Nader's Midlife Crisis
Mr. Halpern is professor of history, Henderson State University and the author of Unions, Radicals, and Democratic Presidents: Seeking Social Change in the Twentieth Century.
Ralph Nader has a long and distinguished career of public service but his 2000 presidential campaign divided progressives. Will the 2004 be a repeat of 2000?
Nader’s failure to listen to what he acknowledges was the unanimous opposition of his many progressive friends to a presidential race this year reminds one of the man in the midlife crisis who believes he has to “do what he has to do” and abandon his family. Marriages get rocky and many people’s feelings were hurt in the 2000 election. Nader appears to have nursed his hurt feelings to the point that he is ready to abandon the associations of a lifetime. Like the man in a mid-life crisis, he appears to have been listening to and becoming intimate with someone else. The indications are that Nader is finding new, conservative allies for his independent candidacy as he dispenses with his old progressive friends.
In an extended interview on National Public Radio on the day of his announcement, Nader reported on his conversations with Democratic leaders. He said his focus would be on attacking Bush and that if the Democrats don’t criticize him, he won’t be criticizing them. He made reasonable points on many important issues, but he couldn’t get through the interview without criticizing the leading Democrat candidates.
Initial commentaries by progressive pundits, the New York Times, and many Democrats were very negative toward Nader’s bid. On the second day into his 2004 quest, in a wide-ranging interview at the National Press Club, Nader advised liberals and Democrats, to “relax,” I’ll surprise you as an ally in the fight to oust the Bush administration.
Time will tell, but the evidence from the National Press Club interview point to 2004 being very different from 2000, but not in a good way for progressives. Nader lauded resolutions of the Texas Republican party convention that he said were critical of Bush policies and called on Ross Perot to speak out as he did in 1992 on trade and the deficit. Nader responded positively to the enthusiasm of a conservative electoral activist. Perhaps most telling was his response to a question from a New York Times reporter about whether Iraq would be better off today if the Bush administration had left Saddam Hussein in power. Instead of mentioning the alternative of working through the United Nations, Nader asserted it was a false question because the first Bush administration had a coalition in 1991 and should have finished off Saddam Hussein then. This, of course, was the line of thinking among Bush’s conservative base and the argument undercut Nader’s other assertion that it’s all about oil.
Nader said he hopes to draw most of his votes this time from independents and Republicans, but is he pulling conservatives out of the Republican party or is he himself being captured by conservative thinking? What Nader neglects to mention, moreover, is that those Republicans and independents opposed to Bush on the war, civil liberties, the deficit, or the jobless recovery have a choice of voting for the Democrat.
In the 2000 election, Nader ran as the candidate of the Green party, a party of the left. He ran a progressive campaign that highlighted the issue of corporate power and brought many young people into the political process, but his campaign also had an ultra-left tinge because it mistakenly saw no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The prediction here is, that while still rhetorically progressive and anti-corporate on many issues, in 2004 Nader’s campaign will resemble the independent campaigns of former Republicans John Anderson and Ross Perot and will play a center-right role between the two major parties.
The wisest response of progressives, Democrats, and grass roots activists is to focus on mobilizing voters on the issues of peace, jobs, a living wage, establishing universal health care, restoring civic harmony and preserving access to abortion and the rights of all. They can praise Nader’s good ideas and criticize his bad ones without getting caught up in the negative game of attacking him as a spoiler. Most important, they can coalesce around electing a Democratic president and Congress and ridding the country of the most reactionary administration in our modern history.