Will Nader Help Bush Again?
By Mike Hersh, Feb 20, 2003

While most Nader supporters are intelligent and thoughtful people, Nader unfortunately attracts a number of people who seem to worship Nader as a god and relentlessly lie to themselves and others.

For example, there's no evidence to support the claim some Naderites make that Nader drew support from both Republicans and Democrats equally. In fact evidence indicates Nader drew close to twice as many votes from Gore as from Bush: "Voter News Service exit polls suggested Nader had the votes of 2% of registered Democrats, 1% of registered Republicans."

Some Nader cultists try to deny Nader intentionally helped Bush in 2000. Since we know Nader did help Bush, they must be claiming Nader was too dim to understand the impact of his focus on the closest swing states - especially Florida in the closing days of the campaign.

How could Nader not know he was helping Bush? Of course he recognized this risk but not only didn't care, Nader announced that was his intention. Nader told RFK Jr. that given a choice between Bush and Gore, Nader preferred Bush. Several progressives - many of whom had worked with Nader over the years - directly explained the risk to Nader, but of course Nader isn't that stupid. He knew he was helping Bush.

Nader directed his campaign activities to maximize help for Bush and harm to Gore. Now, as Nader contemplates another spoiler run in 2004, we should understand why Nader would again work to undermine and obliterate everything he claims to support.

Someone challenged me to explain why Nader helped Bush, trying to refute my recent column - in which I described and quantified Nader's help for Bush - and asked "Why wasn't Nader allowed in the debates?"

Apparently the exclusion of an also-ran from debates means more to some people than "Why did Nader run to maximize help for Bush (and harm to the progressive cause)?" and "Why didn't Nader stand up for democracy in Florida?"

There's no question Nader intentionally helped Bush. The only question is why. Nader's focus on Florida in the final days and his strategy to campaign almost exclusively in the closest states were calculated to hurt Al Gore and benefit Bush. Nader worked hard to that end, see: Did Nader Help or Hurt Al Gore?

There's no way Nader could have been unaware. Progressives - including many who worked with Nader - were screaming non-stop about how Nader was helping Bush and betraying everything Nader claimed he worked for. No one can deny Nader intentionally helped Bush, unless they want to wallow in ... denial. So why did he do it?

Nader intentionally divided the center / left hoping Bush would gain the White House. Nader expects Bush's awful policies will make things so bad people will turn to Nader. Don't take my word for it. Take Nader's word for it. Or better yet, watch what Nader does and doesn't do.

As Joe Conason wrote in his August 30, 2003 article for the New York Observer, Nader: He's Got A Lot of Gaul: "Americans have their own tiny movement whose left-wing rhetoric promotes right-wing ascendancy. It's called Naderism."

Jacob Weisberg explained: "It's not just that Nader is willing to take a chance of being personally responsible for electing Bush. It's that he's actively trying to elect Bush because he thinks that social conditions in American need to get worse before they can [get] better." More from Weisberg's boldly prescient article: It's sectarian idiocy to come.

The Village Voice's Lenora Todaro gave Nader an opportunity to refute this, asking: "Jacob Weisberg wrote in Slate that you had a 'Leninist strategy of heightening the contradictions' and that you adopted a it-has-to-get-worse-to-get-better policy. Anything to that?"

Nader couldn't answer truthfully without owning up to his strategy. That would alienate most of his well-meaning base, the millions who support him to make things better, not worse in some Quixotic quest to make things better some distant date. So Nader attacked Bill Clinton, Al Gore and other Democrats, apparently hoping no one would notice he refused to answer the question:

"We were adopting a policy that says American people deserve significant choices between two major parties and third parties. As far as Leninist strategy, Tony Coehlo and the corporate Democratic National Committee--which spawned Clinton, Gore...."

Nader ignores the 22 million new jobs, the return to fiscal sanity, the record high wages and home ownership - especially for minorities, making college education attainable for 10 million, family / medical leave, health coverage for millions of children, landmark environmental and worker protections, and countless other successes and achievements by Clinton and Gore.

To many of us, Clinton / Gore was better than Bush / Cheney. But because Nader cannot defend his own actions, he blasts others with vague, dishonest charges he cannot support. After portraying Nader as the innocent victim, Todaro defended her hero and offered him one soft-ball question after another, which Nader swung at and missed:

Scoundrel. Spoiler. Narcissist. This fall the left warred over whether a vote for Nader was a vote for progress, a vote in protest, or worse, a vote for Bush. As Gore lost Florida, Nader's critics charged that his 97,000 or so votes in that state had cost the Democrats the election. Never mind Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush and his cousin at Fox news, uncounted African American votes, the Florida courts, and finally, the U.S. Supreme Court. And never mind Gore himself. No, it all comes back to Ralph Nader. The Voice asked him to respond.

