We can’t look at this theme without also considering the moment when the left was most vocal and most demanding to be heard. This was in the 2000 election and the candidacy of Ralph Nader. This is a sore point for many and a fresh point of discord as Nader ran again this year and a core of the left was willing to support him anew.
Central to this bitterness is the belief, repeated by many, that if Nader hadn’t run in 2000, Gore would have been elected president. But I’d like to run this assertion through a kind of George Bailey test. What if Nader had never run? Because what people really mean is that if Nader had magically disappeared from the ballot on November 4th, then Gore would have won. What happened prior to that in the campaign was that Nader mounted the most exhilarating challenge to establishment power that had been seen in years, one that reminded a lot of people why they were progressives in the first place. Hundreds of thousands showed up at rallies to reaffirm the principles that differentiated them from the Republicans, principles largely abandoned by the establishment Democrats.
Gore, on the other hand, ran one of the most boring, depressing campaigns in history. Few people seem to remember now that he refused to offer universal healthcare as part of his platform. The words Global Warming almost never crossed his lips. Obeisance to corporate power was just as much a hallmark of the Democrats then as it is today. Most disappointingly, he failed to show any political agility to try to win even a handful of those Nader voters to a broader Democratic coalition. Any notion that they were too stubborn or purist to be swayed is patently false.
Without Nader in the race Gore would have been alone with his tepid agenda and no progressive enthusiasm coloring the day. I contend that Bush would have won such an election anyway, because as in any sporting matchup, the team that “wants it” most tends to win. That is what the Republicans proved in the post-election scramble- that they wanted power more. Gore gave a half-hearted fight for what was rightfully his. That would have been the case whether Nader ran or not.
One can challenge this view, but I am bringing home the point that none of us really knows what would have happened if particular events had been different. But to wish that Nader hadn’t run or that voters hadn’t been drawn to him is to wish that the activist left would just stay quiet and not rock the boat. It is a pointless and counter-productive fantasy.
For the experiment has to continue beyond the election of 2000. If one wishes for a docile and reticent left wing then what happens to the core ten percent that I spoke of in the beginning. There were plenty of loyal Democratic Gore-voters who made up that ten percent, but I think there were very few Nader supporters who were in the ninety percent who supported Bush in 2001. And without this core of vocal dissidents what might the next seven years have looked like?
We have to ask ourselves, how does the Democratic Party keep becoming more progressive in spite of itself. How did universal healthcare become so central to its mission in 2008 when in 2000 they claimed it wasn’t important? How did the rejection of the premise of the Iraq War become accepted wisdom when the Democrats had staked their credibility on that very premise? How did global climate change become central to the Democrats’ lexicon.
The simple answer is that they were pushed. They were pushed hard by people who care about these issues and who care more about principles than just winning elections in the short run. The candidacies of Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004 and 2008 were part of that pushing process. Any suggestions that the activist left needs to stop pushing, for whatever reason, is a wan attempt to buttress the status quo power structure. I would like to convince more people to be unfaltering pushers. Be loud, vocal advocates for the next level of principled issues- single-payer healthcare, an end to corporate domination, a contraction of empire, opposition to nuclear and coal power. These things can also become an accepted part of the agenda only through agitation.
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