Ralph persists in advancing the view that it does not matter (or does not matter enough to matter) whether a Democrat or a Republican sits in the White House. His position derives much of its energy and plausibility from moral fury against the Democrats who, for example, helped pass the infamous USA Patriot Act and voted to authorize Bush to attack Iraq in a war of aggression that will stain the national escutcheon in history. (When I told Ralph I was writing this article, he said sardonically, "I hope you make the case that Gore would not be as much a warmonger as Bush. And Lieberman.") The pivotal issue, though, is whether we should let this moral fury become blind rage that will help elect Bush in 2004, or whether we can convert it into high-voltage energy for an all-out progressive campaign in the Democratic primaries, such as has not occurred since 1972.

Certainly the party has sold out to corporations, including military contractors. Greens--indeed, most progressives, and Senator John McCain as well--know and say that both parties have sold the people and the government to the highest bidder. That is what drove so many of us to Nader. But there is more difference between the Republicans and the Democrats than Nader concedes. The majority of House Democrats and almost half the Democratic senators rejected Bush's request for blank-check authority to wage war against Iraq. Democrats in the Senate have blocked judicial nominees who would make the federal courts dramatically more right-wing. And Democrats in the House and Senate remain significantly better than Republicans on the major domestic issues and significantly more committed to protecting civil rights, civil liberties and abortion rights. That, along with fear of electing Republicans by voting third-party--not ignorance of the issues, as some of my less thoughtful Green friends suggest--is why overwhelming majorities of black and Latino voters, and significant majorities of women, continue to vote Democratic.

This does not mean that any of us--least of all Ralph--should pronounce ourselves satisfied with the Democratic Party of 2002. Emphatically to the contrary, the Bush disaster and the corporate scandals provide a historic challenge and a chance to return the Democratic Party to what it should be. Attempting to do this by electing Bush to a second term is an option that is neither rational nor safe. Our job is to resist Bush, not to elect him.

The months ahead should be devoted to building nonviolent resistance to Bush's policies and his election. We need to build at once an Internet-based communications network (not an umbrella organization) among progressive, populist, labor, youth, civil rights, women's and religious organizations and individuals. The resistance must take many forms: local protests, sit-ins, teach-ins and, yes, marches on Washington, perhaps even Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 idea of a people's encampment in the city, in 2004--all the tactics that we know matter in building an opposition force and making that opposition heard. And we may hope that in the midst of the pressures and dynamics of the next year and a half, we will focus a substantial portion of our energies on securing the Democratic nomination for a true progressive.

Even if the candidate backed by the progressive coalition does not ultimately take the nomination, this effort alone will contribute to restoring progressives as a permanent force to be reckoned with inside the party. It will enable us to influence the platform so that it includes reformist planks that might, for openers, include IRV, national health insurance, public funding of elections, federal chartering of large interstate corporations, repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and new laws to prevent media monopolies and diffuse the ownership of radio and TV licenses. Other planks might include no attack-first wars, no first use of nuclear weapons, no Star Wars and no weapons in space, a Marshall Plan for the world's poor, a commitment to renewable energy sources and conservation, and a strengthened, not a sabotaged, UN. A strong and coherent left working for such ends within the party should also enable us to influence what the candidate advocates, even if he or she is not our original choice. That is the way Democratic Party politics have usually worked. Even FDR was compelled to defer to his left wing.

The electoral component of our resistance is critical. Progressives should be assembling and talking to one another now about how we can do it right this time. Michael Moore is correct: We can take over the moribund Democratic Party infrastructure. Local activists in every state should begin at once to master the laws and details of the electoral deadlines, the procedures of each precinct, locality and state. The central requirement for the venture to work is that progressives run for the chairships of their Democratic precincts. As the historian and populist theoretician Lawrence Goodwyn says, "Two years is time enough, and the people to do it are out there." But to clear the route back to a liberal-progressive Democratic Party and the kinds of fruitful relationships the likes of Michael Harrington and Tom Hayden had with the party's moderates in the 1970s, the planning and the work have to start now.

Each Nader person has to decide for himself or herself which course is better for 2004: supporting Nader again or converging with Democratic progressives in the Democratic primaries. There are no guarantees. Both courses have grave inherent risks. The first runs the high risk of electing Bush; the second, of ending up with yet another corporate puppet as the Democratic nominee. But apart from the Bush policy and practice of aggressive warmaking, the disgrace of the corporate and financial systems since the collapse of Enron provides progressives with their best political opportunity since 1932. We should now launch a two-year drive for the moral recovery of the Democratic Party and, hence, of the United States. Bush, riding war and the patriotic psychosis he is using our White House to foment, may win whatever we do. But we should not be for Nader knowing that it will help elect Bush. In the emergency that has materialized as if in a nightmare, we may not do that. We no longer have the right.

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