posted 2007/08/01 at 21:43
Paul Slansky: In Defense of Nader-Bashing (Huffington Post)
Going after Nader and the Green Party is kind of old territory at the Huffington Post. Back in its early days I can remember one blogger there (I haven't seen his work on there lately) who pretty much devoted every piece to talking about how Nader allegedly destroyed America because he ran for President in 2000, and how anyone to the left of Arlen Specter needs to vote Democratic because there is no other choice. (My comments to his blog entries, although they were always respectful, kept getting taken down, which is why the Huffington Post kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth to this day.) You'll note that Slansky's blog entry was written over a week ago; it's literally taken me this long to calm myself down to the point where I feel I can write something coherent about it without getting too angry.
I don't want to retread over every counterpoint to Democrats' claims that Nader allegedly spoiled the election; Slansky himself seems to admit nearly every one of them. (He seems to get some points wrong; for example, I can remember that leading up the election everyone was talking about Nader potentially turning one of the Northwest states or maybe one in New England, but no one I saw on television thought he'd be a factor in Florida.) He also seems to take the old line about hindsight being 20/20 to an extreme, somehow thinking that Nader should have somehow magickally known how far to the right Bush would pull the country when given the opportunity. More to the point, though, he ascribes Nader's involvement in presidential politics to Nader having some kind of oversized ego, which anyone who's even bothered to read up on the slightest on Nader knows not to be the case.
That Slanksy would pin this on Nader's ego is richly ironic considering that he posted this on Arianna Huffington's Website. I was one of the few people I knew who welcomed Arianna to the left when she made her big political transformation, and I was tremendously excited for her campaign in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election. Unfortunately, that campaign ended early when Arianna suddenly pulled out and instead tried to keep Grey Davis in office, and since that time Arianna, although she still talks a pretty good progressive talk, constantly tempers that with reminders, from both herself and her Website's bloggers, that voting Green is "just like voting for the Republican." I also can't help but notice that for all Arianna tries to talk about the Huffington Post being this serious Website, there sure seems to be a lot of Hollywood talk on there, endless articles about Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan and the like. I have no direct evidence, but looking at Arianna's behaviour, I can't help but wonder if Arianna's so concerned with her own celebrity status that she's placing it above her personal and political beliefs.
I find the timing of this article particularly distressing given that, in as much as we can figure anything out about the nominations for the next presidential campaign right now (and I'm sick and tired of everyone on the news talking about the campaign like we're just hours away from getting Super Tuesday results), it looks like Hillary Clinton is well on her way to securing the nomination. We had her husband in office for eight years and he and his cronies at the DLC turned the Democratic Party further away from its progressive base than any Republican could have ever dreamed to do, and from Hillary's rhetoric on the campaign trail so far, it certainly sounds like we'll just be in for more of the same if she gets elected. How anyone who gives even the slightest concern for progressivism can think that a vote for Hillary can possibly help our cause just utterly mystifies me. Making matters worse, all the Nader/Green fear-mongering the Democrats did in 2004 wiped out nearly all of the progress and access to ballot lines that the Greens got thanks to Nader's 2000 campaign, so now it will be even harder for them to get a true progressive choice on the ballot for those of us who actually vote our conscience. This whole situation just sickens me to no end.
Does anybody ever make the argument that supporting the Libertarian Party hurts Republicans?
As far as realistic candidates go, I like John Edwards. What are your issues with him?
1. No one I know of has yet, simply because I don't think there's been an opportunity to do so, at least on a scale like the 2000 election.
2. As far as Edwards goes, he's hardly progressive on all the issues, and the fact that he got caught talking to Hillary about trying to squeeze the other candidates out of future debates leaves a REAL bad taste in my mouth.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon