“Lupine Ferocity”? Are you sure you have the right party?
TalkLeft reprints Michael Tomasky’s advice to Democratic candidates on how to solve “the Nader problem”.
So here’s a thought for an enterprising Democratic candidate: Attack Nader right now, and with lupine ferocity. Say he’s a madman for thinking of running again. Blast him especially hard on foreign policy, saying that if it were up to the Greens, America would give no aid to Israel and it would cease to exist, and if it were up to the Greens, America would not have even defended itself against a barbarous attack by going into Afghanistan. Have at him, and hard, from the right. Then nail him from the left on certain social issues, on abortion rights and other things that he’s often pooh-poohed and dismissed as irrelevant. Cause an uproar. Be dramatic. Don’t balance it with praise about what he’s done for consumers. To the contrary, talk about how much he’s damaging consumers today by not caring who’s in charge of the Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Communications Commission.
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: The problem with most liberal politicians is that it’s hard to be liberal and be a bulldog. But if we expect to survive, we’re going to have to learn how.
Of course, things like this are what send the media into a feeding frenzy as reporters jabber on and on about how divided the liberals are, how we have no direction, and how we’re a bunch of headless chickens ready for the plucking. Well, okay. They don’t say that last one in exactly those words, but it’s certainly implied.
It may seem contrary to liberal ideals and philosophy to turn and attack one of our own – but it’s becoming apparent that Nader is no longer operating from a liberal position politically. Stories from inside the Green Party suggest that at the last minute, Nader ignored advice to throw his support behind Gore over what amounted to a personal vendetta. Throughout his campaign, it was clear that Nader considered his race to be against Al Gore – not George W. Bush.
Anybody looking at things from a liberal standpoint should realize by now that we cannot stand four more years of Bush and his administration. So what we need – as has been suggested by other writers – is for Ralph Nader to provide us with an absolutely foolproof plan that guarantees he will carry a significant majority in the Electoral College and beat Dubya for the office, or we need him to get out of the way and throw his support behind another candidate. And considering that the college campaigns and the Nader Traders couldn’t even swing third-party status for the Greens in the last election, I think it’s highly unlikely that Nader will provide us with a guaranteed win.
And if we’re going to demand a progressive candidate in office, it’s possible that Ralph Nader really isn’t the one. As we’ve seen, he allows his sense of vendetta to cloud his attention to facts – anybody running in the last race should have been able to see that Bush’s policies toward the environment were much more worthy of attack than Gore’s. Plus, as Tomasky points out, Nader is incredibly weak on many economic and social issues. In fact, his tendency to dismiss issues as “irrelevant” sounds a bit like our current administration.
And, honestly, where is Nader in the public eye when he’s not talking about running against the Democrats? Say what you will about the current Democratic candidates, but when they stand up and say something they tend to be seen. Where is Nader while the FCC offers major media conglomerates a big ol’ Monopoly board? Where is Nader when Bush is editing the environmental reports? Or when Bush is stating that there’s still no evidence for global warming, and that we need to pay our top polluters billions of dollars over the next ten years to study the natural causes of global warming? I’m certain that somebody out there will point me to Nader’s comments on these issues. And they’ll probably point out to me that Nader says plenty, it’s just the media that doesn’t cover it.
But isn’t that kind of the point? At least when Howard Dean attacks Bush on his foreign policy, the cameras are there. We need somebody vocal on the issues who can stand toe-to-toe with Bush and who gets attention from the media and the people.
Ralph Nader, frankly, is not that candidate.