Clearly, Nader was the only candidate who stirred genuine, as opposed to dollar-induced enthusiasm, with thousands of citizens actually paying money to hear him at major rallies across the country. (No less an authority than ABC's Cokie Roberts pointed this out one October Sunday morning on "This Week." Her male pundit counterparts glossed it over and quickly got back to Gush/Bore.) At universities across the country, Nader drew standing room only crowds of energetic young people, many of whom were inspired by the demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle, the World Bank and IMF in Washington, DC and the two wings of the business party, first in Philadelphia and then in Los Angeles.
The nearly three million voters who stuck to their principles have changed the course of American political history in ways we can't yet fully know. They are the kernel for a new political party and political movement that is bringing hope to the justifiably disgusted and disillusioned voters of the United States.
Those Democrats who condemn the Nader candidacy fail to comprehend a very basic fact: the Greens are not a "knockoff" of the Democrats, not simply Democrats who "are a little more into the environment." In fact, the Green Party platform is only marginally more in synch with the Democrats (particularly the Clinton/Gore/Lieberman neoliberal variety) than the Republicans.
The fundamental difference is this: the Democrats believe that we, as a country and even as an entire civilization, are making progress. Their basic assumption is that things are getting better. They point to ameliorating conditions of racial and gender discrimination, increased environmental awareness, scientific and medical "breakthroughs" (e.g., bioengineering), and to the ever-elusive "consciousness" that supposedly is steadily being "raised." Often they simply conflate and confuse their own prosperity with a "feeling" that things must, ergo, be getting better in general terms.
The vast majority of Greens disagree with these suppositions. Things are not getting better. In fact, things are getting worse for the vast majority of people on the planet at an alarming, steadily increasing rate. Read the Nobel laureates' 1992 Warning to Humanity, the 1995 report of the British Panel for Sustainable Development, the annual reports of the Worldwatch Institute, or the 1999 report of the United Nations Environment Program. One can only conclude, as a famous cartoon possum once did, that "If we don't stop heading in this direction, we'll wind up where we're going." And that place is ever-deepening social and environmental catastrophe.
Of the candidates for president of the US in 2000 only Ralph Nader had the intelligence and the courage to point out that since 1950, we, the human race, have consumed more resources than were consumed in the entire history of human beings prior to that year. Only Ralph Nader explained that corporate ownership of the political process is driving this dynamic, leading to a situation where our air and water are not fit to consume, our climate is being altered in calamitous fashion, and our fastest growing industry, due to the bipartisan war on drugs, is the prison-industrial complex. Our inner cities are squalid, our cancer rates epidemic, our schools decrepit, our citizenry increasingly dispirited.
I have no problem accepting the argument that we Greens helped bring on the Shrub. However, an analysis of polls during the last election shows that Ralph Nader was not responsible for Al Gore's forced retirement to his in-laws' place across the Potomac. In fact, during almost all of 2000, Bush led Gore with the exception of a month-long period following the Democratic convention. During this high point for Gore, Nader was pulling a running average of 2-4% in the polls. While it's true that during October, Nader began pulling a running average of 6% at a time when Gore was fading, Gore continued to lose ground even as Nader's support dropped to its final 3%. In other words, despite the help of defectors from Nader, Gore did worse. Further, as Michael Eisencher reported in Z Magazine, 20% of all Democratic voters, 12% of all self-identified liberal voters, 39% of all women voters, 44% of all seniors, one-third of all voters earning under $20,000 per year and 42% of those earning $20-30,000 annually, and 31% of all voting union members cast their ballots for Bush. Then there's the fact that no presidential candidate has ever won office while losing their home state.
Another reality often ignored is that the Clinton/Gore years have been disastrous for the Democratic Party. While Democrats made unexpected gains in the Senate this year, picking up a net four seats, and a slight gain of two seats in the House of Representatives, their overall political strength has significantly weakened over the past eight years under The New Democrats. In 1993, Democrats held a 58-42 majority in the Senate, a 262-173 majority in the House, and controlled 30 governorships and a majority of the state legislatures.
Although the Democrats have made modest gains in Congress since the debacle of 1994, their majority in Congress has vanished, Democrat governorships have shrunk to 19Ñwith all of the major statehouses, except California, under Republican controlÑand nearly 500 state legislative seats moved into the Republican column. No Democratic president has seen such harm come to his party since Grover Cleveland in his second term 100 years ago.
Those of us who refused to roll over and play dead for the Democratic Party this year can be justifiably proud. We have rejected those who have taken our votes for granted in their mistaken belief that "we had no where else to go." If so many within the progressive, labor, and mainstream environmental community (e.g., ADA, NOW, NARAL, AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, League of Conservation Voters, etc.) hadn't capitulatedÑin order to maintain their "access," their foundation grants and corporate contributionsÑthe message would have been that much stronger. The lesson to be learned for future elections is that we must follow our hearts and maintain our principles, not get caught up in "strategic" games that end up "cutting the baby in half." As the Green Party's Sara Amir says, we must learn to vote our hopes, not our fears.
In order to achieve the systemic changes we need, a third party must emerge. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have the creativity, flexibility, or motivation to make these changes. Only a force outside the corporate-financed duopoly will bring us public financing of elections, electoral reforms like instant runoff voting and proportional representation, sharp cuts in military spending in favor of universal health care, low-cost housing, high-quality education for all our children, an end to the phony and racist war on drugs, and a thorough reevaluation of the position of the United States in international trade relations.
We need a party that can command the loyalty and respect of working-class people, minorities and all of us currently disenfranchised by the moribund offerings of the center-right Republicrat coalition. Our democracy is on the line. So is the survival of our species. It is not a utopian fantasy to believe we can construct a world in which no child is allowed to starve.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2001
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited