Choosing Your Battles

I read through the editorial article written by Ralph Nader Complacency Is Not Democracy (see permalink for complete article), I was struck by the fact this man says he wants to make Kerry a better candidate by running against him. Then he lists off a number of issues that he wants Kerry to adopt as his own.

Frankly I'd bet Kerry would privately endorse most of this list, but Nadar wants to make it a public forum. I can't help but believe Nadar also wants the limelight too, but we won't go there now.

I remembered a quote I read that I thought came from Saul Alinsky in his Rules for Radicals. So I began searching the Internet looking for referance to that quote. I couldn't find one for Alinsky, but I did find a couple of interesting articles from the environmental movement relating to what I was thinking about.

I found this one particularly interesting:

Andy Kerr: It's not Either/Or—It's All or Nothing

The environmental movement is made up of radicals, idealists, and realists. Let's briefly examine each type:

Radicals seek fundamental change of the system. They believe environmental goals cannot be realized without deep socio-economic-political changes, and thus tend to be anti-corporate. Winning individual short-term battles is less important to them than changing the world in the long term. Many feel that the ends justify the means. The best radicals suppress emotion to implement their strategy.

Idealists are usually altruistic. They view the world from a very moral and/or ethical perspective, with individual responsibility and example paramount. They are emotionally involved and believe the ends never justify the means.

Realists view the world as a poker game--the cards are dealt and you do the best you can with your hand. Their actions focus on the short term. Although they believe the ends can often justify the means, they prefer to work within the system. They can live with trade-offs and do not seek radical change, if for no other reason than they see it as unobtainable....

To stretch the “boat-rocking” analogy, realists want to help steer the boat, however small the change of course; idealists would rather the boat not move at all if it doesn't turn far enough in the right direction; and radicals would just as soon capsize the boat.

After reading this, I realized that Nadar is a radical. He wishes to bring about rapid radical change. He fully understands that he is doing damage in the short run to the hopes of Democrats. His hope is to further polarize the nation. He wants to push people to the extremes in hopes of more people joining his left end of the spectrum. He's trading short-term gains for long-term radical change. He wants to promote a radical remaking of the political spectrum in hopes the middle class, pushed economically by the dominance of the right, becomes radicalized and pushed left far enough to adopt his agenda. Of course, the consequences are also extreme: many more people will fall out the middle class due to unemployment and shrinking buying power.

Most of the positions he wants Kerry to adopt are controversial. The others denying him significant campaign dollars. There are significant emotional concerns on both sides of each issue. There are good arguments supporting either side as well. For example, one of the most startling issues might be how voting rights of minorities are suppressed. The Right argues that there are thousands of Floridians who vote absentee from New York. They allege without evidence that they also vote Democratic in New York. So requirements to show ID or prove citizenship or whatever that limits access to the polls by the poor and ignorant merely balence the playing field. These sorts of debates bring out the darkside of humanity: prejudice, paranoia, etc. Neither candidate seem to want to touch these issues. I suspect they do so for pragmatic reasons. When things get too ugly, voters have a way of rejecting the mudslinger. I suspect the average voter doesn't want to believe there could be voter fraud in America.

The redistricting issue is a two sided coin. Since the GOP has been on top, they have been systematically redrawing congressional boundaries to favor their voters. Again, disenfranchising the poor. This tactic has been used for a long time. Since Reconstruction days, boundaries have shifted regularly toward electing one party or another. Can one make a persuasive case that one side benefited more than the other? Or can we expect the old "helping the victim" argument has a chance since Reagan days? Again, this is not an issue the average person can get a good grasp on.

So, yes, I'm a realist. The damage done in the short run by a second term by Bush is something we can do something about. Further polarizing and radicalizing this Country will create even more ugliness and pain than we have now.

We need to choose our battles wisely and get Kerry elected. The role of the press and increasingly the bloggers is to educate the public about what really goes on. Until sufficient people are educated on these issues, they can't be part of an election campaign without doing significant damage to the candidate. Look what's happened to Nader.

Yes, after the conventions, all candidates make a move towards the center. There is a reason for that. It works. The vast majority of Americans including those who never vote occupy the center of the political spectrum. The candidate who activates the complacent to vote, wins. That's Democracy.


Complete Article

Complacency Is Not Democracy



By Ralph Nader



I've been receiving lots of drearily similar advice from members of the liberal intelligentsia over the past year, so perhaps this is an appropriate time to graciously give some counsel in return.



