Seated facing each other in a small, cluttered cubicle, we had at it for an hour or so. Neither of us gave an inch. Under the circumstances I will not quote what he said--he of all people can speak for himself. In substance, the burden of what I said to him is what I have just written here, with additional references in passing to Bush's trillion-dollar tax cut and his Administration's plans to dissolve Social Security insurance into stock market accounts and deny welfare mothers college-level education.

I reviewed with Ralph the elements of a strategy for resistance that members of the Alliance for Democracy and some of our allies in the progressive-populist movement had worked on together during the Alliance convention in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which had ended the day before. But how can we make sense of any strategy of resistance, I asked him, if at the very same time we are splitting the progressive vote for President again? "If you run in 2004 and get, say, 5 million votes," I said, "and Bush wins by, say, 2 million--Ralph, we cannot do that."

To beat Bush, the question we must decide now is not what candidate to run but what vehicle we can use to win the presidency in 2004. It cannot be the Green Party. "You know you can't win as a Green in 2004," I said to Ralph. The lamentable truth, but the truth, is that the only vehicle with which the voters can beat Bush for President is the Democratic Party. There is no other.

Therefore, I argued, what is needed is an undertaking by the liberals, progressives and populists of the country to challenge the corporation-corrupted leaders of the Democratic Party and their Democratic Leadership Council, to make the party's sellout course since 1978 itself the issue of the Democratic primaries, and to converge behind the nomination of a progressive Democratic candidate for President--be it Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Dennis Kucinich, Russell Feingold, Jan Schakowsky or Jesse Jackson Jr. The point, I said, is to get a strong progressive candidate and to get our forces behind that candidate and a progressive platform. Among many other things, it should include a commitment to have the party fight for instant-runoff voting (IRV), which at one stroke would end the third-party "spoiler" threat to the major parties and would free citizens to vote for their favorite candidates without helping to elect candidates whose views are diametrically opposed to theirs.

Otherwise, I said to Ralph, we will look around in 2003 and see the usual marquee sellouts running for the Democratic nomination and Ralph running for the Greens, a political configuration that seems deliberately designed to elect Bush.

I continue to believe that Nader is incomparably the most valuable citizen we have. He has been Public Citizen No. 1 for forty years. Only President Lyndon Johnson, in his domestic policies, achieved as much for the public good as Nader has while holding no office at all. In 2000 Nader drew legions of young people to the polls, educated millions on a wide range of vital issues that both major candidates totally avoided, exposed the emptiness and corruption of the major campaigns and the rigged presidential debates, turned the Green Party into a national factor and helped strengthen the long-term progressive movement independently of the sold-out top Democrats. He has resumed with gusto his cannonading of Congress and the establishment, doing what he does best. Certainly he will continue fighting the good fight. But his running for President in 2004 would not be the good fight; indeed, it could well darken this entire period in US and world history.

I do not mean or believe that Ralph should give up on building the Green Party. I told him I would like to see him run for governor or senator in 2004 (what a difference he would make in the Senate!--there'd be nothing to beat it since Huey Long). And the Greens, who now hold more than 170 offices in the country, should go on running vigorously against conservative or don't-matter Democrats to help rebuild the people's movement long term. But there can be no assurance that the United States will have a long term left as a free and peace-loving nation if Bush is elected for four more years. Helping Bush win in 2004 is not the way to build the Greens, either.

Ralph's own statements in the 2000 campaign, and his decision to campaign during its last days in states that were tossups between Bush and Gore, including Florida, indicate that he believes it is appropriate for the Greens to cause the Democrats to lose the presidency again if that's what it takes to move the Democrats to the left. He does not see electing Bush as the risk of the venture, but as a means to the end of returning the party to the causes of the people. His method in 2000 was to hold forth the progressive vision and beat the Democrat, which unavoidably meant electing Bush. He is not given to saying, "Let's elect Bush so the Democrats will return to the people," but that turned out to be the real-world meaning of his 2000 candidacy, and it would again in 2004.

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next »

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.