March 12, 2001
Nader and the Politics of Fear
<http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010312&s=greider>
by WILLIAM GREIDER
Mention his name in the House Democratic caucus and Ralph Nader draws
spontaneous boos. Among party regulars, many assume that the anger and the
regrets lingering from Election 2000 effectively put an end to the "Nader
moment." Every right turn by George W. Bush reminds people that Nader's
Green Party vote of 2.7 percent deprived Albert Gore of a clean victory.
Even some erstwhile supporters are grumbling about Nader's postelection
silence, depicting a weird recluse who's not even talking to old friends.
Representative Richard Gephardt, the House minority leader, had a different
idea. He invited Nader in for a friendly chat in early February and began
by congratulating him for running "a terrific campaign." According to
Nader, Gephardt was especially impressed by the superrallies the Green
campaign organized in city after city, filling large arenas with
enthusiastic young people who paid $10 or $20 to cheer Nader's dense litany
of progressive policy issues. Nobody is paying to hear us talk about
policy, Gephardt observed.
Under the circumstances, it seems wiser to talk than to shun. The
Democratic Party is now in the full
wilderness, complete minority status for the first time since the early
1950s, and this fallen condition
opens space for a different, more fractious kind of party politics. Where
are the Democrats?
"Castaways," said Representative Dennis Kucinich, new chair of the
Progressive Caucus. "We're back
on the island, learning to make fires.... What happened for the last eight
years was the Democrats
exchanged principles for polling data."
As the minority party, Democrats are likely to experience the pressures of
inside-outside
politics, unscripted and unstable, in which numerous irregular voices claim
the right to clash with the elected establishment over the party's
direction and core beliefs. Democratic senators got a first taste when
their frontline constituencies mobilized against John Ashcroft for Attorney
General. They coaxed or bludgeoned forty-two Democrats into voting against
their former colleague (none of the senators dreaming of a future
presidential candidacy dared to vote for him). At a Washington conference
on February 28, the Campaign for America's Future launches its blueprint
for progressive ideas and action, "The Next Agenda," which describes
leading-edge strategies for achieving universal healthcare, sustainable
economics and other forward-looking goals (reminiscent of the Heritage
Foundation's long-established guidebook for conservative thinking). Inside
Congress, the Progressive Caucus and the Black Caucus agitate for stronger
principles and stiffer backbones.
Nader and the Greens, though outsiders, are among the more distant elements
of the grassroots who intend to exert influence, supportive or threatening,
toward restoration of a more substantial Democratic Party. Nader told
Gephardt he expects Greens to run as many as eighty Congressional
candidates in 2002, nearly twice their list this past year. Some of these,
he said, will be challenging comfortable Republicans like Representatives
Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, the House leaders who are used to enjoying a free
ride in Texas. "At least, it will send them a message from back home when
they think it's a lifetime job," Nader explained to him. But, of course,
Greens will also target Gephardt's own Democrats. "We didn't talk about
that," Nader said. "He understood, though, that this is about
party-building. To build a party, you're not going to help the other guy
win." Gephardt's office confirmed the meeting, but declined to discuss
content.
Nader and the Greens are a problem for Democrats, but might also be a
useful asset, a force for stoking popular resistance to the party's
rightward drift, drawing new voters and energy into the electoral process,
test-marketing advanced issues Democrats are still afraid to touch, perhaps
even encouraging party discipline. "I told him I'm going to continue to
help build the Green Party," Nader said, "and, where there are no Green
candidates running, the spillover vote is likely to help the Democratic
candidate, and the Democrats ought to recognize that." In 2000, the Green
vote was decisive in defeating at least one Democratic House candidate in
Michigan and dangerously close in one or two other districts. On the other
hand, the Green turnout clearly helped elect Maria Cantwell to the Senate
from Washington State and probably saved a couple of House Democrats in
very close California races. Nader directed his personal fire at several
right-wing Republicans, who lost. He also thinks Green voters helped
Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow defeat hard-right incumbent Spencer
Abraham (now Bush's Energy Secretary) and could have helped more if the
Dems had pointed them to the most promising contests. Nader and Gephardt
talked about the missed opportunities last year. It would be helpful, the
two agreed, to consult more closely in the future.
If the cozy talk rankles those many Democrats who loathe Nader, they should
consider the possibility that it reflects their new condition. A minority
party, utterly without governing power, finds itself scolded by unrepentant
outsiders and can't blithely turn them away, if it wishes to grow.
Five-term Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney, who won as a party
outsider herself, observed: "My ability to get elected has always relied on
nontraditional people, bringing new people, new supporters in the process,
so every new voter the Green Party attracts is a potential new voter for
me. The whole idea of progressives, I thought, was to have more people
participating, not fewer. I absolutely understand the frustration of young
people who feel alienated from a Democratic Party that looks like a
Republican Party, especially that feeds at the same trough."
