Ralph Nader's February announceRun that he lin be run in ther
LUS Presidential November - as an independent candidate -brought the expected howls from the Democratic Party establishment. "Spoiler" and "egomaniac" are two of the more restrained epithets launched against Nader.
Once he begins organising his ballot access drives in all 50 states, Democratic machines will begin putting up roadblocks and lawsuits to deprive people of the chance to vote for him.
Nader's response: He wouldn't need to run, nor would anyone vote for him, if the Democrats hadn't climbed on board the corporate bandwagon and left their own constituencies in the ditch.
Up to now, ordinary Democratic voters have decided that the ability to beat George ••• W Bush come November is the only issue that matters. Almost across the board, in the party caucuses and primaries in lowa and New Hampshire, then in the big states, these
SADERA, Ralph Nader NOV Nader found a layer of support in 2000 Presidential Elections
many of them. ....
whelmingly antiwar: lot President Democratic voters chose Senator John Kerry as their candidate in the full knowledge that he has backed the policies that have screwed
As a "pro-investor Democrat" Kerry voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement; he supported Bill Clinton's "reform" which destroyed welfare entitlement; he voted with the Republicans for Bush's Iraq war resolution and "pre-emptive
With all this on the record, Kerry has picked up support from union workers who believe NAFTA has destroyed their jobs (even when their union leaders often endorsed Howard Dean or Dick Gephardt, another defeated candidate); from African American communities left bleeding by the devastation of the welfare safety net; from rank and file Democrats who are overcourse.
n the context of a closely divided and
polarised country, the pressure even on
the tiny socialist left to climb on the "Anybody But Bush" bandwagon is intense.
This writer can attest to examples of folks who supported Ralph Nader in 2000 - committed social justice activists with whom I visited the occupied West Bank; hardened leftwing Palestinian-American cadres who know everything there is to know about the Democrats' Middle East policy; former leftwing Green candidates - who have decided that this year "we just can't afford Nader." tive.
The left-liberal editors of The Nation went to the extreme and unprecedented lengths of carrying an editorial imploring Nader no to run. All this demonstrates if anything the extent to which Bush and the hard right have been able to define the political agenda
Getting on the ballot is a Sisyphean climb for Nader or any independent candidate who doesn't have Ross Perot's bankroll to hire armies of paid petitioners. - Nader to receive and accept the he more logical route would be for
nomination of the Green Party, which has a ballot line in more than 40 states. Between now and the party's June convention, a number of Green activists and organisations will be arguing for both the party and Nader to adopt this logical
Even if a Nader/Green candidacy is organised, there is virtually no doubt that its impact will be much less than in 2000, wher the real record of Bill Clinton's eight-year record in office was much fresher in activists minds, and when the movement was coming off the "high" of Seattle rather than the crushing "downer" of the Iraq war.
Still, for the moment, the prospect of a Nader campaign keeps hope alive - not the hope of winning the White House, but at least the hope of avoiding the crushing curse of boredom in a campaign with no alterna• David Finkel is an editor of Against the Current in Detroit, USA. www.solidarity-us.org