishly decided to go after Nader personally, and in comically inept fashion: They tapped his phone, they followed him around, they hired hookers to try and entice him into sexual escapades they could use for blackmail. Nader won a lawsuit against GM easily, garnered just under $300,000 for himself, got tort law rewritten in the process, and landed himself in the spotlight. And like a grinning high school girl at her Sweet 16 birthday party, Nader has loved the spotlight ever since.
His foray into presidential politics began in 1980 when he urged voters not to support Carter, his reasoning being that "Reagan is going to breed the biggest resurgence in nonpartisan citizen activism in history." Actually, Reagan’s election led to the birth of the Reagan Youth, who were very active in moving this country far to the right. And Reaganomics, which devastated the working class, and support of the paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, which left tens of thousands dead, and a costly war and illegal support of the Contras in Nicaragua, which led to trading arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal. As in Iran, that pesky soon-to-be Nuclear Iran, which is currently using weapons technology supplied by the US against US soldiers in Iraq. Nader proved to be as wrong about the harm that Reagan could do as he was about most things. But being wrong never stopped Nader.
Nader continued with his presidential politics in 1992 with a small write-in campaign in New Hampshire, followed by a very disorganized coalition with the Green Party in 1996. And then 2000. Without rehashing the details of the 2000 debacle, Nader set out to deliberately hurt Gore’s chances of election, to the exclusion of his own chances of making the 5% cutoff for federal matching funds. As an example, many liberals in swing states were terrified of a Bush victory but wanted to support a third party and so began the “vote pairing” (more accurately, vote trading) in which voters in swing states would vote for Gore while voters in solidly Blue states would vote for Nader. But Nader denounced the movement and focused his energies on those very same swing states.
Having gotten the message, most Nader 2000 supporters deserted him in 2004, but John Kerry was such a disaster of a candidate that it didn’t make any difference, the result being that we have had eight long years of George W. Bush, the Iraq war, thousands of our own soldiers killed, tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis killed, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, furthering the cause of Jihadism, making this country more unsafe and more likely to be hit by terrorists, record profits for the oil industry at the expense of the working class, a widening of the gap between rich and poor, tax breaks for the rich, slashing of family planning funds, and general damage to the country that it will take at least a generation to undo. But that, of course, is not Nader’s problem. He maintains that Gore, the same Al Gore of An Inconvenient Truth and outspoken critic of the Iraq war from its beginning, would have been just as bad. Is it possible, in the tiny part of his brain not occupied by his ego that Nader actually believes this? Probably not. But it does sell books and continue to make him very rich and keep him in the headlines.
What Ralph Nader does not seem to realize (or does realize but doesn’t care) is that by saying: accept this bad thing, so that hopefully people will see how bad it is and then things will improve, he is effectively saying: the ends justify the means. Republicans, including Bush, are famous for this kind of flawed logic that was the hallmark of Nazi Germany’s “final solution.” The ends never jsutify the means, a moral life is lived only by making the best possible or least bad decisions at all times. Nader may sleep well at night for his own clear conscience, but he ought to be an insomniac from nightmares of the thousands of dead and maimed in Iraq.
What would be really nice is if we could draft Ralph Nader and George W. Bush, put them through basic training, and ship them off to Iraq to learn, first hand, what they are really accomplishing in this world. They could go out together and look for snipers or try to disarm IEDs, work and live with the devastation being wrought there, live in fear daily of loss of limb or life, perhaps even earn a Purple Heart experiencing the pain and horror of war, the agony of shattered bodies and wasted lives. Then, marked forever as those who experience war are, they could return to their respective work, and maybe have learned a little bit more compassion for humanity.
