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DonCoquixote

(13,615 posts)
Mon May 4, 2015, 08:28 AM May 2015

Leftist Stalking horses re: Supporting Sanders

I write this OP because I have seen some people who support Hillary accuse Sanders supporters of being GOP pawns, or to quote one OP "stalking horses" for the GOP.

Now, I do understand some reasons why people can be paranoid. I still remember the week after Election 2000, where, even as the votes were being counted, and "chads" were still new, right wing operatives would call in to the right wing radio station, WFLA Tampa, and BRAG in gloating detail about how they used the Nader Campaign to their ends. You had people who were previously pretending to be left wing callers come on and say "yes, I was really a Republican!" and get cheered on like some Fraternity and Sorority member that played a really stupid joke. One of the cheerleaders of this was a then local talk show host named Glenn Back, who, despite a very dismal performance in Tampa otherwise, got promoted to the national level.

However, when some people say that Sanders supportets are hust Hillary Haters/stalking horses/people not ready to have a woman president, et cetera, they are not being honest about Bernie, nor us. First of all, Bernie is running WITHIN the Democratic party. He specifically adressed the Nader scenario, where he said he would "not be a spoiler" the way Nader was.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0502/Bernie-Sanders-Liberal-Democrats-savior-or-Ralph-Nader-spoiler

He is bringing matters up because frankly, while the Clintons and Obamas did take measures attempting to keep the right wing at bay, they have also given up ground that used to be standard Democratic ideas since FDR. Unions, especially Teacher's Unions, have been thrown under the Bus. Even with the figures suggesting a "recovery", Wall Street is getting so many slices of the pie that many who used to be considered "middle class" are broke. We know that is due, to a large part, to pressure the right wing of the Democrats places, be they "philanthropists" like Bill Gates, Think tank pundits like Erskine Bowles, donors like Alice Walton and Lloyd Blankfeld and polticians like Joe Manchin and Mary Landrieu that, however they are on social matters, still defend the industires that literally kill both their voters and those near their voters. Yes, the people I mentioned ARE to the left of the MODERN GOP, aka Fascism with better marketing. No, they are not supprters of the traditional, proven, successful FDR era Democratic policy. All of them have a vested interest in weakening or destroying the remnants of the New Deal. Now, we knw these folks are applying pressure on Hillary to lean rightward. We as Democrats, have every right, and every reason to apply pressure on her to lean leftward. We do this NOT because we do not plan to FIGHT to make sure the GOP does not gain one more inch of ground, we do it because, as 2010 and 2014 proved, the masses, the people we need to convince to vote against the GOP, are not happy with a supposed "kinder, gentler" Republican.

If Hillary is the only one who can beat a Jeb or Scott or Marco, she will have no problem beating a Bernie Sanders. The worst case scnario for her is that Bernie gives her leeway to lean left, much as she recently has when talking about Taboo subjects like prison reform and financial regulation (bet that gave Blankfeld a headache.) She will be onoculated against the "cornonation" meme that the GOP would be able to use, and the GOP will be left bleeding for the genuine attacks Bernie will level, which, like it or not, do help Hillary look good against the GOP.

If, on the other hand, the HIllary campaign were to somehow stumble because of Bernie.

(disclaimer, I do not believe this will be the case, especially if she learned her lesson from 2008)

But if her campaign implodes against Bernie, then frankly, it would not have been the ship we would sail against a Jeb or Scott or Marco. It is one thing to lose to Barack Obama, who was able to embody a lot of the disllusioned voices in the masses, Bernie is mostly preaching to a choir at this point. At this point, Hillary would have to make some serious blunders, blunders like she did in 2008, that she would not repeat. I do not expect Mark Penn to be getting any phone calls.

So, while I do admit, there may indeed be some "stalking horses" supporters of Hillary do not help their cause when they stamp that label on anyone who is not already campaigning for Hillary like it is October 2016, as if the Democratic Convention was already old news. You do not give a teenager whiskey, and the campaign should not be forced to "grow up" too quick. Now disclaimers: Yes, if I see stalking horses, I will call them out. Anyone who reads my journal knows what i think of Ron Paul, and the current schill for Ron Paul, aka Ralph Nader.

http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/05/ralph-naders-new-book-urges-liberals-to-back-rand-paul/
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/politics/ralph-nader-rand-paul/index.html

Now, a whole OP can be done asking Nader how the hell he intends to get consumer protection from the guy that would destory government's ability to regulate, but that is not the point, except that I would suggest HE is the staking horse that deserves more hate.

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Erich Bloodaxe BSN

(14,733 posts)
1. I was ready to rec this (and in fact briefly did)
Mon May 4, 2015, 08:55 AM
May 2015

right up until you had to throw in the 'hate on Nader' dig at the end that supports the false narrative that 'Nader lost us 2000'.

Salon covered this all the way back in 2000 in How Florida Democrats Torpedoed Gore.

