"The Left Has Nowhere to Go"
Monday 03 January 2011
by: Chris Hedges | Truthdig | Op-Ed
Ralph Nader. (Photo: ragesoss)
Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore.
“The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes,” Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday. “The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats.”
Nader fears a repeat of the left’s cowardice in the next election, a cowardice that has further empowered the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, maintained the role of the Democratic Party as a lackey for corporations, and accelerated the reconfiguration of the country into a neo-feudalist state. Either we begin to practice a fierce moral autonomy and rise up in multiple acts of physical defiance that have no discernable short-term benefit, or we accept the inevitability of corporate slavery. The choice is that grim. The age of the practical is over. It is the impractical, those who stand fast around core moral imperatives, figures like Nader or groups such as Veterans for Peace, which organized the recent anti-war rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, which give us hope. If you were one of the millions who backed down in the voting booth in 2008, don’t do it again. If you were one of those who thought about joining the Washington protests against the war where 131 of us were arrested and did not, don’t fail us next time. The closure of the mechanisms within the power system that once made democratic reform possible means we stand together as the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration. If we do not engage in open acts of defiance, we will empower a radical right-wing opposition that will replicate the violence and paranoia of the state. To refuse to defy in every way possible the corporate state is to be complicit in our strangulation.
“The left has nowhere to go,” Nader said. “Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?’ It’s very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don’t understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power.
“Corporate power makes demands all the time,” Nader went on. “It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing.”
There is no major difference between a McCain administration, a Bush and an Obama administration. Obama, in fact, is in many ways worse. McCain, like Bush, exposes the naked face of corporate power. Obama, who professes to support core liberal values while carrying out policies that mock these values, mutes and disempowers liberals, progressives and leftists. Environmental and anti-war groups, who plead with Obama to address their issues, are little more than ineffectual supplicants.
Obama, like Bush and McCain, funds and backs our unending and unwinnable wars. He does nothing to halt the accumulation of the largest deficits in human history. The drones murder thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they did under Bush and would have done under McCain. The private military contractors, along with the predatory banks and investment houses, suck trillions out of the U.S. Treasury as efficiently under Obama. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus, have not been restored. The public option is dead. The continuation of the Bush tax cuts, adding some $900 billion to the deficit, along with the reduction of individual contributions to Social Security, furthers a debt peonage that will be the excuse to privatize Social Security, slash social services and break the back of public service unions. Obama does not intercede as tens of millions of impoverished Americans face foreclosures and bankruptcies. The Democrats provide better cover. But the corporate assault is the same.
“Obama has the formula now,” Nader said. “You give the Republicans a lot of what they want. Many of them vote for you. You get your Democrat percentage. You weave a hybrid victory. That is what he learned in the lame-duck session. He gets praised as being a statesman and a leader and getting things done. Think of all the rewards he can contemplate while he is in Hawaii compared to what they were saying about him on Nov. 5. All the columnists and pundits say that now he can work with John Boehner. But once you take a broader view, it is the difference in the mph of corporatism. McCain is 50 miles per hour and Obama is 40 miles per hour.
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“The left has disemboweled itself,” Nader said. “It doesn’t even have a strategy every four years like a good poker player. The best example is Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO. Obama has given them nothing. Therefore, they are demanding nothing. They huff and puff. They make tough speeches. But Trumka hasn’t even made Obama’s campaign pledge of a $9.50 minimum wage by this year an issue. If you want to increase consumer demand, what better way to do it than to unleash $300 billion in wages? The card check for unionization, which Obama pledged as his No. 1 sop to the labor unions, is dead. The unions do not even demand a hearing. And now wait till you see what they will do to the public employee unions. Part of it is their own fault. They are going to be crushed. Everybody is ganging up on them. You have new class warfare. It is non-unionized lower income and middle class taking it out on the unionized middle-income public employees. It is a classic example of oligarchic manipulation. It will start playing out big time in New York State with Andrew Cuomo and others. They will start saying, ‘Why are you getting this? Most workers who pay the taxes, who pay your salaries, are not getting this.’ This plays.”