Wars are not fought by toy soldiers on computer battlefields. These are real people with real lives and real families that are devastated. People who die are dead forever. Species that become extinct are gone forever. Opportunities for progress that are missed are missed forever. Global warming will not improve by saying it has to get worse before it gets better. The effects on humanity of 100 million climate refugees may not be felt by Alzheimerish multimillionaire septaugenarians, but the rest of us will feel it. Three steps forward and one back is still two steps forward, and that’s infinitely better than 20 steps back. When the choice is between mediocre and disaster, we had better choose mediocre; this country can’t survive too many more disasters in the presidency. Life is finite, the fight to move forward is ongoing, never-ending, and every step yielded is ground lost forever. The cerebral existentialist nonsense that things must get worse before anything can get better plays directly into the hands of evildoers, as it always has. By opposing pollution standards that are not strict enough, leaving existing pollution unchecked and growing, do Nader and his minions want to wait until New York City looks like Mexico City before they will get off their rear ends and actually support progress? It is unlikely that Nader has thought much about this, or would care if he did. He has his millions, and his minions, and his 15 minutes.
So now he wants to reprise his spoiler role, and has announced that he is gunning for Hillary Clinton. Many progressives are not fans of Hillary Clinton, and not because they’re not sure if a woman can win the general election in 2008, but because of her support for the Iraq invasion in the first place. Whatever her faults, she’s smart enough to have seen through the lies being used by the Bush administration at the time, which can only mean that her vote was cast with an eye toward a future presidential run and not for the future of this country. But if she survives to become the eventual Democratic nominee, everyone and anyone who considers themselves to be progressive had best vote for her, or endure the police state we will live in under Romney or McCain.
Not content to let the democratic system of primary and caucus take its course, Nader wants to direct its course himself. He sees himself as crown-maker, or at least as crown-spoiler. Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if he would support Clinton’s candidacy, he called her a panderer and flatterer, then went onto say that he was more likely to run his own campaign if she wins the Democratic nomination. In other words, he’d much rather have Romney or McCain for another four years. Surely this time it will lead to a progressive revolution. His conscience is clear. But for those of us who will be the ones to suffer under such an administration, Ralph Nader should stand down, stay home, and shut up.
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With George W. Bush’s approval ratings hovering in the low 30s, the Iraq war grinding on with no end in sight and costs spiraling into the stratosphere, and a field of Republican Presidential candidates as inspiring as corned beef, the Republican base finally has something to cheer about: Ralph Nader is back. This is the same Nader, you may remember, who handed the 2000 election to Bush on a silver platter. If not for Nader, there would have been no recount, no Katherine Harris, no 5-4 Supreme Court decision, and no Iraq war.
The 72-year-old activist, self-promoter, and multimillionaire, rose to fame with his 1965 work Unsafe at any Speed, a very poorly-conducted study of automobile safety that purported to show how horrible many cars were, heaping gratuitous abuse on General Motors. Rather than argue the safety of their vehicles or dispute the study, GM foolishly decided to go after Nader personally, and in comically inept fashion: They tapped his phone, they followed him around, they hired hookers to try and entice him into sexual escapades they could use for blackmail. Nader won a lawsuit against GM easily, garnered just under $300,000 for himself, got tort law rewritten in the process, and landed himself in the spotlight. And like a grinning high school girl at her Sweet 16 birthday party, Nader has loved the spotlight ever since.
His foray into presidential politics began in 1980 when he urged voters not to support Carter, his reasoning being that "Reagan is going to breed the biggest resurgence in nonpartisan citizen activism in history." Actually, Reagan’s election led to the birth of the Reagan Youth, who were very active in moving this country far to the right. And Reaganomics, which devastated the working class, and support of the paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, which left tens of thousands dead, and a costly war and illegal support of the Contras in Nicaragua, which led to trading arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal. As in Iran, that pesky soon-to-be Nuclear Iran, which is currently using weapons technology supplied by the US against US soldiers in Iraq. Nader proved to be as wrong about the harm that Reagan could do as he was about most things. But being wrong never stopped Nader.
Nader continued with his presidential politics in 1992 with a small write-in campaign in New Hampshire, followed by a very disorganized coalition with the Green Party in 1996. And then 2000. Without rehashing the details of the 2000 debacle, Nader set out to deliberately hurt Gore’s chances of election, to the exclusion of his own chances of making the 5% cutoff for federal matching funds. As an example, many liberals in swing states were terrified of a Bush victory but wanted to support a third party and so began the “vote pairing” (more accurately, vote trading) in which voters in swing states would vote for Gore while voters in solidly Blue states would vote for Nader. But Nader denounced the movement and focused his energies on those very same swing states.
