http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0418/levine.php
May 5-11,
2004
How the Great
Crusader used the Green Party to get his revenge
Ralph Nader, Suicide
Bomber
by Harry G.
Levine
n Friday, October 13, 2000, at
Madison Square Garden, the largest of Ralph Nader's "super rallies" kicked his
campaign into high gear. It was a great event in many ways. Fifteen thousand
ticket buyers cheered songs, jokes, skits, and pep talks delivering timeless
radical truths about wealth and power in America. Nader's speech was actually
the low point, circulating randomly through riffs about corporate power, health
insurance, the environment, and what Ralph Nader had accomplished.
But Nader also served up
disturbing untruths. Most notable was his insistence that Al Gore and George W.
Bush were "Tweedledee and Tweedledum"--they look and act the same, so it doesn't
matter which you get. I went home angry. But it took me a while to understand
that my progressive hero had turned suicide bomber--that Ralph Nader had
strapped political dynamite onto himself and walked into one of the closest
elections in American history hoping to blow it up.
The next day I was invited to a
fundraising party in Greenwich Village. There I approached Michael Moore and
described how the campaign could use the Web to provide the latest data on
battleground states like Florida, where Nader supporters should hold their noses
and vote for Gore. When Moore realized what I was suggesting, he puffed up like
one of those fish that expand when threatened, leaned into me, poked his finger
into my face, and yelled: "You can't say that! You can't say that! You can't say
that!"
Later I was introduced to Nader's
closest adviser, his handsome, piercingly intelligent 30-year-old nephew, Tarek
Milleron. Although Milleron argued that environmentalists and other activists
would find fundraising easier under Bush, he acknowledged that a Bush presidency
would be worse for poor and working-class people, for blacks, for most
Americans. As Moore had, he claimed that Nader's campaign would encourage
Web-based vote-swapping between progressives in safe and contested states. But
when I suggested that Nader could gain substantial influence in a Democratic
administration by focusing his campaign on the 40 safe states and encouraging
his supporters elsewhere to vote Gore, Milleron leaned coolly toward me with
extra steel in his voice and body. He did not disagree. He simply said, "We're
not going to do that."
"Why not?" I said.
With just a flicker of smile, he
answered, "Because we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound
them."
There was a long silence and the
conversation was over.
Milleron's words are so remarkable
they bear repeating: Ralph Nader ran so he could hurt, wound, and punish the
Democrats. His primary goal was not raising issues, much less building the Green
Party. He actively wanted Gore to lose. Where did this passion to punish come
from?
In his admiring, balanced 2002
biography, Ralph Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon, Justin Martin explains
that early in his career, "Nader felt he could achieve anything" in Washington.
He testified regularly before Congress and was seriously proposed as a
Democratic candidate for Senate and even, under McGovern, vice president. He was
so allied with the Democrats that in 1972 he rejected a New Party presidential
run because, he explained, that might "help throw the election to Nixon." Nader
had access to the Carter White House, where many of his former staffers worked,
although his notorious nastiness and self-regard prevented him from fully
capitalizing on it.
After 1980, however, he was
completely shut out by the Reagan Republicans--and just as galling, the
Democrats tried to ride out the right-wing onslaught, challenging it only
selectively and knuckling under on electability issues such as crime and energy
policy. In 1992, Nader campaigned briefly in a Democratic primary, but during
the Clinton years, says Martin, Nader was "a pariah even among the most liberal
members" of Congress and was altogether shunned by the White House. By 1996,
he'd had it with Democratic gutlessness. Running on the Green ticket against a
Clinton who supported NAFTA and "welfare reform," he told Mother Jones,
"I think his best nickname is George Ronald Clinton." Nevertheless, Nader
did little campaigning. In 2000, after a slow start, he threw himself into the
process. Clearly, this election was going to be extraordinarily close, and in a
September 2000 interview, Nader discussed playing spoiler:
Rolling Stone: "In 1996, you told the New
York Times, 'If I really wanted to beat Clinton, I would get out, raise $3
or $4 million, and maybe provide the margin for his defeat. That's not the
purpose of this candidacy.' Since you're planning to raise $5 million and run
hard this year, does that mean you would not have a problem providing the margin
of defeat for Gore?"
Nader: "I would not--not at all."
