FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS VOTE NADER
Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine / October 28, 2004
Ralph Nader is on the ballot in at least eight fiercely-contested states. If you have a swing-state friend who is considering voting for Nader, there is still time to make a difference.
Are you a Democrat with a friend who is thinking of voting for Nader?Does your friend live in one of the swing states where Nader is on the ballot -- especially Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Wisconsin?
If so, you have one the most important jobs left in this campaign.
Some of Nader's far left supporters actually want Bush to win. According to their loony logic, only if Bush makes things much worse will Americans "rise up." When people are deeply committed to this view, there is not much anyone can say.
But others are considering voting for Nader because he's a strong advocate for social justice and a critic of the war in Iraq. If you know someone in this latter camp, talk to him or her about why nearly all of Nader's prominent supporters from 2000 are now working for Kerry.
Your friend probably knows that Bush squeaked into the White House despite losing to Gore by 500,000 votes. Your friend may have heard that votes for Nader almost certainly cost Gore Florida's decisive electoral votes. What your friend may not know, however, is that Nader set out to defeat Gore.
In 2000, Nader claimed he was reinvigorating American politics by building Green Party votes to the 5 percent level needed for federal funding. But if that was really Nader's main goal, he would have listened to his own advisers and focused on the many vote-rich safe states like New York, Texas, and California. Instead, after promising supporters he would not campaign late in swing states, Nader did just that, traveling to New Hampshire, Michigan and Florida days before the election. As Nader hoped, this helped only Bush.
Now Nader is campaigning in swing states again. He seeks to punish the Democrats because they ostracized him in the Clinton years and because he thinks most Democratic politicians utterly betrayed the American people. As Tarek Milleron, Nader's nephew and a top aide, explained in the Village Voice (5/12/2004), Nader is committed to the idea that "Democratic politicians should pay for their betrayals in votes." This doesn't mean that Nader wants Kerry to win by a smaller margin, it means Nader wants Kerry to lose and Bush to win.
This is why Nader now sells t-shirts that say "SPOILER." This is why Nader has attracted right-wing financial support. Karl Rove and the Republican strategists understand that helping Nader may take more precious swing state votes from Kerry than any other campaign tactic they have left (short of capturing Osama bin Laden).
Of course, Nader was not the only reason Bush got to be President. The state of Florida, where Bush's brother is Governor, somehow purged thousands of mostly black, mostly Democratic voters from the rolls. And the Supreme Court justices, some appointed by Bush's father, halted the recounts and declared Bush president.
But Nader succeeded in taking tens of thousands of votes from Gore in Florida, allowing Bush to "win" by a mere 537 votes. In New Hampshire Nader's 22,000 votes helped give Bush a 7,200 vote margin. And Nader almost tipped Iowa, Wisconsin, Oregon, and New Mexico to Bush.
Nader has never expressed the slightest regret about the role he played in 2000, and now he's trying to play it again. The majority of Green Party activists understand this, so this time they rejected Nader and many now urge voting for Kerry in swing states. Even Winona LaDuke, Nader's vice-presidential candidate in 2000, has endorsed Kerry.
Like your friend, most people who are considering voting Nader are deeply frustrated with American politics. They see both parties as beholden to corporate campaign contributors, which Nader rightly criticizes. But his claim that Democrats are no better than Republicans is demonstrably false. They are much better than Bush on jobs, education, health care, the environment, and the war in Iraq.
Help your friend see that a swing state vote for Kerry is a vote against more tax cuts for the rich, the Patriot Act II, unprecedented assaults on the environment, more failed wars, and an even more extreme right-wing Supreme Court.
Using one's ballot to say "a pox on both your houses" may feel good for a minute in the voting booth. But for most Americans, four more years of Bush-Cheney will be a genuine catastrophe.
Craig Reinarman is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Harry G. Levine is Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York. They can be reached at hglevine@compuserve.com. More information about Nader's campaign is at: www.hereinstead.com/.