Nader the Narcissist: Unsafe in any Election

Please note: This post has also been published at TPMCafe, and has received 25 comments as of July 3, 2007. I hope you are going to join the discussion at TPMCafe or continue it here.

The first half of this title is inspired by Tood Gitlin's criticism of Nader running as an independent in the 2004 election: From Tragedy to Farce, concluding that his narcissism knows no limits:

So, when all is said and done, leave aside Nader's wishful thinking -- his hallucination of ideologically aroused masses, his prayer that the Electoral College system might vanish. What Nader's decision amounts to is not logic but an exercise in monomania by a man who once accomplished great things and now believes that whatever he claims to accomplish is great by virtue of the fact that he claims it. Quixotic Nader, whose first run was tragedy, now tries farce. It's not funny.

This conclusion is as true today as it was three years ago. In fact, it might even be more true and potentially more tragic, and even less funny, because apparently he is seriously thinking about running again in 2008!

In 2000, Nader arguably helped Bush defeat Gore. As a reminder, Gore lost to Bush in Florida by only 537 votes, whereas Nader received 97,448. Most analysts agree that many of those who voted for Nader would otherwise have voted for Gore had Nader not run, at a minimum 538. In 2004, his role was insignificant. What will his impact be in 2008, if he decides to run again?

He has started calling Hillary Clinton a "coward," and, in his recent article, Hillary's Hypocrisy, criticizes what he calls her "twofer strategy:

So she travels around the country with her twofer strategy - pandering to powerful audiences and flattering gatherings of Democratic voters. She has watched Bill’s lack of political fortitude win elections in this two-party, elected dictatorship against the hapless Republicans. Why should she be any different?

If she wins the primary and the November elections the country will get another kind of twofer in the White House. Here they’ll go again.

In an interview with Politico.com, Nader Ponders Run, Calls Clinton "Coward," he gives all the familiar reasons for running yet again, essentially revolving around the necessity to offer a real alternative to what he sees as the two party duopoly and the corporate interests that dominate the political system.

Nader believes that the Democrats are likely to win the presidency and maintain their majority in Congress. And yet, he still wants to run.

What third parties can do is bring young people in, set standards on how to run a presidential election and keep the progressive agenda in front of the people. And maybe tweak a candidate here and there in the major parties.

For a persuasive explanation of how futile if not counterproductive third parties tend to be in a two-party system and an electoral system based on plurality, and a devastating critique of Nader's justification of his 2000 campaign, see Bill Domhoff's Why Third Parties Don't Work (March 2005). From a progressive point of view, what does this mean for the future strategy of the Green Party? Indeed, a very strong argument can be made that running as a third party candidate in the US tends to be counterproductive.

For the most part, Nader's attempts were pretty much irrelevant; but in 2000 they were fatal. Beyond spoiling the election of Gore, the deeper issue seems to be that Nader is not sufficiently concerned with the effects that a conservative presidency has on precisely those less privileged people that he claims to care about so much. For he must have known how close the election was going to be, both in 2000 and 2004; and likely also in 2008. And how credible is his emphasis on how indispensable third parties are in the US while running as a an independent candidate in 2004, and not as a candidate of the Green Party, as he did in 2000?

Most importantly, how much does the progressive agenda really matter to him when deciding to run? From a strategic point of view, running as a third party candidate takes away precious resources and attention from those candidates who actually do have a chance of winning and therefore can advance the progressive agenda much more effectively.

Nader is 73 now. No one denies the crucial role he has played in advancing progressive causes. But it is high time for him and all other progressive third party candidates to start behaving more responsibly in elections, if not more strategically in politics in general. Quo vadis, Nader?

Bill Clinton, Strategist in Chief

In New Role, Senator Clinton's Strategist in Chief was published in the New York Times on May 13, 2007. This article is interesting insofar as it reflects a widespread understanding of "strategy" that we have noticed all along. This is all the more interesting since this article presents Bill Clinton not only as a mere strategist, but as some sort of super strategist. Accordingly, one might be forgiven to expect to learn something about the long-term goals and big picture thinking of this super politician. But there is nothing of this sort. Instead, strategy is reduced to electoral strategy and, as is frequently the case, is being confused with tactics.

The following excerpts are supposed to illustrate this point:

Bill Clinton's connections, and his endless supply of chits, only begin to capture his singular role in his wife's presidential candidacy, advisers and friends of the couple say. He is the master strategist behind the scenes; the consigliere to the head of ''the family,'' as some Clinton aides refer to her operation; and a fund-raising machine who is steadily pulling in $100,000 or more at receptions.

So far, his roles have unfolded in private as he provides ideas to his wife and makes sure she paces herself, and as he acts as something of a field general with donors, instructing them on how to talk up Mrs. Clinton.

The Clintons mostly talk about strategy, not campaign management, advisers say. (my emphasis)

Now, when I read this sentence, I got excited, expecting to hear something about strategy; I was all the more disappointed when I read on to see how the paragraph continued:

He receives polling data from Mr. Penn, who was his pollster in 1996, and the two men speak regularly. He sometimes looks over drafts of Mrs. Clinton's major speeches, and he gives her feedback on her performances.