Martin reports that during the
2000 campaign, "no matter how hard he tried to be evenhanded in doling out
criticism of Bush and Gore, Nader did show a bias"--against Gore. "It was clear
to many," writes Martin, "that he truly despised Gore, while he was merely
dismissive of Bush." Martin was especially struck by a Portland speech where
Nader said that Gore was "more reprehensible" than Bush because Gore "knows so
much and refuses to act on his knowledge."
Gary Sellers has a simpler way of
putting it. Although Nader was the best man at Sellers's wedding, the two are no
longer close. After extensive discussions with his old boss in late 1999,
Sellers created Nader's Raiders for Gore in 2000. He believes Nader hated Gore,
he told me, because "Gore wouldn't return his phone calls."
Ralph Nader exploited his
reputation as a self-sacrificing idealist to pursue an utterly selfish goal. He
claimed his purpose was to build the Green Party by drawing the 5 percent vote
required for federal funding. But this was cover--a way of justifying his lust
for revenge. Nader campaigned as the honest man who told the truth while lying
about what he believed and wanted.
The most pernicious myth spread by
his campaign was the Tweedledee and Tweedledum line--a claim columnist Marianne
Means branded "insane" and his opposite number Pat Buchanan never got near.
Perhaps Nader concealed from himself that his nostalgic view of a Democratic
Party that had shifted away from its progressive traditions was at odds with the
hodgepodge he actually grew up with--an amalgam of machine hacks and Ivy League
liberals, rip-roaring Southern racists and farmer-labor populists. But he
certainly recognized the huge difference between a timid moderate Democrat like
Al Gore and fierce right-wingers like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. These were
Republicans of a sort never in power before Reagan. Like most politicians,
however, Nader couldn't reveal what he really thought. He needed an explanation
for campaigning in the swing states. So he exaggerated, distorted, misled, and
dissembled. He lied.
"Throughout the campaign, Nader
brushed aside concerns that he might help elect Bush by employing one of several
blithe quips," wrote Jonathan Chait in the November 2002 American
Prospect. "If asked about being a spoiler, he'd invariably reply, 'You can't
spoil a system that's spoiled to the core.'" Chait concludes: "Not since Steve
Forbes has a presidential candidate turned aside unwanted queries so
robotically. Nader's one-liners were pure, made-for-television nonsequiturs, all
refusing to engage on any substantive level the fact that his candidacy might
prove a decisive factor in Bush's election."
Nader's swing-state strategy was
the crux of his anti-Gore game plan. If Nader had been truly committed to
getting the Greens their 5 percent, he would have taken the safe-state route
mapped out by many party advisers. In Stupid White Men, Michael Moore
says he rejected Nader's invitation to join him in the battleground states as
the election neared. Instead, Moore chose to work only "in those states where
Ralph could get a lot of votes without being responsible for Bush winning
the election." Places like New York, California, Massachusetts, and such liberal
enclaves as Bush's own Austin, Texas, as Chait puts it, "offered the richest
harvest of potential votes." This is what Reform Party candidate Patrick
Buchanan did. Nader took precisely the opposite tack. He spent the last days of
the campaign in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and, especially,
Florida, which according to Sellers he visited five times all told. Pennsylvania
and Michigan went Democratic, but Nader forced Gore to expend time and resources
on states he should have had in his pocket. And in Florida, though Nader's poll
numbers dipped from 6 percent to 4 to his final 1.6, his 97,488 voters tipped
the election.
Reached by telephone recently,
Martin explained Nader's motives as "a neat blend of his desire to go where the
cameras and media are and his desire to make the Democrats pay." But even in the
Nader camp this was at best partially understood. Danny Goldberg reported in
Tikkun that Nader told supporters he wouldn't campaign late in swing
states. Sellers suspects that Moore didn't get it until the last moment. And
Ronnie Dugger, the veteran journalist who nominated Nader at the Green
convention, learned about Nader's battleground-barnstorming strategy long after
the election. "Why hasn't Nader been building the Green Party for the last four
years?" he asked me. "Nader was more interested in beating Gore than beating
Bush. And Nader has said he will not follow a safe-state strategy in 2004
either."
Hand it to Nader--he ran a
brilliant campaign, approaching the loony task of punishing the Democrats by
defeating Al Gore with typical hyper-rationality. A mad scientist in both senses
of "mad," he devoted his enormous skills, knowledge, and reputation to a bizarre
personal agenda. Nothing he has said since indicates he thinks he made a
mistake.
The day after the election, I saw
a Nader press conference on TV. I'd been watching TV news reporters, various
Gore and Bush representatives, Republicans and Democrats, almost nonstop.
