Ron Paul is waiting in the wings — TRUST.
We used to be homeys but then you dissed me, and now I must primary you.
Back in January, a little story caught my eye that hasn’t really gotten a lot of attention: the creation of a progressive-libertarian alliance between Ron Paul and Ralph Nader. At the time, I thought (and argued) that our progressive betters would attempt to bleed liberal support from President Obama in favor of Ron Paul and Ralph Nader.
To disaffected liberals or “emoprogs” (and there are not as many of them as the Professional Left and media would have you believe), Nader is all that’s green and holy and progressive. And while Ron Paul is all that’s libertarian and batshit crazy — and holds positions that are anathema to most progressive ideals, to boot — he is staunchly anti-war, and pro-weed legalization. This, of course, appeals to so-called progressives.
When I posted about this unholy progressolibertarian alliance back in January, it seemed to me that there was a problem with this new exercise in “transpartisanship” (to borrow a recently-coined term from Jane Hamsher); a lingering and pesky problem for our Progressive Betters. That problem, of course, is The Blacks™.
You see, The Blacks™ just love them some POTUS, and how in the hell could any nascent transpartisan progressive-libertarian alliance succeed if upwards of 80 percent of “Afro-Americans” support President Obama?
There has, of course, been noise of Cornel West becoming the Great Brown Hope for the white progressives. A black” in”, if you will; a way to reach black folks and potentially transfer some black support away from President Obama and to this new Alliance.1 But there was no serious talk of Cornel West joining any such doomed-to-fail effort; and so I waited for the other shoe — the third shoe — to drop.
Well, today, the third shoe dropped with a resounding “Pffft!“:
The group, led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and scholar Cornel West, said it faults Obama for the escalation of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for extending tax cuts first enacted by George W. Bush and for his actions during the recent debt ceiling negotiations.
The group said Saturday it is seeking six “recognizable, articulate” candidates who would not mount serious challenges to Obama, but “rigorously debate his policy stands” on issues related to labor, poverty, foreign policy, civil rights and consumer protections.
The group’s efforts come as Democrats are growing increasingly pessimistic about the country’s direction. Fewer than three-quarters of Democrats approve of Obama’s job performance, and less than a third believe the nation is headed in the right direction, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.
But Obama is building a formidable reelection campaign that is easily exceeding quarterly fundraising goals and is on course to raise more than $1 billion. Campaign aides last week defended the president’s slipping approval numbers by noting that more than a year before the election, he is attracting thousands of volunteers and small-dollar donors.
Nader said Saturday it is “very unlikely” he would challenge Obama, and that he is gauging the interest of former lawmakers and governors, academics, authors and labor leaders.
Sure, Ralph. I’m sure you’re out there pounding the pavement looking for a potential candidate. I’m sure you have no plans to swoop in and “take one for the team” by offering yourself up as a candidate to primary President Obama, on the off-chance that you find no one else up to snuff.
Uh-huh.
Tell me true, Ralph. What does Mr. West think of the following statements which you made about President Obama?
“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”
“I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law. Haven’t heard a thing.”
“He wants to show that he is not a threatening . . . another politically threatening African-American politician. He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.”
My guess is Mr. West doesn’t mind, given his statements regarding President Obama:
“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man, they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. It’s a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.”
“Brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”
How embarrassing.
So what’s next for this “alliance”? Ron Paul.
Just you wait.
1 Ten bucks says the “group” is actually the New Progressive Alliance. Just a hunch.
UPDATE: Seriously, this fucking guy? This guy who wondered on the night of President Obama’s election whether Obama would be an “Uncle Sam for the people or an Uncle Tom for the corporations”? The guy who applied the phrase Uncle Tom to President Obama and then defended those statements on Fox News? This guy who got called out by Fox News for racist language?
God speed, asshats.
God speed.
[cross-posted at Balloon Juice]
Bring it on. I look forward to Cornel West’s sorry ass being discredited forever in the eyes of those who currently lap up every word of his psycho-babble bullshit.
Maybe they can get Vince Vaughn to put in a good word with Ron Paul for them.
No. There should not be a primary in the first place. Obama staying the nominee without a challenge is the only thing keeping Republicans away.
Remember, everyone, Libertarian = sociopath.
Commit that to memory.
That said, I can tell you from (guarded) personal experience that Ralph Nader is easily one of the most self-absorbed, self-important assholes in public life. And one with an amazingly limited gasp on the real world, just to complicate matters.