Having gotten the message, most Nader 2000 supporters deserted him in 2004, but John Kerry was such a disaster of a candidate that it didn’t make any difference, the result being that we have had eight long years of George W. Bush, the Iraq war, thousands of our own soldiers killed, tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis killed, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, furthering the cause of Jihadism, making this country more unsafe and more likely to be hit by terrorists, record profits for the oil industry at the expense of the working class, a widening of the gap between rich and poor, tax breaks for the rich, slashing of family planning funds, and general damage to the country that it will take at least a generation to undo. But that, of course, is not Nader’s problem. He maintains that Gore, the same Al Gore of An Inconvenient Truth and outspoken critic of the Iraq war from its beginning, would have been just as bad. Is it possible, in the tiny part of his brain not occupied by his ego that Nader actually believes this? Probably not. But it does sell books and continue to make him very rich and keep him in the headlines.
What Ralph Nader does not seem to realize (or does realize but doesn’t care) is that by saying: accept this bad thing, so that hopefully people will see how bad it is and then things will improve, he is effectively saying: the ends justify the means. Republicans, including Bush, are famous for this kind of flawed logic that was the hallmark of Nazi Germany’s “final solution.” The ends never jsutify the means, a moral life is lived only by making the best possible or least bad decisions at all times. Nader may sleep well at night for his own clear conscience, but he ought to be an insomniac from nightmares of the thousands of dead and maimed in Iraq.
What would be really nice is if we could draft Ralph Nader and George W. Bush, put them through basic training, and ship them off to Iraq to learn, first hand, what they are really accomplishing in this world. They could go out together and look for snipers or try to disarm IEDs, work and live with the devastation being wrought there, live in fear daily of loss of limb or life, perhaps even earn a Purple Heart experiencing the pain and horror of war, the agony of shattered bodies and wasted lives. Then, marked forever as those who experience war are, they could return to their respective work, and maybe have learned a little bit more compassion for humanity.
Wars are not fought by toy soldiers on computer battlefields. These are real people with real lives and real families that are devastated. People who die are dead forever. Species that become extinct are gone forever. Opportunities for progress that are missed are missed forever. Global warming will not improve by saying it has to get worse before it gets better. The effects on humanity of 100 million climate refugees may not be felt by Alzheimerish multimillionaire septaugenarians, but the rest of us will feel it. Three steps forward and one back is still two steps forward, and that’s infinitely better than 20 steps back. When the choice is between mediocre and disaster, we had better choose mediocre; this country can’t survive too many more disasters in the presidency. Life is finite, the fight to move forward is ongoing, never-ending, and every step yielded is ground lost forever. The cerebral existentialist nonsense that things must get worse before anything can get better plays directly into the hands of evildoers, as it always has. By opposing pollution standards that are not strict enough, leaving existing pollution unchecked and growing, do Nader and his minions want to wait until New York City looks like Mexico City before they will get off their rear ends and actually support progress? It is unlikely that Nader has thought much about this, or would care if he did. He has his millions, and his minions, and his 15 minutes.
So now he wants to reprise his spoiler role, and has announced that he is gunning for Hillary Clinton. Many progressives are not fans of Hillary Clinton, and not because they’re not sure if a woman can win the general election in 2008, but because of her support for the Iraq invasion in the first place. Whatever her faults, she’s smart enough to have seen through the lies being used by the Bush administration at the time, which can only mean that her vote was cast with an eye toward a future presidential run and not for the future of this country. But if she survives to become the eventual Democratic nominee, everyone and anyone who considers themselves to be progressive had best vote for her, or endure the police state we will live in under Romney or McCain.
Not content to let the democratic system of primary and caucus take its course, Nader wants to direct its course himself. He sees himself as crown-maker, or at least as crown-spoiler. Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if he would support Clinton’s candidacy, he called her a panderer and flatterer, then went onto say that he was more likely to run his own campaign if she wins the Democratic nomination. In other words, he’d much rather have Romney or McCain for another four years. Surely this time it will lead to a progressive revolution. His conscience is clear. But for those of us who will be the ones to suffer under such an administration, Ralph Nader should stand down, stay home, and shut up.
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