The banishment from the corporate media, Nader argues, has been one of the major contributors to the demoralization and weakening of the left. Protests by the left, which get little national or local coverage, have steadily dwindled in strength across the country. The first protest gets little or no coverage and this leads to movements, as well as the voices of activists, being diminished and finally suffocated.
“The so-called liberal media, along with Fox, is touting the tea party and publicizing Palin,” Nader said. “There was an editorial on Dec. 27 in The New York Times on the Repeal Amendment, the right-wing constitutional amendment to allow states to overturn federal law. The editorial writer at the end had the nerve to say there is no progressive champion. The editorial said that the liberals and progressives have faded out to let the tea party make history. And yet, for months, all The New York Times has done is promote Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. They promote Newt Gingrich and the neocons on the Op-Ed pages. The book pages of the newspaper ignore progressive authors and pump all the right-wing authors.
“If we don’t raise hell, we won’t get any media,” Nader said. “If we don’t get any media, the perception will be that the tea party is the big deal.
“On one notorious Sunday, Oct. 10, two of The New York Times’ segments led with a big story about Ann Coulter and how she will change her strategy because she is being outflanked by others,” Nader said. “There was also a huge article on this anti-Semite against Arabs, this Islamaphobe, Pam Geller. Do you know how many pictures they had of Geller? Twenty on this front-page segment. The number of anti-war Op-Eds in The Washington Post over nine months in 2009 was 6-to-1 pro-war. We don’t raise hell. We don’t say Terry Gross is a censor. We don’t say that Charlie Rose is a censor. We have got to blast publicly. We have got to hammer them, because they are the tribune of right-wing fascist forces.
“Three thousand people rallied to protest the invasion and massacre in Gaza two years ago,” Nader said. “It was held four blocks from The Washington Post. It did not get a single paragraph. People should march over to the Post and say ‘Fuck you! What are you doing here? You cover every little blip by the right-wing and you don’t cover us?’
“They are afraid of the right-wing because the right-wing bellows, and they have become right-wing,” Nader said of the commercial press. “They have become fascinated by the bias of Fox. And they publicize what Fox is biased on. The coverage of O’Reilly and Beck and their fights is insane. In the heyday of coverage in the 1960s of what we were doing, it was always less than it should have been, but now it is almost zero. Why do we take this? Why do we accept this? Why isn’t Chris Hedges three times a year in the Op-Ed? Why is it always Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams and all these homicidal maniacs? Why are they there? Why is John Bolton constantly published in The Washington Post and The New York Times? Where is Andrew Bacevich? Bacevich told me he has had five straight Op-Eds rejected by the Post and the Times in the last two years. And he said he is not inclined to send anymore. How many times do you hear Hoover Institution? American Enterprise Institute? Manhattan Institute. These goddamned newspapers should be picketed.”
The timidity and silencing of the left fuels the steady impoverishment of a dispossessed working class and a beleaguered middle class. It solidifies a corporate oligarchy that is dismantling the anemic regulatory agencies that once protected citizens from predatory corporations. The economic system is designed to bail out Wall Street rather than replace the trillions of dollars and millions of jobs lost by workers. And the only hope left, Nader argues, is if the conservatives in the right-wing movement break from the corporatists. If the big banks again start going to the cliff and calling for new bailouts, Nader says, this may provoke a schism between conservative groups embodied by figures such as Ron Paul, and corporate lackeys.
“Every major movement starts with field organizers, the farmers, unions, and the civil rights movement,” Nader said. “But there is nothing out there. We need to start learning from what was done in the past. All over the country people are pissed off. They hate Wall Street. They know they are being gouged. They know they are slipping behind. They know their kids will not be as well off as they were, and they were not that well off. But no one is putting it together. Who could put a thousand organizers in the field, besides George Soros? The labor unions. They have the money. They have a lot of cash. These idiots are going down. The UAW is a paradigm of a suicidal, supplicant labor union. It is disgusting. They are a puppy dog of GM, Ford and Chrysler. They have huge reserves. The labor unions could organize the country, but they are into their own emoluments and high salaries. The union leadership has so distanced itself from the rank and file that it is ashamed to do anything controversial. These union leaders will not go on TV on Labor Day because they do not want someone saying ‘Why are you making $500,000 a year with a pension that is six times your rank and file?’ There is corruption at the top. The only way the union leaders can continue is to be in the shadows. And you don’t build a strong movement in the shadows.
