Strategic Lessons of the 2000 Presidential Election: A Pro-Nader Perspective

by Patrick S. Barrett

Introduction
The recent presidential election was a historically significant one for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most obvious was the controversial manner in which George W. Bush assumed office. Another reason, however, was the division and rancor the election produced among supporters of Al Gore and Ralph Nader. More than its effect on the outcome of the election itself, the deeper significance of the Gore-Nader controversy was the debate over political strategy that it generated on the left. It has been a long time since the left has engaged in such a debate, and its occurrence should therefore be seen as a positive development.[1] At the same time, the fact that U.S. progressives are largely unaccustomed to thinking strategically may help to explain why the debate has been conducted at such a low level of sophistication and with such little forthrightness, especially on the part of those who backed Gore and the Democrats. Indeed, it is ironic that the most common criticism of Nader supporters made by the backers of Gore – namely, that the former are strategically shortsighted, irresponsible, and even destructive – may be much more accurately applied to themselves.

What follows, then, is primarily intended as a critique of the pro-Gore position. But it is also intended as a defense of the pro-Nader position, which contains some of the essential elements of a long-term strategy for bringing about real progressive change, even if not ultimately embodied in Nader or the Greens. Both of these objectives can be accomplished by addressing four fundamental and interrelated questions: (1) Where are we?; (2) How did we get here?; (3) Where do we want to go?; and (4) How do we get there? Together, these four questions are indispensable to any effort aimed at devising a long-term strategy for progressive change. All four questions, moreover, were nearly universally neglected, if not actively avoided, by the backers of Gore and the Democrats.

Where Are We?

Beginning with this question is crucial, for if we do not engage in an accurate assessment of our current circumstances, we have little chance of moving forward, much less getting very far. Thus, before we determine where we want to go, or the steps we need to take to get there, we need to understand our point of departure. Clearly, there is insufficient space here for more than a very cursory response to this question. The first and most obvious observation, then, is that ours is an extremely inequitable society. Indeed, among all the advanced economies of the world, the U.S. has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income, the least economic mobility, the longest hours logged by its workers, one of the highest rates of poverty, one of the most regressive tax structures, and the least developed welfare state. Our society is also characterized by severe racial inequality, as African Americans, Latinos, and other racial minorities suffer the disproportionate effect of these disparities. Moreover, the degree of inequality has worsened dramatically over the last 25-30 years.

            With 25% of the world’s prisoners (a disproportionate and rising number of whom are people of color), the U.S. can also boast the highest level of incarceration in the world. It is also one of the few nations that still employ the death penalty, which is applied in a highly discriminatory manner. In addition, our industrial relations system is heavily skewed in favor of employers and, not surprisingly, we have one of the weakest labor movements. In few developed countries, moreover, are the rights of women more limited and precarious. We also consume an inordinate proportion of the world’s natural resources, in the process destroying our natural environment at an increasingly alarming rate. Not content to confine the ill effects of these practices to our own citizens, we seek to impose them on the rest of the world via a foreign policy whose overriding concern is the expansion of U.S. military might and corporate interests.

            Our political system only serves to reinforce these outcomes. Our winner-take-all electoral system limits our political options to two political parties, which, although not identical, are strikingly similar and have grown increasingly so over the years. In few other developed countries are the political rules of the game so skewed and the resulting set of political options so limited. The two main political parties, moreover, have come to serve an increasingly narrow and privileged segment of the population, made possible in part by the rising corporate domination of our system of campaign finance and our legislative process. At the same time, the growing corporate domination and concentration of our mass media has had the effect of severely constricting our national political debate. It should therefore come as no surprise that approximately half of the voting age population does not vote in presidential elections, and that those who do are disproportionately white and privileged. In fact, over the last forty years, voter turnout in the U.S. has been falling steadily, especially among the least privileged.

            In the face of such a reality, it would seem that the only appropriate response is outrage. In this regard, the Nader campaign performed a service that has been long overdue. It relentlessly drew attention to the fundamental problems confronting the country and demanded that they be addressed. The Democrats, by contrast, steadfastly avoided discussion of these problems and their own role in causing them. So too did many of their supporters on the left. Indeed, rather than a “lesser-of-two-evils” approach to the election, what many progressives engaged in can more accurately be described as one of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” In reality, the Democrats, especially under the Clinton-Gore administration, have veered significantly to the right, adopting core Republican positions as their own and in some cases going further with them than the Republicans had been able to do themselves. The most notorious example of this is the 1996 welfare reform bill, which gutted one of the central accomplishments of the New Deal.

