Nader, the Democracts, Chomsky, and the Left this time around

long story short: if that rule still applies, then poland is out fer me (and i don't wanna end up in iraq, since it's one of the "coalition of the willing"). not to mention that my polish is REALLY rusty.

thank you.

churchill-to-atlee? (although WWII was just about over at that point)

if he doesn't and there's a satan in hell, then he's gonna have to listen to nothing but EATB's heaven up here for eternity.

this election is really frustrating to watch from up here. i really wish kerry wasn't such a cold fish. you guys had better pull this one out.

x-post, i guess.

that said, i'm holding my breath till these debates occur. for some reason totally unfathomable to me, dubya comes off as "friendly" and "likeable" -- even when he's at his most incoherently dumb-assed.

It's a conundrum. Probably a solvable one, but not this time around. I don't think. I would love to be wrong about this.

Dean got "crucified" because his support base and general appeal was artificially inflated by his Internet campaign. He didn't start doing the shrieking banshee thing until after the old man was exposed behind the great and powerful wizard.

the whole leaving-home thing bugs me, it seems like a posture more than anything else. if you want to leave, leave. there's always a way to make a life in another country.

/|\ my current textbook

^^ u suck

what really drains a person of all respect for humanity is living in the biblebelt. i won't leave the states anytime soon, but i may have to migrate north!

yeah. and since most of my close friends have slowly but surely scattered, I often think the only reason I stay put is cost of living. and general inertness tbh.

bought this a couple of years ago. it's fun to fantasize.

So yeah, in case anyone's baffled why this particular thread was revived, Nader's running again.

I'm not sure what to think about it, because I don't yet know how many states where he'll even be on the ballot. In 2004 he was only on the ballot in 34 states, attaining just 0.3% of total votes.

I sympathize with Rockist Scientist's original post above, with the cognitive dissonance in fully recognizing that neither political party represents my interests, there's a clear need for at least another major party, the Green Party at least comes closer to my own opinions, and then...I can't vote for them because I don't want to contribute to the world blowing up in a few years.

Nader himself brings up a possible solution: “Let’s get over it and try to have a diverse, multiple votes, multiple choice ballot like they do in Europe.”

Too bad that's not going to happen anytime in the next 100 years.

the 'multiple' system in most european countries (being mean we could name names, ITALY) tends to lead to unbelievably cynical backroom politics coz no-one has a clean majority. green party in the UK sells itself not as a legitimate political party but as a pressure group... who nonetheless campaign for office. it's very confusing -- they could probably do better as actual lobbyists, what with carbon reduction being worth $$$ nowadays. (the EU actually funds green lobbyists for this reason, so they can compete against the polluter lobby.)

Why doesn't Nader just run for a senate seat and try to legitimize a third party instead of just blowing his load in the general election every four years? The EGO on that guy!!!

because he couldn't get elected dog catcher

There really is a desire for a third party choice among the electorate, and if he really wants to do some good he'd start organizing nationwide to get candidates on ballots for state legislatures and representative and senate positions. But no, he's short-sighted and goes for it all-or-nothing. Understandable, because he's in his 70s and he may not live to see the payoff if he went about it reasonably. But gahd! I just want to slap him.

the 'multiple' system in most european countries (being mean we could name names, ITALY) tends to lead to unbelievably cynical backroom politics coz no-one has a clean majority

...and yet, despite almost never having had the kind of strong, stable government that proponents of first past the post claim is so important, have Italy's politicians made a notably worse job of governing their country than UK politicians have made of running the UK over the last 30/40 years?

errrr.... yeah. it's a tough comparison because their north/south divide is even sharper than ours, and their south poorer than our north. but in terms of naked corruption, i think we do marginally better, and we also just about have a functioning civil bureaucracy.

The corruption I accept but I'm curious as to how this translates to the running of the country for its citizens. I don't know whether you'd measure that by economic growth or crime rates or customer satisfaction or what but I do wonder whether Italians feel their governments have done more bad/less good than people in the UK feel about their politicians. Or whether you could show a measurable, substantial difference.

See I'd've taken a whole lot of fudging and corruption and whatever over the Thatcher governments, any day.

I think that sometimes you can get the same kind of backroom politicking and/or coalition building in the U.S. two-party system as you can in multi-party systems. Or a not entirely dissimilar kind, anyway, e.g. the unholy and tenuous alliance between evangelicals and economic conservatives.

e.g. the unholy and tenuous alliance between evangelicals and economic conservatives.

What alliance? I can only think of two presidents whom a majority of both groups supported and both were genuine in their shared beliefs.

Also, the existence of both of these blocs, and the fact their support gave two terms to two presidents, should be evidence why many in this thread should not want to get rid of a two party system.

Does anyone here really want to cripple the voice of the New England liberals or the Midwest moderates? I wouldn’t think so.

Does anyone here really want to cripple the voice of the New England liberals or the Midwest moderates? I wouldn’t think so.

"the voice" = Hillary Clinton? Well, in this case, yes.

no doubt Obama's gonna have to cater to these folks to some extent in his veep pick, tho

both were genuine in their shared beliefs

uh, no.

“Let’s get over it and try to have a diverse, multiple votes, multiple choice ballot like they do in Europe.”
Too bad that's not going to happen anytime in the next 100 years.

And there's no point in starting the process, right?

I agree that Nader has proven he can't do it. The problem is, no one else is volunteering, and the Dempublicans will trash anyone who does.

What alliance?

Well, actually alliance is probably too strong a word. But what I was trying to get at is that the GOP's pulling together of disparate groups in certain elections is not all that different from what sometimes happens in multi-party systems.

there's really no problem with a two-party system - it's existed through virtually all of american history, with the only major hiccup being the whig-republican crossover in the 1850s. the problem is that the two parties we happen to have are both awful.

