The Spoil

Mention the name Ralph Nader to any loyal Democrat and the response is likely to be a variation on the same theme, and always delivered quickly and angrily.

“It’s his fault we’re in the mess we’re in now,” is the typical argument, uttered at almost light speed and often with a wild eye staring at the questioner. In 2000, Nader took the Green Party’s support in a run for president and ran a meaningful third-party campaign. He brought more liberal voters out to the polls and was such a factor in national opinion polls that Democrats openly worried that their candidate, then Vice President Al Gore, would suffer the consequences.

The fears of those Democrats were realized in Florida, which saw Texas’ Republican Governor George W. Bush defeat Gore by just 537 votes statewide, an election result that ushered one of the greatest legal battles over politics that the modern world had ever seen. Despite Gore’s loss in court, as well as a number of other factors that have had Democrats screaming for the past six years that Bush’s political allies stole the election, those same Democrats often point to Nader’s involvement in the race as the first and foremost reason Gore was defeated. The Green Party candidate snagged 97,421 votes in Florida. Had Nader not run at all, the running logic holds that those presumably left-leaning voters would have switched to Gore, the more palatable of the two major candidates, and Bush would have never been president.

In the aftermath of 2000, Nader’s years of consumer advocacy and his position as a vocal advocate of traditional liberal causes has become nearly meaningless for many Democratic Party members. For them, Ralph Nader is the biggest reason we have the Iraq War, the PATRIOT Act and Gitmo prisoner abuses. Every bad thing that President Bush has ever been accused of doing has been dropped at Nader’s feet. One Democratic elected official (who preferred to remain anonymous) summed up his party’s feeling towards Nader in three simple words: “I hate him.”

An Unreasonable Man, a new documentary on Nader’s life and career by former staff member Henriette Mantel and her filmmaking partner Steve Skrovan, deals with all sides of the fight, interviewing both angry Democrats and Nader defenders alike. The arguments defending Nader’s 2000 campaign are given equal time. Gore lost both his home state of Tennessee and President Bill Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, both of which should have been easy pickings for the eight-year vice president. And Nader spent hardly any time campaigning in swing states like Florida. Nevertheless, Nader is totally unapologetic about the results in 2000. Gore lost because he took votes for granted, says Nader, and did not do a good job placating his traditional base.

“I think the anger of the Democrats is an autocratic anger,” says Nader. “Basically they think the Democrats own a certain number of votes in the country and nobody should challenge them. Well, that’s a very autocratic form of political bigotry.”

Determined not to allow history to repeat itself in 2004, Democrats spent a great deal of time, effort and money trying to keep Nader off the ballot, especially in the swing state of Pennsylvania, out of fear that his independent run might again draw votes from Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and play a factor in reelecting Bush. Kerry even had a private sit-down with Nader as part of the effort, though Nader would not agree to exit the race.

Democrats are afraid of the free exchange of ideas, said Nader, and would rather deny voters their choice than answer the tough questions. “They’re basically not just denying the essence of free speech, petition and assembly, they’re basically saying to our voters, ‘we’re going to deny you the right to vote for candidates of your choice,’ not by competing … but by taking them off the ballot so you can’t vote for them,” he says.

He will not say if he is planning a third straight run for the presidency in 2008, offering only that it is way too early for him to make that decision. Still, Nader is not shy when it comes to criticizing the Democratic Party’s current frontrunners.

Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards is becoming more progressive and has a good agenda on poverty, but he prefers Ohio Congressman and 2004 fringe candidate Dennis Kucinich. Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the current media golden boy of all potential candidates, is far too new to the political arena to even be seriously evaluated as a contender. But Nader saves particular ire for New York’s own Democratic candidate Senator Hillary Clinton, who made it official over the weekend that she would seek her party’s nomination.

For Nader, Hillary Clinton is the problem, not the solution. “I think she’d be a step down from Bill, who is not very high to begin with,” says Nader.

If a more liberal Democrat is to be elected president in 2008, Nader’s machinations in 2000 might have set the stage for such an event. After failing to keep more left-leaning voters in line that year, prominent Democratic politicians have since taken to championing some of their causes more publicly.