But there are many others, including a hard-line approach to crime and drug abuse that has led to a doubling of the prison population in the last eight years, an enthusiastic embrace of the death penalty despite the overwhelming evidence that it kills innocent people and is racially discriminatory, an obsession with balanced budgets that has depended upon cuts in social spending, a foreign policy that was as militaristic and anti-humanitarian as that of its Republican predecessors while even more devoted to advancing the economic interests of Wall Street and corporate America, and an environmental record that was so bad as to prompt David Brower to conclude that “Gore and Clinton have done more to harm the environment than Reagan and Bush combined.”[2] Under Clinton and Gore, the Democrats also became far more adept at corporate fund-raising, significantly closing the gap with their Republican rivals. And not surprisingly, inequality continued to grow, despite the vaunted economic expansion of the 1990s.

The list is longer, but this should have been enough to produce outrage on the part of progressives. Such outrage, however, was in amazingly short supply. Nor was there much anger over the fact that there was a systematic effort to silence the one candidate who was attempting to draw attention to the administration’s abysmal record, Ralph Nader. Indeed, throughout most of the summer of 2000, Gore and his supporters worked hard to deny Nader a national forum. They were aided in this effort by the national media, which largely ignored him. To the degree that the media did cover his campaign, it was to portray him as a “spoiler,” never to report on the substance of his positions.[3] In the early fall, with Gore trailing in the polls, the media and the Democrats did begin to pay more attention to Nader, but only to vilify him as a destructive egotist and to insist that there was no alternative to “the Party.” Simultaneously, the distortion of the Democrats’ and Gore’s record reached new heights. Gore was consistently portrayed as a champion of civil rights, labor rights, women’s rights, the environment, and gay rights. Given Gore’s appalling record in all of these areas, this was a particularly cynical effort.[4] It was all the more cynical given the Gore supporters’ indignation over Nader’s supposed exaggeration of the similarities between Bush and Gore. In truth, Nader did exaggerate, but not by much and certainly far less than the Gore supporters in claiming a difference between the two candidates.

In their lionizing of Gore, his supporters somehow forgot about his 84% pro-life voting record, his steadfast support for free trade, his close ties to tobacco and oil companies and weapons manufacturers, his efforts to end affirmative action for federal contractors through his “reinventing government” program, his repeated betrayal of pledges to protect the environment, and his long history as a gay basher. Also forgotten was the fact that it was Gore who first race-baited Dukakis in the 1988 Democratic primaries with the Willie Horton story and who made it a personal mission to undermine the Jackson campaign in the 1988 New York primary. There was also little reaction when Gore openly bragged about his support for the death penalty, his key role in pushing through the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill, his unbending support for sanctions on Iraq and military aid to Colombia, or his call for an increase in defense spending twice that proposed by Bush. Nor was there much reaction when he chose Joseph Lieberman (one of the most conservative and pro-business members of the Senate) as his running mate and former Commerce Secretary William Daley (a leading figure in the administration’s effort to promote free trade) as his campaign chair person. And there was a deafening silence when Lieberman declared to the Wall Street Journal that big business need not worry about the semi-populist elements of Gore’s convention speech, since it was simply rhetoric designed to win votes.

The response of most Gore backers to the outcome of the election has been consistent with their attitude during the campaign, as they have heaped considerable abuse on Nader as one of the two culprits who denied Gore his rightful victory, the other being Bush’s allies on the U.S. Supreme Court. While there is strong evidence for the latter, the former claim is yet another example of denying reality. Unfortunately, in the hierarchy of reasons explaining Gore’s “defeat,” Nader ranks quite low.[5] Far more significant was the fundamental weakness of the Gore campaign itself, which was unable to win even Gore’s home state of Tennessee or Clinton’s home state of Arkansas. This weakness was perhaps in part a negative reaction to Clinton’s personal behavior and the odd perception that Bush was the candidate with greater personal integrity. But it more likely reflected the fact that there were so few discernible differences between the two main candidates on bread and butter economic issues, particularly to the white working class. Indeed, voter turnout was the third lowest in the last 75 years. To be sure, there was a slight increase over 1996 (from 49% to 51%), but the class composition of the turnout was if anything more skewed than ever in favor of the upper 20% of income earners. Moreover, one of the main reasons for the increased turnout was Nader. In fact, in several states, he helped to elect Democratic congressional candidates.[6]

While a few Democrats have acknowledged the positive role played by Nader,[7] most have treated him as a pariah. In striking contrast to their posture toward the new administration, which they have welcomed in a remarkably “bipartisan” manner, they have been determined to deny Nader any opportunity to weigh in on policy debates in which they are presumably on the same side. There are two basic motivations for this posture. One is to deny their own culpability in their party’s defeat and the sorry state of the nation. And the other is to send a message to anyone who dares to offer a progressive alternative to the Democrats that they will pay heavily. Ironically, Nader in this way performed yet another service by exposing the Democratic Party for what it is. Indeed, if there were reason to be skeptical about the party’s democratic convictions prior to this election, their analysis of the election outcome has provided further reason for doubt.

How Did We Get Here?

Thus, if we are serious about achieving progressive change, we have to engage in a more candid and critical assessment of our contemporary reality. But we also need to understand how we got here. For without an accurate assessment of what led us to our present circumstances, we are likely to continue down the same path, with the same or worse results. Clearly, many of the same factors are in play, as social, economic, and political inequalities have a way of perpetuating themselves. However, a major part of the explanation for what got us here once again lies with the Democratic Party. In this respect, Nader again did a far better job of assessing reality than Gore. But Nader was actually too soft on the Democrats, repeatedly suggesting that they had departed from their progressive roots. The reality is that the Democratic Party never had such roots and was never a champion of the rights of working people and racial minorities.

During the twentieth century, there have been only two moments when the Democrats have presided over major progressive change: the New Deal of FDR and the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson. Two conclusions can be drawn from these experiences. One is that only pressure from below has ever moved the Democrats in a progressive direction. The second is that the lengths to which they can be moved are greatly limited by their ties to big business interests. In both instances, the Democrats were forced to accept change in response to massive popular mobilization. And in both cases, for a variety of reasons, important segments of business were willing to tolerate some degree of progressive change.[8] However, that willingness was both limited and short-lived. In fact, many of the more far-reaching initiatives, particularly under the New Deal, were never realized, while many of the accomplishments were quickly subjected to attack and, before long, reversal. In the case of the New Deal, the possibilities for change were also severely limited by the key role played by southern racists in the party.

Particularly over the last 25-30 years, these two factors have changed in such a way as to cause the Democratic Party to move ever more rightward. The labor movement, which was the most important popular impetus behind the New Deal, has grown steadily weaker since the mid-1950s and has assumed a largely conservative posture. Moreover, with the exception of the 1972 presidential election, it has given its support to the Democrats unconditionally. Meanwhile, African Americans, whose mass mobilization during the 1950s and 1960s was the driving force behind Johnson’s Great Society programs and triggered the departure of most of the party’s southern racist contingent, have since become a demobilized and captured constituency. As a result, the capacity of both groups to influence the direction of the Democratic Party has diminished significantly. Simultaneously, the party has grown increasingly dependent upon big business, which itself has grown less and less tolerant of even the most moderate proposals for change. This process became most evident in the early 1980s following the election of Ronald Reagan and the establishment of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in early 1985. Founded by a group of primarily southern conservative Democrats, the DLC set out to move the Party to the right by strengthening its ties to business, while distancing it from labor, African Americans, and the poor. This effort came to fruition in 1992 with the election of Clinton and Gore and was further consolidated with the nomination of Gore and Lieberman in 2000.

            The DLC’s main argument for pushing the party to the right is that the country itself has moved rightward and that in order to win elections, the party needs to respond to what the voters want. A corollary to this argument is that the Republicans have also moved to the right and that the Democrats must do whatever it takes to keep them out of the White House, including following in their footsteps. But there is virtually no substance to this argument. Survey data indicate that, if anything, the American electorate has become more, not less, “liberal” in its attitudes. In fact, to the degree that Americans have come to oppose government activism, it has not been because they are hostile to government action – to the contrary, they believe that the government should be actively involved in problem-solving – but rather because they have become disillusioned with the government’s capacity for problem-solving.[9] Much of that disillusionment, moreover, can be attributed to the Democrats, who for decades have grown increasingly unwilling or unable to respond to the economic aspirations of poor and working class voters and instead have responded to the demands of the wealthy.

            Furthermore, rather than simply responding to the rightward shift of the Republicans, the Democrats have at times initiated the move to the right. Indeed, it was the Carter administration that launched Reaganomics, fully two years before Reagan came into office. And it is no surprise that Carter lost to Reagan in 1980, with Carter offering such a dismal option to the working class.[10] Once Reagan was in office, the Democrats also went out of their way to accommodate his policy initiatives, giving him bigger tax cuts and increases in military spending than he had asked for, and much of what he requested in social spending cuts. And rather than responding to the growing discontent among the poor, working class, and racial minorities, they instead engaged in a heightened competition with the Republicans for gaining the backing of business.

