Green With Envy?
Color me underwhelmed, but Ralph Nader has announced his candidacy for President in 2008. Much has been written in the blogosphere about the impact Nader will have on the race in 2008, but for some level-headed and well-reasoned analysis on this matter, look no further than Joe Gandleman’s piece in The Moderate Voice:
What has happened to him since is sad because he became overexposed politically and weighted-down with hubris — so the most he will gain in 2008 would indeed be siphoning-off Democratic votes if it’s a razor-thin-victory-margin election. He is not an up and coming force — or even as respected as he once was — any longer.
Now, I’m not opposed to Nader running—it is, of course, his choice. As a slightly left leaning moderate I worry that Nader will hurt the chances of the Democratic nominee in 2008, but as a staunch believer in the marketplace of ideas I also believe that it is that nominee’s responsibility to effectively deal with Nader’s challenge from the left.
Back to Gandleman, who gives the more worried Democrats out there a few reasons to sleep much easier at night (a small selection from his list):
- NADER HAS NO CHANCE OF GETTING INTO THE NATIONAL DEBATES
- THERE WILL BE A CLEARER CHOICE THAN EVER THIS YEAR
- NADER LEFT MANY VOTERS FEELING BURNED (in 2000 and 2004)
- NADER’S STYLE DOES NOT FIT INTO THE EMERGING EARLY 21st CENTURY STYLE OF POLITICS
- NADER HAS LOST A KEY CHUNK OF HIS ORIGINAL STUDENT CONSTITUENCY
I think Gandleman’s analysis is really clear. Check out the full article—you will not be disappointed. Gandleman goes on to summarize the reactions of the blogosphere to Nader as well, a very useful exercise in taking the pulse of the tech-electorate out there. Another look at the reaction in the blogosphere can be found courtesy of the blog Balkinization.
It should be further noted that this time Nader is not running with the support of the Green Party, but instead has declared himself an independent. The Greens, for their part, are having a much less publicized 5-way primary to determine their nominee.
This means that Nader is free to develop his own platform for the election, without the burdens of a party bureaucracy, or the need to prove his environmental credentials at the cost of discussing other policy issues. Nader can discuss the issues that really matter and create a substantive debate around those issues using the vehicle of his national campaign. He can start a grassroots movement to bring new and pressing issues to the forefront of the American political arena. Impressed yet? Me either.
A quick look at Nader’s platform, as it is now written, leaves much to be desired. Nader lists twelve issues in table form on his page and simply says that for him they are “on the table” and for his opponents they are not (noticeably Huckabee does not appear on the list, Nader has counted him out already). Here are some of the “Twelve Issues that Matter in 2008″ according to Nader:
- Adopt single payer national health insurance
- Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget
- No to nuclear power, solar energy first
- Work to end corporate personhood
- Impeach Bush/Cheney
The last one makes me smile. Nader, who currently holds no public office, has impeachment in his Presidential platform? Isn’t this kind of a moot point by March of 2008 already? Nader may not be familiar with the concept of winning elections—he is about to go 0 for 5 in Presidential elections—so I can forgive him for not realizing that if he wins that means Bush/Cheney have to resume their lives of corporate luxury and step down from political power.
Aside from the amateur feel of Nader’s list of issues, I am struck by just how undeveloped his policy plans are. Here we are less than 9 months away from the general election and Nader—who has been sitting on the sideline for the last year of campaigning—announces that these twelve pet issues are merely “on the table” for him. Cutting the military budget is not a matter of changing some figures around on a budget sheet, yet Nader seems to think that saying he is not opposed to cutting the budget is a strong enough stand on which to base a Presidential campaign.
I doubt my problems with Nader’s candidacy will move many of the people who are likely to support Nader no matter what he does. Despite the relative incoherence of his policy proposals (and I thought Obama’s fluffy proposals were vague), Nader will still attract a similar vote count he received in 2004. The reason: Nader is the anti-establishment candidate. Voters who are fed up with the two-party system will vote for him, regardless of his policies, because they see a vote for Nader as a vote against two-party politics in the US.
Nader sees his candidacy as something entirely different. In a revealing interview with Time Magazine, Nader poetically reveals some of his reasoning and uses the opportunity as a soundboard for his own pet issues:
One metaphor for [my] campaign could be the tugboat campaign, pushing candidates toward the harbor of the people and away from the harbor of giant corporations.
In response to the question of playing spoiler of the Democrats in 2008:
No, I think they’re going to win big. [Republican frontrunner Arizona Senator John] McCain, if he is the nominee, given his statements and his position on Iraq…seems to be the candidate of permanent war and intervention.
On why the “issues” are being ignored:
The whole idea of freedom, diversity, choice inside the electoral arena is a major issue, especially as the overwhelming power of commercial money in our elections has drawn the two parties into more and more of a convergence in corporate power issues. And that’s reflected in the issues that draw a bright line between my candidacy and that of McCain, [Illinois Senator Barack] Obama, [and New York Senator Hillary] Clinton.
And finally on his grand strategy:
We’re also trying to get people to form Congress watchdog-type groups in state after state and focusing on their representatives and senators — to take it from the election year ‘08 and moving it into ‘09 and to move these platforms, these issues into Congress. To make it a broader redirection of Congress as it truly represents the people has not been tried before…Any kind of social justice proposal has to be premised on a shift of power and that’s what happened with slavery and the women’s right to vote and worker standards. It was all shift of power.
It is a little unclear of what Nader is trying to shift power toward, aside from, of course, himself…
In a future post I will take a look at the relationship between Nader and the other candidates. Where is he positioning himself among the big 3 (since he doesn’t acknowledging Huckabee as viable candidate). All pretty interesting stuff, and I’m sure we’ll here more from Mr. Nader in the future.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: Green Party, Ralph Nader