Third Parties and the Nader Derangement Syndrome

Even the WSJ has noticed. (Via Roy Edroso)

At the largest progressive gathering ahead of the 2010 elections, liberal activists huddled Friday in a session to plot strategy to protect Social Security from renewed Republican efforts to privatize the program. A woman stood up and asked: "Why is it with a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House, and a Democrat in the White House do we need to be worried about this?"

Why, indeed? Well, we've been over all that and we know why. The New Democrat party is nothing but another corporate captive, panting after the moneybags. That isn't the question we need to be asking. The question we need to be asking is why, with every poll against their policies by wide margins, is the New Democrat party so unconcerned about its base that it's going out of its way to pander to right-wing meatballs like Andrew "Scumface" Breitbart?

Ralph Nader, that's why.

A lot of people, especially Obama partisans, are terrified of a Third Party movement. Like old time right-wingers who blamed communism for everything from the A-bomb to hangnails, lib/progs seem convinced that Ralph Nader's presidential run in 2000 made it possible for Bush to win by splitting the Dem constituency just enough to let the Shrub squeeze through on a technicality. In fact, they become damn near hysterical now every time anybody mentions "Third party" or "Ralph Nader". They foam at the mouth and stamp their little feet and shake their fists and threaten to hold their breath until they turn blue.

This is what I call the Nader Derangement Syndrome. Like all genuine derangement syndromes (Bush DR had legitimate sources - people hated him because he was destroying the country; that's not "deranged", it's a rational response to reality), Nader DR is based on a fantasy of blame for an outcome that later proved to be disastrous. Namely, Bush/Cheney.

But blaming Nader for that is like blaming the Little Dutch Boy for the hole in the dike. The hard fact is that Jeb wasn't going to let his bro lose in Florida. To that end, he and his Sec of State for Chicken Dancing On Top of the Rights of Minorities, Kathleen Harris, disenfranchised over 100,000 black voters with tricks and illegal activities like hiding polling places in black districts, moving them around on election day, and deliberately removing tens of thousands from voting lists. Compared to this Bushing of the minority population, Ralph's couple thousand votes was a drop in the proverbial bucket.

It's important to understand this because it's the primary reason some FDR Dems have been paralyzed into weenieness, supporting Obama fanatically even though he has proved himself to be nothing more than Bush with poetry. Avedon Carol, muching on the whole Sherrod mess, asks pungently, "[J]ust what kind of brains are operating in the White House. Why is the administration in such a hurry to treat these things that deserve nothing but derision with such seriousness? What is it about Obama that nothing seems to fit in his comfort zone like screwing decent people?"

It's patently obvious at this point that the old liberal Democratic base would jump ship in a NY minute if they weren't so afraid that a Third Party with some strength might do what Nader is supposed to have done: let the batshit insane Pubs steal another election and wreak even more havoc on the nation than they did before. Sarah Palin as pres? Or Tom Coburn? Tim Pawlenty? Michelle Bachman? John Cornyn? Any one of these names is an invitation to apoplexy.

And yet and yet and yet....

What choice do we have? The New Democrat party of Blue Dog conservative douchebags is only about 10% less dirty, slimy, corrupt and intellectually and politically bankrupt as the worst of the GOoPers. Therefore, the best we can expect by continuing to support these clowns is that the ultimate destruction of what's left of our economy and our democracy - not that there's much of either to speak of - will happen 10% more slowly than if the Pubs controlled the finish like they controlled the start.

How gutless are we if we're willing to watch that destruction rather than fight it, all for a slightly elongated timeline?

How fight it? The only way I see is...by supporting a Third Party. The New Democrats are so hopelessly stuck to the assholes of the rich and corporate that they won't stop sucking butt until they're scared not to. And the only thing they fear more than the drying up of the corporate tit is a challenge from the left forcing them to turn more populist or at least less corporate puppety or else lose their election altogether.

What you need to remember is that Third Parties in America don't win elections, they win the argument if their answers are better, and ours most certainly are. A viable left-wing Third Party doesn't have to win a single election. All it has to do is make enough noise to scare the Democrat party into going back to its roots and adopting Democratic ideals and policies once again. We need to make the New Democrat BD scuzzballs more afraid of us than they are of Scumface Andy.

And after all, how hard could that be to pull off?

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Comments

[CMike]

97,488 Floridians voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Had Nader not been on the ballot in Florida, I think it's safe to say Al Gore would have benefited by a net increase of 30,000 votes there, a number larger than a "drop in the proverbial bucket."

My big gripe with Nader is that after that election he did not say, "Yeah, maybe our candidacy cost Gore and the Democrats the election. So what?"

Me, I'll never vote for any office holder who, from this day forward, votes to decrease Social Security benefits or limits the federal government's liability for those benefits. With that exception, I'll vote for any Democratic candidate for any federal office who unequivocally supports single payer health care for all and I'll vote for the highest polling opponent of any Democratic candidate who does not unequivocally support single payer health care for all whether or not that opponent is a Republican.

I want to wreck the careers of all corporate Democrats. It'll be up to the Democratic pollsters to identify those of us using this criteria. If my vote and the votes of like-minded Democrats end up costing a Democratic candidate an election win and someone asks me about it my response will be, "So what?"

[Cujo359]

Gore lost the election. That's what the numbers tell me, and I think it's what any serious look at them would tell anyone else. Gore had a double-digit lead in the polls going into the summer of 2000. He blew it by acting like the corporate tool I suspected he was.

The vote suppression had as much of an effect, maybe more, than Nader's candidacy. That's too bad, because if he'd polled ten percent or so, a realistic possibility if progressives weren't so afraid of giving the GOP the White House, it would have been clear that no Democrat could win without progressives, and they might have realized that the DLC road was a dead end.

Instead, we ended up with Kerry in 2004 and Obama in '08.

Whether a third party is a viable possibility to win office is immaterial. The Teabaggers are proving that. If your group is substantial enough to swing an election and it's willing to take its votes elsewhere, it matters. If it isn't willing to do that, it doesn't. That's what progressives aren't learning, and they'd better figure it out soon, or we'll be in this boat for a long, long time.