Relationship between Progressives and Liberals
In an interview with the Comics Journal in 1988, Jules Feiffer, the political satirist, said:
"I've always seen liberals as people who've taken radical ideas, whether from socialists or communists, finding ways of redefining them, relabeling them, reforming them, compromising them, and then improving the society with them. And the liberal's job generally has been to process and homogenize the more radical notions out there for some time and make them acceptable to the mass society. And to that extent, liberals have played an important part. That liberals innovate anything is questionable. But that they innovate anything worth innovating is doubtful. The innovation comes from more radical sources generally."
This is something that I've been coming across a lot lately in books and documentaries about progressives history: the interdependence between the radical and more moderate wings of a progressive movement. In the women's suffragist movement, for instance, Elizabeth Cady Stanton provided many of the arguments and radical ideas on women's equality that society later adopted, but Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone did the dirty work of building coalitions of more moderate and conservative people for the immediate goal of getting women the right to vote. In the book "Izzy: A Biography of I.F. Stone", author Robert C. Cottrell wrote of the New Deal:
"There was a sense of excitement in the air as the New Dealers devised one program after another that at least harked back to the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century and at times beyond that to the Populist and Socialist platforms as well. Long-standing calls by American reformers and radicals for greater government control over business operations, for support of labor unionization, for social welfare measures, for public works projects, for planning, and for a discarding of laissaz-faire approaches appeared to be heeded to some degree or another by the roosevelt Brain Trusters. While it was clear, after a brief spell, that the New Deal was not ushering in a hoped-for revolution of the left or a feared one spearheaded by the right, it was also evident that the influence of progressive intellectuals and activists on government policy was greater than ever."
I think this dialogue between the moderates and radicals is important. It seems to me that an important sign health of this dialogue is how responsive Democratic politicians are to the grassroots.
In the documentary on Ralph Nader, An Unreasonable Man, the DVD has a great special features that has a talk on what is wrong with the Democratic Party. One of the people commented that during the 1980s, Democrats were worried because the Republicans seemed to have an advantage in elections because of their ability to raise money. So Democrats started competing with Republicans for corporate money and Nader and many activist feel that this led to corporations having too much influence within the Democratic Party and that the party has strayed from its earlier egalitarian values.
It seems like Progressives are trying to reassert their voice with in the Democratic Party. In the year 2000, Doris Hadock, a 90 year old activist, walked across America to fight for campaign finance reform, and she ran for the Senate in the year 2004 to fight corporate interests. In the House, Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee have formed a group of congressmen whose goal is to push the Democrats towards being more Progressive. The anti-war movement had a profound influence on the presidential campaign of Howard Dean. Nader stated that one of his goals in his Presidential runs of 2000 and 2004 was to influence the Democratic Party the way Norman Thomas influenced the New Deal in the 1930s.
In these upcoming Democratic primaries, I think it's good that we have all these voices competing to be heard. We have to be sure our candidates forcefully and articulately argue progressive views, and we should really test the 3 frontrunners. Election years are times when politicians listen to the grassroots to get their votes, and this is when we can press them on issues of war and peace, on curbing the bad side of globalization, on issues of poverty.
- Angelo Lopez's blog
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Comments
liberalism progressivism and justice
I've been thinking about the difference in terms between liberal and progressive a lot lately. In one post Jim shot down what I had previously taken to be the case; that the term progressive had simply been swapped for 'liberal' due to strategic vilification of that term.
How does this analysis sound? Perhaps the difference is that, while both liberals and progressives have some common interest in promoting personal liberties, progressives are more likely to emphasize justice. So, for example, when corporate heads garner massive incomes (power) a liberal view might allow it but a progressive stance might be inclined to curtail that power by setting caps or taxes or something to offset the social/political advantage that those individuals have. I guess in effect it might be a difference in the way that the see a proper balance of liberty and justice.
?
David
re: liberalism progressivism and justice
That's a good point, David. From what I've read, it seems like the difference has also to do with the pace and scope of economic change. While liberals tend to want to reform the economic system, progressives tend more to want to get a new system altogether. While I would view the Great Society, for instance, as a great achievement, someone more progressive would view the Great Society as a band aid when more drastic changes are needed.