It may well be for him that the phrase “legend in his own mind” was coined.
He has two noted accomplishments in his long, sorry life. First, getting the demonstrably dangerous Corvair off the road, and second, costing Al Gore the 2000 election.
One of those is something to look back on with pride, the other is an everlasting stain not only on him, but on the history of the United States.
Can you guess which? Sure you can…
Oh dear god…..You know, besides some ocassional grumblings from me….He really hasn’t done a bad job in overall policy. There’s times I wish some laws (Health Care) were further to the left……but, considering that the rethugs decided from the get go to defeat our President, he has a pretty good track record.
Being gay, I probably focus more on those fights in DC. And at first, my hackles started to rise. (Rick Warren) But, he did DADT correctly. If he had done it by executive order, a firestorm would have ensued. But the process had a solid foundation and its repeal will stand. While I was not happy with how the DOMA debate started, It’s in a good place right now. He has changed many other policies that have turned the tide of anti-gay attitudes in the Bureacacy.
Maybe not as fast as I would want…….but pretty damn solid all in all.
I wish Nader et al would leave him alone with crap like primary challanges. He doesn’t deserve it. If he is to get anything done, He has to find a middle ground……Hell, even with 60 dems in the Senate….he had to waterdown the initial Stimulus package.
I agree. He’s done a lot, especially on gay rights issues. It’s just sad to see Progressives cut off our nose to spite our face the same way we did with Al Gore in 2000, and we realize that a big chunk of history would have been different with President Gore rather than President Bush. We would have never gone to Iraq, probably prevented a 9/11, actually do something about climate change and been in fiscal and economic shape because we would have had no debt and a trillion dollar surplus rather than a 2 trillion dollar deficit and a 14.3 trillion dollar debt.
The group “faults Obama for the escalation of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan” which he said he’d do before he was elected, “for extending tax cuts first enacted by George W. Bush” that he just proposed taking away again, “and for his actions during the recent debt ceiling negotiations” that says nothing about a teabagging House of Representatives.
Whoever they pick had better have run at least once for dog catcher. I’m just sayin’. Show me you can govern, and we can talk.
I’m telling you, the person they end up with will be… Ralph Nader.
What get’s lost in that “Bush Tax Cut” nonsense is two things.
1. Obama wanted to keep in place the tax cuts for the bottom 95% of Americans.
2. The Senate Rethugs threatened to filibuster everyting at the end of the session unless Obama agree to keep all tax cuts in place. This included DADT and at least 2-3 other key bills.
One more time….Obama gets screwed by the Rethugs (I like that name)….and then get’s blamed by Firebaggers (Like that name too, now that I know it’s meaning).
What an unholy mess that was NOT Pres. Obama’s doing.
In fairness, I’m going to need you to cite a source where Obama said he would *escalate* in Pakistan. Obama never said “I can’t wait to do more unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan than Bush” on the campaign trail (which he wound up doing once elected). Show me the transcripts or a video link to prove your claim that Obama advocated for military escalation in Pakistan (not on some theoretical if-we-find-Bin-Laden nonsense, but actual advocating for escalated military action in Pakistan) (we can get into the Bin Laden targeted assassination and the morality of targeted assassination generally somewhere else).
Further, Obama was *always* unclear about what *exactly* he would do in Afghanistan, if my memory serves. I don’t *ever* recall him explicitly saying he would escalate troop forces there, rather he said that the focus should have been on Afghanistan and the war in Iraq should not have been started (a moot point since he continually voted for Iraq war appropriations as a Senator). I don’t have any recollection of Obama advocating 30,000 more troops being sent to Afghanistan on the campaign trail (which is what he wound up ordering, once he was elected). Show me the video link to prove me wrong, if you can.
And NO Obama supporter should be making the “experience” argument against his potential opponents; that’s what Hillary did to Obama in the 2008 election! Are his supporters that forgetful? SMH.
Troll, with a link from a blog with no comments.
Assuming something unrelated to the conversation at hand rather than answering a direct question is poor form.
Here’s a nice link for you that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan and FTW, it includes video.
