Just To Be Clear

As with the dead-on-its-feet Giuliani candidacy, I would like to think this is obvious, but apparently not. In comments, the otherwise astute Redbeard gives the Naive Nader Apologist Account of his strategy in 2000: “Yeah, while the most likely consequence of a Nader campaign might be a Bush victory, that doesn’t mean it was really Nader’s goal. Why not take Nader at face value? He wanted to achieve 5% of the popular vote and get the Green Party public funding. The best place for him to get those votes is from dissatisfied Democratic voters, so he tries to convince them the Dem candidate’s no different from Bush.”

Er, no.

1)Actually, I am taking him at his word: “If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win.” “Which, Nader confided to Outside in June, wouldn’t be so bad. When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: “Bush.””

2)Moreover, his actions in the last month were actually consistent with the goal of electing Bush to punish the Democrats and heighten the contradictions, whereas they are radically inconsistent with the idea that his goal was to get matching funds for a party he quite evidently didn’t give a rat’s ass about (although it’s embarrassing if any Greens still don’t see, even after 2004, that he didn’t care at all about party building.) The states for him to mine votes in the last month were where Gore was a lock, not highly contested swing states.

Electing Bush was not a random byproduct of the 2000 Nader campaign; it was its raison d’etre. I can sort of understand people not getting this in 2000, particularly before the last weeks of the campaign, but at this late date? Give it up. He announced he wanted to elect Bush, he campaigned in a manner entirely consistent with that goal, and he succeeded. There’s no second verse here.