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Behind the Headlines
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
October 27, 2000
NADER SELLS OUT
I had great hopes for Ralph Nader, really I did. Here is a man who denounces
the two-party system as a snare and a delusion, and dares to attack the
corporate domination of the electoral process. It looked, for a while at least,
as if he would truly stake out his claim as America's insurgent populist, a
Green David prepared to take on the corporate-mercantilist Goliath. But there
is something a little strange about his "insurgent" campaign, ominous signs
that many in the Green Party are caving in to the tremendous pressure from
liberal Democrats to pack it in. The Greens, I'm afraid, are on the verge of
turning yellow.
GLORIA ON THE RUN
Say what? what – Nader a sell-out? How about all those radio ads being run by
the National Abortion Rights Action League, and the League of Conservation
Voters, the statement by former "Nader's Raiders" that he is helping to elect
George W. Bush and the fulminations of NOW pleading with him to get out of
the race? They've got Gloria Steinem running up and down the West Coast,
lecturing soccer-moms from San Diego to Seattle on the absolute necessity of
voting the straight Democratic Party line. This flurry of consternation and
liberal hysteria is fun to watch: I love it how Gore's shills gush over Ralph
as an admirable guy, a principled crusader for liberal values with a track
record second to none – and then try to tell us that it would be inadvisable to
vote for such a man. Very convincing – not! – and very funny indeed. What is
less than funny, however, is that it seems to be working.
CELEBRITY BACKFIRE
The high-profile "celebrities for Nader" campaign – a group of Hollywood
phonies and assorted limousine liberals, including Susan Sarandon, Phil
Donahue, Tim Robbins, and the insufferable Michael Moore – which has been the
real moneybags behind the Green party presidential campaign has apparently
backfired. Now that Nader is actually beginning to pose a direct threat to
Gore's rapidly dwindling chance at the Oval Office, these dabblers in third
party politics are getting nervous, and are pulling back. Greg MacArthur –
heir to the fortune behind the MacArthur Foundation, which gives out "genius"
awards that have become the equivalent of the Academy Awards for politically
correct academics and professional do-gooders – explains to an Associated Press
reporter the decision to pull $320,000 in ads in California's biggest
newspapers this way:
"California didn't appear to be 'the obvious slam-dunk that these other states
were,' he said. . . . 'I still think Gore is going to win California, but if
the perception is such that it's a tight race, then that's the wrong market for
me to be advertising in."
The latest polls show Bush only five points behind Gore in the Sunshine State
– and the decision to pull the ads came only hours after these numbers were
announced. MacArthur says that the money will go, instead, to states like New
York where the outcome of the presidential contest is more certain.
NADER'S GAMBIT
The Nader campaign has issued a rather huffy statement, disclaiming all
connection with the decision to pull the ads and declaring that they intend to
"fight for every vote." But since Nader could have presumably dissuaded his
celebrity fan club from making such a blatantly pro-Gore move, or at least
instructed them to frame their explanations in less obvious terms, the
disclaimer rings a little hollow. What this underscores is that the Green
Party, and the Nader campaign, do not represent an attempt to build a real
third party in this country: This, of course, is not really news: Nader has
himself stated on more than one occasion that he sees the Green Party as a way
to drag the Democrats back to the Left. But the fraudulence of the Green
campaign goes way beyond that. Aside from the unwillingness of the Greens (or
their leadership) to challenge the Democratic party in key states, the Nader
campaign is acting in concert with the Democrats to ensure a Democratic
majority in both houses of Congress.
DON'T WORRY – BE HAPPY
In California, the Greens have long played a subordinate role to the Democratic
Party bosses, declining in most cases to run against vulnerable Democrats, or,
indeed, against any Democrats: this year, however, they have taken the unusual
step of running a candidate for US Senate – largely because Diane Feinstein is,
unfortunately, a shoo-in. On the local level, however, they have continued
their longstanding policy of running practically no one. This in spite of the
fact that localism practically defines the Green sensibility. Now, listen to
the arguments made by Naderite Jim Hightower, the Texas prophet of poor-white-
trash populism, defending his candidate against the "charge" that the Greens
will hurt Gore in a close race. After enthusing over the pretty impressive
crowds at Nader's rallies on the Lehrer News Hour, Hightower tells his fellow
Democrats not to worry, because:
"These are people who are not Gore backers. If you want to back Al Gore, I
think that's what you should do. That's an honorable position. But it's just as
honorable to be reaching out to the 60 percent majority, Gwen, who are not
going to vote in this November 7 election or are going to vote for third party
candidates because they don't believe they have a choice right now. I believe
that it's irresponsible for us, particularly as progressives, not to be
reaching out to that vast majority of people and offering them a chance to
build a new political channel. I come to you as an old-time Democrat, elected
here in the state of Texas as a Democrat, proud to be so. But now I look up at
my national party, and the Al Gores and the Democratic Leadership Council;
they've taken off the old Sears Roebuck work boots and strapped on the Guccis
and Puccis that the Republicans strut around in."
THE HILLARY FACTOR
These people weren't going to vote anyway, according to Hightower: but Nader's
going to bring them out to vote, many of them for the first time. Kind of like
MTV's "Rock the Vote" campaign, clearly part of the Democratic Party's get-out-
the-vote drive. For more is at stake this campaign season than the election of
a President: when all these new voters get into the voting booth, after they
cast their ballots for Nader how will they vote for Congress and on down the
line? Surely they won't be voting Republican. The decision to put a lot of
Nader's resources into New York that would have otherwise gone to California
may have much to do with Hillary Rodham Clinton's tough fight against Rick
Lazio for the Senate seat. Hillary is down in the polls, and some have even
shown Rick pulling ahead by a hair – the infusion of a few hundred thousand
Naderites, who might not otherwise turn up could well put Hillary over the top.