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/michael-moore-rewrites-history-obama-on-afghanistan
Good quality link, thank you…the only thing is, of the three quotes from Obama on the campaign trail, only one discusses escalation and it does so very vaguely (more troops, more drones). In all honesty, that was *not* a standard part of Obama’s stump speech. I volunteered for the campaign and saw him speak in several states. I tried to watch as many televised or webstreamed speeches as I could…and escalation was never a key theme, he usually focused on the whole Iraq = dumb war, Afghanistan = smart war theme that I disagreed with, without ever outlining specific policy procedures like the 30,000 troop surge he promoted when he got into office. The majority of Obama’s problems with alienated supporters arise, in my opinion, from the vagueness of a lot of his campaign speeches on the trail…he was always thin on policy, which worried me constantly, but his overarching themes (restoring the Constitution, bipartisanship, closing Guantanamo etc) made it seem like his foreign policy would surely be a dramatic shift from Bush’s, yet when he got in office, he did in fact double down on more drones. Now, maybe you recall seeing more speeches where he advocated increased drone strikes, but I sure don’t…I was in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina rocking and rolling for the Big O and I don’t remember drone escalation being a key theme at all…this link you sent me is my first time seeing him advocate for that on the trail. I do thank you for enlightening me, I sincerely don’t remember him advocating for that.
Um, maybe he decided he shouldn’t lay out an entire military campaign until he actually was president and commander-in-chief and could consult with the military commanders who had access to more in-depth information than he had available even as a U.S. senator.
Whomever they get better have a more solid grasp of why they’re “primarying” the President than these two disingenous idiots. The reasons listed all built on top the sand where Nader and West buried their egomaniacal little heads.
I do not see a good reason to take either Nader or West seriously.
Nader is a professional gadfly; a necessary role in a society. But, he seems a spent force to me.
West, I do not know very much about. My impression is that Obama did not give West the deferential respect that West thinks that he deserves.
No, seriously. Seriously? They’re looking for someone who’s “articulate”? Seriously?
Also, too: Ralph Nader can fucking kiss my ass, and so can any American progressive who tries to help him do anything in politics ever. I’ll say it again, and I’ll say it loud, because people seem to have forgotten:
RALPH NADER IS THE REASON WE GOT THE BUSH PRESIDENCY.
So he can go fucking fuck himself with asiangrrl’s rusty fucking pitchfork. Fuck him.
i love when emily swears. :D
Fucking right.
For you, ee, I will season a dozen of my best rusty pitchforks and even help you plant them into Nader’s posterior!
Because you, my friend, are a good and loyal pal, that’s what you are.
So he can go fucking fuck himself with asiangrrl’s rusty fucking pitchfork. Fuck him.
hehehehe…I think I may add that to my DailyKos sig line with modification, if you don’t mind
My pleasure! : ) Somethings are meant to be shared.
Actually, Al Gore’s failure to win his home state of Tennessee and to seriously fight for a statewide recount (not a cherrypicked Democratic county recount) in Florida is the reason why we have a Bush presidency. Gore won the popular vote, but lacked the fortitude to fight for a statewide recount.
And how the HELL did Gore lose Tennessee? Between him and his father, his family had held a senatorial seat there for decades. Completely shameful lack of organizing, you can’t blame Nader for that. Gore would have won if he actually either (a) took Tennessee (b) at least made a serious approach to take Tennessee that would have drained Bush campaign resources or (c) actually fought like his life depended on it for a statewide recount in Florida. Gore beat Gore, period. Stop revising history.
Fuck you troll.
You know what? I’m actually the first one to place Gore near the top of the to-blame-list. If the dude had run a better campaign, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
But this is a two-party democracy, and each party always fields a candidate who does something wrong, and in a major way, in the course of the campaign. That’s just life. And still, one of them manages to win.
Ralph Nader knew this, and he knew that the only votes he would get would be votes that would have otherwise gone to Gore. Remove him from the equation, and even bearing in mind that Gore is human and made some big mistakes — we have President Gore.
So yeah. Ralph Nader still has my permission to go fuck himself.
DING!
The didn’t win Tennessee argument is what gets me. He didn’t live in the state for eight years and it’s a lost cause to Democrats anyway at this point. A redder than red state. I don’t think Romney could win Massachusetts in a presidential.
Come on, Romney moved to Mass from Michigan, he doesn’t have the roots in Mass that the Gores have in Tennessee. Massive false analogy.
Note also choice b: Gore could have poured resources into Tennessee to force the Bush campaign to put up a fight there. If Harold Ford was able to get in the 40s as a black senatorial candidate in Tennessee (and his family also has somewhat of a dynasty in Memphis), then Gore should have and could have put up a MUCH stronger fight there.
