Reflections on Ralph
Nader, the 2004
Election, and Democracy

Thank God George Bush is an idiot.

Next to the Museum of Irreproducible Results, there should be the George W. Bush Exhibition Center of Unimplementable Initiatives. There we would find goodies like Mission to Mars and No Child Left Behind.

And the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment.

It will never become law. It’s not meant to. It’s just election-year horseshit.

But let’s make sure some good comes of this dismal political exercise.

Look at the pictures of painfully earnest gay couples committing themselves to a lifetime of monogamy. There’s the wedding cake. The formal wear. You can almost see the house with the picket fence, mortgaged to the hilt, and smell the fresh cut grass.

George W. Bush wants to push these wannabe bourgeoisies out of the wedding chapel and back into the bathhouse in an endless rump to belly conga line of anonymous, promiscuous, and transitory sexual encounters.

What an idiot.

Please e-mail your paper protesting the President’s efforts to undermine the institution of marriage. (Billmon helpfully points out that the Bush campaign website has an automated e-mail system that allows users to locate and bombard their local papers with messages. Let’s use it.)

Gay marriage is a potent reminder that as long as we can keep the focus on the drivel coming out of George Bush’s mouth, the election looks good.

What we need to worry about is the White House’s upcoming $100 million campaign to distract attention from Bush by shining a harsh, unflattering spotlight on Kerry and/or Edwards.

What we need is Ralph Nader — and his supporters.

Now, Ralph cost Al Gore the election in 2000, whatever fuzzy math he tries to invoke to say otherwise. But I don’t hold it against him. Who knew that Bush would become captive of a corporate-fascist clique, instead of just sucking up to it?

And Ralph could cost the Democrats the election in 2004. I rolled my eyes when Ralph decided to run.

But again, I don’t hold it against him. He’s a worrisome symptom, not a disease — or a solution.

Nader doesn’t offer a panacea for this country, even if I agree with every position he takes.

The shameful secret of American society is that it’s a pretty sick puppy. The progressive idea that the American people are instinctively and innately good-hearted populists looking for the right candidate to push their liberal button is pretty much a fantasy. At least 30% of the likely voters in this country will vote for Bush not because they are deluded or co-opted. It’s because they’re assholes, and they recognize George as one of their own.

It’s very difficult for a country that deeply divided to agree — or to progress.

If we want progressive nirvana in the United States, the country needs an enema, not an election. And our candidate would probably have to be Pol Pot, not Ralph Nader.

Ralph is not a social factor in this country. He’s more of a political headache for the Democrats.

The only reason Ralph throws Democrats into a frothing fit is because we fear that Kerry and/or Edwards will mutate into the usual flat-footed DLC weenies during the campaign and stumble across the finish line a nose — and a few thousand Nader votes — short of Bush.

This kind of anxiety is poison for a campaign. When the supporters reek of fear, the candidates become defensive, and the opposition is emboldened.

And it’s wrong. I don’t want to indulge in passé Marxist analysis, but politicians don’t lead their base. They reflect it. If a coherent, confident, anti-Bush mass movement is there, no matter how much corporate money is sluicing into Bush’s campaign coffers, opportunistic politicians will heed the popular will.

So it’s our job to unite with the Nader/Dean crowd and build a firewall for our candidate against the impending Republican attack.

Naderites and Deaniacs must be accommodated. And they have to accommodate us — by campaigning enthusiastically for the Kerry/Edwards ticket.

Even if it’s the lamest damn ticket on the planet.

Fortunately, there is a platform the whole ABB crowd can unite behind:

Democracy.

The 2004 election should be about Americans’ right and ability to choose their futures.

George W. Bush is trying to hijack that future.

He snuck into office as an unelected president. He seized war powers from the Congress for Iraq under false pretenses. He is using the Patriot Act to harass people and organizations that don’t reflect his views. He is misusing his office to reward his political supporters and advance his election prospects at the expense of his country’s interests. Through his non-stop Red State/Blue State social, economic, and political gerrymandering he is trying to make the chasms separating us permanent and unbridgeable. He wants to rewrite the Constitution as a discriminatory document.

And he has saddled our children with an immense, growing national debt.

Some conservatives are trying to defend Bush’s debt-financed spending binge with the excuse that our children will benefit, so they should pay for it.

The correct reply is: They’ll never have the choice, will they? That’s taxation without representation. That’s what the American Revolution was about.

Think of the 2004 election as a peaceful mini-revolution, a partial restoration of our democracy for the sake of our children.

Also, think of it as a revolution that ABB Democrats, Naderites, Deaniacs — and even conservative Americans — will join.

I don’t care if Kerry/Edwards fail every liberal/progressive litmus test there is. I don’t even care if they come out of the convention sounding more like Republicans than Democrats.

This election isn’t about them. It’s about us.

Naderites and Deaniacs shouldn’t care either. This election is about something even more fundamental than our pet issues and personal political loyalties.

I’m voting this November because I want accountability. I want Bush out of office. I want democracy.

I want my country back.

I’ll worry more about the quality of our candidates once we regain our basic freedoms.

We’ll be looking at ourselves, our neighbors, our allies, and our traditional ideological enemies differently come November if we realized that we successfully joined hands across the divisions George Bush has been tearing in this country.

We’ll be celebrating a shared response to a true national crisis — and a victory.

And when we show ourselves worthy of distinguished leadership — by our clarity, conviction, determination, and unity — worthy candidates will appear.

Then maybe even Ralph can win an election.

But until that time, please don’t vote for him.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.