The 1984 campaign of Walter Mondale was itself a revealing case study of the party’s increasing domination by business and its growing distance from its popular electoral constituencies. Particularly striking was the campaign’s deliberate efforts to limit voter turnout among the poor and racial minorities, for fear that it would strengthen the candidacy of Jesse Jackson. Even after winning the nomination, Mondale continued to oppose registration efforts despite a 250-page study written by his aides that concluded that “the only way Mondale can win is by pitching his appeal to the white working class and minorities.”[11] The main problem, of course, was the effect such an appeal would have on the Party’s business backers. Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers described the situation well:

As the Mondale campaign made clear, virtually no Democratic business group has a stake in expanding the party’s mass base. To gain the support of millions and millions of poor nonvoters and marginally identifying blue- and white-collar workers, the Democrats would actually have to offer them something – perhaps a progressive tax code, or full employment, or unionization with real power for the rank and file, or enhanced social programs. [But] the party’s dominant business elites are not prepared to do this.[12]

Constrained by his business backers, Mondale thus offered nothing to those voters who could have given the Democrats a victory. Instead, he offered only fiscal restraint and a promise to increase taxes. Coupled with one of the largest political business cycles ever engineered, this was enough to produce a landslide victory for Reagan. In the wake of this defeat, party leaders saw it as an opportunity to push even harder for the strategy that had produced it. Indeed, it was in early 1985 that the DLC was founded. Moreover, instead of rewarding Jesse Jackson with greater influence for his loyalty to the party and the new voters he recruited, the white Democratic establishment (in a preview of their treatment of Nader in 2000) viciously scape-goated him for losing the election. In 1986, party nominating rules were also re-written in an effort to “moderate” the party’s image and advance a candidate that could appeal to conservative white voters.

It was not until 1992, however, that the DLC succeeded in getting one of its own elected in the person of Bill Clinton. But Clinton’s victory should not be seen as a vindication of the DLC’s conservative strategy. Clinton received fewer votes than Dukakis had in 1988 and would never have won if not for an economic recession and the presence of a strong third candidate, Ross Perot, who received millions of votes from the very voting bloc that has abandoned the Democrats in droves over the last 25 years: low-income whites.[13] Apparently oblivious to the real significance of the election, Clinton very quickly dedicated his administration to the service of business interests, thereby producing the fiasco of the 1994 congressional elections, in which a rightwing Republican cabal took control of the Congress. Continuing the pattern established by his party since 1980, Clinton responded to this outcome by turning even more to the right. Aided once again by the presence of Ross Perot, a less than stimulating Republican candidate in Bob Dole, and the fact that the Congressional Republicans that he had set out to imitate had become thoroughly discredited, Clinton was able to win reelection in 1996. Voter turnout, however, was the lowest since 1924. Given this history, it was not particularly surprising that the 2000 Democratic ticket consisted of Gore and Lieberman, two darlings of the DLC. It was also not surprising that Gore, despite benefiting from an unprecedented economic expansion, ran a very close and uninspired race against George W. Bush, arguably the least prepared presidential candidate during this century. And it came as no shock that the southerner Gore did abysmally in the south and that the Democratic leadership made no effort to challenge the disenfranchisement of African American voters in Florida and instead worked to diffuse their protests.

The Democrats, then, have played a major role in producing the increasingly rightward shift of politics in the United States. By adopting Republican policy positions, they have legitimated those positions and enabled the Republicans to move ever farther to the right, with little fear of becoming politically marginal. When in power, moreover, they more effectively realize Republican policies by paralyzing groups that are reluctant to oppose a Democratic President. And by alienating low-income voters, they pave the way for Republican victories. As Jesse Jackson Jr. recently put it, the move down this path has been “aided by Democrats. In 1992 a conservative Democrat, Bill Clinton, selected an even more conservative running mate, Al Gore, who in 2000 selected an even more conservative running mate, Joseph Lieberman. By helping to shift the Democratic Party and the country further right, a very conservative George W. Bush could select an ultraconservative Dick Cheney as his running mate – and win.”[14]

Where Do We Want to Go?