Everyone was grim. Nobody thought this was a good outcome.
And then up stepped Nader. He had
not smiled at the New York party surrounded by his supporters. But now, after a
few comments, he was beaming. With this deadlocked election, where his efforts
in Florida made all the difference, Nader looked happy, very happy. On the first
strange day after the election, Ralph Nader may have been the happiest man in
America.
What does Nader want to do in the
2004 election? Does he again want to defeat the Democratic candidate by taking
swing-state votes? "Absolutely," says Gary Sellers. This time the Greens will
likely run David Cobb, who is committed to a safe-state strategy. But not Nader.
So voters in Florida and other battlegrounds where the differences will again be
razor-thin can expect to see a lot of him. The stampede of his prominent 2000
supporters means many of them know what their former hero has in mind. But there
are always new citizens to con. In 2004, as in 2000, Nader's real campaign
slogan is: "Vote for Ralph Nader. You too can punish, hurt, and wound the
Democrats."
VILLAGE VOICE
LETTERS / May 12-18,
2004
From Tarek
Milleron:
In "Ralph Nader, Suicide
Bomber" [May
5-11], Harry G. Levine
relies heavily on his imagination. The Voice should have checked the words he
attributed to me in quotation marks before publishing them: I never uttered the
words "we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them."
Levine and I had a conversation about the "safe states" strategy that he
espoused. Since Ralph Nader's campaign was one based on principle, rather than
political games, I knew that he would never undermine his own convictions on the
issues by semi-endorsing Al Gore, and I expressed that to Levine. I told Mr.
Levine what I had repeated many times during the 2000 campaign: "The Democrats
should not be allowed to take progressive voters for granted anymore. Democratic
politicians should pay for their betrayals in votes." This was a rather banal
statement of the most basic of political truths.
Although some
commented, during the 2000 campaign, that environmentalists and others would
have an easier time raising money under Bush, I never took that view to justify
potential benefits to a Bush presidency, as Levine implies. What I did
repeatedly say in 2000 was that I thought that the same damage to the
environment that occurred under Clinton would receive much more attention under
Bush because of his awful record in Texas.
Levine claims that I
"acknowledged" that a Bush presidency would be worse for poor, working-class,
and black Americans. Nonsense. I acknowledged no such thing, having seen, in one
area after another, the plight of poor and working-class Americans worsen or
stagnate under Clinton. Furthermore, I had recently met a black Justice
Department lawyer who characterized civil rights enforcement--that is, actions,
not words--under Clinton as being "as bad, or worse, than [under] Reagan and
Bush." Levine has invented this "acknowledgment" on my part to bolster his
baseless contention that Ralph Nader's campaign was an act of destructive
revenge.
In fact, Nader and
many of us working on his campaign were quite certain, as soon as Bush had the
Republican nomination locked up, that Gore would win the election. But--far from
Levine's absurd characterization that dozens of people on the Nader campaign
worked their hearts out for a personal vendetta--that was beside the point for
us. Our every effort went toward competing for votes on the issues and the
record.
Finally, if I were
indeed "piercingly intelligent," as Levine claims, it would be obvious to Voice
readers that I would not have discussed anything with Levine.
Tarek Milleron
Berkeley, California
Harry G. Levine
replies:
In 2000, Ralph
Nader claimed that he was running to win 5 percent of the vote and build the
Green Party by getting it federal funding. But this was a deception, a lie.
Nader's chief campaign goal was actually to punish the Democrats by taking
enough votes in some swing states like Florida to defeat Al Gore. In effect,
Nader tried to "Kill Bill and Al." Now, in 2004, Nader has nothing to do with
the Green Party and is running as an independent claiming to be the anti-war and
anti-Bush candidate. But this too is a deception, a lie. Nader's chief goal this
time is to punish the Democrats by taking enough votes in some swing states to
"Kill Kerry."
Tarek Milleron indeed said the
things I reported. And despite his protestations, Mr. Milleron just about admits
this. He writes: "Democratic politicians should pay for their betrayals in
votes." This doesn't mean Kerry should win by a smaller margin--it means Kerry
should lose and Bush should win. Mr. Milleron's own words show us that Nader
truly views his presidential campaigns as weapons of vengeance aimed to defeat
the Democrats.
Harry G. Levine is a professor of
Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York, and can be reached at
hglevine@QC.edu. The longer essay this was based on can found at:
http://www.soc.qc.edu/Staff/levine/. A few words that were cut or changed by the
Village Voice have been restored for this version.
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