THEREAL THING?
I hate to tell you lefties this, especially the sincere ones who want so much
for Nader to be the Real Thing, but the Green Party presidential campaign is
nothing more than a get-out-the vote effort on behalf of the Democratic
congressional campaign committee – with not a few of the key personnel
having strong links to both groups. Ralph Nader is an articulate, if
occasionally wrongheaded, opponent of globalism, mercantilism, and the two-
party monopoly, but he has either been duped, or is willfully blind to the
sellout that is taking place before his eyes. Nader is no doubt sincere in his
contempt for Gore's laughable stance as the populist man of the people, and he
deserves credit for standing up to the arrogance of liberal mandarins, such as
the editorial board of the New York Times, who insist that he is "stealing"
votes that somehow rightfully belong to Gore. But the actions of his own
supporters belie his rhetorical effusions: if you say you want to build a new
party, why not challenge Gore in California, and indeed all along the Pacific
coast, where the ecotopian crankery of the Greens has a cultural advantage
as well as political appeal?
NO TRESPASSING: VIOLATORS WILL BE PERSECUTED!
The answer is all too clear: this is Democratic territory, and, not so
surprisingly, the "No Trespassing" sign has gone up in the final weeks of the
campaign. While Nader himself may disdain this admonition, clearly his most
prominent supporters – and financial backers – are taking it very seriously
indeed. Ralph's s Hollywood friends were quick to jump on the Green Party
bandwagon, eager to have a sandbox in which to play third party politics,
assert their "independence" – and even their radicalism – provided no one took
them too seriously.
TRUTH IN POLITICAL LABELING
The Nader campaign is not only selling out its supporters on the national level
– their pulling back in the West could easily prevent the Greens from achieving
the 5% necessary for federal matching funds in 2004 – but is also actively
engaged in a gambit to help the Democrats wrest control of Congress from the
Republicans. By failing to run candidates for Congress in any significant
numbers, and doing "outreach" to non-voters, the Green strategy is to establish
not a genuine third party but a quasi-independent "Green" auxiliary of the
Democratic Party. If there were such a thing as a Political Truth in Labeling
Act – and who can doubt that Nader, our foremost Public Citizen, has at one
time proposed such legislation? – Nader and the Greens would be in clear
violation. And I, for one, would be all in favor of prosecuting them – in the
court of public opinion, at any rate.
CONSOLATION PRIZE
Think about the real implications of the Nader Gambit, and the mindset of those
who probably set it in motion: Gore was unelectable, in any case, and would
have fallen on his own demerits – this is not a very hard case to make. In any
event, the consolation prizes this election year may be worth as much, if not
more than the big one. Without a Republican Congress, President Dubya's
"compassionate conservatism" is going to merge, effortlessly, with the New
Democrats' tough-minded liberalism. The Bush administration will then have
the perfect out when confronted by conservatives outraged that Republican
principles are being sold down the river: after all, the moderates will moan,
it was the conservatives who lost control of Congress.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
Progressives who imagine that Nader is building an independent movement, and
conservative Republicans who cheer him on for entirely different reasons, had
better ask themselves: who benefits from the Nader Gambit? Congressional
Democrats, first and foremost, as we have seen; the Hollywood Left, which has a
new platform to ply its tired act on; and the putative Bush administration,
which will come into office with a built-in protection against conservative
dissent. The only losers are conservatives – who will be told that their
legislative initiatives are impractical and "extremist," and who will be
consigned to watching the GOP drift inexorably leftward (along with the rest of
the country).
IMPERIAL MINDSET
I have to give credit to Nader for speaking out – finally! – on the Middle East
crisis. But the foreign policy section of Nader's website is filled with his
palaverings about a "preventative" foreign policy – the idea is that we have to
redistribute America's wealth to the rest of the world and thus solve the
problems of poverty, illiteracy disease, and overpopulation that are the "root
causes" of war. This is a variety of hubris even more overweening than the
Clintonians,' "humanitarian interventionism" on a much bigger scale than anyone
in Madeleine Albright's State Department ever imagined. In principle, the world-
saving crusaders of the Green Party have no quarrel with the Clintonian foreign
policy of global interventionism – there's is merely a touchy-feely version of
the same imperial mindset.
JUST SAY NO TO NADER
In a previous column, I recommended a vote for Nader or Buchanan on the grounds
that this is the only way for independent voters, as well as opponents of war
and intervention, to register an effective protest. With the Nader sellout,
however, this no longer holds: it is clear that, of the major-minor candidates,
only Pat Buchanan is trying to build an organizational alternative to the two-
party system, and not just another pressure group. To add real injury to
insult, the Nader effort to elect a Democratic Congress is bad news for those
who put foreign policy at the top of their political agenda: for the Democrats,
as Al Gore and his running mate have made all too clear this election year, are
the party of war. This sentiment is overwhelmingly reflected in the ranks of
congressional Democrats: it was the Republicans, you'll remember, who protested
the Kosovo war in the halls of Congress and refused to support it. Having put
George W. Bush in the White House, Nader will retire from the scene, leaving
the rest of us to reap the consequences – and it isn't going to be pretty.
THANKS, RALPH
With Dubya safely in the White House, his quasi-isolationist campaign rhetoric
of the past few weeks – including Condolezza Rice's suggestion that we might
someday withdraw from the Balkans – will be long forgotten. As the focus of the
world shifts from Europe to the Middle East, and war clouds gather, the
disaster will begin to unfold. We'll have a gung-ho interventionist Congress,
and an internationalist Republican in the White House – and for this, the worst
of all possible worlds, you'll have none other than Ralph Nader to thank.
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The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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