In the ’90s Republicans were forced to begin to embrace the agenda of the Christian right in order to keep their electoral ducks in a row. Today, Democrats face a similar situation with their more liberal voting base. They have seen firsthand what can happen when you assume that a particular voting block will stay loyal based on a desire to avoid electing Republicans. This strategy, whereby liberals vote Democrat as the lesser of two evils, has diminished largely through the actions of a motivated activist base drawn in by new media methods, a strategy designed to force the party’s elite to pay attention.

DailyKos.com, a liberal powerhouse blog and online community, has gained such influence amongst the Democratic Party that its founder, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, has become a sought after consultant for Democratic candidates. The site drove Ned Lamont’s upstart campaign against Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman last year, providing advice, manpower and money as Lamont defeated Lieberman in the Democratic Party primary.

Nader is not sold on the Internet, preferring more Luddite-friendly activities like town hall meetings and street corner rallies. Technology has made it easier to develop a movement, he explains, and activists are not taking advantage of that technology nearly as much as they should be.

“This is the first generation in history that has essentially had a free communications system from themselves to the world, and that used to always be one of the obstacles years ago,” says Nader, pointing out that activists just a generation ago could not afford to buy newspaper ads or print newsletters, both necessities in furthering one’s political cause.

Today you can start a blog for mere pennies, but according to Nader, much of the Internet amounts to little more than a high-tech spinning of the wheels.

“Now they have basically an ‘open sesame’ situation, and it’s not producing a more aroused younger generation,” says Nader, who went on to lament how much time on the Internet is wasted pursuing gossip, playing video games and updating a MySpace profile. “And it doesn’t do much for their intellect, or their sense of injustice. And I don’t think many people would have predicted that 15 years ago. They would’ve predicted probably just the opposite. Having this kind of communications system would’ve created a lot more social activism.”

Nader claims the nation’s college campuses, at one point the epicenter for liberal activism in this country, are just as dead. Though the war in Iraq is on the minds of college students much like the Vietnam War was in the ’60s and ’70s, students faced a real threat of fighting in Vietnam due to the draft.

In the film, Nader discusses how crucial these college activists, motivated by Vietnam and other causes, were when it came to pushing a progressive agenda. But today the military is all volunteer and, although many college students might oppose the war, they will never have to actually serve overseas fight in it.

“If you’re part of the risk, you’re going to be part of the solution, most likely. The campuses are pretty asleep on this issue,” says Nader. On other issues, like global warming and even student loan payments, Nader sees the nation’s collective student body just as disinterested, attributing this malaise to a feeling of powerlessness bred into them from grade school. “They’re taught to obey,” said Nader.

Edwards and Clinton might have announced their presidential aspirations via YouTube, but that does not mean they will motivate anyone to their side through technology alone. Nader points out that the United States had a much smaller population in the early 1800s than it does today, yet the rallies and marches behind social causes in those days were much bigger and organized without the benefit of technology that is taken for granted today. In Nader’s opinion, a YouTube-style candidacy is a start, but building a movement requires one to actually leave their home and physically press the flesh.

“I don’t think much is going to come of it,” says Nader of the current hybrid of politics and technology. “I don’t think the electronic media is very motivating for people to really act. I think person-to-person is really the only way. Marches, demonstrations, living room meetings, when people connect human-to-human, not through some screen. That tends to work throughout history. We had greater mass movements 100 years ago without any telephone, automobile, anything like we have today.”

Though he has been a major focus of liberal anger in the past few years, Nader spent most of his career fighting the right wing, starting with his record of fighting corporate abuses to such a degree that some have labeled him anti-capitalist. In fact, conservatives have charged that Nader’s “man of the people” image, as well as his agenda for the working class, is hypocritical in light of his own considerable personal wealth. Nader argues that such wealth is needed to get a movement off the ground, providing essential capital while other grants slowly roll in. He also claims that his own lifestyle is very frugal, and states that he has given the vast majority of his income, earned through appearance fees and speaking engagements, to charity over the years. “No one else can say that,” said Nader.

