I have a lot more time for Ralph Nader than most people I know who’ve given money to the Barack Obama campaign. I don’t have any intention of voting for him, and I find a lot of what he’s about to be personally distasteful, but I’ve never begrudged him his right to run for President, and I’d like to see him invited to participate in the debates. Especially this year, when there are five scheduled (including one sponsored by Google, who can break the old media stranglehold on the process that everyone’s been complaining of for so long), there’s no reason why at least some of them can’t include candidates from smaller parties.
It works to the strategic advantage of those who’d like to see the most progressive possible Democrat elected to the office (accepting the reality that the only options are a Democrat and a Republican) to include Ralph Nader in the debates, too. Obama’s always been at his best when he’s got a foil that forces him to run to the left- when John Edwards was in the race, we saw him do things like recruit Lawrence Lessig to write his technology platform; when Clinton was still around, he pledged that his first action as President would be to investigate all of Bush’s signing statements for their legality; even right now, it’s hard to imagine he’d have been so willing to talk down to his base as he endorsed the FISA bill if the primary were still going on.
Nader’s presence in the debates would force Obama to address things that wouldn’t otherwise be brought up, in order to contrast more sharply with McCain. Nader’s candidacy in general is an opportunity to keep Obama from pulling too far to the right (within certain parameters- the Naderites who will never vote for him under any circumstances don’t really have much influence, as politicians are never going to feel beholden to people who won’t vote for them), and for that alone, we should remember that he’s a useful tool.
But.
That shit stops sounding so compelling when he drops his bizarre race-baiting nonsense about how obama talks white. That’s the point at which you remember who Ralph Nader really is- the guy who sold out the Greens in 2004 because he preferred the individual power in running as an independent, only to demand they drop their own candidate and endorse him so he could have ballot access in more states, the one who continued campaigning in Florida in 2000 rather than focus on states where he could better achieve his stated goal of getting the 5% of the popular vote that would secure the party federal matching funds in 2004… Ultimately, he’s a guy who isn’t above a sleazy cheap shot with potentially divisive ramifications if it’ll get him on the news.
Ralph Nader has no business determining what a non-white way to talk is. There are some privileges white people don’t have, and one of them is determining the way leaders of color ought to present themselves. I’m going to go ahead and assume that, based on the context of the quote, that he meant Obama should be talking about issues the way Jesse Jackson does, not that, like, he should be holding press conferences where he sounds like Omar from the wire. But even then- how condescending and absurd is it for Ralph Nader to pretend that he better understands the authentic black leadership experience than a grown black man who’s lived in America his whole adult life? Nader is hardly an authority on what the real black experience is, and for him to presume that this is a line of attack with any validity at all would be a lot like me declaring that Obama’s an Uncle Tom because he looks like a character from the boondocks. All of this the number one thing a black politician should be bullshit is a sleazy way to claim an authority that he never earned, because shit like this is the only way Nader gets on the news. Either he knows that he’s got no credibility here and is saying it because he wants some attention- in which case he’s another politician saying whatever shit he has to try and score points- or he honestly thinks he knows more about the experience of being a black man in America than Barack Obama does. Either one of them proves an important point.
ralph nader is a worthless judas goat with no moral compass. - Hunter S Thompson, 2004
Like I said- I’ve defended Nader a lot in the past. No candidate for office is entitled to run without challengers, and his presence serves as a reminder to people running for President that they have to work to earn the votes of his supporters, rather than expect them as a given simply because there’s a lack of other options. But I was thinking about this quote after Nader’s racist bullshit fell out of his mouth so casually, and there’s a sublime phrasing here that reminds you exactly how skilled a writer HST was. Because he may or may not have a moral compass- though his treatment of the Greens raises the question. He’s certainly not worthless. But judas goat… Man. The precision of that description is downright surgical.
A judas goat is an animal used in slaughterhouses; basically, they train a goat to associate with cattle and then have it lead them from the stockyard to be slaughtered. The goat’s then returned to live the good life until the next batch of animals need to be led to their doom.
And when you think about Nader’s message- the one he hammered home in 2000, and then again in ‘04 after John Kerry hurt his feelings- that there’s no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, that it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. Well,tell that to kids who joined the National Guard for the promise of some college money and ended up in Iraq; tell that to the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay; tell that to the people in New Orleans who lost everything when anti-government ideologues were put in charge of FEMA… I don’t blame Nader for those things, but it underscores something important- it’s easy for him to say it doesn’t matter who’s in charge, because to him, it doesn’t. At the end of the day he’s an old white millionaire, and old white millionaires do not usually have much to expect in the way of suffering no matter who’s in charge. He’ll return to the pen, safe and well-fed, no matter what happens. Like a judas goat.
But I don’t mean a hatchet job on the guy. No, seriously. Because he can be important, and he can be useful. But as long as he continues to say and do whatever it takes to get on the news, just like a regular politician, then I’ll write about him like he’s a regular politician. And those people are fucked up.
