Nader bashing; Kerry delusions. posted by Richard Seymour

Surprisingly, today's Guardian has the usually excellent Gary Younge recycling the Democrats' favourite trope about Ralph Nader taking Republican money:

Many Democrats still loathe Mr Nader, accusing him of handing the election to Mr Bush in 2000 by taking potential votes from Mr Gore. Their contempt has intensified since he decided to run again and took money from prominent Republicans to do so. In the past year they have tried every possible legal means to keep him off the ballot in each state, advising Democrats not to sign his petitions and challenging the signatures he does get.

As my blogging comrade Dead Men Left pointed out when the Observer tried to peddle this nonsense, its a red herring:

[T]hese supposedly Republican backers gave more money to the Democrats: $66,000 for Kerry, $54,000 for Nader. Only 4% of Nader's funding has come from those also funding the Republicans ... And if Republicans have wanted to assist Nader's campaign...? As Lenin didn't say, "the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

Younge also reports a conversation with someone who was interested in voting for Nader, but in the end cast an early ballot for Kerry:

"I liked what he had to say about healthcare, the war and the minimum wage. Nader is my ideal candidate. But Kerry would not appoint justices to the supreme court who would impact on abortion rights, and I decided that was more important to me."

Aside from being a rather miserable reason to vote for deputy dawg, this happens to be completely untrue, as I pointed out some time ago . Kerry has already said and repeated that he "would not hesitate" to appoint anti-abortion judges to the supreme court. Indeed, Kerry goes so far as to stipulate that he has voted for judges who are anti-abortion before. Bush's appointments, by contrast, have so far been impeccably pro-choice.

Younge also turns in a strange in accuracy:

Many of Mr Nader's most prominent supporters, including the film-maker Michael Moore, the academic Noam Chomsky and the campaigning journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, have called on him to stand down.

Moore's actions are a matter of public record, and an unfortunate blemish on a barnstorming radical career. Ehrenreich has attacked Nader's candidacy (suggesting as she did that if Dennis Kucinich failed to become the Democratic presidential candidate that she may have to reconsider her options). But Noam Chomsky has not called on Ralph Nader to stand down. While calling for a vote for Kerry/Edwards in swing states, he has indicated that he himself plans to vote Nader in his safe state and thinks that is "fine".

The fervour with which liberals in the US and UK media have wielded the stick against Nader certainly has something to do with Bush's unforeseen extremism. On the other hand, Kerry has done the old Clinton thang, triangulated, and found a way to repackage almost every element of the Bush gang's agenda in Democrat clothing. It is this latter fact that Kerry's left supporters have so far proven unwilling to confront - and, as it has become more and more obvious just what a dud Kerry is, the attacks on Nader have become more and more hysterical.