October 26, 2000
A Vote for Nader
Is A Vote for Nader
"A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush."
How quickly the Gore liberals adopt a totalitarian mindset, sounding
like Soviet commissars back in the old days who would urge the
voters towards a 98 per cent turn-out for the Communist candidate,
arguing that any deviation from absolute loyalty would "objectively"
play into the hands of the imperialists.
A vote for Nader
is first and foremost a vote for Nader. And since the programs
of the Democratic and Republican candidates are pretty much the
same on issues ranging from corporate welfare to Wall Street
to the war on drugs to crime to military spending, a vote for
Gore is actually a vote for Bush, and a vote for Bush is a vote
for Gore. It was the same in 1996. Clinton or Dole? Vote for
Clinton and you got Dole anyway.
These waning days of the campaign there's a desperation
to the alarums of the Gore people about the Nader. For one thing,
they know that the Nader super-rallies in New York, across the
upper midwest and in the north-west have had a hugely energizing
effect on young people. There hasn't been anything like it since
Jesse Jackson's populist bid for the nomination back in 1988.
Back that time Jackson rolled in behind the Democratic ticket
and rolled up his Rainbow, leaving hundreds of thousands of supporters
with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Having spent the
past month speaking about Gore and Nader on campuses along the
track of these rallies, we can say with certainty that the enthusiasms
of these young activists aren't about to be quelled by lectures
from Gloria Steinem or Barney Frank or Jesse Jackson Jr about
the need to take the mature view, and root for Gore-Lieberman.
For one thing, they watched the debates. Did they take from those
labored encounters any nourishment from Gore on issues that they
have an appetite for, like trade or sweat labor or the drug war
or the growing divide between rich and poor?
Gore liberals such
as Steinem, or Patricia Ireland of NOW, or Carl Pope of the Sierra
Club have been trading in false currency for so long that they
don't realise that as shills for the Democratic Party their credit
was used up long, long ago. When Steinem of all people wags her
finger at greens and tells them that poor people don't have the
luxury of voting for Nader, it doesn't take longer than a second
to hear the response: "Then what about the welfare bill.
Was that good for the poor?" And only middle class women
enjoy the luxury of Roe v Wade since Gore and others voted down
federal aid for abortions for poor women long ago.
Listen to Ellen
Johnson, an organizer for the Arizona Greens, who
teaches at Arizona State in Tempe. "Since the onset of the
Clinton
presidency NOW's once stalwart support of many women's rights
issues has eroded. While reproductive rights are important,
so is quality childcare, a living wage, eradication of environmental
toxins, and health care. Although Clinton/Gore promised to
address these issues in '92 and '96, no acceptable plans for
improvement have been implemented.
Why is NOW so willing to give Gore another chance?
Oh yeah, we forgot, for abortion rights. What is Roe vs. Wade
worth to you, NOW? If it's the wholesale sellout of a constituency
you once pledged to serve then you are on the right track."
In mid-October,
we went to a debate at the Hothouse in downtown Chicago, a great
club featuring jazz, blues and political events. Here were ranged
advocates of the Nader/Green third party bid against Democratic
loyalists. we heard an organizer from the United Electrical Workers
(one of the few unions to endorse Nader) put up a strong argument
as to why labor should rethink its loyalty to the Democrats.
He pointed out that at the stroke of a pen Clinton/Gore could
have helped labor immensely by any number of executive orders.
No such orders came. After eight long years there's been nothing
on striker replacement.
Despite all the
bright talk of New Labor, unions have actually lost
ground in the Clinton/Gore years, simply because the legal playing
field is so tilted in favor of the employers. There's no prospect
on earth that a Gore-Lieberman administration would work to tilt
this playingfield the other way. Back in 1993 and 1994 when Democrats
held the White House and Congress, what did Clinton-Gore do for
labor? They pushed through NAFTA.
Nader has actually grown in stature and in political
skills these last two months. From a pedagogical style that could
tend to the soporific he's been transformed by the energy of
those rallies into an inspirational orator. He's outcampaigned
the man who has most to fear from him. Visions do count . Gore
hasn't offered one and Nader has. Unlike Jackson in '88 he's
not going to quit and neither, we suspect, are most of his supporters.
They're already thinking about what to do after November 7. CP
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