Ralph Nader wants liberals to back Rand Paul. Don't do it.

[pampango]

5. "... opposing "sovereignty-shredding global trade agreements, Wall Street bailouts, the overweening

expansion of Federal Reserve power, and the serious intrusions of the USA PATRIOT Act against freedom and privacy" may be Paul ideas that would get some support from the left, aligning yourself with him politically cares a lot of baggage as well.

However, coalition building requires compromise and, most critically, prioritizing one set of issues over another. The trade-offs inherent in Nader's path into Rand Paul's arms should make liberals run screaming. ... you can forget about anything that involves new government regulation, higher taxes, and more spending. That would preclude big-ticket liberal priorities like capping carbon emissions, expanding anti-poverty programs, guaranteeing universal pre-school, and investing in infrastructure. Nader effectively deprioritizes those goals, because his primary agenda is to "Dismantle The Corporate State."

Nader wants to scrap this long, if quiet, history of liberal success that has built the pillars of modern activist government in favor of prioritizing a civil libertarian agenda. His strategy makes sense if you think smashing the NSA is more important than saving the climate or feeding the hungry. I suspect most liberals would not make that trade.

There's nothing wrong with forging temporary, limited partnerships with whoever is willing to play ball at that moment. You can work with libertarians against corporations on global trade today, and cooperate with corporations against libertarians on funding infrastructure tomorrow.

But Nader's vision goes beyond ad-hoc coalitions. He wants to permanently side with government-hating libertarians over government-accepting corporations. That may have superficial appeal to liberals currently agitated over income inequality, but it's not the strategy that helped liberals in the past century build the social safety net, reduce poverty, and avoid another a Great Depression.