“The black swan question is whether something will erupt that is rare, extreme and unpredictable,” Nader said. “It is amazing that it hasn’t happened in any pockets of the country. How much more can the oppressed take before they revolt? And can they revolt without organizers? These are the two important questions. You have got to have organizers, and as of now we don’t.”
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Nader & Hedges tell the
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 16:26 — David (not verified)Nader & Hedges tell the truth in this article, and we know that 95% of Americans, including many who comment on Truthout, will refuse to hear it or act on it. The unfortunate reality is that as long as Americans have their booze, television, junk food, pharmaceuticals, toys and other sedatives, they are not going to do the only thing left to do, which is to have a revolution. Watch the movie Idiocracy, or just watch Fox, and you'll see the mental and physical weakness that the American sheep are infused with. This country is ruined environmentally, politically and socially.
I have yet to see where
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 16:31 — Anonymous (not verified)I have yet to see where Ralph Nader has been wrong on anything, never mind the way he has been abused by the corporate press. Thanks for giving him the forum, Chris.
I don't hear people standing
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 16:48 — Anonymous (not verified)I don't hear people standing up to Nader either and/or criticizing him for his taking the wind out of the progressive movement. He has gotten nowhere because no one listens to him or respects him anymore, at least I don't. He does not speak for me and I was appalled that he ran for President in 08. No way was I going to vote for him. He only dilutes the vote.
Please, Mr. Nader, stop running for office and work for someone who can win.
We need more people speaking out for the causes that the Left believes in and Nader needs to retire and allow others to step in. He only dilutes the vote.
The Left needs to learn a thing or two from the Right. We need to make a bolder stands and speak up louder and louder to be heard. It does not just happen. It takes a lot of work. You have to be heard. You have to write letters. You have to make phone calls. If it takes an entertainer to make the news, then we must be entertainers. I am tired of reading about Nader. I saw him speak in 1971 and I respected him then. But we need more people than him to speak up.
"was I going to vote for
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 17:08 — Anonymous (not verified)"was I going to vote for him. He only dilutes the vote.
Please, Mr. Nader, stop running for office and work for someone who can win"
This is bull*** and you know it.
The last debate I remember even paying attention to, nader was barred from attending, even though he was on the damned ballot in the state in question. The libertarian candidate attempted to get in anyway, and was arrested. He too was on the ballot.
So by complaining, and demanding he support someone "who can win", you obviously mean someone who signs the corporate contract which allows him to even get onto the news.
You can't win if nobody knows who you are.
Nader has it RIGHT, we should be picketing and actively hindering these news stations by whatever means necessary.
Voting in a President from
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 17:28 — brooke (not verified)Voting in a President from the Left isn't effective enough. The gov't. runs from Congress. Unless you clone Bernie Sanders,resurrect Paul Welstone, and take over the House and Senate the Left Prez won't have anyone to work with. They'd get boxed in.
Mr. Nader isn't a messiah. He's an important part of the whole.
21:48 is speaking as someone
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 17:34 — Anonymous (not verified)21:48 is speaking as someone who believes the system works, not just as a Democracy but at the Fairy Tell level too!: 'if we just get behind the right candidate - all will be well.' Get a grip! There isn't voting to get out of this situation, seriously, the system is broken, it can't work until overhaul.
I'll second that. It's
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 17:45 — Anonymous (not verified)I'll second that. It's disheartening to me how many supposed liberal democrats still believe that Nader cost Gore the election. We will never have a viable third party in this country that can truly challenge the corporate oligarchy if people on the left aren't willing to stop supporting the democrats and the BS they spew.
Of COURSE we have a way to
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 18:21 — Vic Anderson (not verified)Of COURSE we have a way to go! On this same homepage, Alan Grayson is Still SWINGING!! Just(ly) organize around him with a NEW Party, the REAL DEAL and defeat of BOTH the lying DEM RENEGER & his miserepubilkan Collubricators!!!
Dammit, Chris, Ralph
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 18:38 — inventor34 (not verified)Dammit, Chris, Ralph ,Dennis, Russ and the rest of us, the United States does NOT have a viable political left. Let's start one. Let us form a new, Liberal (or Progressive, or whatever) party with a genuine liberal platform and genuine Liberal candidates. Feingold for President.
They control the media.
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 19:30 — fred fep (not verified)They control the media. Therefore nothing we do will work. Media is all now. The internet just confuses the issue as UFO believers are thrown in the same bag with sensible people of the left, etc. There is no there there, so to speak.
Nader no longer can control the message to be heard correctly. And for all those who claim we never had anything viable here. Maybe in terms of communists but Nader gets absolutely nothing done ever if all those directly thinking liberals weren't in the legislature back in the 1960s and in the White House.
The last 30, 40 years of unrelenting strategies and propaganda from right wing successfully destroyed definitions and paradigms from even the center. You guys from the left cut off your noses to spite your face. There is a reason that 3rd parties get no where in this country. Ever. Especially when the left and unions were strong.
Depend on liberals as worked for some of the past 250 years or be irrelevant. It is clownish to expect a giant size popular left in this country. Especially now when lack of depth and breadth make most in this country pretty lame and dumb in terms of knowledge or capability of understanding knowledge. Strategies from the 60s no longer will work. Demonstrations unreported are meaningless. Demos where the cops have more people than the demonstrations are useless.
This article and most of
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 19:31 — digger22 (not verified)This article and most of this string reminds me of why the progressive movement in the US of A is in danger of losing it all and soon. Here we have a fine, articulate, effective political leader, the envy of the civilized world and the best progressive leader we've had since Roosevelt in the person of Barack Obama. With this nit picking perfectionism, we are flirting with throwing away all our recent gains, plus the tremendous benefits we would all enjoy with a full 2 term presidency.
WAKE UP, or don't complain when Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee becomes President!!!!! Obama isn't even the lesser of two evils; he's an excellent President who makes me proud to say I'm an American.
Any comment to a story in
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 19:47 — Anonymous (not verified)Any comment to a story in the New York Times
that seeks to explain how Slick Willie Clinton
doublecrossed the working classes will not be allowed. In an effort to discourage comments no in line with NYT policy, they found a way to tell us that your password is not recognized by the NYT.
Other comprimizing Newspapers have also found a way to discourage comments not in line with the
Conservative thinking. Try the Portland Press
Herald in Maine, just like the NYTimes.
Nader is head and shoulders above the fray and the common people that he tries to represent.
We have turned into Sheeple.
I'm as liberal as they come
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 20:09 — Don (not verified)I'm as liberal as they come --- but this article is the same old BS that keeps the GOP machine going.
A vote for Nader or Green Party may be an act of defiance -- but it is also an act of futility and, frankly, stupidity.
The Obama-bashing liberals will end up with what they deserve --- a country run by Faux News!
I was one of the 700,000 who
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 20:20 — montag (not verified)I was one of the 700,000 who proudly voted for Ralph Nader in 2008, and I'd gladly do it again. God bless Ralph Nader! When he's gone, we'll be a poorer nation.
Obama's "change you can
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 20:45 — Anonymous (not verified)Obama's "change you can believe in" turned out to be an enormous sham. I first picked up on that when he refused to accept Federal Election Commission monies. Next came the murmurs that single-payer healthcare was out. Then, the final thing that prevented me from voting for him, was his unambiguous advocacy for TARP. Timothy Geithner and the other architects of Wall Street's rape of the American worker run his administration. Obama now calls, as a "bipartisan," for so greatly limiting Social Security as to make retirement impossible for most people. He seems to indulge in a game of one-upping Republicans at their own Game of Greed, as seen in his "tax plan" to further underfund Social Security while giving massive breaks to the super rich. His "change" is not anything I can believe in; if I did, I would've voted Republican. I am no longer a Democrat, because the leadership of what used to be "my" party is now as dominated by lust for power and money as anyone in the G.O.P.
Roberts' Supreme Court has taken away the last vestige of credibility in the electoral process, by giving a guarantee to corporations that they can provide as much funding as they like for electoral disinformation campaigns. A third or fourth party will do nothing to improve our country so long as Big Money makes all the rules and runs the electoral process.