Advisers say his advice to her can be boiled down to a few broad themes. He urges her to remember that the biggest person gets elected (in other words, the one who rises above political pettiness) and that the most optimistic candidate wins. He has encouraged her to talk about average people who work hard and play by the rules, classic Clintonian language. And she has, using those phrases and other themes in talking, for example, about regular Americans who are ''invisible'' to the Bush administration. (Advisers say Mr. Clinton did not devise the invisible line.)

So apparently this is how the leading paper in the country understands strategy, essentially as polling, framing, and messaging. Interestingly enough, in a profile of Hillary Clinton's top strategist, Mark Penn, the other leading paper in this country, the Washington Post, exhibits a similar understanding of strategy. Clinton's PowerPointer: With Data and Slides, a Pollster Guides Campaign Strategy of April 30, 2007, appeared in the Post's series "The Gurus: The professionals who manage the machinery of American politics."

With the same pollster in charge of "strategy," a very similar network of advisers and a very similar platform, one should not be surprised to get with Hillary what the country got with Bill: Clintonism 2.0, the updated version. Not surprisingly, apparently one of the Clinton campaign's major concerns is whether the country is ready for yet another Clinton or whether there is still too much "Clinton fatigue" around.

One way for progressives further to the left to respond to this state of progressive "strategy" is to quote the great strategist Sun Tzu: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." For indeed, the sad truth is that winning elections is the be all and end all of centrist strategy. Getting Clinton (or Obama, or ...) elected is the ultimate goal. By the way, it is rather sobering to contemplate that if Clinton got elected and re-elected, that would give us 28 years (almost three decades!) of uninterrupted rule by the two most powerful political machines in the country.

For more liberal progressives however, this state of affairs is precisely part of the problem, not part of the solution. For them, getting yet another centrist elected is "tactics without strategy," is "the noise before defeat," because this is not the way to significantly change the country. You win a battle, but you lose the war. Hence the urgent need to develop a strategy that allows us to win the war.

By necessity, this strategy goes far beyond election cycles. That seems to be one of the reasons why hardly anybody is thinking about it. What you find much more is something along those lines: 'Bush is so bad, we absolutely have to get a Democrat elected in 08! Now it is even more urgent than in 2004!! This must be our absolute priority!! Electability is everything!!!' -- And then what?

On the Primacy of Fundraising

Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN), last December, after only two weeks, dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for President (Rumor has it that one main factor was Obama getting ready to enter the race, attracting so much attention and money).

In an interview with NPR's All Things Considered on February 12, 2007, Bayh spoke very frankly about how much time he had to spend on fundraising. A "non-celebrity candidate" (probably referring to "rock star politicians" Clinton and Obama), he said, without exaggerating, has to spend 80-90% of his/her time raising money.

He went on to describe a typical day: After getting up, his fundraising breakfast is followed by fundraising calls; then there is a fundraising lunch followed by - you guessed right! - more fundraising calls; and then, there is a fundraising dinner and/or reception, followed by yet more fundraising calls to the West coast, depending on where in the country he is.

All this of course is nothing new; but to hear someone who experienced this himself talk about it in such a calm and matter-of-fact way, is still sobering.

It is also well known that any candidate who wants to have a chance in 08, has to raise at least $100 million in 2007 alone. The year having 52 weeks, this translates to roughly two million dollars per week, almost $300,000 per day (assuming, realistically, a seven-day fundraising week), and about $30,000 per hour (assuming, admittedly, a rather short 10-hour fundraising day)! Welcome to contemporary US politics!

While small donations, especially raised online, are increasingly important, the bulk of the money still comes from relative few major donors and donor networks. What most donors are most interested in is whether their candidate can win, which is largely determined by how well he/she does in the polls, which in turn is largely determined by how much money they have to buy airtime to gain name recognition, get their message across, and build an appealing public persona. So there clearly is a circular relationship between fundraising capability and probability of success. Everything else, especially their platform, becomes a function of this absolute priority of having to raise $30,000 per hour.

Since 1976, it has always been the candidate who had raised the most money, who eventually was nominated by his party to run. This means that it's not the people who decide who is running, but a handful of donors. This will be the case all the more this time around because with several big states moving up their primaries, this will be the longest and costliest campaign in history. By this time next year, we will know who is running.

This also means that this pattern is all the more likely to hold in 2007. As of now, by most estimates, Hillary Clinton, together with her husband, and their whole infrastructure, will be able to raise the most. My big concern, like that of many, is that she will be nominated as the Democratic candidate, and then might not win - truly a worst-case scenario.

What does all this mean for progressive grand strategy? It can only mean one thing: It's the money, stupid! The logic is impeccable: You want to win; in order to win, you have to raise the most money; in order to raise the most money, you have to get the biggest donors on your side; in order to get the biggest donors on your side, you have to promise them the kinds of policies that they prefer seeing enacted once you win; etc., etc.

How can progressives even begin to break this vicious cycle, which systemically deforms the US political system?

Already 66 years ago, the liberal Supreme Court Chief Justice, Louis Brandeis, had a sobering answer:

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both." (Labor Journal, October 17, 1941, p. 18)

Unfortunately, this is precisely what has been happening in this country in the last 30 years, and especially since 2001: A greater and greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, who use this wealth to literally buy political power and influence. Money is power, and money talks louder than civil society; at least for now.