Bush’s margin of victory in Tennessee was less than 4%, you don’t think an extended campaign-long effort by Gore’s campaign to assure he took TN didn’t have a chance of working? If so, you’re way too cynical.
Not so. The people I personally know who voted for Nader would *never* have voted for Gore. They would have stayed home. You’re assuming this is a zero sum game. It’s *not*. People don’t *have* to vote. If the available candidates are completely uninspiring to them, many people can and *do* stay home. What Gore failed to do was inspire people in any way near how Obama inspired them. If anything, I wish I had a time machine so that Obama could have run for Senate earlier and been in place to run in 2000. If he had Senate experience under his belt then, I bet he could have taken Bush out. But that is the realm of science fiction.
Have to also add that Gore did win the popular vote, but he would have been better off with the ground game that Obama had…Axelrod and the crew seemed to have the electoral count sized up as early as October. Gore also decided *insanely* not to use Clinton on the campaign trail because he thought the scandals had tainted him. Clinton was then and still is loved by loads of Dems. Not to mention the fact that Clinton is one of the best natural campaigners on Earth. When I met the guy, I felt like he treated me like a cousin…for the ten seconds he talked to me. The guy had a gift on the trail that can’t be denied. I could Monday morning quarterback that campaign all day long.
Voting isn’t about being “inspired.” It’s about doing the best you can to preserve the best you have in your country and not let things get more effed up because a candidate failed to deliver the RIGHTEOUSGASM OF JUSTICE!!! you wanted. People who expect politicians to “inspire” them to vote probably also believe that their partners are supposed to be “soulmates” instead of “mates.” Most of the things that we have to do in Grown-Up Land aren’t always inspiring. For example, I’m scheduling a colonoscopy in a couple of weeks. Funzies? No. But since I know there is a history of colon cancer in my family, it’s the prudent and smart thing to do. Similarly, when you know there are demonstrable potential ass cancers like George W. Bush and Rick Perry lurking in the body politic, you take the prep, shove that scope up your fundus, and cauterize the living motherfuck out of them.
Why do people act like voting is such a big goddamn deal? Shit, in most states you can do it at home. Without pants. But EmoProg Whiners act like they’re being asked to stand out on the Pettus Bridge and get their skulls split open every time someone who doesn’t “inspire” their pwecious-wecious selves but who is indubitably better than the alternative is on the ticket.
Get over yourselves, idiots.
Yeah, Gore did not win Tennessee or go after the votes and bush had the SC 5, the corporatemediawhore$$, and Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris..BUT, Ralph lying his fucking ass off, Nader was a big part of why Bush got it.
So don’t try to sweep Ralph under the rug.
What a crock. A primary challenge would weaken Obama’s re-election chances, at the most, and whatever “Green” candidate won would lose, even to a lunatic teabagger. The way to mount a real progressive revolution isn’t to attack the only guy you’ve had fighting for your cause in DECADES, it’s to create a grassroots support system. If the voters want more progressive representatives, then the representatives themselves can BE MORE PROGRESSIVE. Without that support, it’s a lost cause. Quit bitching, emoprogs, and get out and knock on some doors.
See “Greider’s Bad Advice” for a full critique of this anti-progressive progressive movement.
The “emoprogs”, as you and ABL disparagingly refer to them, did “knock on doors” for Obama. He came back and supported a bank bailout they overwhelmingly opposed, doubled down on targeted assassinations, never got detainees that due process he promised (and left Guantanamo open), wholly ignored progressive organizing around the public option, stood by and shrugged while organized labor has been assaulted in Wisconsin, Ohio, etc, and…I don’t even feel like going on. If they decide to “knock on doors” for whatever party West/Nader propose, then God bless them.
And Obama isn’t the only person to fight for progressives in decades. That’s a huge insult to people like the CBC, Wellstone, Kucinich and many others who have banged hard for progressive causes over the years.
Yawn.
Well, whaddaya know? It is possible to quote somebody yawning!
The CBC is useless. Kucinich is an embarrassment (stumping for Syria? Seriously?)
These people are a joke. This primary is a joke.
And Naderites attempt to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the 2000 clusterfuck is, likewise, a joke.
Obama used to be a part of the CBC.
So if they’re a “joke”, what does that say about his judgment when he joined them?
SMH.
