Nader: The Lesser of Two Evils

This game is far from over. Next round comes this week during the Democrats' convention in Los Angeles, and I have little doubt that Gore will do his best to trump the Moron ploy. But how to drench the tv audience in elevated bathos? Perhaps by rolling out Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeve to compete in a mile-a-thon-for-Gore potato-sack race? Can't wait to see.

Here's a certainty: If things continue as is?with the Republicans moving left in their newfound compassion for the downtrodden, and the Democrats veering right with their VP nominee making seven references to Gawd in a single 90-second address?these two parties are soon going to zip right past each other.

The gap between continues to narrow. Dubya closed out his convention two weeks ago with a speech directly modeled on Clinton's '92 address, right down to aping certain phrases like "Leave no child behind." The Dems counter with a sappy and sanctimonious Joe Lieberman as much as reprising Dan Quayle's '92 jeremiads against Murphy Brown moms and subversive tv sex. En route to his nomination, Lieberman even stooped to appropriate some of Dubya's own political baggage by endorsing privatized Social Security and public school vouchers. And now the same Democratic Party scolds who couldn't bring themselves to demand that President Clinton withdraw from a 21-year-old intern's mouth piously demand that Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez be pulled from this week's convention stage because she planned a fundraiser at the Playboy mansion.

Which is not to say that no differences remain between the Democrats and Republicans. Contrasts can still be made, and the Republicans are still worse. A presidential win by Shrub, bringing on his coattails a reelected GOP congressional majority, would open the way for enactment of the full conservative agenda: the rollback of labor's political power; the blocking of minimum wage increases; more tax relief for the wealthy; more welfare for multinational corporations; increased military spending; fast-track trade treaties favoring sweatshop globalization.

The above generally leads one to invoke the Lesser of Two Evils criterion when voting: Better to hold your nose and be Gored, rather than throw your vote away for Ralph Nader and risk getting Bushwhacked by the radical right.

But that's wrong. I do believe in the Lesser of Two Evils argument. It is precisely why I'm going with Ralph. Allow me to explain:

The differences between the two major parties exist, but they are far too slight to matter. Clinton has already proved himself the most effective moderate Republican president since Ike, and Gore-Lieberman is committed to staying that course. A Democratic victory in November will do nothing to slow the increasing dominance of special interest money in the day-to-day governance of the nation, the current historic and radical redistribution of wealth and income upward, the breathless race to the bottom of the international labor market, the forced march toward the multibillion-dollar boondoggle known as National Missile Defense, the construction of a Gulag America thanks to an idiotic drug war, the rollback of civil liberties, the encroachment of moralizing harpies into the national political debate (just what kind of Supreme Court justices will Orthodox Lieberman be suggesting?) or the ever-expanding employment of the death penalty. (I can just imagine the house lights ceremoniously flickering and crackling during this week's convention balloon-drop finale in homage to California Gov. Gray Davis' lust for the state death chamber.)

So, yes, a Republican victory might be worse?but not by much.

The far greater evil would be if those of us who have railed against the permanent corporate regime in whose interest Clinton has governed, against NAFTA and fast-track, against the growing wealth gaps among us, against the outrage of 50 million Americans without healthcare, against an administration steeped in prevarication?the greater evil would be if we now rolled over and, quoting Rosanne Rosanadanna, said, "Never mind?we're voting for Gore."

America does not simmer with rebellion. But the complacency of the last two decades ripples for the first time with a palpable but still inchoate restlessness and rejection of politics-as-usual. No accident that in some places like California, Nader's Green candidacy peaks for the first time near double digits. For the first time there's a presidential candidate out there?a man veritably venerated by millions of Americans for his honesty and integrity?giving voice to precisely the anxieties that so roil so many of us.

There's a complicated synergy between elections and public opinion. Balloting tests the temperature of national sentiment. And a high enough reading can offer encouragement and some hope that an oppositional politics is possible. Likewise, voting for Gore based on his fuzzy differences with Bush surrenders that promise. Indeed, the "logic" that a vote for Nader can only help Bush forever short-circuits the possibility of a third-party victory. By this reasoning, the stronger, the more popular a third-party option, the more dangerous it would be. If you argue that Nader's current 7 or 8 percent might aid a Bush victory, then, by extension, if he were polling 20 or 25 percent he would outright guarantee that GOP triumph.

Sorry. I refuse to be hostage to Gore and Lieberman. I'll take the lesser of two evils and risk Bush for the sake of casting a principled vote for Ralph Nader.

Marc Cooper is a Los Angeles-based contributing editor to The Nation.