As you have probably already seen, Ralph Nader has announced that he will run for president in 2004. Lot’s of people seem to be saying that he shouldn’t run because he it will take votes from Democrats and in doing so, help the Replublicans (or the press talks about people you say that a lot, at least). Suggesting Nader shouldn’t run is counter to all things free and democratic.
Dave Winer, who I don’t always agree with, states the case well:
Imho, Nader’s run separates the people who “get” American democracy, and those who don’t. If Nader is going to win the election for Dubya, then now’s the time to fix the bug in the process.
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By trying to hold back Nader (good luck) maybe you’re preventing exactly the kind of transformation we need. I think Nader is a patriot. Give him a medal. And think instead of being part of the herd.
I tried to donate to his campaign, but I can’t, because I’m a Canadian citizen (I’m not complaining – that’s fair enough).
American democracy isn’t in the habit of correcting itself. We still have an electoral college. It’s still possible to someone to win the presidency with less votes than a single opponent.
Hypothetically, the problem could be corrected by having tournament style elections. If you’ve got three candidates, have two of them square off first, and then the third gets winner. There wouldn’t even be the possibility of a spoiler. But even that has drawbacks.
I don’t think Nader’s candidacy will matter much this year. No one’s going to take him seriously.
Josh
Most American progressives agree that our 2004 presidential election is an ideal moment to prove abstract points about political inclusion, and applaud Mr. Nader’s candidacy for helping provide the opportunity.
We can only hope that the point is driven fully home, by Nader drawing enough votes to ensure the defeat of the eventual Democratic party candidate, Al
CharlatanSharpton.And there’s something supremely elegant about preserving NASCAR-mindlessness through progressive self-castration. Talk about making the cuts permanent. Hoo-ah!
LQ
Your quote confuses Democracy in it’s pure form with ‘American Democracy’. American’s believe in power by association. We build huge power structures that have vast amounts of momentum and strength, but (after making so many necessary comprimises) rarely represent the people belonging to those structures. Rather than vote for issues, we would rather vote for parties; and since we like to win, we only want to vote for big parties.
I personally would like to see seven or eight parties, each representing a single core set of beliefs (and representing them well). That isn’t how our country works, however. Because of that, people like Nader are rarely welcome.
I welcome Nader, and not specifically because I disagree with most Democrat viewpoints and would like to see them fail. I welcome Nader specifically because, whether or not I agree with his or any other person/party’s views, we don’t have just two major views in this country. There has to be some middle ground as well as some freaky left and right wing fundamentalists. Why should we/they shun Nader? Why shouldn’t he run? So what if he takes votes away from the Democrats or the Republicans? Isn’t that the point? Does everyone agree with every point on the Democrat or Republican agenda? I sure don’t.
I’m quite disapointed that chose to run. Will he actually build a movement? Will he form a coalition made of Greens and young Dean supporters? Will he change the political landscape? Well, no, actually. Super-lefts want a candidate that lets them feel morally superior to Dems, but their litmus-test ideology actually accomplishes the destruction of the very things about which they profess to care. Having George W. Bush win, only to appoint the next supreme court justice (who will undoubtedly be anti-choice, Ashcroft-friendly) is not my idea of “progressive accomplishment.” When the American left trains its eye on results, moral purity will be seen for what it is, the luxury of the marginalized.
If Nader running casues the Democrats to losetheelction they don’t belong in the White House anyway. 2000 was Gore’s to win and completely blew it, and in spectacular fashion. It never should have come down to Florida or the courts.
If, after all Bush and Co have done in the last 4 years, the Democrats still haven’t made up ground they have serious, serious issues when it comes to understanding the American voting public.
*shakes head*
For a country that is supposedly helping spread democracy around the world, a lot of people just don’t get it:
Nader running cannot cause the Dems to lose.
Nader cannot “steal” votes from the Dems.
Parties do not own votes, people do. And they can cast them for whoever they damn well like.
Dems can only lose if they fail to convince people to vote for them. It’s not a given: they have to work for it.
I take it civics was one of the first things to get cut in their education system, because such widely espoused contempt of democracy is hard to find in any other industrialized nation.
What’s even more puzzling is how so many can be blaming Nader for spoiling an election that was utterly rigged. How many people were crossed off the electoral lists? How many military personnel voted with illegitimate ballots? Did you ever count the ballots? …
As the other comments state above, the problem is not Ralph Nader. The problem is that the first-past-the-post voting system encourages voters to compromise and vote for one of the two top candiadates, even if that candidate is not their first choice. A system that encourages voters to vote for a candidate other than their first choice is not a fully democratic system.
Alternative systems such as runoff voting or instant runoff voting solve this problem by allowing voters to choose not only their first choice, but also second and third choices incase their first choice is eliminated.
I believe the Canadian parties use a runoff system for internal leadership elections.
