The Nader bite
Democratic apologists are in a lather again over the prospect of another Ralph Nader presidential candidacy. What does Nader think he's going to accomplish, they ask? Is he trying to permanently damage his legacy? Is he going to wind up costing the Democrats the election again?The huffy harangues and pathetic potshots heard this week over Nader's renewed candidacy would have more teeth if they hadn't already been there dating back to his first bid. I guess for Ralph Nader it's an "ego trip" to put his entire career's reputation back on the block in service of his core principles, but Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, running for president with one complete senate term between them, are paragons of modesty.
Said Clinton about Nader Sunday (on the day she hit the campaign stump railing against the North American Free Trade Agreement that's synonymous with her husband's presidency, and which she supported publicly up until the point she lost the convention delegate lead to Obama): "Wow, that's really unfortunate. I remember when he did this before. It's not good for anybody, especially our country... Obviously it's not helpful to whoever the Democratic nominee is. But it's a free country and I don't know what party he'll run on. What did he run on last time, does anyone remember?"
Said Obama of Nader, "He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work."
Now Obama's comment may be just a product of professional jealousy-- Obama got his start as a community organizer in a Nader-established citizen group. It makes some sense that Obama would try to establish his own bona fides separate from Nader's-- supporting nuclear power, for example, or pandering to Israeli lobbyists on the Palestinian issue, or promising to expand our nation's already bloated military budget beyond the scope of even that of the Bush regime. As an attorney supposedly specialized in Constitutional law, though, you would think that Obama would realize that attacking al Qaeda targets in Pakistan without the permission of the Pakistani government, as he's threatened to do as president, would be a violation of international law, and would, like Bush in Iraq, make him a war criminal. I'd be curious then to find out the neophyte Obama's supplemental plan for restoring America's reputation abroad after launching such an attack.
The party hacks still scapegoat Nader for their own failings in 2000, despite the fact that 10 million more Democrats voted for George W. Bush in that election than for Nader. Their representatives in Washington spent the next eight years proving Nader a modern-day Nostradamus. It's typical of the corporatists to blame the reformer rather than the corrupt system they're responsible for putting in place-- a system they're intent on keeping exclusively to themselves and to the Republicans who routinely bludgeon them on election day. The Democratic party is the graveyard of progressive movements, but they want to make sure that principled progressive voters continue to have no place else to turn.
posted by CM @ 8:50 PM
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