Barry Sheppard, San Francisco
Prominent consumers' rights advocate Ralph Nader's decision to stand in the November US presidential election as an independent is freaking out Democratic Party and its liberal and leftist hangers-on. While claiming to agree with Nader on the key issues, they accuse him of splitting the anti-Bush vote. What the "anybody but Bush" brigade really hate about Nader is that he tells the truth about the Democratic Party.
"Washington is corporate-occupied territory. The two parties are ferociously competing to see who's going to go to the White House and take orders from their corporate paymasters", Nader said on NBC's Meet the Press on November 22, when he announced his candidacy. When asked, "Do you think that Al Gore would have gone to war in Iraq [if he had been elected in 2000]?", Nader shot back: "Yes!"
This presents a big problem for the "anyone but Bush" crowd because both leading candidates vying for Democratic Party nomination — senators John Kerry and John Edwards — voted for the US-led war on Iraq and the infamous USAPATRIOT Act. Both support the continued US occupation of Iraq.
The Democrats are attempting to distance themselves from Bush by attacking in vague terms the administration's "handling" of the war. They want to appear critical because opposition to the war is growing. However, both the Democrats and Republicans share the goal of "remaking the Middle East" as part of the US ruling class' drive for world domination.
Nader's decision to run was made in the teeth of a ferocious campaign by the liberals to discourage him. The Nation ran a full-page editorial demanding he not run. A "don't run" internet site was set up to barrage Nader with thousands of email petitions. Editorials, cartoons and letters to the editor in pro-Democratic Party capitalist newspapers hammered the same message. Well-off liberals have cut funding to advocacy groups that Nader has championed.
Following Nader's decision to run, Reverend Al Sharpton, who is running in the Democratic Party primaries as an anti-war and progressive protest candidate, said: "The only reason [Nader] is running is either he's an egomaniac or as a Bush contract... I'm going on a national crusade to stop Nader."
Sharpton's stand exposes the function of such "progressive" campaigns in the Democratic Party: to corral left wing voters into the Democratic Party and get them to vote for the Democratic candidate the "lesser evil".
Many socialists are following suit. None of this is new. For the last 70 or so years, US liberals and most leftists have found excuses to back the Democrats. In 1964, they urged a vote for the Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson against the "warmonger" Barry Goldwater. Johnson won and promptly escalated the Vietnam War.
Nader says he will be a far more formidable foe of Bush than the Democrats. The reason is simple: the Democrats won't raise fundamental opposition to Bush's policies. Without Nader's campaign, there would be no real opposition to Bush.
"We're going to lose much of the liberal intelligentsia", Nader told a February 23 press conference. "They are freaked out by Bush so much that they engage in amnesia about how bad the [Democratic ] Bill Clinton-Al Gore administration was. How long do you tolerate this? I've been around this circle many times... I'm told, 'This is not the time'. I played the good soldier. But every time I was told it was not the time, the Democrats felt freer to follow the corporate pull."
In 2000, Nader ran as the Green Party's presidential candidate. There is a big debate within the Greens over whether to join the "anyone but Bush" bandwagon, run its own presidential campaign or back Nader.
A position paper, titled "The Avocado Declaration", has been initiated by Peter Camejo, who ran for governor of California in 2003 on the Green ticket. It begins: "The Green Party is at a crossroads. The 2004 election places before us a clear and unavoidable choice. On one side, we can continue on the path of political independence, building a party of, by and for the people by running our own campaign for president... The other choice is the well-trodden path of lesser evil politics, sacrificing our own voice and independence to support whoever the Democrats nominate."
"History shows that the Democrats and Republicans are not two counterposed forces, but rather complimentary halves of a single two-party system, 'one animal with two heads that feed from the same trough', as Chicano leader Rodolfo 'Corky' Gonzalez explained."
The declaration provides a concise explanation of the two-party system and the role of the Democratic Party in US history, outlining how this system has been used to preserve corporate rule. In this sense, the Avocado Declaration goes beyond Nader's understanding.
Should the Greens decide to endorse Nader at their convention in June, it will not only give his campaign greater weight, it could save the Greens as a viable organisation.
From Green Left Weekly, March 3, 2004.
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