Yah, after the major, high
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 20:53 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)Yah, after the major, high turnout protests in January and February of 2003, I can't believe that, with how much worse things have gotten to be, the protests have been so meager ever since. Well, in another sense I am not surprised and I can believe it. People have become more apathetic, self-satisfied and narcissistic. They still have their ipods and can talk about nothing almost all day long on their cell phones, frying their brains, and they just don't care. They don't care about anyone but number one, and their families and friends too of course, but that's it, and they don't believe there's anything they can do about anything anyway, as well as falling for being led to believe the major lie that it's supposedly "un-American" to protest, or they just don't feel it's their responsibility.
"Americans" have for the most part had all "Founding-Father-True-Patriotism-and-Courage" material and principles completely worked out of them by design of the propagandizing and brainwashing powers-that-be, and have completely capitulated. It seems like the only ones' who haven't are the civil libertarians of the original "Tea Partiers", but they are now much too willing to be fooled and to be hijacked and/or co-opted by the NeoCONS like Palin, etc. Most "Americans" so live in a fantasy world of selfishness supposedly being okay and preferable, convinced that everyone who is not of that persuasion is supposedly "weird" and "crazy", and are so convinced that we don't have any political responsibility(ies) short of voting, if that, that there seems to be no temporal redemption from it. Most of them just don't want to truly wake up...
...What are we going to do
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 20:54 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)...What are we going to do now when people like "Digger22" above are still fooled into believing that the complete corporate-fascist sellout, Barach Hussein "Barry Soetero" Obama is "an excellent President" and makes them "proud to say (they're) 'American'". Such blind idiots have no idea what a True American is, and they don't want to know anymore. Because of how intentionally dumbed-down and brainwashed most of populace is, it certainly makes things appear to be truly and completely irredeemable and/or hopeless; and, if one didn't know better, they could see why most people have just given up and have no interest in even trying to save this country anymore; again, just as the powers-that-be engineered. The sheep are just following the Pied Pipers and lemmings right over the edge of the cliff; but, hey, they've got their "tunes", etc., to keep them company all the way down to their destruction.
This article is as accurate
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 21:03 — Anonymous (not verified)This article is as accurate as it gets. Thank you, Chris Hedges. Thank you, Ralph Nader. Perhaps there will be violent outbreaks. That would get the media's attention. Then, Obama, like Bush, like McCain, would have the military out in the streets shooting people, the way we've seen U.S. constructed Coups in South America shooting protesting civilians in the streets. Obama is nothing short than a dictator. He is as much a Republican as any Bush, Palin or McCain. Obama is trash and he indeed is seeking this hybrid electoral win next election. I've already figured all this out.
Right Ralph, Right
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 21:16 — Dave Lindorff (not verified)Right Ralph, Right Chris,
But how many on the left who read this site ever make a donation to support the work of Truthout?
How many of our readers at ThisCantBeHappening!, when it comes to that, bother to make the paltry $5 annual contribution that we ask them to make to support an online progressive newspaper that is trying to actually do reporting, so that aggregator sites like this one have original news reports to post on the issues that the corporate media is blacking out or misreporting?
The answer is damned few of them. People on the left seem to prefer to grouse lamely about the failures and sins of commission of the corporate media, but they won't lift a finger or a fin from their wallet to finance the left media that could counter this propaganda.
That's simply self-destructive behavior.
Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net
Nader didn't cost Gore
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 21:46 — MNGeezer (not verified)Nader didn't cost Gore anything. Gore blew the election by sticking a Dick Cheney clone on his own ticket. Obviously, the Democrats dilute the vote all by themselves. The only liberal strength on the ballot has been Nader for the last three elections.
The American system of
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 21:46 — Anonymous (not verified)The American system of elections is designed to create precisely the change-resistant, class-loaded sham we are witnessing now. It's no accident. Ultimately, we need a new constitution and a new system of government--perhaps a version of a parliamentary system (the devil being in the details).
Overthrowing the system has to be the ultimate goal. Falling prey to the third-party delusion (and its sister illusion that the moral gesture of a "pure" vote somehow reaches the ears of the angels) contributes nothing to that goal, and only reinforces the futility designed into the system by its vastly overrated founders in the first place.
