Stop Me Before I Vote Again

For-wizord! I joined up too. You know, I watched the GP pres debates and while I respect the other people offering themselves up as candidates, none of them is even close to Nader - not in record, eloquence or just general knowledgeableness. The man has worked with so many people on so many difference popular issues that he has literally become a walking encyclopedia of citizen activism 1960-Present. His politics and rhetoric can be problematic at times, but who can possibly impugn his sincerity in the fight for change? As Louis Proyect pointed out in his review of An Unreasonable Man, Nader’s “career and his life are practically equivalent.” Every waking hour of Nader’s adult life has been dedicated to fighting the corporate overlords. That even led Jay Leno to make a spoof commercial during the 2004 elections that showed John Kerry and Dubya in various modes of recreation with a voice over talking about how these two men play more than they work. Then it cuts to a picture of Ralph Nader sitting at his desk, literally buried under paper, with the voice over saying, “ That’s why you should vote for me, Ralph Nader. I’ll work for you 24 hours a day, because, I have no life.” It’s difficult not to respect him for continuing on so diligently in the face of so much adversity - all the betrayals, personal and political slings and arrows and the general complacency of the average American voter. So yeah, I’m voting for this motherfucker if he runs, which I hope he does.

Here would be my memo to Mr. Nader:

You've done well, and you've done good..but it's time to step aside and allow for some new leadership.

Personally, I'd prefer that he back Cynthia McKinney's Green Party campaign and remain in the sidelines, lest he tick off the usual "lesser evil"/"spoiler" Dems who are ready to condemn him as a Republican agent again.

But....who am I to stop him?? He's still preferable to Ron Paul or any of the Dimocrats and Repubs.

Anthony

Anthony - Sorry, I forgot to mention that McKinney seemed like the only other really cogent and composed candidate speaking at the forum. I would readily support her candidacy were she nominated, and I hope that Ralph will not run independently without the Greens in that case. She certainly also has a distinguished record. While I would see a McKinney/Nader ticket or vice versa come out of the GP primary, I suspect that greens will reject Nader completely for the reasons you cite above. The only problem with McKinney though, is that she has also been the victim of very bad publicity - accused, as you'll remember, of pulling the "race card" after assaulting a poor, helpless white security guard. I'm sure that made-for-media-circus moment will be quickly revisited as soon as her nomination is announced...

The problem with the Greens is that accursed "safe states" strategy. If they're going to do that foolishness again, then the hell with 'em. If not, then pulling a lever for Cynthia McKinney could be fun.

MJS - no, you're right. If that's their game again this election, then I agree to hell with them.

John Walsh just wrote something on Counterpunch about the Green Party bureaucrats rejecting Nader again, in hopes of using safe states.

http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh02022008.html

I'd really like to see someone else run. Idon't have any problem with the platform, but I'd like to see some new blood up there. I've voted for Ralph twice, at this point it's starting to feel like Gus Hall redux.

I've been a member of the Draft Nader campaign for weeks now. (http://www.draftnader.org/) Things aren't quite as sewn up in the GP as Walsh would like to think.

Hear, (well, almost) hear!

One begins to worry about Ralphie actually doing harm to whatever remains a hope for a leftward leap.

I'd feel much better about this if he would do the obvious and drop his beyond-tired crap about "corporate crime" (that crime is entirely baked into the pudding, the Naderian special plea notwithstanding) and talk about what everybody wants and needs, which is GET TOUGH ON WAR CRIMES -- a.k.a. trials and jails for the Cheney Administration and all the Congresspersons who voted yes on the blatantly illegal current war.

And maybe also propose not just restoration of the Independent Counsel laws, but uploading of same into el Constitucione...

And perhaps the diatribe Ralph never exhibited after 2000 -- away with the Electoral College!

How about a Second Constitutional Convention, while we're at it. That might open a few wormcans...

Alas, I smell instead the coming of a mere thrice-reheated Swanson's Skinny-Man Not-on-TV Dinner...

It's started: I signed up for the explorathon, and I'm already getting emails about "corporate welfare kings!"