Rather than addressing their demands for my withdrawal from exercising my right to speak and assemble -- that is, the core of running for elective office -- I offer these words to advance their more responsible engagement in recovering their beloved, corporate-indentured Democratic Party. I suggest the following steps toward recovery:



• Reject the mantra "Anybody but Bush, leave it to Kerry, and make no demands." Replace it with the slogan, "If we don't make Kerry better, he will get worse." Scan the major constituencies supporting Kerry -- environment, labor, minorities, consumers, civil justice, antiwar, peace groups, civil liberties -- and note the absence of any mandates pushing Kerry to take long-overdue stands and campaign on them. Notice that the corporate lobbies are not behaving in a similar fashion. In fact they pounced on Kerry's early remarks about corporate crime and welfare. Do you now see or hear Kerry or his Web site presenting any concrete platform on tougher law enforcement against corporate abuses of investors, consumers, workers and pension-holders? Or becoming specific on the abolition of vast subsidies, giveaways and bailouts to corporations?



Daily the corporate supremacists pull Kerry -- through money, Wall Street advisers and sheer power -- in their direction. If the liberals do not demand from Kerry commitments in detail that pull him toward the necessities of the people, guess in which direction he will continue to move. If he wins the election without mandates, corporatist dogma will follow him decisively into the Oval Office.



• Help Democratic liberals who are becoming an endangered species in the so-called red states in the Southern, Rocky Mountain and Plains regions. In significant part, this is due to the abandonment of these states every four years by Democratic presidential campaigns. This results in shrinkage of the Democratic vote right down the line, from the races for governor to Congress to state legislators, mayor and city council. Republicans become ever more entrenched. Abandonment, as Texas's Ben Barnes has stated, deprives the Democratic Party of a farm team to nourish attractive candidates in the future. I recently returned from Hawaii and Alaska, where I received an earful from Democrats who are never visited by Democratic presidential nominees. This neglectful behavior feeds on itself, further conceding territory to the Republicans.



• Address increasing reports of serious electronic vulnerabilities and irregularities that could lead to more voter disenfranchisement in several states, including Florida. Also, Jesse Jackson Sr. told me that the Democratic Party is not actively registering 9 million African American voters whose high preference for the Democrats could swing key states. Instead of unleashing hordes of lawyers, operatives and infiltrators to block our access to the ballot and voters' choices in the various states, tell your party to focus on millions of votes that may not be counted or cast because of Republican shenanigans, as well as the 90 million non-voters.



• Press all Democratic candidates at the federal and state level to condemn partisan redistricting. The new, more frequent gerrymandering is carving up our nation's electoral districts so that there is not even a semblance of two-party competition. Liberals have stood idly by and allowed our country to be turned into one in which incumbent-dominated districts account for 95 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives. Similar patterns attach to many state legislative elections. Where there is no practical choice, there is no real election, just a coronation. I know that a three- or four-party system does not interest the intelligentsia, but surely they should turn their attention to the end of the two-party system, as the Democratic Party is crowded to the edges of both coasts heading out to sea.



• Challenge the Democrats who are dominant in the party's hierarchy, including those in the Democratic Leadership Council who have taken bigger and bigger business campaign contributions in exchange for ceding the major economic issues associated with their corporate benefactors. Pro-labor law reform; a living family wage; single-payer health insurance; a serious reduction of the bloated military budget; authentic crackdowns on corporate crime and abuse of investors, workers and consumers; a programmatic commitment to renewable energy and efficiency; defending the impoverished and moving to end deep poverty -- these are a few directions that come to mind.



Liberals have become increasingly estranged from demands that their party incorporate these subjects as part of what it stands for. They have settled for the Democrats' saying or doing the right things on the social and cultural issues such as choice, gay and lesbian rights, church-state separation and Social Security. When considered against the deterioration of standards of living, access to justice and the dwindling power of the people vs. giant corporations, the party's offerings are grossly insufficient.



Next time you complain to professional party operatives about their losing to the worst of the Republicans at the local, state and national elections for the past 10 years, don't accept the glib response that Republicans have more money. Ask instead about the grass-roots agendas. And demand a strong move toward public financing of elections.



And whenever these professionals answer your complaints with, "But do you know how bad the Republicans are?" ask them, "Why not the best instead of the least worst?"



Ralph Nader is an independent candidate for president.





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