The CBC is well respected by most Dems I know. You are an outlier in that regard, as near as I can tell.
Despite what you personally think about the CBC, Kucinich et al, they do indeed fight for the progressive cause. No idea why you didn’t address Wellstone, perhaps because you don’t have an argument against his sterling record (RIP).
if you hadn’t noticed, nobody here cares. go back to FDL. i’m not wasting my time with you.
I knew Paul Wellstone.
Don’t sully his name by comparing him with that useless noisemaker Kucinich. When he can win even one statewide election, we can talk. Not until then.
He’s nearly as much a waste of a sperm cell as you are.
Paul Wellstone would never engage in the type of ad hominem attack that you just leveled. You sullied his memory with that inane response.
You dare to presume to speak for Paul Wellstone? You fucking dare? You despoil his memory by mentioning his name.
I’ll attack you when and if I feel like it, and in the way I choose. That’s not a determination you get to make, nor is speaking for my late and highly esteemed Senator.
It’s time for you to take your emo bullshit for a good long hike. Do yourself a favor and leave. I don’t see it getting any better for you here the longer you stay.
Might be entertaining for the rest of us, though. Invective practice always comes in handy.
you’re sullying my blog with your emo bullshit.
Oh, stop it. What you are is a bunch of quitters. Those progressives have done nothing but kneecap their own progress and quit for well past 30 years now–over the course of my entire lifetime–and they’re set to fold and quit again. You guys don’t fight; you lay down your arms, then whine when you get ran over, and then blame everybody else for your failure to do.
In 2000, I saw how you did your own hero, Vice President Gore, with much of the same undercutting and whining you’re doing now. I could get into how you failed to get all the toppings on your pizza by not working Congress, but seeing as you quitters don’t think Congress exists, and you’ve bought into that Imperial Presidency bullshit you were selling from 2005-2008, why waste the time?
I’m just going to lay it out there: The CBC doesn’t do shit, period, except when it’s members are taking bribes for themselves. Dennis Kucinich doesn’t do shit; hasn’t written so much as an economic bill in his entire tenure in Congress. But he (allegedly) was trying to help Libya blackmail his own government, so there’s that. And West, Smiley, et. al., don’t do shit; all those years of Black State of the Unions where they sit around discussing the same fucking issues, never yielding a plan, never building on forward momentum; just a promise to meet again in a year, pimp whoever’s book, and make jokes.
Yet some of y’all want credit for door knocks? Fuck your door knocks. You didn’t follow up with calls to your senator or representative to get the things you claim you wanted–didn’t call to close Gitmo, didn’t call to pressure them on the public option–but you want credit for door knocks, like that shit was worth $100 per door. Get out of here.
Stop overstating your effect on politics. What’s plain to see, here, is that you voted for a president, and intended to sit back on your fucking asses, and watch as your dreams of progressive utopia came true. You thought this was Disney World or some shit. Well…it isn’t. It never has been. But until you start realizing this, you will continue to live in a mirage, and quit at every difficulty that arises.
Frankly, I don’t care what you do in 2012. But stop fucking our country up, and stop fucking over the people you claim to want to help, because you didn’t get shit from Column A or Column B on your personal list of whateverthehell accomplished by whoever you think should serve as your progressive wizard-lord. I’ve watched this bullshit for 12 years, now. I’ve studied on the 38 years this act has been playing. I have had enough.
Step up, show your work, or get the fuck out of here.
::standing ovation::
Wow – OK, close the damn comment thread after that! Enough said.
I hereby nominate vcthree for comment of the week. Every time I read some idiot saying how “hard” they worked for President Obama as a candidate and how THEY deserve better, I scream “Bullshit!”.
Thank you, vethree!!
“Yet some of y’all want credit for door knocks? Fuck your door knocks. You didn’t follow up with calls to your senator or representative to get the things you claim you wanted–didn’t call to close Gitmo, didn’t call to pressure them on the public option–but you want credit for door knocks, like that shit was worth $100 per door. Get out of here.
Stop overstating your effect on politics. What’s plain to see, here, is that you voted for a president, and intended to sit back on your fucking asses, and watch as your dreams of progressive utopia came true. You thought this was Disney World or some shit. Well…it isn’t. It never has been. But until you start realizing this, you will continue to live in a mirage, and quit at every difficulty that arises.”
So freaking TRUE!