Jesus Shittin Christ! Backhandedly further demonizing welfare and sounding like a rumor of a rumor as well as a broken scratchy old record, all so that nobody has to say the 5- or 10-letter c-word. This ain't 1965 or even 1996 any more, RN. We got ourselves a system now, name it or not.

For that matter, why not drop the diagnoses altogether and simply make single payer health insurance the one and only ish-shoe?

How is it that this already feels like barking up the wrong sapling...

Fourth time, not so charming...Ugh.

Michael Dawson,

I agree with most of everything you wrote, but let's not maintain any illusions. Nader is obviously not a Marxist. In fact, he has said so himself. From ISR:

--Are you a Marxist?

"No, I believe in democracy. I believe in competition. I think big corporations are destroying capitalism. Ask a lot of small business around the country how they're pressed and exploited and deprived by the big-business predators."

Nader on CNN, "Talk Back Live," July 5, 200019

So he's not going to name the system. Following from that, perhaps voting for Nader is a kind of lesser evil voting, but I think we all know what the difference between Ralph Nader and the other candidates is - and it's stark, even within the pro-capitalism parameters.

Furthermore, Nader at least seems amenable to the idea of a "commonwealth economy", promoted by people like Gar Alperovitz, who spoke at Nader's Taming the Giant Corporation conference in DC last summer. That's a start at least, no? I mean the fact of the matter is that, at this point, any candidate who so much as murmurs the word capitalism and/or socialism without praising the former and condemning the latter, has no chance of going anywhere in electoral politics, especially someone as marginal as Nader. You know as well as anyone that most Americans experience an almost visceral nausea upon the very mention of the word socialism and that includes most liberals (it's a noble idea, but it ain't gonna happen! - ever heard that before?). Certainly we can agree that Nader indicting capitalism on CNN or calling for socialist revolution isn't going to undue 50 years of Cold War propaganda, even if many people might quietly nod their head in agreement on the other side of the screen.

But, yeah, probably this is all for naught, and one might as well cast a vote for the far left/ socialist party of his or her choosing. I mean given how much success we've had advancing people like Nader - hell, even Kucinich - despite the undeniable and steady march to the far right by the Democratic Party as a whole, along with the miserable state of the economy and world affairs, the future looks bleak. We need dramatic change yesterday, but in this upcoming election we'll get status quo tomorrow, at best. Meanwhile, ecological apocalypse draws ever nearer with peak oil and gas in the background and global famine in the foreground...ekh. stop the world and let me off.

Michael Dawson,

I agree with most of everything you wrote, but let's not maintain any illusions. Nader is obviously not a Marxist. In fact, he has said so himself ISR:

--Are you a Marxist?

"No, I believe in democracy. I believe in competition. I think big corporations are destroying capitalism. Ask a lot of small business around the country how they're pressed and exploited and deprived by the big-business predators."

Nader on CNN, "Talk Back Live," July 5, 200019

So he's not going to name the system. Following from that, perhaps voting for Nader is a kind of lesser evil voting, but I think we all know what the difference between Ralph Nader and the other candidates is - and it's stark, even within the pro-capitalism parameters.

Furthermore, Nader at least seems amenable to the idea of a "commonwealth economy", promoted by people like Gar Alperovitz, who spoke at Nader's Taming the Giant Corporation conference in DC last summer. That's a start at least, no? I mean the fact of the matter is that, at this point, any candidate who so much as murmurs the word capitalism and/or socialism without praising the former and condemning the latter, has no chance of going anywhere in electoral politics, especially someone as marginal as Nader. You know as well as anyone that most Americans experience an almost visceral nausea upon the very mention of the word socialism and that includes most liberals (it's a noble idea, but it ain't gonna happen! - ever heard that before?). Certainly we can agree that Nader indicting capitalism on CNN or calling for socialist revolution isn't going to undue 50 years of Cold War propaganda, even if many people might quietly nod their head in agreement on the other side of the screen.

