May 17, 2003
The Nader 2004 "threat", and those poor, pitiful Democrats

Salon.com has a decent story about Ralph Nader's potential 2004 bid for the presidency, and how it's causing a painful split in the hard left -- between those who have utterly given up on the Democrats and who support Nader, and those who are scared enough of Bush madness (and trusting enough of the Dems) to say that the Greens should stay out of the 2004 presidential race so as to avoid a repeat of Nader's 2000 "spoiler" effect. Many Greens are worried that if Nader runs it will make even more people resent the Green Party for "helping" Bush win, again.

The issue brings up a lot of thoughts in me. I don't think Nader should run, but it has nothing to do with the "spoiler" potential. I don't think he should run because I think he's proven that he's unelectable, and without some revolutionary new gimmick or campaign plan he's likely to get even less votes than he did last time. I think that would be the case even without the spoiler worry, which will be much more acute this next time around. The simple truth is that Americans have had plenty of time to get to know Ralph Nader -- he probably has almost 100% name recognition -- and have decided that no way do they want him to be president. He's likely to suffer a similar fate as Harry Browne, who ran for a second time in 2000 with virtually the same method and message as in 1996, and got a lot less votes the second time around. You can't try to sell people something they didn't buy the first time, without making any major changes to it or syour sales technique, and expect to get a better response.

I think it must be hard for presidential candidates to see that from their first-person perspective, but it's brutally obvious from the outside looking in. Ross Perot proved it, Harry Browne proved it, and Nader will prove it if he runs in 2004. Even if he could increase his vote capture a bit, it's pretty much inconceivable that he could get it anywhere near the high-30% he would need to win against Bush and a Democrat. Of course, it's highly likely that the same could be said for any other person who might run in his place, but at least a new face wouldn't have a proven track record of having no chance of winning, as Nader does. He certainly isn't going to win over any Republican voters, and I don't think he'll sway any Democrats either...so unless he's got 30-40 million voters outside of those two groups who will rise up en masse, he is a 100% guaranteed loss as a presidential candidate. And I don't see even a shred of a hint that Nader could find a way to invigorate a mass of that size into voting for him, unless he has some sort of really, really amazing tricks up his sleeve. Even then, I think it's clear (as I said) that most Americans have evaluated Nader over the past 30+ years and simply don't want him to be president. I kinda like the Greens, and I even kinda like Nader, and for both of their sakes, I hope he does the right thing and steps away. The Salon article mentions that folks have urged him to run for Senate or Governor -- I think that would be smart, and useful. He almost certainly wouldn't win those either, but he could actually do some good by running for one or the other. I don't see any good coming from a 2004 Nader presidential candidacy, especially considering the anti-Bush nervousness on the left, and the spoiler resentment factor. Even an utterly unknown nobody Green would do more good than him in that spot.

That said, I think the "spoiler" whiners are just that -- whiners. If the Democrats can't field a candidate who can win in a competitive race, against whoever else wants to run, then they don't deserve to win. Nader didn't hand Bush the election -- Al Gore and the Supreme Court did. If Al had simply won his own home state, nobody would be talking about Florida 2000, or the "spoiler effect". During last year's Minnesota Senate race, Working Assets (the liberal advocacy phone company folks) sent out an action alert urging people to press upon that state's Green Party Senate candidate to drop out, so as not to "spoil" Walter Mondale's bid for the seat. I found it pathetic, and I wrote them a scathing letter to that effect. If the Democrats can't win races because a competing liberal party is "stealing" a couplefew percentage points worth of voters, they should just pack it up and quit.

Greens (and Libertarians, and whatever other parties) have every right -- and it could be said, a responsibility -- to run as many candidates as they can, and as hard as they can. Any votes those candidates get aren't "stolen" from the Bipartisans -- they are earned, and earned hard at that. They should be applauded, not castigated -- and certainly not bullied out of the race. The word "pathetic" just keeps running through my head over and over when I think of folks whining about third party candidates earning votes that the whiners seem to think belong to the "major" party candidates. It's not just pathetic, it's backwards and wrong-headed. The proper conclusion to reach, when one sees that a Green is garnering enough votes to make a difference in a given race, is that lots of voters don't want to vote for the old party sell-out politicians. If Democrats want those Green votes, they should work to earn them -- not try to stifle or bully the candidate that is earning them. If the Bipartisan candidates are so great and wonderful, they should have no problem earning all the votes they need. The only reason people are worried about Nader running is because they know that none of the Democratic candidates in the field right now is likely to be able to beat Bush by a comfortable margin, if at all. That's a problem with those candidates, and with the Democratic Party itself -- it's not Nader's fault. Focusing on "winning" Nader's electorate over by simply taking their guy out of the race is ignoring the real problem, and it's lazy politics. And I feel I must say once more -- it's pathetic. It feels strange to pity a behemoth, half-of-a-political-monopoly major party that's been around for over 200 years, but that's what I feel. I pity the poor, dying, lost Democratic Party -- the weakling giant that fears an unelectable, 3-percent-getting guy, while ignoring the problems and failures that have made it so weak.

I fear Bush and the Republicans as much as the next guy, but if the Democrats expect to ride in and save the day somehow, they better focus on figuring out how to do it on their own merits -- whatever those might be.

Posted by Lance Brown at May 17, 2003 01:30 AM
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