Liberal reliance on courts
In reading Frank and Bill's posts, it makes a point that I haven't really thought much of. I have heard arguments that the courts shouldn't try to legislate change, but I usually hear that argument from the conservative side. During the Roberts and Alito hearings, both men said that they want to reduce the role that the Supreme Court plays on the national stage and allow the debates of vital issues to play itself out in the legislative branches. In reading about Roe versus Wade, I read that both liberal and conservative critics said that the Roe decision cut off a healthy debate on the issue of abortion and it lead to a conservative backlash and the birth of the prolife movement. Are you both making a liberal version of the same argument? In relying on the courts and not patiently building up public support and allowing a healthy debate on the issues that they are fighting for , are liberals actually undermining their causes?
On a side note, until watching An Unreasonable Man, I didn't realize there was that much of a debate over Ralph Nader's role in the 2000 elections. It seems to be replaying itself in these posts and it's kind of baffled me. I wish Gore won the 2000 elections, but I don't see why it was wrong for Nader to have run and fought for votes. With a booming economy and a budget surplus, the elections should not have been that close.
If we Democrats want to make Nader irrelevant, we should do a better job of listening to our own Progressive wing and not sideline Progressives like Kucinich. I recently read that Kucinich is being excluded from a debate on ABC. I'm not a supporter of Kucinich, but I think he is an important voice and his views tend to be adopted 5 years down the line by the party. When voices like Kucinich are marginalized, it makes Nader's arguments for running outside the Democratic party more valid.
Kucinich Is Not the Problem
And unlike Nader, far from it. Over and over again, Dennis Kucinich has proven his desire to work within the Democratic Party and not stomp his feet like a child and threaten to act as a splinter force. I agree with you 100% that Kucinich should not have been excluded from any Democratic Party debates.
As for what went wrong during the 2000 Election, see my reply below entitled, Again Bill, You Mischaracterize. The hyperlink therein will give you a good overview of the nefarious role played by the mainstream press.
One Other Thing Angelo
I realized that I did not answer your question about the courts.
What Alterman was getting at had less to do with Roe (which I believe was properly decided), but more with busing and economic cases.
Too often the courts did go beyond rendering legal holdings, but actually engaged in specific plans of action (as with the busing cases) or became too involved in adminstrative rulemaking. That, I believe, is what Alterman is getting at.
The liberal law professor and writer Cass Sunstein makes very similar arguments.
Todd Gitlin Was There.
And he bears witness to Nader’s destructive narcissism.
Yes, Gitlin was there
Frank,
Yes, Todd Gitlin was there and has since renounced and denounced his past. Now he's as fervently committed to the Democratic Party as the one last best hope as he once was to radical activism, back when he was president of SDS.
Although he hasn't, to my knowledge, labeled Ralph Nader as suffering from narcissism, Gitlin has used the word "narcississm" in his attacks on challenges to the Democratic Party from the left.
In 2003, he used the word in his Letters to a Young Activist. After writing that "The Democratic Party is the inescapable field where we either win, lose or draw", he went on to write that all attempts to build a radical third party are "narcissism wearing a cloak of ideals."
He could have said that he thought they were just "wrong" instead of throwing around an unsupported psychological diagnostic term to characterize a wide variety of people who have a wide variety of ideas, and who are organized into several different parties.
But then there are lots of problems with Gitlin's new politics. Although Gitlin has become a mainstream Democrat, in contrast to the ex-radical leftist David Horowitz, an adversary of his, who has become a noted and rabid rightwing Republican, still Gitlin has gone so far as to refer to McCarthyism as a "mixed blessing".
In his 2003 book, he attacked all forms of left activism that don't fit nicely into his vision of the Democratic Party. That includes activism in favor of justice for Palestinians; objections to the war against "Islamic murderers" (although he now criticizes the way it's been handled); extreme feminism as being sometimes indifferent to children; those who won't salute the flag; anti-racism as an important focus, since he believes racism is fading away; identity politics, such as black students filling their "existential void" by "proclaim(ing) their marginal identity".
His one hard and fast rule is that "you either vote Democratic, or submit to the rule of the Republicans." It's One Big Tent, now that the "netroots" have changed reform politics forever, with MoveOn.org as a vanguard. No caveats; no other analyses allowed.
Bill
A Poor Summary of Gitlin
I've read Letters to a Young Activist and you have seriously mischaracterized what Gitlin has written, virtually making him sound as if he were de Maistre. Instead Gitlin is seeking to make the non-socialist Left more mature, more disciplined and as a result, more effective.