Now that we have a better sense of where we are and how we got here, the next task is to figure out where we want to go. How we answer this question may be the most critical task of all, since it will dictate how we act. Indeed, in addressing this question, we are beginning to speak more directly about strategy. This is because strategic action consists of two basic elements: conceiving of a vision of the future; and devising a series of steps aimed at getting there. Without a vision of the future, political action is aimless and very unlikely to be successful. It certainly is not strategic in any meaningful sense of the word.

 

Unfortunately, the American left has by and large ignored this question. The vast majority of us have little sense of where we want to go or of the future we would like to bring into being. At least, we do not devote much discussion to it and we certainly do not make the effort to think systematically about what it would take to make it a reality. Instead, the greater part of our political activity, by far, is devoted to reaction, to opposing or trying to limit the worst effects of things we do not want, rather than to working proactively to construct an alternative reality. Our political orientation is heavily geared toward the short term, with our highest goal set on winning the next election. More often than not, we find ourselves in a defensive holding action, and we devote little thought to the long-term implications of our actions.

 

We also make very little effort to influence the program of the political organizations and elected officials who presumably represent us. Indeed, we demonstrate an extraordinary willingness to demand, and accept, very little from them, and we tolerate a political dialogue that is superficial and even repressive. Again, there was perhaps no better example of this than the treatment of Nader in the 2000 election. Instead of welcoming a candidate who offered an unusually elaborate and straightforward program for change, even if only because of the effect that discussion of that program could have on our national political debate, far too many of us were willing to stand by and let the focus be trained entirely on his supposed role as a “spoiler.” His program, meanwhile, was systematically ignored, if not suppressed.

 

To some degree, the defensive posture of American progressives is very understandable, particularly since we inhabit an environment in which our enemies are strong and determined to implement very undesirable initiatives. The irony, however, is that by focusing so much attention on containing our enemies, rather than on conceptualizing and working toward the construction of a better society, we can end up hastening the realization of the very things we oppose. This is because we are more likely to find ourselves losing sight of and compromising our positive goals and thus allowing for the kind of scenario described above, in which the Democratic Party can pull us ever more rightward, because the Republicans, themselves aided by the Democrats, are always a little worse. We can therefore easily find ourselves in a vicious, downward spiral in which our actions serve only to reinforce a continual worsening of conditions.

 

None of this is to say that we should refrain from being negative, in the sense of engaging in a critique of contemporary society. Our vision of a positive alternative reality is very much contained in our critique of things as they are, since the nature and depth of that critique will point to what it is that we seek to change and how much of a change we seek to achieve. One vision of the future, based for example on the critique advanced in the first section of this article, might be characterized as social democratic or perhaps democratic socialist. This would involve constructing a society in which inequalities of wealth and income are limited, poverty is all but nonexistent, health care is universal, taxation is progressive, racial minorities, women, and gays are full members of society, unions are powerful and democratic, the death penalty is abolished, the prison population is vastly outnumbered by the university student population, foreign policy is humanitarian and democratic, the defense budget is geared toward defense and thus radically reduced, the environment is strongly protected, the media permit an open and wide ranging political debate, political campaigns are publicly financed, and the party system provides a wide range of political options, including some that represent the least privileged members of society.

 

Of course, many may not feel comfortable with this kind of social democratic or democratic socialist vision and would prefer a future that is not such a departure from our present circumstances. Some may wish to work for only one or two of these objectives and may be very willing to sacrifice the remainder in order to accomplish them. These differences may tell us as much about who we are as anything else. Some of us clearly benefit a great deal from our current conditions and thus are less interested in seeing such changes realized. But even among those who do not define our interests so narrowly, there will be major differences. Indeed, the democratization of society will unavoidably require the construction of a diverse coalition of interests, many of which may not easily join forces with each other, but which can nevertheless find enough common ground to advance a mutually beneficial program of change. On the other hand, our failure to embrace a program of change may have nothing to do with our interests, and instead reflect the nature of our expectations. In other words, some of us may have simply given up on the possibility of change and do not consider the above vision of the future as a feasible or realistic one, however desirable it may be. But whatever our particular response to this question, the fact remains that unless and until we address it, there is little or no chance that we will move forward, wherever or however far we end up deciding we want to go. With that in mind, we turn now to the fourth and final question.

How Do We Get There?

