If Nader were president, would the markets crash?

Posted Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 4:42 pm · No Comments · By: messels

as you [should] know, nader has thrown his hat back into the ring and is running for president again (3rd time).

nader has a track record of fighting for the consumer, the little guy, the families forgotten on the tarmac to riches and a higher standard of living.

as readers of the blog know, i got really excited by obama. i’ve since had time to look over his voting record and of course check other sources. aside from the fact that having a black man running for president being quite the accomplishment for a still-subtly racist society is pretty exciting, i’m not sure i see myself putting the check next to his name…not now that nader’s back in. i was emailing my friends just last week (”way before” the announcement) that if nader runs i’m going to abandon the obama-drum-beating and go with my gut and vote nader. i have one friend in particular who was shaking his head in dismay that i was supporting a dem…i can’t honestly recall if that’s something i said i would never do or not…

reading through some blogs for reactions, i’m still seeing a lot of nonesense comments that illustrate, as mr. nader called it, political bigotry. tim russert with meet the press is a smart man for asking and probing into what nader thought the american reaction, and dem’s in particualar, to his candidacy would look like. obviously nader thought about this for a while when he responded:

Solon Simmons and other scholars–he teaches at George Mason–have shown that by pushing Gore to take more progressive stands, he got more votes than the votes he allegedly–were withdrawn from for the Green party. Twenty-five percent of my vote, according to a Democratic pollster, exit poll, would’ve gone to Bush. Thirty-nine percent would’ve gone to Gore and the rest would’ve stayed home. Every major–every third party in Florida got more votes than the 537 vote gap. So let’s get over it and try to have a diverse multiple choice, multiple party democracy the way they have in Western Europe and Canada.

…

If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form.

so why is nader running? (again, from meet the press)

Let me put it in context, to make it a little more palatable to people who have closed minds. Twenty-four percent of the American people are satisfied with the state of the country, according to Gallup. That’s about the lowest ranking ever. Sixty-one percent think both major parties are failing. And, according to Frank Luntz’s poll, a Republican, 80 percent would consider voting for a independent this year. Now, you take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut, shut out, marginalized, disrespected and you go from Iraq to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts, getting a decent energy bill through, and you have to ask yourself, as a citizen, should we elaborate the issues that the two are not talking about? And the–all, all the candidates–McCain, Obama and Clinton–are against single payer Health insurance, full Medicare for all. I’m for it, as well as millions of Americans and 59 percent of physicians in a forthcoming poll this April. People don’t like Pentagon waste, a bloated military budget, all the reports in the press and in the GAO reports. A wasteful defense is a weak defense. It takes away taxpayer money that can go to the necessities of the American people. That’s off the table to Obama and Clinton and McCain.

The issue of labor law reform, repealing the notorious Taft-Hartley Act that keeps workers who are now more defenseless than ever against corporate globalization from organizing to defend their interests. Cracking down on corporate crime. The media–the mainstream media repeatedly indicating how trillions of dollars have been drained and fleeced and looted from millions of workers and investors who don’t have many rights these days, and pensioners. You know, when you see the paralysis of the government, when you see Washington, D.C., be corporate-occupied territory, every department agency controlled by overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists, corporate executives in high government positions, turning the government against its own people, you–one feels an obligation, Tim, to try to open the doorways, to try to get better ballot access, to respect dissent in America in the terms of third parties and, and independent candidates; to recognize historically that great is sues have come in our history against slavery and women rights to vote and worker and farmer progressives, through little parties that never ran–won any national election. Dissent is the mother of ascent. And in that context, I have decided to run for president.

what was really appealing to me about obama in the first place is the passion that he puts into his claims that he’s about change. obviously this message resonates with a lot of people since obama has been steadily destroying hilary in the primaries. people do want change.

the question i keep coming up against is whether people really want the change that obama says he’ll bring or if they just like the idea of change. here’s a portion of my comment on “economist’s view” (cited above)

the democrats problems all come down to one thing: they act like liberals–meaning everything they say and maybe even believe is with a “left-wing” tilt but they really can’t reconcile that paradigm with being just as money-hungry, power-grubbing as republicans. essentially, the democratic party is a bunch of rich, elites who like to parade blacks and other disadvantaged minorities around so they can show the people that they have “their” best interests in mind. if they were just honest and real, they may actually be a party but this fissure in their political ideology and it’s foundation is too great to maintain a consistent party…so they keep losing to dough-doughs (like the pun?) remember, they don’t have the civil rights movement (among many other politically charging events) to ride the wave into office.

another way of phrasing this would be: (quoting my friend joe who’s way more informed about politics than myself–and much smarter to boot!)

It also rests on the false assumption that opposition to Bush was the primary political motivation of Nader supporters (as it appears to have been for Kerry).

What this argument fails to realize is that Nader supporters are primarily progressive liberal populists, and they therefore have almost as much to despise about the Dems as the Repubs.

Furthermore, Nader’s platforms tend to emphasize “voting your conscience” or “vote your dreams” by which he means that he endorses ideologically based voting. He believes, as I do, that one ought to define one’s politics by what one is in favor of to a greater extent than who or what one is opposed to. At times, in 2004, it seemed to me that Anybody-But-Bush folks defined themselves entirely by their opposition to bush. They had no discernable stance on any issue except this vague notion “Bush bad.”

Anyway, all that is my understanding of how the forces were aligned in 2004.

I don’t see how they’ve changed that much. Dems still define themselves as “we’re not them” to the extent that they court the middle. They’re republican lite. Non-committal (when not diametrically opposed) to the populist stance on almost every subject.

Plus, none of the old “survivor-like” mentalities are gone. I suspect that many Democrats still consider Nader supporters to be naive, and to be unknowingly supporting the republicans.

I still know many on the left who marginalize the idea that democrats are not legitimately progressive. They don’t tend to deny the claim, as those who do are easily refuted. But it’s just not as important to them as defeating the republicans.

Personally, I think the whole bullshit distinction between democrats and republicans is like the acid-laced kool-aid of our time.

There’s far less difference between them than there is similarity. Period.

Until the droves of allegedly progressive, allegedly liberal people on the left who support the democrats out of an alleged desire (hope!) for change wake the fuck up and quit drinking the Kool aid, voting, particularly in presidential elections, will remain a meaningless, symbolic, and divisive activity that only serves to perpetuate the status quo. Things will not change until people realize what the reality is. And to me, the primary fact that people miss is that there is no two party system! Just like the spoon in the Matrix. That shit is just a convincing illusion. Wake up and smell the oligarchy, succa!

so, what does everyone think?

will a vote for nader be a vote for mccain? will a vote for nader be a vote for a depression? would regining in the costs for health care be a good thing? would unionized clothing makers in malaysia be a bad thing for us?

what would the affects of changing our socio-economic paradigm to transparency, efficient government, reduced corporate influence on policy, etc, etc be on our country and it’s “growth”? would we need to redefine how we define growth? nader’s not a communist but i see him coming to office being something similar to a political revolution…

speical thanks to counterpunch for posting the transcript for me.