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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.

February 23, 2004

The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader

Things They Should Consider

by AL KREBS

Before the Democratic Party and its "liberal intelligentsia" unleash its expected vindictiveness upon Ralph Nader’s candidacy for president in 2004 it might consider the following:

* Al Gore (with an able assist from the U.S. Supreme Court) lost the electoral vote for president in 2000. He not only lost his home state but that of his president. If his managers had spent less time in that campaign attacking Nader’s candidacy and more time arranging at least one trip to West Virginia, a traditional Democratic state, Gore would have won that state making Florida irrelevant.

* Arguments that Nader work within the Democratic Party for genuine change, as Howard Dean’s populist candidacy in recent months leading up to the current primaries demonstrated, only begets the wrath of a Party establishment intent on preserving its power and the present "two party duopoly" governing our country.

* Progressives believe it is important to "defeat Bush at any cost," but as Nader points out "while it is important that Bush must be defeated," Democrats are currently incapable of it "without someone running a third party campaign with a strong Bush critique pulling them in the right direction."

* The tendency of progressives tied to the Democratic Party, while admitting to the party’s sizable failings, is to still cling to the idea that "this is not the time," to run a third party campaign from the left. "They have no breaking point, no point of termination" Nader points out. "They watch Democrats in office offer them one defeat after another without ever being willing to establish a termination strategy, a point beyond which too much is too much."

Thus if the Democratic Party spent less time and effort trying to seduce its "corporate paymasters," exhibit a willingness to wage an unintimidated and full bore attack on George W. Bush’s domestic and international policies while returning the party of the people to its Jeffersonian populist roots there would be no need to waste its scarce resources continuously and needlessly attacking Ralph Nader.

AL KREBS is the editor of the Agribusiness Examiner, one of CounterPunch’s favorite newsletters. He can be reached at: avkrebs@earthlink.net