Ralph Nader has quite
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 22:15 — MikeAustin (not verified)Ralph Nader has quite possibly done more to improve the lives of average Americans than any other single person. It's too bad that he chose to fritter away his and his followers' energy and goodwill on running for president. If only he had organized his followers to reform the electoral system to include some form of instant-runoff voting and proportional representation! We all might be singing a different tune right now! Even if this had only been accomplished in states with an initiative system, it would have been a major improvement. Instead, his ego and hubris made him pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Nader's analysis is correct
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 22:52 — Anonymous (not verified)Nader's analysis is correct and the dems are complicit in the deconstruction of the media which in turn "informs" the electorate.
The media must be free and independent of the vested interests.
I do believe, that taking over the democratic party and installining generational terms limits (20 yrs) will help.
I voted for Nader until Bush - I could sense the oncoming doom
It's not about Nader, it's
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 23:31 — Anonymous (not verified)It's not about Nader, it's about the cowardice of the American people. The Democratic Party has been rightly accused of being spineless and Obama of being pusillanimous, but they are like their constituents, turtles trapped flapping on their backs. The vicious adherents to the right wing who cling to their self-righteous myths don't have to be brave because the media and politicians are funded by their corporate-military puppet masters -- they get their ephemeral rewards for voting and for being subservient, ignorant, hate-engulfed puds.
"Nader's analysis is correct
Mon, 01/03/2011 - 23:43 — Anonymous (not verified)"Nader's analysis is correct and the dems are complicit in the deconstruction of the media which in turn "informs" the electorate."
You're not getting it. It's not some blame pointing piece or an empty lament about the big bad media, he's calling people to arms, and pointing us at the root cause of this nation's lack of properly informed populace. The battle lines need to be drawn against the corporate media machines which have locked out real discourse.
"They still have their ipods and can talk about nothing almost all day long on their cell phones, frying their brains, and they just don't care."
The people who have ipods are savvy enough to understand what nader has said. (this is opposed to people with iphones, which tend for the most part to have the IQ of your average chicklet). Everyone I know who owns an ipod, who gets their music online, knows damned well from the coverage the MSM gave to the napster issue that the media is bought and paid for by people who wish to monetize and control our culture at any cost.
I am the person who blames
Tue, 01/04/2011 - 00:30 — Anonymous (not verified)I am the person who blames Nader on costing Gore the election. You all need to face facts. You will not be elected and you can be proud of your vote all you want but face the facts. We are in two wars that Bush got us into and Gore would not have done that. We are in so many crises that we have dug ourselves a grave.
So would you rather be right and in a two wars and in an economic crisis or would you rather have compromised and at least costs a lot less lives?
Please listen to reason and read up on what third parties do in Poli Sci 101. They cost elections. That is a fact.
"Please listen to reason and
Tue, 01/04/2011 - 00:55 — Anonymous (not verified)"Please listen to reason and read up on what third parties do in Poli Sci 101. They cost elections. That is a fact."
Please wake up and look around you, listen very carefully to what is absent from every major news organization.
If it doesn't mesh with the corporate agenda, it gets crushed. G20 and G8 protests have never happened according to the MSM, and, according to the MSM, that woman who had her whole face broken at a democratic convention by tea-party protestors is the one at fault, apparently for being there.
If you don't sign a contract with the corporate masters, the MSM will not cover you.
There is no "compromise". They're turning us into a banana republic. Reagan = bush1 = clinton = bushII = obama on american economic and labor developments. They are flushing us away and anyone who raises opposition to the new 3rd world us gets ignored. The MSM must be taken to task for its crimes against the american people.
In response to 5:30, I too
Tue, 01/04/2011 - 01:27 — Anonymous (not verified)In response to 5:30, I too thought there was some truth to Nader's presence costing Gore and lamented the turn our nation made into despotism under the Bush regime. Then I realized that all Nader did was just move the inevitable up one election. With the right wing control of electronic voting systems, doom was just one election away without Nader anyway and who knows whether Gore would even have been allowed to pursue a progressive agenda. He might have gotten removed if he tried. And PLEASE don't point at Obama as being proof the elections aren't rigged. He has done NOTHING to offend the powers-that-be and has been a corporate man from the get-go.