I too have no place for undisciplined radical politics because --as Gitlin astutely observed-- it does not lead to change but being consigned to the margins. On that point, he is absolutely correct. This Nader-Green/progressive obsession with purity is killing progress itself. He was dead-on correct when he called the Greens out by observing of them at page 83:
And that is why I don't call myself a progressive but a liberal. I don't seek to end capitalism but--like FDR--seek to end the bad behavior of some who practice it. And it is on this point that those who like to call themselves "progressive" are very vague. Like Giltin I've learned that while radical chic may feel good, it just doesn't bring about change.
Yes, Gitlin is correctly trying to channel action through the Democratic Party. But that it is not dissimilar than what Michael Harrington preached. So, there goes your argument on that point.
As far as I'm concerned, old Todd hit the nail right on the head.
Gitlin, again
Frank,
Although historical analogues are imprecise, it's David Horowitz, formerly of the radical Ramparts Magazine (1962-75), who is more like de Maistre by moving from supporting a "revolution" to becoming a neocon Republican. Gitlin's move to the Democrats is more conventional and falls far short of Horowitz's. Like Horowitz, though, he does take out after leftist academics, though not quite from Horowitz's point of view. In his "The Self-Inflicted Wounds of the Academic Left", he over-generalizes as condescendingly about academics as he does about "undisciplined radical politics".
"Mature" is a funny word. I get the feeling that Gitlin is generalizing from his own youthful radical politics and concluding that all radical politics are therefore immature -- except for the socialist left which presumably has mature discipline. That makes it sound like you have to be either a Democrat or some variety of Socialist if you want to be considered grown up.
The same goes for "undisciplined radical politics" -- which seems to say that there is no such thing as disciplined radical politics.
That doesn't fit with my own experience in the Green Party. Despite the many problems within the party, Gitlin's observations on the Greens is badly drawn, over-generalized, and doesn't acknowledge the Greens' internal struggles to find a way to deal with the spoiler issue. The whole 2004 Cobb/LaMarche Green campaign was self-restricted to "safe states" in order to avoid criticism from the Democrats -- although it did get criticism from within the Green Party. However, "relishing" the spoiler role is something I've rarely encountered.
Gitlin's observation that the Greens' "rhetoric makes it clear that they relish the spoiler role" also isn't borne out by the Green Party website where defending against the charge of "spoilers" is still a feature. So I wonder whose rhetoric he was referring to.
(Following up on the studies I cited in a previous post that contradict the Democratic Party line on Nader as a spoiler, here's an interesting comment from the Democratic Leadership Council's Al From, in an anti-populist election post-mortem: "The assertion that Nader's marginal vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. When exit pollers asked voters how they would have voted in a two-way race, Bush actually won by a point. That was better than he did with Nader in the race." Blueprint Magazine, January 24, 2001: Building A New Progressive Majority)
Frank, I don't understand your closing reference to Michael Harrington. I'm not sure what argument of mine is destroyed by Harrington's combination of promoting Democratic Socialism and working with the left wing of the Democratic Party.
My own point of view is that there are good reasons for leftish people to be working the left side of the Democratic Party; to be in the Working Families Party (a NY party that runs both its own candidates and Democrats, since NY allows fusion tickets), and thus work from the edge of the Democratic Party; and to be Greens, who will occasionally endorse a Democrat -- or even an independent-minded Republican -- in very local races. I have friends and political colleagues in all three categories and also in the Democratic Socialists of America -- who usually go with the Democrats nationally and the Working Families Party statewide.
As for the spoiler role, I agree with Noam Chomsky that small differences can have large consequences. I agreed with Nader that in 2000 Gore rated a D+ and Bush a D- which for me would have been a significant enough small difference if I had lived in battleground state. So I have argued in favor of "lesser evildom" when I think the situation calls for it. And as I indicated earlier, along with other Greens I know, I'm hoping for a big Democratic victory. When they disappoint and fail, maybe then we can get move ahead and to the left. Although Americans don't much like the label "left", they do like the principles of the Green Party.
Bill
Bill, You're Still Wrong
Especially with this comment, which totally ignores the mainstream press's 1999-2000 War on Gore:
"I agreed with Nader that in 2000 Gore rated a D+ and Bush a D-"
As Gitlin said, "This is narcissism wearing a cloak of ideals."
Gore was very much on target with everything he campaigned on. In fact, unlike Ralph, he has been correct on a whole host of issues. Al rated at least a "B."
re: being wrong
C'mon, Frank. I didn't think Gore was as good as you thought he was, so you call me a name?