But, yeah, probably this is all for naught, and one might as well cast a vote for the far left/ socialist party of his or her choosing. I mean given how much success we've had advancing people like Nader - hell, even Kucinich - despite the undeniable and steady march to the far right by the Democratic Party as a whole, along with the miserable state of the economy and world affairs, the future looks bleak. We need dramatic change yesterday, but in this upcoming election we'll get status quo tomorrow, at best. Meanwhile, ecological apocalypse draws ever nearer with peak oil and gas in the background and global famine in the foreground...ekh. stop the world and let me off.

I'm not really complaining about Ralph's capitalism. It's more the thoughtlessness and staleness and repetitiveness. "Corporate welfare kings"? Did he put, what, 8 seconds into that one? It's a clanger.

And seriously, how about some kind of new beginning if we're even going to explore this again? "Corporate power" is a problem indeed, but even the Dembots are using this empty shell now.

Why no aim an arrow or two into the gaping, festering, but bipartisanly unaddressed lesions on this decrepit system? Single payer? War crimes, Dembots yea-sayers and funders included? Restoring the corporate income tax?

And I'm not advocating a full frontal socialist harangue. But how about mentioning, perhaps "the overclass?" As much as St. Ralph wishes it were otherwise, talking about "corporate welfare" is as trite and weird-sounding and simply dishonest (owning a share and getting a dividend is not welfare, and everybody knows it) as any kind of old fashioned system-naming ever was.

I just want to see a sign of some new work.

Dividends are welfare, of course, but he's not really attacking that, is he? And it's still just an alien-sounding approach, compared to simply talking directly about shameful, harmful, inexplicable wealth gaps.

"Clanger" hardly captures it... more like missing the broad side of a barn.

Not that I'm a big fan of tripartite bargaining or continental corporartism or
fanatical GDPism -- especially in this age of drip, drip, drip ecocide as Tim D -- but I always got the impression that Nader would tut-tut-tut ANY form of industrial policy (however nominally or actually "progressive") for being
intolerably market-distorting and insufficiently Jeffersonian. Were Nader put at the helm of the S Korean military dictatorship in 1961, they'd still be eating tree bark like their country cousins up north.

Dude in a bar #1: Hey buddy... what's the difference between a neo-liberal and Nader?

Dude in a bar #2: I dunno.

Dude in a bar #1: The neo-liberal talks a good game about freedom of contract and believes in class war; Nader talks a good game about corporate welfare and believes in freedom of contract.

Still, I voted for the guy once... or was it twice? or was it thrice? The fact that my memory hole is clogged says more than my words themselves, I suppose.

Oblique indeed. Ralph's main beef with the insurance-medical-pharmaceutical complex is, apparently... drum roll, please... "billing fraud." Talk about a pocket protector tucked in a rayon shirt...

Gluelicker...didn't really follow your claim about my intentions or sympathies. And if you'll notice I wrote that "ecological apocalypse" could easily take its it toll before leftists can make any electoral and social advances. I'm not even going to bother to make political predictions about a post-collapse society.

In any event, I would say barring proletarian revolution, the best bet is to advance candidates that will reform the electoral arena. Proportional rep, instant run-off, public funding and the like would do much to undermine the ruling class's chokehold on our lives and political system. But for that reason they will fight tooth and nail to prevent those changes...

Premature truncation malfunction (see p. 4-C in the manual)... of a very low-grade variety.

It was supposed to read:

"especially in this age of drip, drip, drip ecocide as Tim D _notes_"

My main point here was really to say that Nader is such a naive believer in American innocence and 100% Americanism that he would find developmental state or late industrializer or what have you dirigiste policies totally alien and unfathomable... not that they are models to emulate anyway.

I am more clueless than ever about what to do in the bourgeois parliamentary arena (yah, a necessary evil at the moment). It seems that I find any and all well-conceived and well-argued analyses 100% right and 100% wrong at the same time... I hope that speaks to our collective dilemma moreso than my own frontal lobes.

I'm going to end up reading the ballot anyway. We'll probably have the usual six dozen ballot measures on it so what the hell ? If the last Green standing avoids all that watery "safe states" tapioca peddled by that schmuck Cobb in '04, they can have my vote.

See ? I don't know why all the Demos I know complain that I'm impossible to please...