Dear Barbara Ehrenreich,
Posted to www.marxmail.org on
I want to begin by congratulating DSA for its ability to
gain a foothold in the mass media. With you subbing for Thomas Friedman and
Cornel West taking a bit part in "The Matrix Reloaded", what can be
next? (Is there any truth to the rumor, by the way, that Bogdan
Denitch will be doing a Food Network show? I
understand that he does a killer paella.)
With that out of the way, I want to turn to something that I
am not so impressed with, namely your op-ed attack on Ralph Nader in today's NY
Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/opinion/18EHRE.html).
That being said, I have to hand it to you. You implicitly throw your
celebrity-leftist heft behind Kerry without mentioning his name once. As a
student of Communist Party history, I for one feel a sense of déjà vu when I
read this sort of thing--as in 'Defeat Landon at All Costs.'
I can understand this sort of thing when somebody like FDR
was the implicit choice of the Communists, but a pro-war billionaire who once
joked to Don Imus that his opponent Bill Weld
"took more vacations than people on welfare" seems like a case of
diminishing expectations when it comes to "the lesser evil". In
relationship to Nader's 2000 campaign, you refer to this year's run as a farce
following tragedy. Oddly enough, I find Kerry to be sub-farcical when it comes
to such matters.
You explain that "hindsight" allows
you to describe Nader's 2000 run as a tragedy. Isn't it possible that something
else is going on, namely the enormous peer pressure of the social
democratic/liberal milieu to renounce everything that Nader stands for?
Frankly, I haven't seen such a herd phenomenon outside of the Communist Party
of Stalin's era. Did you ever see Costa-Gravas's
"The Confession"? I can see Nation Magazine contributors standing
before the court of public opinion today confessing that they undermined the
progressive movement in the
Everything seems to hinge on the figure of George W. Bush,
who you describe as "a figure invoked worldwide to scare unruly
children." Odd, I feel the same way about John Kerry, who has always
looked to me like a cross between the Frankenstein monster and Edmund Muskie. Not only is this Bush a figure whose evil beggars
all description, like Ming the Merciless in the old Flash Gordon serials, you
had a whole rafter of really peachy-keen people running in the Democratic Party
who had all the same nice values as Nader himself. So why did he have to go and
spoil things by running against both Democrats and Republicans.
Since you mention Dennis Kucinich
as one of these really nice Democrats whom you support now (until presumably
after he instructs his followers to back Kerry), it is only fair to remind you
of the unpleasant fact that his delegates have folded like a cheap suitcase:
"Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's
campaign headed off a showdown in the party platform yesterday over
"Saying party unity is more important than particulars,
delegates agreed to forgo amendments on
You raise the same canards as the rest of the ABB crowd
about Nader's cozying up to the rightwing. "Republicans are the least of
it. You've been kissing up to the Reform Party, which ran paleo-right-winger
Pat Buchanan the last time around." Perhaps Nader should have chosen John
McCain as his running-mate, whom Kerry unsuccessfully attempted to seduce in an
open bid to capture rightwing votes. Looking back in retrospect, this would
have been a perfect match for Kerry, whose recently published book demonizes
the Vietnamese resistance, just as Iraqis are demonized today. McCain once told
reporters, "I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live." A perfect complement to John Kerry.
In any case, I'll stick with the Barbara Ehrenreich
of 2000. Just substitute "Kerry" for "Gore" and this sounds
right as rain:
But I can't get really
mad at the Gore-ites of the left--there is such a
becoming and altogether seemly diffidence about them. To my knowledge, none of
them are sporting Gore buttons or bumper stickers, and I don't expect any of
them to invite me to a Gore house party anytime soon. While they may firmly
believe that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush," they seem also to
understand that a vote for Gore is a vote for the system as it stands--and
specifically for the DLC-dominated Democratic Party. Like it or not, that's how
the Gore votes will be counted, and that's how they'll be spun.
Here's how generous I
am: I'll tell them what they can do if they'd like to save Gore. They should
stop flacking for him--stop all this carping about
"spoiling" and "vote stealing"--and explain to their man
what he'd have to do to start taking votes away from Nader. Like
renouncing the substitution of bribery for the democratic process. Like pledging to spend the budget excess on such daily necessities
as universal health insurance and childcare. Like
embracing a worker-friendly approach to world trade.
I doubt Gore could
ever become Nader-like enough to steal my vote from the original, certainly not
after his choice of DLC leader Lieberman as Veep. But
it sure would be nice to see him try.
Full: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20000821&s=ehrenreich