Tag: Ralph Nader

“New” Dems, Old Insults.

If you can judge a man by his enemies, then Howard Dean picked up a key endorsement last week. Via Scully by e-mail, Al From’s Democratic Leadership Council – one of Al Gore‘s main water-carriers in 2000 and an organization which counts Joe Lieberman and Bob Graham among its members – decides to attack Howard Dean as an “elitist.” What garbage…The DLC is going to have find a better way of dealing with their left flank than simply casting old GOP insults their way. It’s exactly this type of Republican-lite thinking endlessly promoted by From’s organization that made Ralph Nader the spoiler in 2000. Don’t think it couldn’t happen again. Update: Perhaps Clinton will straighten ’em out, although it sounds like he’s just reading from the Lieberman-Graham playbook instead. Update 2: Independent James Jeffords criticizes the DLC remarks, calling it “incredible to hear such charges coming from Democrats.” Not as incredible as it once was, I’m afraid.

Behind the Green Door.

In the election of 2004, will the Dems have to keep an eye on the Green Machine? As David Talbot reports, Ralph Nader will probably run again, despite calls that he back down to support an anti-Bush coalition. Actually quite a fascinating article, not only to discover that Michael Moore is giving the Greens good advice (his message: follow the example of the Christian Coalition and build from the bottom-up) but also because it’s the Dems that are freezing out cross-progressive talks between the parties. Bad, bad call: playing hardball with your left flank is only going to further embitter Green voters, and we’ve already seen where that got Gore.

Taxpayers for Jeb.

TNR explores how Dubya’s using your money to re-elect his brother (and keep the Florida machine greased for 2004.) Amazing how little we’ve heard about this considering all the treatment the FALN clemency story got during Hillary’s run. (Speaking of Hillary, my respect for her diminished further — it was already pretty low after the “somebody should kill Nader” bit on election night — when she got in a shouting match with Russ Feingold over campaign finance reform last week. Apparently, she’s already trying to find ways around the ban.)