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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The Nader factor
By Kareem FahimRalph Nader is the only presidential candidate that Matt Craft still believes in. The 29-year-old Washington native is just the kind of voter Democrats were pursuing in the weeks leading up to the 7 November election, fearing that he could imperil what was once a sure thing. A former Democrat, Croft feels unable to trust either Democrats or Republicans anymore and voted for Ralph Nader.
Al Gore tried to persuade voters like Craft that a vote for Nader was essentially a vote for the Republican candidate George W Bush. The Gore campaign relied on friendly politicians, celebrities, and broadsheet editorial pages to put out the spreading Nader fire. An editorial in The New York Times encapsulated the substance of the appeal: "We would regard Mr Nader's willful prankishness as a disservice to the electorate no matter whose campaign he was hurting. The country deserves a clear up-or-down vote between Mr Bush and Mr Gore, who have waged a hard, substantive and clean campaign."
The Times, perhaps remembering De Tocqueville's feeling that minor parties are "generally deficient in political good faith", argued that the egomaniacal Nader purported to represent a liberal left long gone. "The spectrum has shifted, and Mr Nader cannot jerk it back by demolishing Democratic chances."
But on the Monday before Super Tuesday, polling numbers told a different story, with Nader aides confident their candidate might well do better than the five per cent needed in order to win federal matching funds for the next election. The numbers led pollster John Zogby to question the timing of the Gore attack. "I think it may have backfired," he said, adding that Nader continued to do well, especially in states considered heated battlegrounds between Gore and Bush, like hotly-contested Pennsylvania.
The Gore campaign's appeal, however, reveals the continued reluctance of America's distinctive brand of democracy to embrace outsider politics. Missing in the logic of the "willful prankishness" referred to by the Gore camp is the possibility that positions exist outside the entrenched two-party system, and that Americans might identify with them. Although young Americans turn out far less than other groups to vote, they have nonetheless energised Nader's Green Party candidacy this election, potentially altering the final outcome of the presidential race.
"In America you get a choice between a grilled cheese sandwich and a grilled cheese sandwich with an egg," said Matt Craft, a former Democratic Party elected official. "It's not a real choice. You know the quote -- vote your hopes, not your fears. I'm only going to vote what I believe in." Craft's sentiment of being "fed up" is shared by a number of voters in the 18- to 29-year-old age group that has formed the base of support for Nader's candidacy, along with those who register "independent" or identify themselves as liberals. For Craft, Gore's assault on the Green Party candidate did little to draw him back toward the Democrats.
"I thought [the attack] was funny, if anything. I didn't make me angry," he noted. "Look, Gore isn't part of the left. There's only Democratic centre-right, and Republican centre-right. And I don't buy that 'lesser of the two evils' crap." Similarly unmoved by Gore's admonitions regarding the nomination of conservative, pro-life Supreme Court judges under Bush, Craft pointed out that the Nixon-appointed Justice Harry Blackmun authored the majority opinion in the landmark Roe v. Wade case that effectively legalised abortion in the United States.
He did admit that a Bush victory was a frightening prospect. "But it comes back to the same thing," he maintained. "I'll vote for the candidate I believe in."
Which is to say that a vote for Nader is not only a vote against Bush and Gore. Last week Nader drew fire for his fiery comments on the Palestinian-Israeli violence and the ongoing negotiations between the two adversaries. "The US is taking sides; Al Gore is taking sides. You cannot be a friend to the Israelis in this conflict without being a friend to the Palestinians," Nader said on 25 October. "The military superiority of the Israeli forces is staggeringly greater than that of the Palestinian rock-throwers. Most of the deaths and injuries have occurred in Palestinian territory. So the burden of restraint is more properly placed on the Israeli(s)."
Tom Adkins, 20, a press assistant for the Nader campaign, doesn't believe Nader's statements affected support for the candidate. "Our Jewish supporters tend to be progressive -- if anything, it may have helped us gain support among the many people who don't feel their views on the Middle East are accurately reflected," he said.
Violence in Palestine and Israel has charged election races nationwide, forcing candidates to react to the Clinton administration's record of brokering a Arab-Israeli peace. Maybe because so many politicians have sided with Israel, Matt Craft felt heartened by Nader's reaction to the crisis. "Gore and Bush laid the blame [for the violence] on Yasser Arafat, which felt to me like we're living in a fun-house mirror," he said. "Nader's the only one who called that straight, the way I see it.
Related stories:
A voice, at last
Can you see a difference? 2 - 8 November 2000
Ralph Nader by George Bahgory, 2 - 8 November 2000
A voice crying in the wilderness 24 - 30 August 2000
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