It's a long, statistics-full piece, but in words,

How is the Democratic Party establishment dealing with this crisis of legitimacy and its own declining numbers? By blaming Ralph Nader. Partisans wail that Nader denied Gore the few hundred votes he needed to prevail on election night. Indeed, Nader polled some 95,000 votes in Florida, which prompted New York socialite and Hillary Clinton moneyman Harry Evans to blurt angrily, “I want to kill Ralph Nader.”

Hold your horses, please. Ralph’s not the message — he’s only the messenger. Again, the politicos and pundits are ignoring another set of election statistics in Florida that are way more revealing about the core weakness of the corporate Democrats. I’m grateful to Tim Wise, a Nashville writer and activist who dug into the Florida tallies and exit polls to find some stunning results that refute the “Ralph did it” assault. Wise’s full report will appear in a forthcoming issue of Z magazine, but the essence of it is that Gore was the problem, not Nader. Start with two constituent groups that Democratic nominees usually win in the Sunshine State:


(and onward to more statistics.)

onehandle

(51,122 posts)
2. Nader spent weeks in Florida at the end of the election.
Mon May 4, 2015, 09:41 AM
May 2015

If only half a percent of Nader's voters in Florida had voted for Gore, we would have been spared Bush.

No, it wasn't only Nader. But without Nader, the GOP would have failed.

Period.

Erich Bloodaxe BSN

(14,733 posts)
4. Read the article. Far more Democrats voted for Bush than for Nader.
Mon May 4, 2015, 10:19 AM
May 2015

So 'if only half a percent of Bush's Democratic voters in Florida had voted for Gore, we would have been spared Bush.

But has also been pointed out GORE HAD THE VOTES. The Republicans didn't fail because Gore caved and didn't fight it when the Supreme Court stopped the recount.

m-lekktor

(3,675 posts)
3. yep, no rec from me either because of the Nader foolishness.
Mon May 4, 2015, 09:45 AM
May 2015

I put "Nader lost 2000" nonsense up there with chemtrails. many more florida DEMS voted for Bush than they did for Nader.

 

Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
5. You Naderites are completely missing the point.
Mon May 4, 2015, 01:15 PM
May 2015

The point is to distinguish the Sanders campaign from the Nader campaign.

You see, like it or not, there are many, many of us progressives who do blame Nader, among other people, because we believe that Nader's campaign was one factor, among several factors, that resulted in the Bush Presidency. (You'll note that this depends on the rather sophisticated concept that an event can have more than one cause. Katherine Harris was a factor, the butterfly ballot was a factor, SCOTUS was a factor, etc.)

I personally would have voted for Nader if he had run in the Democratic primary. He had the legal right to choose that option, which, IMO, would have generated better exposure for his views as well as a better electoral outcome. He had a legal right to run in the general instead, but I can affirm that legal right and still say that he made the wrong choice about which right to exercise.

Bernie Sanders faced the same choice and decided the other way. Therefore, to those of us who criticize Nader for his decision, it's absurd to compare Sanders to Nader. Sanders departed from Nader's course on precisely the point where we disagree with Nader.

There are also people who don't fault Nader at all for his choices in 2000. From that point of view, perhaps comparing Sanders to Nader constitutes praise, I don't really know. The OP is not addressing that point of view, however. It's speaking to a different group of progressives.

The huge falloff in Nader's vote from 2000 to 2004 is confirmation that there are many progressives who now believe that Nader made the wrong choice.

Erich Bloodaxe BSN

(14,733 posts)
6. It's so odd that so many people who blame Nader 'among other people'
Mon May 4, 2015, 01:24 PM
May 2015

still always simply mention 'Nader', but not the other people or other factors.

That's the thing. 99% of the comments that are anti-Nader are simply ... anti-Nader. They don't acknowledge other factors, they just seek to dodge any possible notion that Gore and the Democratic party shared any blame for how that fiasco was played out, to make 'Nader' the useful scapegoat.

Anf 'You Naderites'? Really? you're completely missing the point yourself. The 'point' is not to 'defend Nader' (who acted like a total jackass, celebrating the fact that he saw himself as a 'spoiler') but to prevent the Democratic Party from making the same damn mistakes over and over again, and losing more elections because they keep sliding to the right. And the first step in recovering is to admit YOU have a problem, not to scapegoat someone else for it.

 

Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
7. The difference between Nader and Harris is that Nader has adherents on DU
Mon May 4, 2015, 01:43 PM
May 2015

I doubt that any significant number of DUers support Katherine Harris.

You want mention of other factors? Does DU really need a whole bunch of posts detailing the illegal voter purge, the subsequent litigation, and the reinstatement of most of those people to the voting rolls, albeit too late to help Gore?

I personally wouldn't click on that post if I saw it on the Greatest page. I wouldn't click on a post denouncing the Communist Party of the United States, either. That doesn't mean I'm pro-Harris or pro-CPUSA. It just means that I have little interest in preaching to the choir.