He has never stood with the Right on policy issues, but that does not stop him from handicapping the 2008 Republican presidential primary and the chances of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who Nader says will never make it out of that process alive. When voters have a chance to really examine Giuliani, and when he cannot simply fall back on his performance in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Nader thinks a temperamental Giuliani will be pushed from the spotlight.

“He wasn’t a particularly good mayor in many ways,” says Nader, stating that the drop in crime Giuliani gets credit for began under Democratic Mayor David Dinkins and adding derisively that “he did clean up some of the graffiti.”

Nader continues, “He was pretty low in the polls on Sept. 10, and he’s benefiting from what was basically a forceful showing up on Sept. 11 and afterwards. A lot of mayors would have done what he did. But he was in the eye of the media, and he’s still lunching off that. I think if he were to become a candidate, he’s not going to be able to parade his post 9/11 behavior day after day. He’s going to have to show up with other agendas.”

That other agenda would reveal Giuliani to be a forceful right-winger with a short fuse, said Nader, and make him unpalatable to the many Democrats and independent voters who still have good feelings for him.

Though his distaste for Senator Clinton and Giuliani is apparent, Nader does favor some of New York State’s other well-known elected officials. He is particularly impressed with new Governor Eliot Spitzer, noting that he ran his attorney general office in the mold of a corporate crusader like Nader himself. “He made the other attorney generals look less significant by what he did,” says Nader, noting that he has spoken to Spitzer a few times and thinks of him as a good public servant. “He’s made his imprint on corporate crime prosecution history. I hope he pursues that as governor.”

But Nader reveals a real respect for a man who might be his polar opposite. While Nader worked as a crusader against corporate fraud and abuses, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was building his media empire from scratch and becoming just the kind of guy Nader might have been looking to bring down. But both men share a common thread. Nader was the major third-party presidential candidate in 2000, and Bloomberg is reportedly considering stepping into those shoes in 2008.

“He’s a real cut above most Republicans, obviously. He’s got more of an open mind,” says Nader. He particularly admires Bloomberg’s strong stand in the face of opposition to the citywide smoking ban that became law in 2003. “Obviously, he has a pro-business leaning, and he wouldn’t be my progressive candidate, but I think he compares quite favorably with what the Republicans and Democrats are likely to put up … say a Hillary Clinton and a John McCain. He’s more of an independent thinker, and that’s always good in politics.”

As far as mayoral performances go, Nader considers Bloomberg miles beyond his predecessor. “I don’t think he compares with Bloomberg,” Nader said of Giuliani.

Whether they share the same policies or not, Bloomberg would be a welcome addition to the 2008 race for Nader, who feels that only a billionaire like him could ever be in the position to break the political monopoly currently held by Republicans and Democrats. A lawsuit against a campaign like Nader’s has the potential to be financially crippling. Bloomberg, on the other hand, could simply throw money at the problem to make it disappear.

“There’s so many billionaires now that, just randomly there are going to be a few progressive ones,” explains Nader, adding that money would bring credibility to the candidates and that the $200 million it might cost to run a campaign would be “chump change for them.” “That’s what we’re going to see on the horizon, and not just at the presidential level,” adds Nader. “And when you have that kind of money, you can break through.”

For the Democratic Party to be successful in 2008, Nader advises that they review his agenda from the 2004 election and find a credible candidate to adopt it. Nader presented copies of the agenda to the Kerry and Bush campaigns in 2004, though he was not satisfied with Kerry’s lack of enthusiasm for the product. It includes liberal and populist red meat like progressive tax reform, universal health care, public works job creation and campaign finance reform. Right now, Nader does not anticipate any of the major Democrats embracing his ideas, preferring instead to run their campaigns based on “Clintonian rhetoric.” “We know what has to be done, but when greed rules it doesn’t get done,” says Nader.

In the film, talk-show host Phil Donahue opines that Nader, for all the work he has done, for all the laws that have been passed due to his work, will only be remembered for his role in the 2000 election.

Nader himself hopes that 100 years from now, the public will remember him as a man that motivated people to action, who drove individuals to commit to civic activity and to protect the vitality of democracy.

Nader adds, “Without that, things are gonna get worse.”