Left has EVERYWHERE to go
Tue, 01/04/2011 - 08:05 — Anonarcmous (not verified)Left has EVERYWHERE to go with GOOD leadership--2008 proved that until PresObama CHAGED himslef and did not hold to his promisess. Mr RNader needs to incorporate himself in the EXISTING EFFECTIVE structure to be effective--sadly only a small USA% understands and appreciates his message. He is NOT good or right if he is NOT effective, he needs to adapt to reality and press forward and OVERCOME what 06:27 above speaks of.
Look, I have great respect
Tue, 01/04/2011 - 09:48 — beejeez (not verified)Look, I have great respect for Nader's ideas and passion, but screw him. He trots out once every four years to gum up Democrats' electoral chances and burrows into his ivory tower for the remainder of his days. By now he could have had a powerful senate seat and actually have been working on something constructive for the country all this time, maybe even positioned himself for a realistic run at the presidency. But nooo, he's gotta snipe from the sidelines like the worst Monday-morning quarterback. Enough.
"This article and most of
Tue, 01/04/2011 - 10:30 — Anonymous (not verified)"This article and most of this string reminds me of why the progressive movement in the US of A is in danger of losing it all and soon. Here we have a fine, articulate, effective political leader, the envy of the civilized world and the best progressive leader we've had since Roosevelt in the person of Barack Obama. With this nit picking perfectionism, we are flirting with throwing away all our recent gains, plus the tremendous benefits we would all enjoy with a full 2 term presidency. "
Is that you, EJ?
"So would you rather be
Tue, 01/04/2011 - 21:31 — jahf (not verified)"So would you rather be right and in a two wars and in an economic crisis or would you rather have compromised and at least costs a lot less lives?"
Don't look now, but we are still in two wars that are still costing lives, as well as still in an lingering economic crisis, and that's with this country having chosen as Anon 05:30 has chosen (or as Anon 05:30 seems to indicate he/she has chosen).
If one who voted Democratic did so as a compromise in order to get out of two wars and into a healthy economy, then it would seem that such the voter has compromised and not gotten that for which one had compromised.
Given how much Democrats have bent over backwards over the last decade years to accommodate Republican goals, even as the majority party in Congress the last four years and controlling two branches of Federal government the last two years, the proposition that the U.S. would not eventually have entered into new campaigns of brutal conquest in the Mid-East is not entirely convincing, even accepting that Gore would not himself have initiated them.
A ballot cast for a legitimate candidate--which Nader was in 2000--is a legitimate vote. Nader got the votes that he did because he offered something that those voters felt they couldn't get elsewhere.
Nader didn't cost Democrats the 2000 election. Democrats lost the election; and they lost because they couldn't or wouldn't offer what was necessary to get those votes. Those votes aren't owed to anybody. If Democrats want those votes, they must earn them like any other candidate.
Why is it people forget, or
Wed, 01/05/2011 - 12:08 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)Why is it people forget, or refuse to face, when it has categorically been proven, "end of story", that the 2000 election was stolen by the Supreme Court stopping the "democratic" process of the vote recount? It has since been proven without any doubt(s) whatsoever that if the recount had been completed, Gore would have won Florida, and he would then have had the requisite majority of the Electoral College votes and would have been victorious. The whole thing was obviously engineered so that Bush, Jr. would get into the presidency.
But I'm sure that Gore wouldn't have been much better anyway. He's a corporatist sellout too, as John Kerry is as well, and they both would have sold us and the country out as Obama is doing now. As far as Gore supposedly not getting us into Afghanistan and/or Iraq, I'm not convinced of that either. When the military-industrial complex wants more undeclared wars, they get them. It doesn't matter if a majority of the American people don't want those wars, or turn against them later as the majority of the American people have now done about Afghanistan.
Like others here have said or alluded to, the U.S. is already a corporate-fascist, military-industrial dictatorship with the "lipstick on a pig" of being made to look like a "representative government"; when, in reality, it is anything but the latter. The majority of the American people were against TARP and the bankster bailout from the get-go; but did that stop it? The vast majority of "our" government has long been hijacked, and couldn't care less what "We, the People" want under most circumstances. It's just getting much worse now, and coming to a head.
