SO, RALPH Nader has crashed the party. In a misguided move that shocked no one, Nader announced last week that he will run for president, once more subjecting the electorate to his rumpled charm, his high-minded lectures and his callous indifference to the fate of America's mainstream liberals. Faced with a close and critical race for the White House, Democrats are understandably dismayed by Nader's decision, but I'm not worried. I trust liberals, and I think they've learned their lesson.
Four years ago, Nader played spoiler to Al Gore's presidential campaign, and the Democrats are positively apoplectic at the thought that he might undermine John Kerry's candidacy in similar fashion. But those who draw links between the present campaign and that of 2000 forget just how much the political landscape has changed in the past four years. On Nov. 7, 2000, workers had jobs, America was at peace and George W. Bush was a compassionate conservative, bidding voters to send him to Washington as a uniter, not a divider. On that simple day, a vote for Nader was a cheeky jab at a dusty two-party system, and if those votes paved Bush's road to victory, well, he wasn't much worse than Gore anyway.
Three years later, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is as clear as it is critical. Under Bush's leadership, Republicans have made unprecedented assaults on the Bill of Rights, saddled future generations with 12-figure budget deficits and sent 547 Americans to die in Iraq, fighting a threat that never existed. In voting for Nader, disaffected liberals often claimed that Gore's defeat would only be regrettable if Bush turned out to be more conservative than expected. Now that Bush has become the most reactionary president in modern history, it's time for liberals to grow up and admit that Democrats are different, whatever their moderate politics or corporate sponsorship.
Many left-wing voices have already been raised against Nader's candidacy. Earlier this month, a group of prominent liberals published an open letter in The Nation, urging Nader to support the Democratic nominee, rather than run a hopeless campaign that would only benefit Bush. Meanwhile, Democratic voters have said time and again that their sole objective in the primary season is to find a candidate who can beat Bush, whatever his ideological nuances. After three years in the political wilderness, liberal America seems finally to have its head on straight.
This, of course, is bad news for Nader, who has made a hobby of crash and burn campaigns on principle that aid only his most principled opponents. In 2000, Nader's idealistic appeals found a ready audience in those liberals who believed that they could strike out safely against the status quo, voicing their support for liberal change while the nation remained firmly in the political center. The right-wing radicalism that these voters unleashed should be enough to convince liberals that their political survival still depends on their participation in politics as usual.
Given the enormous importance of this year's election, the Democrats have little to fear from candidate Nader. After four long years of Bush, most of Nader's old supporters can be expected to close ranks around Kerry; those who still preach the equivalence of Democrats and Republicans have so taken leave of their senses that they would never vote for Kerry anyway.
So let Nader make his idle stand on principle, while Bush makes daily attacks on every principle he holds dear. No clear-headed liberal will vote for him this time -- we're old enough to know better.
Alec Solotorovsky's column usually appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com.
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