Again Bill, You Mischaracterize
I called you no name, but I did identify this progressive/Green-Nadeite impulse to to avoid responsibility by taking refuge within an aura of purity--so called.
And yes, Gore, while imperfect was still a far better a candidate than generally given credit for. He told the truth, And when you compare it with the 2000 Bush Campaign, he was much, much better. For Nader to rate him a "D+" just doesn't hold water. To criticize Gore for a sigh during one debate while feting a reactionary dissembler who couldn't string together two coherent sentences was a major failure for the fourth estate.
The problem in 2000 (as was the case in 2004 and as is being played out with Hillary now) is intense press hostility. They don't like it when a candidate doesn't kow-tow to them or worse, is smarter than them, which certainly was true in Gore's case. Instead, they waged war on his campaign with an assault of lies, uneven treatment and shear stupidity.
And "Saint" Ralph played right into this nonsense. All the evidence you need to see that there was a huge difference between Gore and Bush is to look at who Junior put on the US Supreme Court. Do you honestly think that a President Gore would have appointed either a John Roberts or a Samuel Alito? You and I both know the answer to that one.
re: political narcissism
Frank,
At the very least, as a progressive/Green, I'm covered by that "narcissism" label, too. (I leave off "Naderite" since I don't know exactly what that's supposed to entail beyond having voted for Nader.)
But more directly, you labeled this sentence -- "I agreed with Nader that in 2000 Gore rated a D+ and Bush a D-" -- as an example of narcissism. The subject of the sentence was me, not Nader, not a "progressive/Green-Naderite impulse". So, yes, I took it personally. And you've repeated this "aura of purity" kind of thing as if it were self-evident, needing no corroboration. However, I've never made any claims of purity but, instead, have offered polling and voting statistics and other observations. I'd like to see at least one representative quote from a Green who is playing the purer-than-thou game.
Now if Gore had been given a grade of C would that have been enough to have lifted us out of the realms of narcissism? Would widening the distance between Gore and Bush by dropping Bush to an F have done it? Or is the break between narcissism and realism located between a C+ and a B-? Or would that be making more out of the grading metaphor than was ever really there in the first place?
I'd like to ask why you use words like "narcissism" and "stomp his feet like a child" when there are perfectly adequate words like "wrong" and "misjudgment", or even "gross misjudgment". My guess is that, in general, treating differences of opinion as psychological aberrations frees people from having to take challenges seriously and from having to deal with thorny issues. Since you've not responded to any of my substantive comments with anything other than "mischaracterization" and "wrong", it could, indeed, seem that you think that there's no point in trying to engage in reasoned discourse with a childish narcissist. Not that I think that, but that's the way your words can be read.
In the end, I think you're using the same type of emotive and constructed narrative about Nader that we both criticize the press for habitually using in their political coverage -- and you're still using "Saint" as if I think of Nader that way, even after I've already brought up some of his more unsaintly characteristics.
Re: the Supreme Court: One of the arguments that I used in advocating that Greens vote for Gore in swing states was the Supreme Court. (And one of the reasons for disrespecting the Democrats as a party is their failure to block Roberts and Alito or, for that matter, Mukasey.)
As for Nader playing right into that nonsense, there's an interesting study that shows his campaign swings and advertising expenditures fit the model of trying to reach his 5% goal, not one of trying to be a spoiler. I still think he would have done better in NY and Massachusetts by playing on the "safe state" theme, but then that MSNBC exit poll in Florida (which I mistakenly called a CNN poll before) showed that he helped, rather than hurt, Gore, as counter-intuitive as it sounds. It's not that I call that conclusive evidence, but it does raise another question about the standard narrative.
And the press, well, it's too easy to call the media stupid. Although Gore and Hillary are smart people, so are lots of journalists and pundits. Being dumb is not a requirement for being wrong or being venal or for lazily and cleverly inventing narratives that make the practice of journalism easier and perhaps more profitable.
Here You Go Bill
This piece explains how Nader’s demagoguery hurt Gore in Florida, effectively exploding the 5% myth. The Bush Campaign certainly welcomed his presence.
As Robert Scheer noted:
And this piece also explains how Nader again cost Gore the election in New Hampshire—something that would have made Florida irrelevant. Particularly damning is this admission by Ronnie Duggar:
As well as this tidbit:
As for not responding, I noticed that you did not address my explaining the role Judas goat “liberals” such as Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd, Pat Caddell and Frank Rich played in spreading falsehoods about Gore.