This may be the most difficult question of all, since it is a lot easier to engage in a critique of contemporary society, or elaborate a vision of a future society, than it is to come up with a viable strategy for moving forward. It is also likely the question on which we have reflected with the least care. This was clearly illustrated in the 2000 election, and in particular in the analysis offered by the backers of Gore. To review, that analysis consisted of the claim that the only real option was to vote for Gore, given that Nader was not going to win and that Gore, however undesirable, was preferable to Bush. The mantra of the Gore campaign was therefore “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush” and anyone who did not understand this was labeled as strategically unsophisticated, irresponsible, and even destructive. While voting for Gore was touted as an eminently strategic act, voting for Nader was seen at best as a symbolic action, or a protest vote, certainly not one informed by a strategic understanding of the stakes involved. However, just as the Gore supporters never reflected on where we are, how we got here, or where we want to go, they never carefully examined this claim to strategic insight. Their critique of Nader supporters, it turns out, would have been more appropriately applied to themselves.

In the first place, the focus of the pro-Gore option was entirely short-term in character. It was at best a defensive maneuver with no real end game – yet another holding action designed to prevent a Republican from assuming office and totally devoid of any proposal for what to do the day after the election. At virtually no point did anyone consider, much less explain, how voting for Gore fit into a long-term strategy of bringing about progressive change. In reality, there were basically only three reasons for voting for Gore, only two of which made any real sense. One reason is that you benefit from the existing inequalities in US society and understand that voting for Gore would help to preserve, if not increase, those inequalities. This group actually behaved in a very strategically rational manner and, of course, was well represented among those who contributed so generously to Gore’s campaign. A second reason is that while you dislike what Gore and the Democrats have come to represent, you have largely given up hope that there will ever be any better option. This too is rational, though it is very cynical and can hardly be called strategic. The final reason is that while you dislike Gore and the Democrats, you believe (or hold out hope) that voting for Gore is somehow consistent with getting something better than Gore. This reason is also not strategic and the rationality behind it is dubious at best.

This last group of voters in particular made very little effort to examine the long-term implications of their actions. If they had, they might have realized what was the very best-case scenario of the vote-for-Gore option: a Gore victory in 2000; his reelection in 2004 (because the same logic of preventing a Republican victory would have prevailed and the best candidate for that is an incumbent President); a victory by Lieberman in 2008 (as the heir apparent); and Lieberman’s reelection in 2012. It bears repeating that this would have been the very best-case scenario, a quarter century of Clinton, Gore, and Lieberman. Not only would this have been unlikely; had it occurred, it would also have dealt a severe blow to the chances of constructing a progressive future. That is, unless it finally provided indisputable evidence to enough Democratic Party loyalists that a third party alternative was now necessary. This, however, is a “things have to get worse before they get better” scenario that is neither promising nor desirable.

            A closely related failure was the Gore backers’ basic misunderstanding of the difference between long-term and short-term costs. They aggressively reprimanded Nader supporters for supposedly ignoring the costs of their actions, particularly the costs borne by the weakest members of society who would pay most dearly for a Bush victory. This argument has a powerful emotional appeal, as it touches upon what should be at the very center of our political decision-making – the effects that our actions have on the weakest among us. No one backing Nader should have taken this argument lightly. Yet, it artificially absolves the Gore backers of their own responsibility by failing to consider the long-term costs of their actions. If we are really concerned about people who are suffering and want to be certain that our decisions do the least harm to them, we cannot focus only on the short-term. We also have to consider the harm that will be done to them in the long term. We must ask ourselves whether the actions designed to minimize short-term costs produce far greater costs in the long-term by foregoing the possibility of future change. In other words, will those actions reduce the likelihood that the weakest among us will become full members of society and realize their life chances? These questions (which are more relevant than ever in light of the recent evolution of the Democratic Party), were virtually never raised, much less addressed, by the supporters of Al Gore.

            It deserves noting that no significant social change was ever accomplished anywhere by focusing exclusively on short-term costs. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to state that in every case of significant social, political, and economic progress in the history of human existence, the protagonists of change have had to reject the argument that they should be careful and not rock the boat, because the balance of forces is against them, things are unlikely to get better, and they can easily get worse. That reality has not changed. The truth is that, much like the periods preceding significant social change in the past, we are engulfed in an increasingly severe vicious circle (or downward spiral). By definition, breaking free of any vicious circle has significant short-term costs, but the longer the decision to break free is put off, the more costly (and hence unlikely) it becomes. Those who seek to democratize society must confront this basic strategic dilemma head on. Their fear that a rupture with the status quo may be too costly is very understandable, but they must also understand that by exercising excessive prudence, they will contribute to the perpetuation of current conditions and preclude the possibility of future change. What it comes down to, then, is the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy we choose to be a part of – one that maintains conditions as they are, or one that builds toward an alternative future.

