Weak Kneed Progressives buckle Under Democrat Pressure

Progressive growing pains

Ralph Nader has managed to call the bluff of progressives who’ve made a habit of walking around moaning about corporate control of the two party system in the U.S., and it’s narrow ideological scope. His sin? He made the Green Party relevant in the 2000 elections. All of a sudden the party and its coalition of social justice and environmental organizations were being covered by the national media and examined by hundreds of thousands of voters who had never heard of the Greens before. For a moment they weren’t just a bunch of fringe environmentalist and ageing hippies. They mattered. For this Nader has been vilified, charactered, and ostracized. The saddest part of this is that progressives are leading the charge.

The group United Progressives for Victory is an organization that was formed for the explicit
purpose of discrediting Ralph Nader and his 2004 presidential campaign. The group includes
Toby Moffett, a former Democrat congressman from Connecticut, and Roy Neel, a former Gore aide. The goal of the group is to keep Nader off the ballot in as many states as possible and to target Nader voters with direct mail in key states that assail him for his “big ego” and reiterate the lesser of two evils argument of the liberal establishment. According to Moffett they seek "to drain him of resources and force him to spend his time and money."

This and similar efforts to “stop Nader” by folks like filmmaker Michael Moore, comedian Bill Maher, and others who supported Nader in 2000 reveals a sad lack of conviction and spine. It appears that what many U.S. progressives wanted wasn’t a viable
third party but just some attention. After they got some in 2000 they decided protesting, writing letters to the editor that never get published, and going to seven person meetings to plan more meetings- in short being irrelevant- is preferable to being hated by the liberal establishment. Never mind that liberals and progressives have real differences on real issues.
(corporate globalization, electoral reform, the war on drugs, single payer universal health care etc..) More specifically, never mind that John Kerry has said he wants to send more troops to Iraq (he has also said he wants to bring troops home), double the CIA budget, cut corporate taxes, continue the ban against same sex marriage, and appoint anti- abortion judges to lower level federal benches. The important thing for progressives after 2000 was to apologize to the Democrats for not being team players and promise to be more responsible next time around.

The Green Party decision not to run a real campaign in 2004 is the fruit of this contrition.
At their party convention in Summer 2004 they declined to endorse Ralph Nader’s campaign
and instead nominated a no name California lawyer, David Cobb, to carry the Green mantle. He vowed to run a “safe states” strategy to make sure the Greens didn’t take votes away from Democrats. For this concession the Green Party got nothing from the Democrats but a pat
on the head. The Kerry Campaign didn’t even have to meet with them. They’re intimidation of Green party leaders and activists worked.

The truth about electoral politics is that it’s a zero sum game (particularly with single member districts- something neither the Democrats or the Republicans are going to change) For the Greens to win, Democrats must lose. And the more the Greens cause the Democrats to lose the more serious the Democrats have to take the Greens. When the Democrats start calling Greens about making compromises and adopting planks that’s when the Greens can reasonably think about safe states strategies and similar concessions. If a political party is not building power by forcing its rival parties to the table its wasting the time and money of its members. Better that the cowardly Greens go back to the Democrats and map out a 30 year plan for a progressive take over (the way conservatives did in the Republican Party) then to continue the farce of the third party in the hopes that someday its very existence will compel Democrats to legislate into existence all those reforms that will make third parties viable in the U.S. Message to weak kneed progressives: don’t hold your breath.