So, your plan is to uncritically support whatever Democratic incumbent happens to be running for re-election?
That is one sorry vision for the future.
Wake me up when you have a Plan B.
Plenty of progressives organized around the closing of Gitmo, etc.
You’ve been “watching” for 12 years (or is it 38?), which doesn’t make you sound like much of an activist. Stay on the sidelines then, while others move.
“So, your plan is to uncritically support whatever Democratic incumbent happens to be running for re-election? That is one sorry vision for the future.”
>> I’ll do what I want. Just like you do every other fucking election. I know what you’re selling, and I want none of it. That’s on you.
You’ve been “watching” for 12 years (or is it 38?), which doesn’t make you sound like much of an activist. Stay on the sidelines then, while others move.
>> Deflection. When you stop quitting elections, let me know, and I’ll consider this. But for the record? I’m 31, a student in college, and jobless for 3 years, now. That’s right, Mr. Super Liberal: jobless. I know you don’t give a shit. But what I really need to know is: DO YOU HAVE A PLAN TO FIX THAT? Of course not. Your whole plan is self-aggrandizement. I’m sorry, I can’t eat on self-aggrandizement. Sell smug somewhere else, pal.
VCthree:
Your comment is spot-on. The oxygen has left the room. Truth does that.
IF Nader was really interested in speaking “truth to power” he would have built a progressive movement in the 10 years since he helped hand the 2000 election to Bush. WHy hasn’t he? Because he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.
ABL, this has been the sticking point for many a former Green, myself included. The Naderites want people to drop everything and fawn at their Nerd Savior. If Nader were truly serious, he would take his substantial operation and skills to take guys like Lieberman out of office, or, at least, build a real ground level progressive movement that didn’t require him to be the front man. He’s not, a Presidential run is about selling more books and booking more speaking fees. He’s Newt Gingrich with 5x the intellect but a 5th of the personality – a shameless huckster and hack masquerading as a politician.
He’s an ego maniac and so is West. They’re both pissed that this mellow, moderate mulatto multi-tasker in the White House has done more for liberals in 3 years than either of these guys have done in the last 20.
West has written many important works on race, religion and politics. And Nader was on the forefront of consumer rights. But now, they’re media pundits who make their money talking a game with little to back it up.
The reality is that Obama does not need of these two clowns and will summarily beat any weak-kneed goober these two can find to ‘run’ against him.
It’s not the doors that you knocked on during the ’08 elections; it’s the ones that the emoprogs failed to knock on during the health care debate and during the governing process. After the POTUS was elected the legion of supporters became complacent allowing the Tea Party to take over the conversation. Since I was one of many attempting to recruit volunteers, I know well how people did not heed the President’s call on election night: his elections was only the opportunity to make change, not the change. If the Emoprogs want to be heard, they should start pushing candidates all over the country similar to the TeaGOP in 2010. However as for the President, we have our nominee and we need to support him. 81% of Dems support him contrary to many reports. For once, let’s stand together to defeat the real enemy. West and Nader can go to an undisclosed location.
The Tea Party is bankrolled by Koch Industries. They didn’t roll out of bed a fully formed organization, they’re astroturf, not grassroots. There are lots of progressive organizations that are organizing on a range of issues. Granted, some are more active than others (the peace movement particularly lost steam when Obama was elected).
I’ve typed too much about this already. Think what you will.
And about other things as well.
So what are you waiting for? Go away already.
Quit. Whining. You look ignorant. Wellstone was a Pragmatic Democrat..bet you didn’t know that. And, Kucinich is an attentionwhore..everyone knows that. Whoring for Libya..really.
111 Accomplishments of the Obama Admin during his first two years in Office before the teabagger Koch a$$holes took over Congress.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/09/so-that-ignorance-wont-be-reason-why.html#comment-302015019
spot on, nicholas. these morons want all the glory without doing the work. the work that is required is installing more progressive democrats into school boards and municipal boards and other local elected positions.
this notion that they can get a Better POTUS and then usher in an age of progressivism is laughable and displays a stunning misunderstanding of how government works.
What asiangrrlMN said.
You have to factor in history when you have these discussions. Hillary Clinton was polling around 70% with black people at this point in the 2008 election (i.e. roughly 14 months from election day). Obama trounced her in the primaries (taking greater and greater shares of the black vote as the primaries rolled on). No one is unbeatable and no one politician has a lock on the black vote nationally. Obama’s poll numbers with black people are already dropping. I have seen polls with that number in the 70s as recently as roughly a week ago.