            Yet another strategic weakness exhibited by the Gore backers was their fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to prevail in politics. At an abstract level, the answer of course is power, the capacity to force others to act in a way that they would not otherwise. But what does this mean practically? In electoral politics, it means being willing to deny support to parties and candidates, even at the risk of causing them to lose and helping to elect something or someone worse. The Senate Democrats’ role in the recent confirmation of Bush’s cabinet appointments illustrates the point. Presented with some of the most reactionary appointments in recent memory, the Democrats made little or no effort to oppose them. In fact, most were confirmed unanimously. Disturbed by this weak response, some Democratic loyalists reacted in anger. For example, Patricia Ireland, the president of NOW, declared: “There is a fairly angry and experienced crowd of activists who can be mobilized to bring a lot of public pressure, mainly, in my view, on the Democrats – to keep the Democrats from folding into the center-right agenda.”[15] In a similar vein, Julian Bond, the president of the NAACP, stated: “Democrats need to know that their votes are monitored just as the Republicans’ votes are monitored.”[16] But these statements beg some very fundamental questions. How does one keep the Democrats from folding into the center-right? What is the point of monitoring votes if one lacks the capacity to sanction those votes? What form would those sanctions take? Are these credible threats then? In truth, the only way to ensure that the Democrats do the right thing is to put the fear of losing in them. But like so many others, both Ireland and Bond have made it so clear that they prefer anything to the Republicans that they have no real leverage on the Democrats. The only way to gain leverage would be to make their support conditional, which means being willing to cause them to lose their seats, and neither is willing to do that.

            At least Ireland and Bond recognize the Democrats’ culpability. Far more of those who backed Gore have reacted to the Bush appointments by claiming that they provide clear proof that voting for Gore was the correct thing to do. But the logic underpinning this argument is very cynical. It rests fundamentally on the claim that we have no choice but to vote the Democrats into the White House because we cannot trust them to use the power at their disposal to do the right thing in the Congress. It thus comes down to a form of blackmail: “If you don’t vote for our candidate, we’ll stand aside and unleash a right-winger on the country.” This is why the frequent invocation of Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Thomas during the election rang so hollow. Somehow overlooked was the fact that the Democrats stood by and let those appointments go through when they had the power to block them.[17] None of this, of course, is particularly novel. It is simply a continuation of a pattern that has been gaining momentum for several decades.

            So much for the strategic shortcomings of the Gore backers. What about the Nader/Green option? Did it really represent a promising alternative, one that could serve as the basis for a new progressive political movement? In many respects, it did, and perhaps still does. In the first place, Nader was unmistakably the most progressive presidential candidate to come along in at least a half century, if not longer. He offered a program that not only addressed many of the country’s deepest problems, but offered concrete proposals for dealing with them. He was thus the first candidate in decades to advance a clear vision of the future that progressives could enthusiastically embrace. He also demonstrated a solid grasp of what it takes to get there, including an understanding of how power functions and is distributed in this society, the differences between short- and long-term costs, and the crucial role of social mobilization. Indeed, in this last regard, he has strong links to the social forces that emerged in the Seattle demonstrations in November 1999, probably the most significant instance of mass social mobilization to materialize in decades. Moreover, although he has never been elected to political office, he has long experience in working with Congress and has an impressive list of legislative accomplishments, certainly far more impressive than almost any member of Congress.

            All of this suggests that if one were to opt for a third party candidate, this was going to be the time. If progressives remained hesitant in the face of this unique historical opportunity, and were even willing to actively undermine it by voting for Gore, it therefore likely meant that they are fundamentally pessimistic about the prospects for a viable third party emerging. But shouldn’t they be? Isn’t the history of third party efforts in the U.S. pretty terrible? And isn’t this primarily because our electoral system is simply inhospitable to third parties? Moreover, doesn’t it make more sense to work at the local level, and establish a third party presence there, before launching a campaign at the presidential level where the stakes are so high? In any case, isn’t the Green Party badly organized and therefore not a particularly promising vehicle? And haven’t Nader and the Greens failed to reach out to African Americans and other people of color, a crucial constituency in any progressive movement? For all of these reasons, would it not therefore make more sense to try to work through the Democratic Party?