Thanks, Frank
I'll read these articles and get back to you with a measured response.
As for the role of the press, you mentioned press hostility in passing and I agreed in passing when I referred to the constructed narratives that we both object to. I agree that the press badly mistreated Gore and I sympathized with him for that during the campaign. One thing I didn't respond to was your connecting Nader's "D+/D- grades" statement to the mainstream press's war on Gore. That was because I don't think they're connected. Instead, I responded to a more salient part of that message, the part that I took as an example of name-calling.
Going further into that subject, though, I don't see where you explained, rather than simply referred to, the role of the press or the role of Matthews, Dow, Caddell, and Rich. If you had, I'm sure I would have agreed with you. Do you have any choice samples of their hatchet work handy?
Nader, Greens in 2000 - #2
Frank -- Moving on to Ronnie Dugger's Nation article, urging Nader not to run in 2004, I'm surprised that you claim his article "explains how Nader again cost Gore the election in New Hampshire". Ronnie mentions NH only in one sentence, saying that the exit polls "indicate that arguably we Nader voters made it possible for Bush to win NH's four electoral votes..." Saying that it's "arguable" is something less than an explanation.
On the other hand, Ronnie thinks it's "clear" that Nader made the difference in Florida, but that's a conclusion that I think I've shown is arguable but not at all clear.
Ronnie explains the Greens' and Nader's motives quite well in terms of the long term risks posed by the Democrats' corporate-influenced move to the right vs. the short-term risks of a Bush victory. His comment that the calculated risk was underestimated is shared even by Nader, who admits that only Bush would have created a mess like Iraq and that Gore would have made a difference in that situation. That's not much different from Hillary saying that if she knew then what she knew later, she wouldn't have voted for the Iraq resolution.
As for Ronnie's final tidbit about Nader being out to cause intentional damage to Gore and the Democrats, that's all his inferences from Nader's actions, not Nader's words. I've already given my interpretation of that.
What we're left with is the perennial problem of "change" in our two party system. The traditional role of third parties is to bring new issues into the public square. To do that, you have to win enough votes to be taken seriously. With Perot's 19% tally, his followers had to be taken seriously: Republicans had to woo rather than demonize his supporters. In contrast, the Nader vote was too small, so the Democrats felt free to demonize Nader and the Greens and, by and large, to reject their issues. However, it's good to see Edwards take up the anti-corporate line.
Jim has written about progressives moving in to take over the Democratic Party. That's a long way away from happening. So I think the Greens have a role to play, either eventually to help move the Democrats leftward or to become a stronger force when the Democrats fail to produce after winning big this year. Strategy for this year is still undecided.
My Last Word on the Subject
If Nader was truly concerned primarily about "the 5%" he would have spent more time in states like New York and not have gone up and down the state of Florida the day before Election Day 2000 focusing his attacks on Gore. In fact, he should have then released his Florida supporters, urging them to vote for Gore.
And even if you are correct about attaining 5% of the vote, when balanced against Bush's damage potential it was still an incredibly reckless thing for Nader to do. Not only that, but I believe Nader never registered as a Green; he was only using the party for his own selfish purposes.
In essence Nader was adopting what Huey Long's 1936 strategy would have been had he not been shot: help elect the Republican believing that things would get so bad that by 1940 Long would win. As we all observed, not a very sound strategy.
re: your last word
Frank, I had already pointed out, in the first "Nader, Greens in 2000" post, that Nader never joined the Green Party. (Did you actually read what I wrote?)
Also I've mentioned that I, too, thought he'd have done better by trying, at the end, to recover the votes that polls showed he was losing in NY and MA, but that getting media coverage in FL seemed to be the deciding factor. "Releasing" Florida supporters would not have made sense in getting the 5%. Why only Florida and not other close states? It would inevitably have been taken to heart in other states and would have undercut any chance of hitting 5%.
Here's something that I wrote about Nader's goals and the Greens' goals but didn't post, having re-edited my first draft:
"...Nader's goals were more complex than the Greens'. My take on it is that he wanted to push the Democrats to the left and I think, for him, building the Green Party was just a means to that end....But it's clear that the 5% goal was necessary to achieve whatever his goals were. So, perhaps, was hurting the Democrats. It's not clear what he expected or wanted to happen. For the Greens, however, reforming the Democratic party wasn't the goal: causing them pain to make them change was irrelevant since most Greens had already given up on trying to change the Democratic Party. Building up the Green Party was the sole goal..."
