Run, Ralph, Run! (But I Won't Vote for You)

In announcing another quixotic presidential bid on Meet the Press, Ralph Nader was his usual cogent self, asking, as he does, why so many in the "liberal intelligentsia" condemn him for discussing the important issues that the two major parties ignore.

Although the Democratic debates during this primary season are about a thousand times better than those of recent years, he was, as usual, right -- why the hell haven't the Democrats come up with a coherent position on trade, for example?

As he spoke, one could almost hear Democrats across the country pulling knives from their sheaths. Another Nader run, another opportunity for Democrats -- even progressive Dems -- to attack him, in the words of Michael Tomasky, "with lupine ferocity."

At the heart of that animalistic urge is the notion that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election and was responsible for placing Shrub in the White House, a revisionist history that's as ludicrous as it is pervasive within Democratic circles. The reality -- the hard data point that makes it a perfectly specious narrative -- is that Al Gore, had he immediately and forcefully demanded a recount of all the votes in the state of Florida, would have won and would probably be finishing up his second term right now. It was his decision -- one that Nader had nothing to do with -- to contest only a handful of counties that would ultimately cost him the presidency (and the United States so much more than that).

What's more, as Ralph said during his appearance on Meet the Press, Democrats are perfectly capable of analyzing a story with multiple variables, but when it comes to election 2000, they focus on just one. Even if Gore hadn't won the most votes in Florida -- according to any of seven standards the courts might have used -- even if we look at just the recounted counties that gave Bush that slim 500-vote lead, there were a dozen other factors that would have tipped the scales. Katherine Harris purged 50,000 (mostly black) eligible voters. Gore decided not to have Bubba Clinton campaign on his behalf, despite Clinton's 65 percent approval rating (which was the highest for a departing president since World War II). Pat Buchanan won little old gray-haired Jewish ladies' votes thanks to the infamous "butterfly ballot." I could go on -- the point is that looking at all of those factors and then blaming a citizen for exercising his right to run for elected office is both intellectually weak and absurd in principle.

Many Democrats, in their misplaced pique, also condemn Nader and his supporters in a profoundly bone-headed way -- they suggest, or at least imply, that it was somehow the duty of progressive-minded people to vote for the Democratic ticket because of the perfidy of the alternative.

The larger comparison is right -- there's a hell of a lot more than a dime's worth of difference between the Dems and the GOP at this point in history -- but the idea that people "owe" their vote to a candidate, even one who fails to fully represent their interests, is not only offensive, it's also counter-productive. The reason is simple: It's anathema to liberal ideology to walk in lock-step with a party. One can piss and moan all one wants about how conservatives are more "disciplined" (think about the idea of a party "disciplining" its members), but the reality is that liberals and progressives will always chafe at the idea of being told how to vote.

But here's the rub: While people don't owe a vote for any candidate, it is in the self-interest of liberals, moderates and even those few remaining "principled conservatives" out there to defeat the reactionaries who have controlled the GOP for the past couple of decades. Smart Democrats, if they're concerned about the impact of a Nader run (which, let's face it, will be minimal after eight years of Bush; Nader got 2.7 percent of the vote in 2000 and in 2004, after one Bush term, he got less than 0.4 percent), will stop bloviating about Nader's "spoiler effect" and start making that explicit appeal to progressives' self-interest.