If Democrats manage to win back the House and Senate in '02 (a good bet if
a severe recession unfolds), they might brush aside such critics. But, if
not, Democrats will have to learn how to think like a minority, taking
bigger risks because they have nothing to lose. When the Republican Party
endured in this wilderness, its ideological reconstruction was a long and
very nasty affair. The energetic outsiders were true-blue conservatives who
assailed the old guard and occasionally defeated their incumbents in
primaries or as third-party challengers. The uncompromising right-wing
ideologues were relentless and harsh, regarded in GOP circles as the
"frothers" and "ankle-biters," but they had real impact in pulling the
party rightward. Think of Ralph Nader as a vigorous new ankle-biter from
the left.
Nader compares the Greens' potential to the electoral leverage the
Christian right exerts over the Republican Party. "The Democrats are just
not used to dealing with any leverage from the left," he said. "They're
used to saying to progressives: Shut up, you've got nowhere else to go."
This comparison sounds a bit self-inflated (as insurgent leaders often
sound) and certainly it's far ahead of present facts. The Greens are
growing but lack anything close to the popular base assembled by the TV
preachers and allied groups. Indeed, the Greens barely exist as an
organized party, though Nader has great confidence that young people will
develop a more muscular organization. The 900 college coordinators from his
campaign are launching Campus Greens to continue the party recruiting and
to build active chapters on campus (in truth, mobilized young people could
take over large chunks of the Democratic Party where state and local
organizations are moribund). Nader doesn't have a developed electoral
strategy for ^A'02, not yet anyway, but at this point even the major parties
cannot think strategically until state-by-state redistricting determines
which seats are safe, which are in play. Still, Nader did not disappear, as
some believe, and by his count has held nine press conferences since the
election, along with four Green Party fundraisers, and he makes the rounds
of TV chat shows.
Nader could flop, of course, or fail to deliver on his expansive ambitions.
If one were designing the leader for an insurgent third party, Nader would
probably not be the model. He is not a political animal in terms of the
human sensibilities successful pols usually exude, an acute empathy for how
others are reacting to him, the neediness for personal affection. He has no
real experience in electoral politics, aside from initiative
campaigns. His singular strength of character, the tenacity to go it
alone, is a bad fit with the everyday give-and-take of running campaigns or
building a real organization.
Y et Al Gore and the Dems did not help themselves last year by
underestimating Nader
and the young people around him. At the eleventh hour, the attacks and
warnings from party regulars succeeded in scaring off roughly half of
Nader's potential voters, but an odd bounce occurred in some postelection
polling. In late November, a Zogby International poll reported that 6
percent claimed to have voted for Nader (twice his actual vote). In late
December, another poll found 10 percent claiming they had voted for
him. One shouldn't make too much of this. Some voters typically
misrepresent themselves afterward, but usually they pretend they voted for
the winner, not for someone who finished a distant third. Possibly, the
Nader moment left a stronger afterglow than Washington yet recognizes.
Nader has two essential strengths going for him.
First, his ideas. The issues Nader articulates connect intensely with
left-liberal activists and organizations at the grassroots, but are not
ready for prime time, so far as the Democratic Party can see. Or they may
even be dangerously liberal. The "living wage" campaign that has swept the
country. Food safety and the concentration of production by agribusiness.
The deformities in criminal law, including draconian drug sentences and the
death penalty. The
malfunctioning electoral system, beyond voting machines, which requires
representational reforms
like "instant runoff" voting. The archaic and bloated national security
state. The federal subsidies to
companies that abuse their own work forces, not to mention the environment.
The overbearing influence of financial markets and corporate power. Nader
says he reminded Gephardt: "The Greens actually have a more legitimate
platform for the old Democratic Party than the Democratic Party does."
Nader's other great asset is the Democratic Party. It is more profoundly
divided than the Congressional numbers suggest, torn between serving money
patrons and responding to its voting constituencies, and utterly without
the means of imposing party discipline. Most Democratic incumbents are not
deeply threatened by their party's fallen status, since they raise money
and run largely on their own, even gain contributors and favorable press by
going against the party on large matters. Thus, among senior liberals, 2001
feels a lot like 1981, when the Reagan White House cherry-picked Democratic
votes to enact its right-wing agenda. The defections have already begun.
Instead of "Boll Weevils," the white Southern renegades who voted with the
Reaganites, the potential defectors are now among the thirty-strong Blue
Dogs or the sixty business-friendly New Democrats associated with the
Democratic Leadership Council. The faithful labor-liberal vote in the
Senate is even weaker than in the House. The DLC roster exaggerates its
influence (since some members sign up for political cover and fundraising),
but it wagged the dog during the Clinton years, insisting on a mushy agenda
that did not upset business and finance. Leaders complied to keep everyone
on the same page.