If wanting to move the Dems to the left is a "selfish" purpose, what does that say about progressive Christians wanting to make the Dems more "progressive"?
Greens recognized that there was a mutual using of each other by Nader and the Greens. (As I wrote: "For the Greens, it was all about building up the party via Nader's persona and message..." That's called a convergence of goals and there's nothing nefarious about it.
I think you go beyond the reliable data to conclude that Nader, like Huey Long, wanted to make things worse so that he would win the next time. It wasn't about him, it was about policies. Even though he was really the most popular candidate (remember the Condorcet polling), I doubt if Nader had any illusions of grandeur about winning the presidency.
Where we agree is that it didn't turn out well. There were risks and the worst happened. He, and we Greens, miscalculated. He, in particular, believed that progressive gains in environmental regulation and other regulation of corporate misbehavior were too popular to be reversed in a democratically based society. Wrong. And who foresaw Iraq? The difference between Nader and Hillary is that he miscalculated while she, when the situation was much clearer, enabled.
Bill
Nader, Greens in 2000
Frank -- I've had an interesting time looking up materials on the 2000 campaign. My opinion is that your sources don't effectively make your case that the Greens, along with others on the left, and Nader, are narcissistic, practice undisciplined radical politics, take refuge in 'purity', or relish the damage done to Gore and the Democrats. But they do make a good enough case to require some discussion.
Scheer takes the standard anti-Nader narrative and builds a case for the Democratic Party as being the sole legitimate vehicle for all progressives. He makes a good case but doesn't deal with the long-term dilemma of 'progressive' change within our peculiar party and electoral systems. (More on that in another post or a blog.)
What he has to say about Nader is limited to the fact that Nader attacked Gore in Florida at the end of the campaign. That by itself doesn't explode what you call the "5% myth". 5% was central to the campaign. For the Greens, it was all about building up the party via Nader's persona and message, which involved getting the 5%, increasing the membership, and qualifying for more access to state ballots by surpassing the various threshold numbers required by many states for the last presidential race.
Why did Nader go to Florida and not the Northeast where his relatively high poll numbers were slipping because of the fierce attacks the Democrats were making and where he could make a "safe state" appeal? One reason was that he was being shut out of the media. It was a controversial call, but his own judgment, as I heard it, was that the only way to get coverage was to be in the thick of the battle, not to be in ho-hum NY. Also, and this is important, I think he was very angry. Being shut out of the debates, being led away by the police from even being in the audience where the debate was being watched on a screen, and being so fiercely attacked by the Democrats while the message he hoped to influence them with, and that he thought was in tune with their better values, was being rejected -- these had an effect.
As I've written here before, I think Nader is a reformer, not a radical. (And he's never been a member of the Green Party.) He's never fully given up hope that the Democrats would eventually see the light. He was willing to take the risk of helping to elect Bush because inflicting some punishment is a way to get taken seriously. He had great, if misplaced, faith that popular, democratic sentiment would keep Bush from being too retrogressive.
As Lawrence O'Donnell, a former Democratic chief of staff of a couple of Senate committees said, "If you don't show them you're capable of not voting for them they don't have to listen to you. I didn't listen or have to listen to anything on the left while I was working in the Democratic Party -- because the left had nowhere to go." Those who had nowhere to go included environmentalists, blacks, and labor.
Ironically, in light of Scheer's condemnation of Nader's "elitism" in going against the unions' support of Gore, I did find one clear example of "relishing" doing damage to the Democrats -- but it came from a labor source allied with the Detroit Greens. "Free trade is going to be the downfall of the American worker," says Mark Dagle, a pipefitter and member of the AFL-CIO who recently joined the Green brigade....Dagle and his compatriots relish their role as potential spoilers. And while he harbors no illusions about Nader's chance for victory, a Gore defeat, Dagle said, "will send a message that the next Democrat will have to be a real Democrat. He won't take his base for granted." In contrast, Greens don't consider themselves part of the Democrats' base. Scheer thinks we should. You and I can argue the point further.
Aside from these consideration, there's the voting itself and the statistical record and estimates. The CNN comment on exit polls which you linked to was a report that about half the Nader voters nationwide would have gone for Gore. That sounds about right. When you consider that almost 1/3 of Nader voters wouldn't have voted at all without Nader in the race, regardless of who their second choice was, it's roughly in line with the MSNBC exit poll from Florida that I quoted. That's the one that indicated that without Nader in the race, Bush would have taken Florida 49-47 over Gore.
