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November 2, 2000
You Can Smell Their
Fear
Get Nader!
A political culture is under siege. Hear the panic
as the waters pour into Atlantis.
Jesse Jackson cries
out that "Our very lives are at stake." Paul Wellstone
quavers that George W. Bush will "repeal the twentieth century."
Martin Peretz, owner of the Gore-loving New Republic, writes
furiously (and foolishly) that "Naderism represents the
emotional satisfaction of the American left at the expense of
the social and economic satisfaction of women, blacks, gays,
and poor people in America."
Back in 1992 Jackie
Blumenthal, wife of White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, was asked
why she and her husband were such rabid supporters of a con man
from Arkansas called Bill Clinton. "It's our turn,"
she hissed at once, as though that settled the matter once and
for all.
And so indeed it
was: the turn of that whole class that had endured the twelve
long years of Reagan/Bush time to take their rightful place in
Washington. Of course, in terms of substantive change, America
remained a one-party state, under center-right government.
The amazing thing is that Clinton has never endured
mutiny from his left. He stuffed NAFTA down the throats of labor
and the AFL-CIO endorsed him in 1996. He threw the crime bill
and the welfare bill at the liberals and they took it with barely
a bleat. In 1996 he never faced a challenge, as had Jimmy Carter
in 1979 from old-line liberalism embodied in the form of Ted
Kennedy. In 2000 the only halfways-serious threat to Gore came
from another neo-liberal, Bill Bradley. By the early summer we
were set for another status quo election, a reaffirmation of
the one-party state.
Somewhere in the
third week of October the Gore crowd woke up to the clear and
awful thought that they might not make it, that maybe it wasn't
their time any more and that the man to blame is Ralph Nader.
Gore had bombed in the debates. The Greens had organized a whole
string of Nader super-rallies across the northern half of the
country from Seattle and Portland, through the upper midwest
to New York. In Minnesota Nader was polling over ten per cent
on some counts.In Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan
and Maine, maybe even California, Nader could make enough of
a dent to put Bush over the top.
And so the Get-Ralph campaign began in earnest.
In many ways the contour of the attacks reminds us of the last
time the Democrats had to deal with dissidence, back in 1988
with Jesse Jackson's populist challenge. "What does Jesse
want?" was reborn as "What does Nader want?" But
Jackson was running inside the Democratic Party. By the time
the '88 convention in Atlanta rolled around, Jackson was back
on board. By the start of 1989 and the Bush years, he'd brusquely
disbanded the Rainbow and fallen in line.
"If the basis
of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the basis of
popular government in time of revolution is both virtue and terror:
virtue without which terror is murderous, terror without which
virtue is powerless." That was the French revolutionary,
Max Robespierre, back in 1794. I've always seen Ralph as our
Robespierre, having to make do with class actions suits instead
of the guillotine. Years ago the late Jim Goode, at that time
editor of Penthouse, used to look across the piles of pin-ups
with a shudder of distaste (he was gay) and snarl at me, "Alex,
is your hate pure?" "Yes, Jim." Ralph's hate is
pure.
So when the Democrats came at him, when he saw Toby Moffett,
formerly a Nader Raider and until recently a Monsanto lobbyist,
lining up squadrons of Nader bashers, Nader didn't blink and
say he'd just had a long conversation with Al Gore and he'd was
suspending his campaign, was instructing his supporters to vote
the Gore-Lieberman ticket, and would be accepting an "influential"
position inside the next Democratic administration (something
we'll bet the Gore camp has already tried). He'd no doubt prefer
to be running at over 30 per cent, but short of that, the privilege
of being able to influence the race in at least six states is
exactly what Nader had been waiting for all along: the power
to remind the Democratic Party it can't take for granted the
progressive slice of the country.
Even if the Nader/Green
run vanishes off the margin of history by the end of the year
(which we hope won't happen) it still will have given many young
folk a taste for the excitements of radical political organizing.
People carry such hours and days with them for the rest of their
lives, as the inspiring leaven in our business-as-usual loaf.
A final irony. As the Gore attack whippets snapped
at Nader the most conspicuous effect was a turn-off by Democratic
voters, in the form of lower predicted turn-out. Early checks
of Oregon's postal ballots showed a sharp fall-off from the vote
four years ago, but with Nader's numbers going up. This bodes
ill for any hopes of a Democratic recapture of the House of Representatives.
Not that Gore probably cares. Back in 1996 he denied House leaders
vital campaign funds with which they might have recaptured the
House back then. He didn't want to see his rival Dick Gephardt
as house majority leader. There's Gore for you. And they attack
Nader as bad for the Democratic Party! CP
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