The real problem for Nader and West is, they should have been planning this primary challenge, with a candidate in place, since 2010. Whoever was going to run should have been on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire since at least spring of this year.
In terms of the tone of this piece, I urge you (and others who agree with you) *not* to assume that (1) black people will vote as a bloc for Obama (2) Nader and West don’t have legitimate policy differences with the President (3) progressives (and the black people (progressive and not) who *aren’t* supporting Obama in polls) don’t have legitimate policy differences with the President and (4) policy differences with the President aren’t worthy of being respected, just like every view in a democracy that doesn’t overtly advocate for the oppression of one (or more) group(s) of people deserves some measure of respect, even as we disagree. I don’t see how calling someone an “asshat” is useful to the political discourse at all. Regarding Nader’s usage of the loaded Uncle Tom term, I don’t expect him to apologize to Fox but I would expect him to apologize to *us* (while, at the same time, this lays out clearly the problem of racializing internal arguments that black folk have had internally for years, i.e. the attempt to measure the blackness of one person or another by their policy positions…we built the slippery road that Nader slid down (even though I would argue we have a group prerogative to determine which members of our group are adhering to an internal code (no Reconstruction Black Codes pun) that Nader, as a racial outsider to our group, lacks) (leaving aside debates about whether phenotypical traits are even valid principles to organize around, period)).
The more important question for black voters should be what course of action serves our short term and long term interests? The historical precedent of electing a Black President has been set. Do we need to vote as a bloc for a Black President who waited until his term was 75% over to propose a jobs bill when black unemployment was rising through his whole term and never seriously addressing the foreclosure crisis when it let to a roughly 50% decline in black net worth, according to some claims? I would say no. Everyone should vote their conscience. The biggest wake up call to the Democratic Party would be if they lose any sizable portion (5% or better) of the ever-faithful black vote in a re-election campaign led by a black candidate.
Since the “Bullet Or The Ballot” speech, if not earlier, black critical thinkers have assailed the tendency of black people to vote overwhelmingly for one party (it used to be the Republicans but switched to the Democrats, particularly from the 60s forward, as they offered more policy proposals that directly addressed our community concerns). When our support was in flux like it was in the 60s, we had Republican presidents like Nixon creating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, because it still seemed like such overtures might earn (or retain) a vote or two. We lost our seat at that GOP table, from a policy perspective. I don’t think losing a seat at a prospective third party table is smart politics. If Obama wins with 51% of the vote, a progressive-libertarian third party coalition takes between 3-5% (ideally 5%) and a Republican candidate loses with 44-47% of the vote (likely given Obama’s organization and fundraising), this is a win-win (particularly if the third party coalition West and Nader proposes pulls in the magic 5% that gets them access to matching federal funds in the next election cycle).
If anything, considering rumblings from the right to form a third party that will dilute the Republican vote, black voters who aren’t Republican or conservative *should* be seeking to dilute the Libertarian vote with a progressive-Libertarian alliance, so that the conservatives don’t have complete control over the Libertarian movement and seize the crucial 5% of the vote for whatever third party *they* assemble.
This is chess, not checkers.
(cross-posted to my blog Tell A Lie Vision, because I didn’t do all this writing for nothing…LOL)
I’m the only blogger on Earth who would forget his own blog title. That should be Truth To Power. The URL is tellalievision.blogspot.com because I was always fond of that play on the word television and it started primarily as a place to criticize televised media portrayals of oppressed folks that slanted rightward/corporatist.
Your blog is a piece of shit and so are you.
Another ad hominem attack, how clever. If you care to debate me intellectually on any point in my blog, feel free to make an attempt and I will break you down to your smallest components there.
Well, I actually went and looked at your meandering, self-serving, whiny drivel-fest of a blog, and unless you can offer some evidence that you are in fact the MN-SC Justice and former Vikings and Bears defensive lineman, I’m willing to bet that “Alan Page” as your ID is just another pile of cowflop you’ve left behind.
We’ll wait.
Okay, “That Guy With The Ponytail”, the fact that you post as “That Guy With The Ponytail” makes the essential nature of your questioning the veracity of my name a basis for challenging the quality of my contribution to public debate a non-issue.
Whether or not you think Alan Page is a pseudonym is wholly immaterial to any point I might make.
