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Return of the Repressed: What Ralph Nader’s Bid for President Means for the American Left
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By Michael Thompson
Factionalism, division and an antipathy to political unity have always plagued politics on the left. From the earliest days of the American and European labor movements to the divisions that characterized the apex of the social democratic, socialist and communist parties in Germany and France in the first decades of the 20th century, the left has shown an odd aversion to embracing what it staunchly advocates in rhetoric: political solidarity.
The return of Ralph Nader to the American political scene has provoked discussion—much of it derisive—among liberals, democrats and radical leftists. At the same time, supporters of Nader’s campaign argue that his entrance into the race is an expansion of democratic alternatives since he will be raising issues and themes that Democrats will not. But the overall concern is obvious: will the entrance of Nader as a presidential candidate have an adverse impact on the chances of unseating George W. Bush in the next election? And, even if this is so, is it at all “democratic” to claim that Nader should not run for tactical reasons, or out of fear that the “Nader effect” in 2004 could compromise the common goal of defeating Bush?
Most liberals and those on the left have repressed any memory of Ralph Nader since 2000 and his public face has been decidedly absent since the election. After all, the “Nader effect” of the 2000 election is commonly seen as costing Democrats the election. He received 97,488 votes in Florida where Gore “lost” to Bush by only 537 and there was a similar phenomenon in New Hampshire as well. The math speaks for itself.
But Nader’s decision to run in 2004 raises a broader set of issues than mere electoral strategy. It presses the issue of politics and political conscience to the surface of many minds on the American left and hence the present debate over Nader’s entrance into the presidential fray.The Politics of Third Parties in America
The American political system is set up in such a way to guarantee a two party system. Political scientists generally refer to this as “Duverger’s Law”—named for the French sociologist Maurice Duverger who formulated it in a series of papers during the 1950s and ’60s. Duverger’s work essentially states that when the citizens vote for candidates in single-member districts (more commonly known as winner-take-all districts), there is a tendency in such elections towards the creation of two large parties which will capture as many voters as possible. These parties will inevitably lead to the exclusion of third or fourth parties since there is less likelihood of their election. Voters subsequently develop an either/or mentality where they feel their vote will count only if they support one of the two major parties, rather than wasting their vote on a candidate with little chance of winning. This system and mentality only strengthen with time and finally end up producing a durable, two party system openly hostile to third parties.
So it is difficult, as a result of the very structure of the American electoral system, to have a viable third party; there have been exceptions, of course, but not in recent memory on a national scale. That said, it would seem that Nader’s decision to run for president in 2004 goes against all common sense and, in many ways, it does. But his decision to run is, in the end, not really the point in question. Rather, we have to ask ourselves whether or not democracy in America means the constant constriction of political choice between two parties, or the expansion of political choices beyond them.
Indeed, this is precisely what the supporters of Nader’s bid for president are arguing: there ought to be a debate on what it means to be in opposition to Bush. Nader’s position—which has become something akin to theater—is that the Democratic party candidates are no alternative to Bush; that they are the recipients of money from special interests; that they are just as establishmentarian as Republicans and that, as a result, they can offer no policies that are authentically different from that of Republicans. But what are the political consequences of this argument?Should Nader Run?
The problem that Nader poses is therefore not in the substance of his arguments, but in his sheer existence as a candidate and the opposition against him that has arisen on the left. In other words, is it at all democratic to limit the choices of voters by not adding a third party to the ballot and leaving them with a narrower range of options for political office? The problem with this argument is that we are faced with a form of anti-politics by which I mean a retreat to political “conscience” as opposed to the dirty grit of politics itself. Anti-politics is the refusal to deal with the concrete social and political implications of one’s own moral convictions or political choices. It is anti-political in the sense that it eschews the public good for moral righteousness and, more often than not, ideological prejudice.
At its base, politics is not an ethical enterprise and any hope of making it so is invariably utopian and defeatist. Nader’s supporters see his candidacy just as they did during the 2000 campaign: he is the only “true” progressive alternative to both liberals and conservatives, and represents the true interests of most Americans on issues like the environment, health care, corporate regulation and tax cuts.
But in politics, it is not enough to be progressive and have the most sensible arguments. Politics is a matter of institutions as well as ideologies. It is therefore not enough to claim moral conviction in politics since what is at stake is not something moral but something political: the transition of the executive branch of the government from a conservative regime to one marginally more liberal, pluralistic and sensible on all political fronts. It is one thing to allow for a debate about what progressive values are and which ought to be put forth by an opposition candidate to Bush. But it is quite another to ignore all forms of political tactics and support Nader’s presidential bid.
The question becomes whether or not it is democratic to push against Nader’s entry into the race? A truly democratic society, Nader and his supporters fervently argue, will allow all voices to be heard and allow voters to make free decisions based on a diversity of policy choices. But this idealized view of political democracy misses a larger, more important point: America’s democracy is republican in nature which means that although politics is grounded in popular sovereignty, it ought to take note of the broadest extent of the public interest and not the interest of a minority.
A conservative Republican bias, rooted in corporate interests and fused to a populist Southern religious base, has shifted American politics to the far right. Combating this bias requires neither revolution nor unrealistic political candidacies, such as Nader’s. What is required is for the American left to embrace politics and unite in support of the most realistic—i.e., most politically realizable—end that is available to them, and this will be, for quite some time to come, the Democratic party. This is the most that can be hoped for in contemporary American politics, and the sooner that the American Left sees that this requires a separation of moral conviction and political action, the more likely they will be able to prevent the continuing excesses of the American Right.Michael Thompson is the editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture (www.logosjournal.com) and teaches politics at City University of New York and William Paterson University.