It is a reality of current American electoral politics that a large number of middle- and working-class folks associate with simplistic “conservative” formulations in contravention of their own interests. Embarrassing but true. They’ve bought an anti-intellectual line that makes for a comfortable near-term political identification. There are additional appeals woven into the modern Republican message besides the anti-wonk angle, which range from (in the best case) “My dad can beat up your dad” to “Hey, they can’t talk that way about our president! That’s like pickin’ on a retard! Our retard!”
Democrats, as well, are in transition, message-wise. They risk alienating traditional interest groups (labor, racial and ethnic minorities, etc.) by running center. This will all work itself out, but hasn’t yet.
A Nader campaign stalls progress in this regard. It atomizes the left at a time when it’s desperately groping for cohesion.
Now, nobody’s saying Nader should be precluded from running, only that he’s smart enough to know these things and just doesn’t give a shit, or gives more of a shit about externalities. Like the public presence of Ralph Nader, for instance. Which makes him an asshole, which is arguably worse than being a retard.
LQ
It should also be noted that U.S. elections are decided on a plurality basis, rather than majority, which drives the entire system toward two-party dominance. Where majorities are required, multi-party coalitions must be struck in order to form a government, or the whole process is stalled.
Political coalitions are built in the American plurality-wins system, but they happen within parties and are thus slow to develop. This immobility is actually a designed feature, a check on rapid change. No actor in U.S. electoral politics is excused from knowing these things, and behaving in a manner consistent with that knowledge.
Nader chooses to ignore systemic facts that are well within his ken, and asks his supporters to join him in cognitive dissonance. This bears closer comparison to “conservative” urges than to any definition of progressivism. Radicals of any stripe are the enemy.
LQ
I frankly don’t understand why Nader is running again. His platform in 2000 essentially rested on two ideas: 1) that there was little to no difference between the two major parties (the “Gush vs. Bore” line) and 2) that his campaign could help to build a viable third party in American politics.
After four years of Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, anyone who still buys “Gush vs. Bore” is out of touch with reality. And Nader’s running sans party affiliation, so no party-building this time around.
Where’s the platform?
Also, to the person who cited the existence of the Electoral College as evidence of no “corrections” in American politics: I heartily recommend the article “Math Against Tyranny,” which changed my views on the College, and my entire outlook on the American electoral system.
http://mikemiller.net/math_against_tyranny.html
Winer couldn’t be more wrong. Rational voters are aware of odds. Voting the odds given your conscience is a much more intelligent course of action than voting your conscience and ignoring your odds. Bayes anyone?
If you had to eat one of three pies (apple, cardboard, or shit) and you knew the vote between cardboard and shit were close (and apple had no reasonable chance), you wouldn’t hesitate to vote cardboard, even though it is not your preference.
Now, if didn’t have any information on the odds, then of course you would vote apple. But that isn’t the case. We know that Nader isn’t going to win.
For some reason people forget how to be rational when it comes to voting a political preference.
Jese
The knowledge of the odds that Jesse mentions above is gained through the media and public opinion during these many months before an election. In this environment a first-past-the-post system begins to resemble a runoff system with the initial rounds happening in the public forum.
“Suggesting Nader shouldn’t run is counter to all things free and democratic.”
No it is not. Suggesting that Nader should use his time to more productive ways of effecting change is not counter to all things free and democratic. That’s a willfull misrepresentation of the motives of those who have reason to believe a Ralph Nader run will undermine the causes he obstenibly believes in. Or to paraphrase someone I’ve read recently, “Suggesting I can’t express my displeasure at Ralph Nader’s candidacy is counter to all things free and democratic.”
Ralph Nader is not interested in building a third-party movement — otherwise he’d run as a member of any such third party. And to think that his run would reform the way we select our president (Electoral College, Winner-Take-All, etc.), you’d have to ignore the fact that virtually nothing changed since 2000, when Nader ran, Gore won the popular vote, Florida screwed the pooch and the Supreme Court wrote the final coda to that screwed up symphony. If *that* external event couldn’t effect changes as to the structures of presidential election, nothing on the outside will. And let me reiterate that point — despite what Ralph Nader said on Meet the Press, he is not an insider. He is as much an outsider as I am, as you are. Especially since he is not a member or affiliated with any political party or governmental group, and never was a member of a governmental group or an elected official. Throughout the history of this country we’ve only had two external revolutions — the successful revolution of 1776, and the unsucessful one of 1861-65. Every successful change in our government came from pressuring those on the inside. . . women’s sufferage, civil rights, worker’s rights. And even in the political arena, third parties (which Nader isn’t even running as a part of) can only do two things, surplant one of the two major parties, or get its issues co-opted by one of the two major parties. In this case, despite Nader’s protestations, the Democratic Party is co-opting the issues animating Nader. Globalization? Kerry and Edwards are blasting ‘Benedict Arnold’ corporations. Edwards talks about there being two separate Americas. The Democratic party is talking about pretty much undoing all the things George Bush has done. Those two are closer to being on the inside. That means they are more likely to effect change than Nader ever could hope to.
I’d better stop here. I’m getting unfocused. I should try to write about this on my journal, just so I can lay out my argument better.