The Chris Moeller Archives

There's no difference, Nader now vindicated

The Obama Presidency has had the remarkable effect of finally convincing Democrats of the principle argument that Ralph Nader has been making for three decades—that there is no practical difference between Republican and Democratic governance in Washington.

The dissatisfaction with Obama has been most pronounced in respect to the corporate giveaway legislation that was disguised as health reform, the abhorrent budget deal involving the debt ceiling this summer that will gut social programs, and his unilateral, illegal bombing of Libya. The public frustration is palpable even if nobody affiliated with the party yet has the stones to challenge the president in a primary in 2012.

It’s been a gradually-rising tide of anger, but now a prominent progressive writer has taken the critique to a new level by challenging even that loudest charge against Nader’s 2000 third-party presidential campaign—the accusation that the Al Gore presidency that Nader supposedly sabotaged would have been an improvement on the Bush II presidency. As the runner-up in the 2000 campaign, Gore evolved into a loud public critic of the war in Iraq, but a President Gore would not necessarily have done anything different than Bush did in respect to toppling Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. The new champion of this theory is Salon’s Steve Kornacki:

It should be noted that when he announced his opposition to Bush’s war push in the fall of '02, Gore endorsed the basic goal of removing Hussein and securing his (supposed) WMD stockpiles. What he objected to was more the go-it-alone nature of Bush’s approach. In other words, you could also argue that Gore, still stung by the 2000 election outcome, may have been motivated in some way by his desire to stage a big, principled fight with Bush -- and that a different result in '00 might have produced a different, more hawkish response from Gore, one that would have led to … an invasion of Iraq.

As U.S. Senator from Tennessee, Gore had been very much a hawk on the issue of the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, and his would-have-been presidential advisors in 2001 and 2002 were major hawks—including, of course, his VP nominee Joe Lieberman, who would have us bomb Iran tomorrow if it were his call to make. Kornacki argues that there would have been tremendous political pressure on Gore to go to war as Hussein continued to thumb his nose at world leaders and weapons inspectors.

Statesman Gore and President Gore would have been different in other ways as well. Statesman Gore is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning advocate for protecting the environment. Yet as Vice President, Gore was the highest-profile advocate for NAFTA, the trade deal that favored private sector investment and expansion over environmental regulation, and that would come to devastate traditional farming practices in the U.S. and Mexico. Indeed, over the years, the required sacrifice of capitalists for the sake of a healthy planet has been "an inconvenient truth" for corporate Democrats as much as it has been for anybody.

According to this "60 Minutes" and Vanity Fair poll cited by Kornacki, 56% of Americans now fully equate the concept of an Al Gore Presidency with the W. Presidency, including 48% of Democrats. Shockingly, only 44%-- of Democrats-- believe today that the world would be a better place if Gore had won the 2000 election. Consider my mind blown. But then again, those polled have now endured three years of a Democratic president and it looks a lot to them like the Republican President. Hope and Change have both taken on the discernible stench of hog manure. Ralph Nader and his small, courageous, and prophetic group of supporters await your apologies and your support for a truly progressive (third-party) presidential candidate in 2012.

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How ridiculous are U.S. drug laws? We've begun requiring prescriptions for over-the-counter cold and allergy medications because one of their principle ingredients is used to cook methamphetamine. This type of stupid prohibitionist legislation should be the only proof we need that these well-financed and parasitic medical and pharmaceutical corporations are calling the shots with lawmakers. A high is perfectly legal if there's a health industry conglomerate out there that can make a dollar off of it. The shit on the street is nothing to them but competition. Have a 24 hour bug or even just a seasonal allergy? That'll be 90 bucks for a visit to the doctor's clinic, thank you, or if you're lucky, only a $20 co-pay and half a day off of work. Not to mention that $50,000 a year it already costs to storehouse your neighbor in a private prison after his possession charge. What's up next? Am I going to have to carry around photos of my workbench on my cellphone to show the guy at Lowes that I'm not planning to sniff the wood sealant?

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I don't have a workbench.

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If my entry looks and feels different today, it's because I'm typing it on my new laptop. Oh, the places we will go...

posted by CM @ 3:56 PM