Ralph Nader was right. The Democrats didn’t need his help to lose. Nader’s share of the vote was miniscule. He thought, as many people did, that John Kerry would win. Nader held his final rally at a rundown library in the District of Columbia to draw attention to the misplaced priorities of a city focused on a new stadium while neglecting the needs of its citizens. “Welcome to John Kerry’s America,” he concluded, satisfied that even if few people were listening, he had spoken out and put pressure on Kerry to do better by America’s urban communities.
Nader offers a plausible if self-serving analysis for what went wrong for Kerry and the Democrats. He blames the “Anybody but Bush” mindset that led Democrats to set aside their issue differences with Kerry and give him a free ride. “Leave Kerry alone—make no demands on him,” that was the mantra, says Nader. The party’s various factions—labor, liberals, women, environmentalists—took a holiday. “They allowed Kerry to adopt ambiguous wishy-washy positions and they deprived him of the key to victory, which is bright lines,” says Nader.
Some of us have been saying for months that there was no way John Kerry was going to erase a stubborn 2-3 percent shortfall, for a variety of reasons. His unsolvable problems ranged from his Brahmin, aristocratic coldness and deductive pessimism, to his transparent and opportunistic flip-flopping, to the venomous "help" of the Michael Moore/Howard Dean/Al Franken extremist fringe, to the incongruity of billionaires voicing boutique leftism — whether that be the often-polarizing Teresa Heinz Kerry or the creepy George Soros. The electorate also sensed that a Kerry victory would represent to the Europeans, the Arabs, and our enemies in the field a repudiation of the current struggle against the terrorists.
Two multimillionaire lawyers from the East Coast were not populists in the manner of a Richard Gephardt, and it was the epitome of arrogance to pretend that they were. Now is not the time for the Democrats to harp about "a divided county," but to ensure that next time Hollywood, MoveOn.org, rock stars, and billionaire currency speculators do not headline their campaign, though venom and money they may bring. Perhaps someone in the Democratic party will tally up a Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry and conclude that there is a pattern here that leads to political suicide. And perhaps the world will conclude that America, thank God, still stands firm against the utopian socialism of the U.N., Europe, and its own privileged sophisticates.
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Article comments
1 - Hal Pawluk
On a lighter note, this news report:
2 - RJ
I hope these "Americans" all move far, far away...
3 - Shark
RJ: "...I'm not sure what makes me happier: Kerry losing, or Leftist "journalists" losing..."
And how do you feel about America losing?
...Iraq.
You broke it -- you own it.
Have a nice four more years.
~ahahahahah~!
4 - Jim Carruthers
So pleasant that with Martha in prison, scrap-booking and doily making has moved beyond her usual constituency.
5 - Hal Pawluk
It's nice to see Canadians helping the US again (as they did with housing the planeloads of Americans on 9/11).
I wouldn't have thought of trying to make The Ugly American look better your way, but it's definitely working. It's always handy to have a worse example for comparison.
I'm not sure you had to make it that much worse, but keep up the good work, Carruthers.
6 - andy marsh
God Bless America - I'm really starting to think fences are a really good idea!
7 - Jim Carruthers
Amazing how a little strong Canadian language from the land of Terrance and Philip can make such he-men like RJ and whatnot crap their pantaloons.
So, you don't have a functioning government, so, instead, fear being called a bunch of cock-knockers by the rest of the world.
Yes, a fence would be what it would take to prove you are living in the equivilent of east germany.
Boo! hey, look everybody, he crapped his pants! Boo!
8 - boomcrashbaby
I thought the Right did not care what anybody outside our borders thought anyway.
I think Canadians are noble.
9 - Bob A. Booey
None of these so-called pundits you quote really said anything. Most of the post-election analysis has missed the point, by and large.
That is all.