Democrats needn't fret about Nader
Is Ralph Nader a secret agent for the GOP?
Maybe, but does anyone seriously believe he matters any more? Like other third-party candidates before him, he's had his moment. Now, it is gone.
Many Democrats think Nader handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush. If even a fraction of his votes in either Florida or New Hampshire had gone to Al Gore instead, runs the argument, the outcome of the election would have changed.
Now Nader, the dyspeptic warrior of American politics, is back in the mix. That has Democrats in a panic. Sure, recent national polls put either John Kerry or John Edwards well ahead of Bush. Few think that will last, however. Once the race tightens, they fear, Nader could end up making the fatal difference.
Democrats needn't fret so.
Some practical issues hamper Nader's effort this year. He has started late in the electoral game. He needs to collect an estimated 700,000 signatures to get on the ballot in all 50 states. He has little money and, since he has decided to go it alone (he ran under the Green Party's banner last time), little organization.
More significantly, however, Nader's irrelevancy is part of a regularly occurring phenomenon. At various times, third parties or independent candidates pop up on the political landscape. For a time, they may gain a toehold on the mountain. But it's only that. Despite promises to the contrary, they eventually slip and fall into obscurity. That's what happened to George Wallace in 1968, John Anderson in 1980 and Ross Perot in 1992. That's what is happening to Nader right now.
For a country
founded on revolution and peopled by immigrants drawn from everywhere,
That, however, marks the only time one party has supplanted another - and it took an impending civil war to do it. Sure, other third parties have made their mark, including Free Soilers, Socialists and, most notably, the Progressives (Teddy Roosevelt got 28 percent as a Progressive in 1912). But none has won the presidency. And, more intriguingly, even when they have seemed relatively successful, third parties don't last.
Why is that? It all comes down to the presidency. The presidential election is a winner-take-all event, with no opportunity for a run-off. This puts incredible pressure on various factions to band together in support of a candidate who can win a majority of votes. It becomes a two-party, us-vs.-them contest.
The natural downside of this is something Nader has observed: The two parties end up becoming more like each other. Nader deems this corruption (he's blaming large corporations). In fact, it's something far less venal: Parties figure they can always count upon their die-hard members. To win, however, they need to attract centrists. To do so, they move to the middle.
Occasionally, though, the ideologues take umbrage at this. George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan all ran out of frustration that neither of the major parties was giving serious credence to their concerns.
Having vented and perhaps made their point, however, they then seemed to go away.
Take Perot, for example. In 1992, he got an astonishing 19 percent of the vote. Determined to capitalize on that success, he created the Reform Party. The result? Four years later Perot received just 8 percent. By 2000, Buchanan controlled the collapsing party and he received less than one-half of 1 percent.
Nader is following the same path. Nader's message in 2000 was similar to one originally voiced by Perot: The two parties seemed to be clones of each other. That message resonated with leftists who were unhappy with Bill Clinton's welfare reforms and his support of free trade. They also rationalized that Bush was a centrist, making him and Gore near equivalents.
Few today believe Bush and Gore were political twins. One-time followers of Nader can pretend that the Democratic Party has heeded their message and moved leftward, allowing them to return to the fold with a clear conscience. The reality, though, is that it is the imperatives of winning - even with a flawed candidate - that brings them back.
As Perot went, so will go Nader. Watch the polls. Democrats quickly will find they have little to fear from the spoiler of 2000. Still, there may be one lesson they can draw from the experience. Perhaps they can try a little subterfuge of their own. How about persuading Pat Robertson to run?
Talk back to Tom Keane at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.