Thus, the Gore-bashing that Nader did in Florida at the end of the campaign didn't seem to have much effect. The exit polls, and other studies later, lay to rest the idea that Nader pulled exclusively from Gore. Oddly, Buchanan drew a substantial part of his smaller vote total from Gore. The standard narrative of polarized and purist third party voting blocs doesn't hold up. The case that Nader was one of the causes of Gore's loss remains highly speculative. You might as well argue that it was all the fault of any of the three small socialist parties each of whose vote totals exceeded Bush's official margin over Gore.
The Nation article by Ronnie Dugger, which I remember having read back in December, 2002, is, out of these three pieces, the most supportive to your case. But even there I think Ronnie falls a little short. I'll take that up in my next post.
Bill
Sure
Bill, just go to The Daily Howler web site; Bob Somerby's archieves are full of examples. You can also read the chapter on Campaign 2000 in Alterman's book, What Liberal Media which drew heavily from Somerby.
Eric Alterman on the Nader Documentary
On December 18, 2007 Eric Alterman (What Liberal Media?) wrote an excellent piece for his Media Matters column on the Nader documentary An Unreasonable Man. One of Alterman’s keenest observations was this:
I couldn’t have said it better Eric.
re: Alterman v. Nader
The "misbegotten movement" had a well-begotten birth. It was the Civil Rights Movement that got liberals used to going to the courts and expecting to win. But there was no lack of democratic muscles and instincts in that movement. Even so, we didn't have the muscle to win at the ballot box in most places. Fortunately, we had the Constitution/Bill of Rights on our side and could use the federal governmen and the federal courts against the state governments and state courts.
We've never again had that same confluence of radicals, liberals, and the feds working the streets and the courts. I think people took that as a replicable model when it was really an anomaly based on the inherent contradictions between Jim Crow and the Bill of Rights.
In a similar vein, back in the 70s I criticized, although much more even-temperedly, the feminist movement for going for the ERA too soon, before a majority of even the women were on board. I remember being criticised for being "weak on women's issues" because of my strategic emphasis on organizing a stronger base before asking legislators to get the job done for us.
Nader's advocacy work has always been oriented both to the courts and to the legislatures. Although the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) that he started reached out to students and have campus chapters, none of Nader's many organizations do political or community organizing nor do they have an interest in populist mobilizing. That's a weakness shared by many other advocacy groups. It makes their movements incomplete, not misbegotten.
Organizing is work, hard work (as Bush would say). After a surge of movement activism, there's a natural ebbing of energy as conditions change. It's hard to adapt to the changes. Also, energies burn out and people react against failed or outgrown strategies and tactics.
I can pinpoint one time of changing energies. In the 1971-72 academic year, I inherited a large lecture course in Anthropology at the University of Illinois, "American Communities and Their Problems", with 8 or 10 graduate student TAs for the non-lecture sessions. They told me that they felt a strange generation gap had opened up between themselves and their freshman and sophomore students. It was if the younger students had seen older siblings get messed up one way or another in the counterculture and the political messiness of the times, and had withdrawn from activism. Or they had been turned off by all the media exposure of those crazy-making times.
Perhaps that was the beginning of both the move to the right and the move to what I would call technical or expert advocacy. For liberals, maybe research seemed like a reasonable way to go after all the great expectations of The Movement and with the war winding down and grinding on at the same town. Perhaps, focusing on well-defined advocacy goals and taking them to the courts and to the legislatures seemed to make more sense to them than to keep taking them to the streets.
Eric Alterman was 11 at the time. Sometimes you just hadda have been there.
Todd Gitlin Was There.
And he bears witness to Nader’s destructive narcissism.
re: Gitlin, Nader
Frank,
In the article you linked to, Gitlin was writing about the 2000 election while the recount issue was still unresolved. He wasn't delving into the development of advocacy groups that over-depended on the courts.
Gitlin attacked Nader for hubris and for not taking responsibility for his role in the impending election of Bush. But Gitlin didn't try to describe or diagnose Nader's inner psychological dynamics. He charged Nader with being wrong, not with being narcissistic.
And going back to the subject of advocacy groups, even if Nader were narcissistic, it's a stretch to see that as playing any role in the rise to ascendency of a strategy of research, lawsuits, and legislative advocacy that was engaged in by many groups besides his.
Bill