[Note: Nader didn't decry "Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush and his cousin at Fox news, uncounted African American votes, the Florida courts, and finally, the U.S. Supreme Court...." save to shirk personal responsibility for helping Bush.]

I don't know anyone who thinks "it all comes back to Ralph Nader," but Nader should explain his intentional efforts to help Bush in 2000 before demanding progressive support in 2004. This because even with all the other factors mentioned, without Nader's help Bush would not be in the White House today.

However, instead of responding to serious, honest questions Nader chose to evade and obfuscate, blaming others for his efforts that helped the Bushes and others who resort to throwing out ballots.

Astonishingly, Todaro never asked why Nader said nothing against any of the Republican outrages she listed. Instead she served up this lollypop:

Whenever you called Bush and Gore Tweedledum and Tweedledee, someone would say, "What about the Supreme Court?" Now that the Supreme Court appears to have decided the election for us, what about the Supreme Court? Will it matter that Bush will nominate future justices rather than Gore?

Nader replied: "It matters that the Democratic Party sent Scalia and Thomas to the Court...." Of course those were Republicans nominated by Republican Presidents, whom no Democratic President would have nominated. By helping Bush into the White House, Nader ensured the next nominee would be similar.

Nader habitually blames Democrats for "not stopping" Republican efforts. Since Nader actively and intentionally helped empower the right wing, his accusations and attempts to deflect blame are nothing but self-serving lies. See: Ralph Nader Lashes Back, Lenora Todaro, The Village Voice, December 20 - 26, 2000.

When you lash first, second and last, as Nader does by branding Al Gore a "whore," and attacking all Gore voters as "frightened" and "willing to settle for a stagnant, indentured corporate Democratic Party," it's facile and dishonest to claim Nader is defending himself or merely retaliating.

It's also foolish to deny Nader intentionally helped Bush. This is a war Nader declared which he wages against even his closest (former) allies. As Jacob Weisberg wrote: "It's clear that the people [Nader] really despises are those who half agree with him."

Here are key excerpts from his article It's sectarian idiocy which explain the aims and attitudes behind Nader's actions, the points Nader refused to address, even in a cushy interview:

For some time now, Nader has made it perfectly clear that his campaign isn't about trying to pull the Democrats back to the left. Rather, his strategy is the Leninist one of "heightening the contradictions." It's not just that Nader is willing to take a chance of being personally responsible for electing Bush. It's that he's actively trying to elect Bush because he thinks that social conditions in American need to get worse before they can [get] better.

Nader often makes this "the worse, the better" point on the stump in relation to Republicans and the environment. He says that the Reagan-era interior secretary James Watt was useful because he was a "provocateur" for change, noting that Watt spurred a massive boost in the Sierra Club's membership. More recently, Nader applied the same logic to Bush himself.

Here's the Los Angeles Times' account of a speech Nader gave at Chapman University in Orange, California, last week: "After lambasting Gore as part of a do-nothing Clinton administration, Nader said, 'If it were a choice between a provocateur and an anaesthetiser, I'd rather have a provocateur. It would mobilize us.'"

Nader thinks Americans need a solid kick in the pants before they'd support him and his agenda. He'd rather attack moderates and progressives and further the aims of the right wing than work responsibly and patiently for progress. Even if that means going backwards - even causing death and destruction.

Nader is loath to admit that he wants right wingers to replace liberals in office, because he knows most of his supporters would find his callousness repugnant. So Nader hints and winks and jokes around, but occasionally cries havoc and lets slip the dogs of Naderism. Weisberg continued:

Lest this remark be considered an aberration, Nader has said similar things before. "When [the Democrats] lose, they say it's because they are not appealing to the Republican voters," Nader told an audience in Madison, Wisconsin, a few months ago, according to a story in the Nation. "We want them to say they lost because a progressive movement took away votes."

That might make it sound like Nader's goal is to defeat Gore in order to shift the Democratic party to the left. But in a more recent interview with David Moberg in the socialist paper In These Times, Nader made it clear that his real mission is to destroy and then replace the Democratic party altogether.