The thing is, we're a dictatorship with more than one dictator; and the dictators, or group of dictators, are somewhat hidden from view. We think the people who really pull the strings are supposedly "benign", "humanitarian", "benevolent", etc. They've done a really good job of fooling us. They've steadily engineered the downfall of this country, but most "Americans" falsely believe that the present crisis is just another setback for the country, and that we'll pull ourselves out of it and end up "smelling like roses" again, sooner or later...
...Yet what is happening now
Wed, 01/05/2011 - 12:09 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)...Yet what is happening now is the "puppet masters'", or dictators', endgame. They're putting the finishing touches on the final destruction of this country's independence and sovereignty, and bringing it under world government; and they are being very successful at doing so because The People are not stopping it from happening. Self-knowledge of it being our duty to do so has been intentionally and very effectively "de-programmed" out of most of us, and now most of us are literally content to just sit back and watch the country disintegrate into non-existence.
Most of us have been led to actually believe that our only responsibility is to vote "to preserve liberty(ies) and freedom(s)", and that that will somehow be effective; though, as has become more than obvious now, that doesn't work. The powers-that-be make certainly we only have viable establishment candidates; who, though they put on a real good "dog and pony show" that they're supposedly for preserving freedom and liberty, such as Obama did probably more flashily, convincingly and successfully than ever before, when they have no intention of preserving liberty(ies) and freedom(s)...
...Each administration and
Wed, 01/05/2011 - 12:10 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)...Each administration and each Congress systematically overturn civil liberties and further destroy the country; but, up until now, they did it with stealth and a little bit at a time. Now, they have pulled out all the stops, and are doing it drastically and extensively, right out in the open, and right in our faces. Why? Because they know they've so successfully manipulated and made most of us blind and powerless, that they don't need to be so "measured" in their steps anymore. September 11th, 2001 was the catalyst that enabled them to complete the final destruction of this country.
Look at how well it's going for them, and how they're now able to do it with relatively little opposition. I absolutely detest giving them credit, but they've done a masterful job of herding the masses and de-empowering them. We have been so effectively neutered, and/or chemical-wise, propaganda-wise and indoctrination-wise lobotomized, that the puppet masters have nothing to fear from most of us anymore. The vast majority of us are willingly following them to our own destruction, and will nary bring forth a bleat of objection as our throats are cut and all of the life force of our human rights and civil liberties is drained from our collective "body".
The reason we have no
Wed, 01/05/2011 - 19:34 — dennis (not verified)The reason we have no organizers out in the streets is quite clear: everyone is sitting home reading blog after blog after blog and writing comments on them...
"S. WolfBritain" is up to
Sat, 01/08/2011 - 12:29 — Anonymous (not verified)"S. WolfBritain" is up to his/her usual ad hominem attacks, gross generalizations, and paranoid scenarios. Possibly a TeaBagger shill?
Keep it up! You make the Limbaugh/Beck crowd seem almost rational by comparison!
And people wonder why progressives can't get their act together?
Oh, be gone, true shill and
Sat, 01/08/2011 - 15:20 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)Oh, be gone, true shill and ad hominem attacker! So-called "progressives" 'can't get their act together' because most of them are complicit, just as the right-wingers' like you are, in the mass-insanity of supporting ANY of these establishment candidates, on either side of the same coin, no matter how convincing their rhetoric, lies and charismatic showmanship is, like Obama's was. Progressives, to be True Progressives, need to COMPLETELY stop being fooled by or voting for ANY of these fools and tools of military-industrial corporate-fascism, the evisceration of human rights and civil liberties domestically and internationally, and their mass-murder; and thereby TOTALLY stop being complicit in their mass-murderous designs, actions and war crimes, and their crimes against the peace and humanity, without fear, both at home and abroad. Otherwise, as long as they remain complicit, they also have themselves to greatly blame for the extreme worsening of all of the foregoing, and the deterioration of all sanity, True Peace, civil liberty(ies) and freedom(s), and human rights and dignity in the U.S. and all over the world...
...So stick your evil
Sat, 01/08/2011 - 15:20 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)...So stick your evil judgments, detracting and distractions from the truth of what is and is not truly important, where the sun don't shine!