What I think is very informative is your call "to prevent the Democratic Party from making the same damn mistakes over and over again...." This is something else I see from a lot of pro-Nader posts: the idea that "the Democratic Party" is a monolith, a unilateral decision-maker that can choose to go left or right. It's as if we were still in the nineteenth century when the party was completely controlled by a handful of bosses. Certainly there are Party establishment figures who have considerable power, but, ultimately, the Democratic nominee will be someone who received support from primary voters and caucus-goers around the country. It's not as if the DNC will hold a board meeting and say, "Should we tack to the left to pick up the Nader voters? Or should we figure that they wouldn't support us when we ran an environmentalist against two Texas oilmen, so screw it, we'll never win over those purists, should we tack to the right to try to pick up votes from centrists?" If there were such a meeting, I think it would be more likely to take the second course, and nominate Clinton, but fortunately that's not how it's done. Sanders understands, as Nader did not, that the way to move the Democratic Party is to fight within the Democratic Party.

You write that "the first step in recovering is to admit YOU have a problem...." Well, go talk to the millions of Democrats who nominated Al Gore. Your beef should be with them. And the point of the OP is that talking to Democratic voters is precisely what Sanders is doing, as opposed to stomping off in vocal disgust and expecting that to effect change, as Nader did.

DonCoquixote

(13,615 posts)
9. You said what I said better than I did
Mon May 4, 2015, 02:14 PM
May 2015
Sanders understands, as Nader did not, that the way to move the Democratic Party is to fight within the Democratic Party.

Rinse, repeat.

DonCoquixote

(13,615 posts)
8. the fact is
Mon May 4, 2015, 02:12 PM
May 2015

A) My point was to show that Bernie was NOT acting like Nader. That was a point above and beyond the endless Nader Vs Gore matter which, let's face it, will not be setlled anytime soon. He made a choice that he would NOT be a spoiler, which is what many who used the term "stalking horse" are acussing him of.

second, since you did bring up Nader, you can assign other factors, like those dems that backstabbed Gore, most of whom were from the right wing. Part of the reason I supprt Sanders running is because, at the very least, he can get out the dependable voters, the actual people who VOTE Democratic.

However, when the math is done, one fact will not change. If Nader's voters voted for Gore, he would have won, period. Granted, I hate and despise the right wing fake center fifth column that has been hamstringing us from within, indeed, I am hoping that even if Sanders does not win, he lures Hillary out of their orbit, so they can actually be treated like the election killing losers they are. However, Nader has shown his true colors. Again, why out of all the people, why does he support Rand and Ron Paul? Hell, if he was stumping for Cynthia Mickinney, at least it would show some consistency.

Erich Bloodaxe BSN

(14,733 posts)
10. You do Bernie no favour by putting him and Nader in the same posting
Mon May 4, 2015, 02:16 PM
May 2015

even if you claim you're 'trying to show the difference'. The kind of thoughtless scapegoating of Nader as opposed to the fact that far more centrist Democrats voted for Bush has only one goal - smearing the left and moving the party rightward. People who hate Nader simply aren't going to vote for Bernie, no matter what they say, or what you say to differentiate the two. Bernie is too far left for them.

 

Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
11. You're simply wrong about Nader's critics.
Mon May 4, 2015, 04:31 PM
May 2015

You write that criticizing Nader with respect to the outcome of the 2000 election "has only one goal - smearing the left and moving the party rightward." That's false. There are many of us whose goal is to move the party leftward but who understand that a third-party candidacy hurts that goal rather than helping it. We criticize Nader in the hope of averting a repeat of 2000.

Nader ran outside the Democratic Party (as a Green or an independent) in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008, and in 2012 urged support for one of that year's no-hoper lefties (Stein or Anderson). Suppose that he had, instead, run in the Democratic primaries. The result would now be a whole cadre of progressives around the country who not only wanted to move the party leftward but who had practical experience in intra-party politics: in getting people to caucuses, in campaigning in primaries, in working within local Democratic Party rules, etc. Many of them might now be the Democratic Party in terms of sitting on or even chairing party committees at various levels. That group would stand ready to be a powerful force on behalf of the Sanders candidacy. Instead, many of them followed Nader into the ranks of the Green Party, where their influence on the Democratic Party is nil.

You write, "People who hate Nader simply aren't going to vote for Bernie...." I personally don't hate Nader. I'm a tort lawyer myself, and I respect the enormous contributions he made before his ill-advised foray into electoral politics. Certainly, people who criticize Nader as being too far left will likely think the same of Sanders -- but people who criticize Nader for running in the general election rather than the primary are Sanders's natural constituency.

In Nader's peak year, 2000, he received 2.9 million votes. In the 2008 nominating contest, Clinton and Obama each received about 17.5 million votes. No one can mount an effective progressive challenge to Clinton based on the Nader voters. Sanders (or O'Malley or anyone else) must rely primarily on people like me -- people who agree with many of Nader's stands on the issues but who believe that his decision to run in the general election was a foolish mistake that had calamitous consequences.

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