According to Moberg, Nader talked "about leading the Greens into a 'death struggle' with the Democratic party to determine which will be the majority party." Nader further and shockingly explained that he hopes in the future to run Green party candidates around the country, including against such progressive Democrats as Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, and Representative Henry Waxman of California. "I hate to use military analogies," Nader said, "but this is war on the two parties."

That's what Nader wants. War on the two parties, but mainly against Democrats. Many of his supporters probably would like to add the Greens as another viable choice in the voting booth. Do most of them want to help Republicans consolidate control for decades in order to achieve that aim?

Nader hopes the Greens will face down the right wing Republicans after he leads them in destroying the Democrats. Isn't it far more likely his Greens will just join Democrats face down in the mud - divided and conquered by the empowered right wing Republicans - after Nader's "war?"

It's hard to imagine many will support Nader now. Not after suffering through years of right wing Bush-led theocratic war on progressivism - especially if Nader reprises his help Bush now to help us in 40 years strategy in which, as Weisberg describes:

Nader criticizes Bush half-heartedly, then becomes enthusiastic and animated blasting the Green version of the "social fascists" - Bill Clinton, Gore, and moderate environmentalists. It's clear that the people he really despises are those who half agree with him.

To Nader, it is liberal meliorists, not rightwing conservatives, who are the true enemies of his effort to build a "genuine" progressive movement. He does have a preference between Republicans and Democrats, and it's for the party that he thinks will inflict maximum damage on the environment, civil rights, labor rights, and so on.

By assisting his class enemy, Nader thinks he can help pull the wool from the eyes of a sheep-like public. See See: It's sectarian idiocy, Jacob Weisberg, The Guardian, (UK) November 7, 2000: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,393674,00.html

Again, Joe Conason explains why so many people find Nader and Naderites naive and negative -- a threat to progressive and liberal causes:

[Nader] attracted a substantial group of his followers to a rally where he explained again that there was no significant difference between the two major parties. Even while Ralph Nader was delivering his rote witticisms, the public-interest groups he founded were lobbying feverishly in Washington to defeat the energy proposals of George W. Bush, the President who owes his victory to Mr. Nader.

At issue was the desire of Mr. Bush and his oil-industry backers to open the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. A victory for the White House would have dealt a terrible symbolic blow to the environmental values proclaimed by Mr. Nader and his supporters. Fortunately for the country and the caribou, the Naderites were proved wrong again." See Nader: He's Got A Lot of Gaul: http://www.newyorkobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=5766.

We're all free to decide what we consider important. Some put the whims of one person over the life-and-death needs of the entire nation and the entire planet. So be it.

Nader declared civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, workers' rights, choice, hate crimes, education, the environment, wages, health care, campaign finance reform, Social Security, Medicare, and much more didn't matter to him when he urged voters to dismiss Gore's superior positions vs. Bush on all of the above in 2000.

Nader - as a straight, white male millionaire - has every right to dismiss the life-and-death needs of others as unimportant to him, or to sacrifice them in a grand chess game he thinks he's playing. Now, Nader tells people Al Gore cost him the Presidency. A funny line for Nader, but not for the millions who are suffering thanks to Nader's schemes.

Decision time is here. I prefer to support candidates who - no matter their race, means, gender or sexual orientation - uphold the rights of all Americans and support the Constitution. I prefer candidates who tell the truth about what they want, rather than mislead supporters into pointless power struggles more about ego than anything else.

Oddly, the Nader cultists who hysterically and dishonestly attack anyone who dares to question Nader make out their hero as a kind of fool who has no idea about the obvious consequences of his own actions.

Anyone with any sense - including Nader - knew Nader was hurting Gore and helping Bush. Claiming Nader was doing this but was too stupid to know it indicates these Nader cultists think their god is a fool. At least the truth-tellers respect Nader's intellect if not his honesty or morality!

Now of course people have the right to lie, even to themselves. It's bizarre that some people love Nader so much that they cannot bring themselves to accept Nader's own comments much less the clear record of Nader's actions. So much so they end up implicitly calling Nader a liar, a fool, or both! Bizarre!

Nader even stood by silently during the direct assault against democracy in Florida in the aftermath of the election. Nader's remedy wasn't "count the votes." The pro-Bush stalking horse refused to stand up for the voters' rights or common decency, branding him forever as a pro-Bush operative.

In 2000, there may have been some question about Nader's true goals and objectives. Not for 2004, however. By now, we know Nader helped Bush on purpose. Nader voters have a clean slate now. They have a clear choice: support Nader (and by extension Bush) or oppose Bush and the right wing. They can't do both.

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