Nader 2000 was what was supposed to happen. A smug incumbent gets his feet put to the fire by someone with a conscience. What was needed was a simple nod to the principles the Democratic Party has always pretended to stand for. Gore did not rise to the challenge. Nader 2004 is just daft and I don't know what to think about Nader 08. He ought to be grooming someone hardcore.

Nader & Matt Gonzalez were on Forum on KQED Friday I think, and Nader totally came off as a cranky, angry old hippie, a far cry from the rational consumer crusader I remember from the 80s, who inspired my best friend to take up law. I joined the Green party as a hoot in about 2003 and even voted for Matt G. for SF mayor, but there's no way in hell I'd ever vote for Nader for president, 'cause I know the diff between milk-crackpot evil and 93% crackpot-solids evil.

Nader in 2000 was a weird-ass time for many. I skipped out on my lunchbreak while working at AMG(really!) to see him speak in Ann Arbor that year. We happily voted for him knowing that the state would go for Gore. It seemed like a proper first step in establishing 3rd parties in america, where proportional representation like what allowed multiple parties in later parliaments hadn't been invented yet.

And yet, how disappointed we all were.

It's like that's been the turning point in his image for many ever sense. Running in the '04 campaign when he was clearly not wanted by anybody(Bill Maher and Michael Moore got down on their knees on an ep of "Real Time" to beg him to pull out), etc. So much positive vibe tossed into the incinerator of egotism.

nader increasingly resembles one of those uptight kings in a greek tragedy who just plain REFUSES to see reason until five minutes before everyone dies.

I'm still not sure that Nader's weakness is "egotism," even in not realizing that what someone running a Send a Message candidacy needs to do -- build a movement/party -- is not in his skill set.

Also, Kerry blew '04 while Nader was contained to 0.36% of the vote, didn't he?

nader increasingly resembles one of those uptight kings in a greek tragedy who just plain REFUSES to see reason until five minutes before everyone dies.

you appear to be confusing this guy with the sitting president

FTRE etc etc etc

if you're voting for nader or mckinney because of gay rights you might as well write in paul lynde
― and what, Friday, September 19, 2008 2:27 PM (6 days ago)

Best post of this election.

― Eric H., Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:42 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

gay rights. The New Abortion.

Chomsky on save-a-cap'list interventions:

The initial Bush proposals to deal with the crisis so reeked of totalitarianism that they were quickly modified.... The immediate origins of the current meltdown lie in the collapse of the housing bubble supervised by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, which sustained the struggling economy through the Bush years by debt-based consumer spending along with borrowing from abroad. But the roots are deeper. In part they lie in the triumph of financial liberalisation in the past 30 years - that is, freeing the markets as much as possible from government regulation....

The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats. There are differences between them. In his study Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels shows that during the past six decades "real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working-poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans."

Differences can be detected in the current election as well. Voters should consider them, but without illusions about the political parties, and with the recognition that consistently over the centuries, progressive legislation and social welfare have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above.

http://www.counterpunch.org/chomsky10122008.html

im kind of surprised to see you giving away that much by endorsing these ideas
i certainly agree with the spirit of that

You misunderstand my views then. I have never said Dems & Reps were identical. But Obama has got to be pressured to change more than Clinton was, and my hope that left-leaners will do it is not strong.

We've got to break down the Republican's door. With the Democrats we at least get a lock picking set.

ohama is not the same kind of conservative that clinton was, by any means.

i hope not. What he does in the Oval Office, and if the Congressional Dems can be pushed, I just can't say.

What was up with the Naomi Wolf thing recently where she was like "OMG, martial law is just a breath away, it's just a shot away, etc."

Did she just lose it somewhere along the way?

Am I the only one who gets mildly offended when people take this position, condescendingly warning (e.g.) Democratic voters that OMG, certain ideals may not be magically and aggressively upheld by electable politicians? What kind of presumption of idiocy/naivete is involved in thinking there is any call whatsoever for you to inform people of that? (Isn't it possibly more naive to think this is some sort of significant point, despite many voting adults having got over around age 19 or so?) This bothers me...

What was up with the Naomi Wolf thing recently where she was like "OMG, martial law is just a breath away, it's just a shot away, etc."

Martial law is always a shot away, the West is always collapsing, our cherished freedoms are always threatened on all sides, etc. And the Rapture is always coming. Again. Once more. For real. This time.

xpost Nabisco, you are definitely not the only one, esp on day of Obama's jobs plan coming out. People to the far left of the spectrum should be intelligent enough to realize that this campaign is about building a consensus with uh not just them, also it's about humanizing a diversity of opinion under a pretty big leftish umbrella. After eight years of virtually unchecked propaganda and bullshit, this is the kind of clawback that works.

Better way of putting what I'm saying, maybe: whenever someone whose ideals lie slightly outside the consensus of mainstream parties says that he/she supports a mainstream-party candidate, people who share those ideals immediately start patronizing him/her by pointing out how that party is insufficiently committed to those ideals. This is silly: the voter never made any claim that the party was. The voter has simply made the sensible decision to vote for the candidate who seems the most useful tool in advancing those aims. The voter does not deserve to be presumed so clueless or credulous that he or she believes anything more than that.

yeah my ideals lie outside the consensus of mainstream parties but i am voting for obama because i heard he was a socialist and an arab

allahu akbar

chomsky's insistence that "capitalism" is responsible for all our ills — along with his foolish assumption that the interests of the two parties are always commensurate with those of big business, which is demonstrably untrue — is emptyheaded leftist blather.

Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," concluded America's leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda".

this makes no sense at all. if "big business" actually pulls the strings and mere elected politicians have no power, why does he blame the reagan and bush administrations for creating those policies?