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Ralph Nader, Suicide Bomber
"Later I was introduced to Nader's closest adviser, his handsome, piercingly intelligent 30-year-old nephew, Tarek Milleron. Although Milleron argued that environmentalists and other activists would find fundraising easier under Bush, he acknowledged that a Bush presidency would be worse for poor and working-class people, for blacks, for most Americans. As Moore had, he claimed that Nader's campaign would encourage Web-based vote-swapping between progressives in safe and contested states. But when I suggested that Nader could gain substantial influence in a Democratic administration by focusing his campaign on the 40 safe states and encouraging his supporters elsewhere to vote Gore, Milleron leaned coolly toward me with extra steel in his voice and body. He did not disagree. He simply said, "We're not going to do that."
"Why not?" I said.
With just a flicker of smile, he answered, "Because we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them."
There was a long silence and the conversation was over. "
Milleron's words are so remarkable they bear repeating: Ralph Nader ran so he could hurt, wound, and punish the Democrats. His primary goal was not raising issues, much less building the Green Party. He actively wanted Gore to lose. Where did this passion to punish come from?
***
Nader's swing-state strategy was the crux of his anti-Gore game plan. If Nader had been truly committed to getting the Greens their 5 percent, he would have taken the safe-state route mapped out by many party advisers. In Stupid White Men, Michael Moore says he rejected Nader's invitation to join him in the battleground states as the election neared. Instead, Moore chose to work only "in those states where Ralph could get a lot of votes without being responsible for Bush winning the election." Places like New York, California, Massachusetts, and such liberal enclaves as Bush's own Austin, Texas, as Chait puts it, "offered the richest harvest of potential votes." This is what Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan did. Nader took precisely the opposite tack. He spent the last days of the campaign in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and, especially, Florida, which according to Sellers he visited five times all told. Pennsylvania and Michigan went Democratic, but Nader forced Gore to expend time and resources on states he should have had in his pocket. And in Florida, though Nader's poll numbers dipped from 6 percent to 4 to his final 1.6, HIS 97,488 VOTERS TIPPED THE ELECTION.
And for all of you insisting that Nader didn't throw the 2000 election, I suggest revisiting an Algebra I textbook. For all of you who still believe Nader's "tweedledee and tweedledumb" self-serving assessment of the two-parties, I hope you are prepared to enjoy PNAC's New Wars: The Sequel(s). Do you really think we would have invaded Iraq if Gore had been confirmed as President? You can wank all you want about the undifferentiated evil of the Big Capitalist Machine and how real change is impossible without a major structural overhaul, but I'm guessing that means jack-shit to all the Iraqi civilians murdered by the US bombing campaigns, or tortured to death while in US captivity.
"Later I was introduced to Nader's closest adviser, his handsome, piercingly intelligent 30-year-old nephew, Tarek Milleron. Although Milleron argued that environmentalists and other activists would find fundraising easier under Bush, he acknowledged that a Bush presidency would be worse for poor and working-class people, for blacks, for most Americans. As Moore had, he claimed that Nader's campaign would encourage Web-based vote-swapping between progressives in safe and contested states. But when I suggested that Nader could gain substantial influence in a Democratic administration by focusing his campaign on the 40 safe states and encouraging his supporters elsewhere to vote Gore, Milleron leaned coolly toward me with extra steel in his voice and body. He did not disagree. He simply said, "We're not going to do that."
"Why not?" I said.
With just a flicker of smile, he answered, "Because we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them."
There was a long silence and the conversation was over. "
Milleron's words are so remarkable they bear repeating: Ralph Nader ran so he could hurt, wound, and punish the Democrats. His primary goal was not raising issues, much less building the Green Party. He actively wanted Gore to lose. Where did this passion to punish come from?
***
Nader's swing-state strategy was the crux of his anti-Gore game plan. If Nader had been truly committed to getting the Greens their 5 percent, he would have taken the safe-state route mapped out by many party advisers. In Stupid White Men, Michael Moore says he rejected Nader's invitation to join him in the battleground states as the election neared. Instead, Moore chose to work only "in those states where Ralph could get a lot of votes without being responsible for Bush winning the election." Places like New York, California, Massachusetts, and such liberal enclaves as Bush's own Austin, Texas, as Chait puts it, "offered the richest harvest of potential votes." This is what Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan did. Nader took precisely the opposite tack. He spent the last days of the campaign in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and, especially, Florida, which according to Sellers he visited five times all told. Pennsylvania and Michigan went Democratic, but Nader forced Gore to expend time and resources on states he should have had in his pocket. And in Florida, though Nader's poll numbers dipped from 6 percent to 4 to his final 1.6, HIS 97,488 VOTERS TIPPED THE ELECTION.
And for all of you insisting that Nader didn't throw the 2000 election, I suggest revisiting an Algebra I textbook. For all of you who still believe Nader's "tweedledee and tweedledumb" self-serving assessment of the two-parties, I hope you are prepared to enjoy PNAC's New Wars: The Sequel(s). Do you really think we would have invaded Iraq if Gore had been confirmed as President? You can wank all you want about the undifferentiated evil of the Big Capitalist Machine and how real change is impossible without a major structural overhaul, but I'm guessing that means jack-shit to all the Iraqi civilians murdered by the US bombing campaigns, or tortured to death while in US captivity.