Nader thinks Greens can help break up the party's passive strategy, at
least discomfort it, first by identifying core-issue roll calls as "the
markers" and then going after the incumbents who ignore them. "The marker
is: Are the Democrats really going to fight?" he said. "If they really
fought, they could stop Bush on anything, we know that. But, they will say,
'Oh no, you don't understand about the Blue Dogs or the DLC.' Well, if they
don't have party discipline on these major issues, then you don't really
have a party. They shouldn't say, 'We, the Democratic Party, are better on
this and that.' Don't talk about the Democratic Party, it's two parties."
This blunt-nosed analysis sounds naive, and terribly unfair, to insiders
familiar with the reality of intraparty divisions. Yet, if Democrats do
disappoint energized constituencies on major matters, the Greens will have
good talking points for recruiting.
The Progressive Caucus, though a minority within the minority, is sounding
a similar warning inside the party: Restoration requires strong principles
and ideas, not more polling data. Nader, says Kucinich, "should have stayed
within the party. We've talked about these same issues for years and have
worked with Ralph. The issues are valid. They become more valid when they
are taken within the Democratic Party."
Nader's logic has a serious downside, a mismatch he does not acknowledge,
but that could injure the party without producing therapeutic change. Given
the nature of the Greens and their issues, they typically demonstrate the
best potential for harvesting votes in the districts already held by
liberal Democrats or conscientious moderates. So, as Greens go about
building a party, they are going to run against "good guys," for sure.
"When you're building a party, you don't go around saying, 'Hey, don't run
against him, he's a good guy,'" Nader said. That naturally enrages
Democrats. "His idea is making things better by making them worse," said
Representative David Obey, a thirty-year veteran of liberal legislative
battles. "In some cases, [Green challengers] might work, but in most cases
it will push those members further into the arms of the people they're
already beholden to. The answer isn't that you have to break fifteen
people's arms. The answer is you have to win the national debate, and the
way you do that is on the economic issues, the kitchen-table issues people
care about." Nader shrugged. "Sometimes you've got to prune the tree to
make it grow healthy," he told me.
The untested Green potential is whether they can exert electoral influence
on the less obvious targets, the New Democrats from closely contested swing
districts or conservative-voting Democrats with safe seats and even some
Republicans who vote more conservative than their districts. "That's a
collateral benefit of what we're trying to do," Nader insisted. Despite
appearances, the status quo is not invulnerable. Among the New Democrats,
for instance, a dozen won last year by less than 10 percent, and some of
their margins were squeakers where a third-party candidate might well have
tipped the balance against them. The watch list includes some voluble
champions of DLC deal-making such as California Representatives Cal Dooley
(53-45 percent) and Ellen Tauscher (53-44 percent). A Green opponent might
at least complicate life for some Democrats who win easily and flaunt their
independence, Representative Charles Stenholm of Texas or Representative
Gary Condit of California or Representative Jim Moran of Virginia (whose
affluent district may be more liberal than he is on environmental issues).
At a minimum, the idea of introducing competition in uncontested districts
should be stimulating for small-d democracy.
Certainly, it might be far more effective if the major constituencies
(labor, blacks, enviros and others) decided to impose their own, more
aggressive electoral tests on Democrats who stray. These groups have the
battlefield experience and resources to get everyone's attention, but as
effective players inside the legislative system, they are also inhibited by
some of the same factors that make the party itself risk-averse. Labor
brings the most muscle, for instance, but it also has to play defense
against Republican assaults on a variety of bread-and-butter issues. Many
incumbent Democrats who swing conservative on the more visible issues will
give labor their votes on parochial matters vital to union members but not
the general public. It's difficult to threaten retribution against an
incumbent if you have to stop by the senator's office the next day and ask
for a vote.
What Nader and the Greens might bring to the table is fear"nameless,
unreasoning fear," as FDR put it in a different context. That emotion is
(or ought to be) a powerful motivation in representative democracy, the
fear of being defeated by the next unknown. In my experience, the one thing
sure to alter thinking among comfortable incumbents is seeing a couple of
their colleagues cut down, blindsided by a new issue or a swarm of
discontented voters they didn't see coming. Typically, politicians will do
what they can to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to them. Even safe
incumbents are eager to avoid the harassment and risk of a dedicated
challenger. This fear helps explain why presumably marginal forces like the
NRA can accumulate so much influence or how the antiabortion camp gradually
swallowed the Republican Party, despite opposition from the American
majority. Winning elections depends on amassing big numbers, but political
leverage exists on the margins for those with intensity of purpose. The
Democratic Party, for that matter, could benefit itself from a little more
intensity of purpose.
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