In fact, it’s quite germane. Since you will lie about that, we can safely presume everything else you say is a lie.
next time, just leave a link. you don’t need to paste your whole damn post.
POTUS’s support among black folks is strong, and if you think that Nader and West are going to be able to siphon off votes, you’re sorely mistaken.
Cornel West is jealous. Ralph Nader is a narcissist. They’re both an embarrassment.
IF Nader was really interested in speaking “truth to power” he would have built a progressive movement in the 10 years since he helped hand the 2000 election to Bush. WHy hasn’t he? Because he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.
He can kiss my ass. The black part and the white part.
Moving on.
If you don’t believe Nader and West can siphon off votes, what is your opposition to them suggesting a primary challenge, then?
I just don’t see Nader as having any meaningful relevance or impact. The last time I saw him interviewed he was defending Sarah Palin as a poor woe begotten victim of ruthless people who had the audacity to ask her what she reads. He felt sorry for her. He’s pathetic. If West teams up with him, he’s on a small potatoes track.
At best, Nader and West would be vanity candidates: I cannot think either thinks in practical terms of the nasty business of actually governing this lovely but increasingly insane country. And West actually seems to believe his own “sublime and funky” bullshit and gets called on it: here is a mean but funny thread from “Crooked Timber” : http://crookedtimber.org/2009/12/02/decline-of-the-west/
And Ralph Nader? Oy. Sometimes I get depressed and think his line about a two party Fascism is not without merit, that the US is becoming like the Byzantine Empire, divided between the adherents of the Green and Blue. But if you can’t tell the difference between the Teabagger Right and the Democrats, you’re not paying attention.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I used to look at the recent efforts of the Consumer Crusader and think “oh, what a noble mind is here oe’rthrown” ; but now I think ‘Grandpa is in the ficus, again..”
Nader and West eh?
“Speaking the truth to power”. That is what each of them do.
No thank you.
better Obama drunk in a ditch than either Nader or West sober.
amen.
Since West, Bill Maher and Michael Moore are thick as hair on a dog’s back, I suppose the two laddies have found their dream ideal real “black” candidate.
I would also say that for today’s politically fashionable radical chic (comprised of Maher, Moore, Arianna, Cenk, KO, Joanie-wannabe-Walsh and the fragrant Katrina – whose mommy was verbally mau-mau’d by a Black Panther 40 years ago in Leonard Bernstein’s living room), that racism is the new black (pun intended), and Cornel West is the token at the table.
Sure, Ron Paul’s waiting in the wings. I want to see how these esteemed pundits make excuses for his “property rights” euphemism as well.
The article cited above says West and Nader are seeking candidates, not running themselves.
No. They cannot do this. They are only going to give the country back to the Repyublicans if they do.
There is a fundamental problem with such candidacies that no one is yet addressing: No one starts to build a house from the roof-peak down.
Where exactly is the “progressive” base for such candidates, in the (incredibly) unlikely event of one of them displacing President Obama and then taking the general election? How do they propose governing when most of it is made up of counting votes, not issuing edicts?
The scope and depth of their delusion would be hilarious were it not so dangerous. I point to Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter as examples of the futility of such primarying.
yes. precisely.
I’d call it more an “old white racist/old white racist” coalition than anything else.
I notice that Mr. Nader omits decent jobs from the laundry list of priorities with which he tasks Black Politicians.
Poor folk don’t work? Since when?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the Professional Left hates Obama, because Obama exposes just how ineffective the Professional Left has been over 30 years.
The CBC have been shucking and jiving for 40 years and have little to show for it. Nader hasn’t made a significant impact on politics since the mid 80′s (other than showing up every 4 years to chastise Democratic Presidential nominees for not naming him Chief of Staff). And like others have said, West and Smiley have made a pretty penny promoting…..West and Smiley, under the guise of helping Black people.
So yeah, the haters will hate, as the saying goes, but the President keeps on working. History will remember this guy as a liberal icon much like LBJ, FDR and MLK. Nobody’s gonna give a tinker’s damn who Ralph Nader or Cornell West were in 30 years.
And in the end, President West had the most satisfying revenge of all: former President Obama couldn’t get a ticket to the inauguration.
Only in Cornell West’ Afro-Picked dreams will that man ever be President of the United States, like Nader – his ego outpaces his abilities. He could barely get along with other eggheads to stay at Harvard – Congress would eat him alive.