Ralph Nader: 'Cowering' Democrats face defeat

[Ken Burch]

480. How many people have you talked to?

There's no way you've met every activist in the country. Or even everybody who made the choice to vote Nader in 2000.
Many of those people had worked for the party for decades...sometimes when nobody else would. And rather than being rewarded for their loyalty, they were given the blame for all the party's troubles, when, in truth, they weren't to blame for any of them. ANY Democrat would have lost 49 states to Nixon in 1972(even Scoop Jackson and for damn sure Humphrey). ANY Dem would have lost 49 states to Reagan in 1984(even John Glenn or Ernest Hollings). And any Dem would have lost 44 states to Bush the First in 1988(even Clinton or Gore). And you damn well know it.

And it wasn't just about the DLC...it was about the whole idea that our party HAD to tell all these people to fuck off, to tell them that what they lived and died for didn't matter to the party anymore(that "winning an election" was ALL that mattered...oh, and btw, we could have beaten Bush the First with ANY Democrat in 1992...it didn't have to be the most right-wing, anti-labor, pro-corporate death penalty freak we could possibly find).

The notion that the base is the enemy, that activists are the enemy, still lives on in the highest sectors of our party, DLC or not. So it doesn't matter whether the DLC exists or not anymore.

It's that attitude...the attitude that everybody except the ceo's and the Southern sheriffs had to be told to "pound sand and peddle it walking", that drove people to the choices they made in 1996 and, to a larger degree, 2000. If we'd even had a primary challenge in 1996(which Clinton clearly deserved, and which would have done no real harm, since Clinton and Dole agreed on everything but a few trivial side issues)the Nader phenomenon might well have been prevented. But it was never going to be prevented simply by DEMANDING that progressives support a party whose presidential candidates had no respect for them. They were OWED respect in exchange for their votes. That wasn't asking too much.

If you want to make sure THAT never happens again, learn from it. We must never again be a party in which those who want the least change possible, and the least debate possible are given unchallenged dominance.