            The truth is that the history of third party efforts in the U.S. is terrible and it does have a great deal to do with the nature of our electoral system. But this is not a reason to abandon all future efforts. Indeed, the immutable status we give to our electoral system is actually quite mind-boggling. Somehow, many of us are capable of condemning the most deep-seated socio-economic problems, but when it comes to a destructive institutional feature of our political system, we accept it as permanent, almost as though it were part of the natural order of things. This attitude is all the more astounding given the enormous benefits electoral reforms such as proportional representation or even instant run-off voting would instantly produce (e.g., a widening of our political options, greatly expanded participation, and the elimination of the “spoiler” effect) and the very fertile terrain for electoral reform created by the Florida debacle. Ironically, it is even possible to take advantage of the current electoral system to advance such reforms. In fact, the two states where IRV is being seriously considered are precisely those states where a strong third party has created a spoiler effect: New Mexico and Alaska. In both cases, it is the party that has been transformed from a winner into a loser (the Democrats in New Mexico and the Republicans in Alaska) that is most interested in reform – here we see how “losing” can be a positive force for change. There is no reason, moreover, why this cannot also be accomplished at the national level, since the logic behind it is unaffected by scale.

            Any effort to establish a third party should also involve a great deal of work at the local level. However, this does not preclude launching a national, presidential campaign. Rather than being mutually exclusive strategies, they can be mutually reinforcing. A good example of this is Madison, Wisconsin, where an already strong local party, Progressive Dane, made a strategic decision to get involved in the Nader campaign precisely because of the benefits it would have for building their organization. And as a result, they have experienced a surge of hundreds of new, very actively engaged members. One reason this makes sense is the de-politicized nature of our political culture. Unfortunately, most Americans, to the degree we are at all interested in politics, focus on the national level. In other words, only a national, presidential campaign has the capacity of politicizing people rapidly. It is highly unlikely, for example, that the tens of thousands of enthusiastic people who paid $10 each to attend Nader’s “super rallies” would have been similarly inspired and energized in the absence of the Nader campaign. Thus, rather than slowly building a local presence all across the country before launching a national campaign, it makes more sense to jump-start the whole process by advancing both efforts simultaneously.

            The Green Party is also not particularly well organized or experienced, and in fact, suffers from some not insignificant divisions. But this is also not a sufficient reason to write it off. Arguing that we cannot opt for a third party until such a party is strong, well organized, and experienced is to create a catch-22. If our involvement is essential to building such a party, waiting until it emerges before we lend it our support is to ensure its demise. In any case, there is no reason to stake our hopes on the Green Party as the only possible third party alternative. It is simply a vehicle, and a rather open one at that. The same is true of Nader. In fact, we should be very wary of attaching our political agenda too closely to any individual. But no matter where we begin, we will have to confront the reality that organizations are weak in their infancy. In order to attain the strength of adulthood, they require substantial nurturing, not a wait-and-see attitude.

            Nader and the Greens also did a very poor job of reaching out to people of color, probably the greatest weakness of their campaign. In fact, it was not until very late in the game that Nader began to address their concerns explicitly. And not surprisingly, he did poorly among minority voters. Yet, there is no significant reason why this cannot change. Despite Nader’s limited efforts in this regard, he focused far more directly on issues of concern to minority voters than Gore did, including support for affirmative action, an end to racial profiling, an end to the war on drugs, abolition of the death penalty, closing the racial wealth gap, and even reparations for slavery. Much of his poor showing among those voters thus had as much to do with the suppression of his message as the failure to deliver it more effectively. Moreover, unlike the Democratic Party, in which there are major structural obstacles to advancing a program that addresses the needs of people of color, there are no such obstacles in the Green Party.

            But despite all this, shouldn’t Nader have sought to advance his progressive agenda through the Democratic Party instead, given that it is organizationally more developed and still has the most significant progressive following of any political party? A number of people have in fact advanced this argument, including Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts.[18] Invariably, they point to Jesse Jackson as the best model of what can be accomplished. This is a curious choice of models, however, since Jackson’s experience is a far better example of the limitations of the Democratic Party. As noted above, Jackson’s rainbow coalition set off alarm bells in the party and the current political leadership went to great lengths to ensure that it was defeated. Recent developments, moreover, suggest that the chances of such an effort succeeding are more limited than ever (e.g., the naming of super fundraiser Terry McAuliffe as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the DLC’s insistence that a main reason for Gore’s defeat was his excessively populist campaign). None of this rules out the possibility of progressives taking control of the party. That possibility, however, is extremely small and it would require somehow surmounting the overwhelming and growing power that moneyed interests have in the party.[19] It would also require a radical change in strategy on the part of progressive Democrats. Ironically, perhaps the one factor that could significantly strengthen their leverage vis-à-vis their internal party rivals is the emergence of a strong third political party.