[Marxism] Alexander Cockburn: "C'mon Ralph, You've Got Nothing To Lose"

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
CounterPunch - Sept 26, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/


C'MON RALPH, YOU'VE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE

Go to Baghdad; Then Visit the West Bank

By Alexander Cockburn

If I were Ralph Nader, (and given the number of people screaming at me about
stabbing Kerry in the back I sometimes think I am) I'd get on the plane to
Palestine, and Baghdad and spend less time on ballot access fights with
lawyers working for the Democrats.

There's about six weeks left to run in this campaign, and Nader, the
outsider candidate, needs to finish off with a bang, not a whimper. The
Democrats have got him stuck in the trenches, running from one courtroom to
another. It's the only campaign they know how to fight. They can't sell
Kerry. Their hearts aren't really in it anyway, but when it comes to
stopping people from being able to vote for Nader, they're firing on all
cylinders.

Organized labor can't get Kerry to promise working people more than a hike
in the minimum wage to $7, but here's the SEIU putting $65 million of its
members' dues into the Kerry campaign and deploying hundreds of organizers
across the country, working 24 hours a day to keep Nader off the ballot.
It's tying Nader down. He's fighting 21 legal cases in 17 states, and as
Nader himself concedes, "The ballot access has drained our time and our
resources".

Next will be battles over Nader's exclusion from the debates (along with
other candidates like the libertarian, Michael Badnarik). At the end of the
day Nader will be looking at a vote for him on November 2 in the low single
digits and that'll be that. The way things look in mid-September the
Democrats won't be able to blame him if their man goes down, because the
person sabotaging John Kerry is manifestly and unarguably John Kerry, but a
more important fact about the way things look in mid-September is that
History's tempo is picking up. If ever there was an opportunity to seize the
hour, it's now.

Even as America's reach in Iraq contracts to a few acres in downtown
Baghdad, George Bush goes to the UN and says of the US occupying force in
Iraq "The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat. It is to
prevail." John Kerry visits NYU, says he'd have done it all different and
then, by way of constructive ideas, and mumbles absurdly about the need to
involve America's allies in the occupation, which sounds like General Custer
wiring the Canadians to come help him turn the tide at the battle of the
Little Bighorn.

At home there's been a sharp escalation in anger and resistance to the war
from the people press-ganged to fight it. Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat
unit tell reporters angrily they've been issued an ultimatum: re-enlist for
three more years or get transferred to units scheduled for deployment in
Iraq.

In Fort Dix, New Jersey, 635 soldiers from the South Carolina National Guard
scheduled to depart for a year or more in Iraq were under a disciplinary
lockdown in their barracks for two weeks. On September 22 the Army disclosed
Only about 60 percent of reservists ordered to report to Fort Jackson have
reported so far.

During Laura Bush's speech in New Jersey last Monday, Susan Niederer was
arrested for demanding toknow why her son was killed in Iraq. Niederer
interrupted Laura to ask, "If this war is so righteous, why don't you send
your children?" She was escorted out and started talking to reporters
--which was when she was handcuffed and led away. Niederer was wearing a
shirt with her dead son's picture and the words, "President Bush, you killed
my son". The official White House transcript of the speech notes applause 39
times, laughter once and four chants of 'Four more years,' but not the
interruption.

Meanwhile in the Bay Area an Army veteran represented by attorneys Michael
S.

Sorgen and Joshua Sondheimer, in association with the Military Law Task
Force of the National Lawyers Guild is bringing suit against the "stop loss"

retention of 40,000 service members forced to serve beyond the expiration of
their enlistment terms since the war in Iraq began.

Here are ripe opportunities for candidate Nader to remind people that on the
number one issue on the election agenda--the war in Iraq-- between Bush and
Kerr the electorate is offered no choice. He should give press conferences
with the parents of soldiers killed in Iraq, file suit on behalf of Ms
Niederer for wrongful arrest, array himself with those dragooned into the
war on Iraq.

Here too are opportunities to break through the iron ceiling maintained by
the two parties on discussion of Israel's crimes against Palestinians, a
topic on which Nader has already expressed himself with some force. He
should travel to Palestine, stand in front of the illegal apartheid wall and
denounce it, speak as a Arab-American on behalf of the Palestinians
beleagured by US-subsidized Israeli terror.

>From there he could travel on to Baghdad, have parleys with all 
>relevant
parties, denounce the needless sacrifice of American and Iraqi blood, the
Allawi puppet government, the theft of Iraqi national assets, the enrichment
of Halliburton and the rest, and call for immediate US withdrawal and
elections.

In other words, across the next few weeks, Nader needs to show just how
different he is, just how much is off the agenda in this miserable joke of
an election. He needs to go into the South (surrendered by Kerry to the
Republicans)and Florida to talk to disenfranchised voters, many of them
kicked off the voter rolls because of drug offenses. In Cleveland or Akron
he should stand with welfare moms pushed off the rolls by Clinton with
Kerry's vote, (the same Kerry who told women's leaders he would treat them
at arms length because they are a "special interest").

As Robin Blackburn stressed recently in our CounterPunch newsletter, Nader
and Camejo have nothing to lose so they should embrace every radical and
progressive cause they can think of. On Robin's list, the outlawing of
factory farming, $30,000 for every American reaching the age of 18, an end
to the laws against drug use, amnesty for all those convicted of drug
offenses, an end to the death penalty, a contiguous Palestinian state with
half the land and a port in the north, evacuation of all US bases abroad,
not just those in Iraq.

They could come forward with a plan to restore the employers' contributions
to health and retirement programs by requiring companies to finance a
network of state trust finds dedicated to this purpose.

At the moment the Nader campaign is mired in legal procedure. The way Nader
can counteract his former supporters signing an ad telling him to step aside
is to remind the world forcefully of the need to contest the prime function
of presidential contests in our age, which is to keep every important issue
off the table.

(A slightly shorter version of this column ran in the Nation that went to
press last Wednesday.The Nation has expended much ink and passion across the
last year denouncing Nader and urging him first not to run, then to drop
out.)

       
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