A Confederacy of Dunces is Poised to Secede

Nader 2008

I said it a couple of days ago (in a roundabout fashion), but George Packer just beat me to the punch. I could understand defectors if I could discern any meaningful policy differences between Hillary and Obama, but the fact of the matter remains that they're moderate peas in a pod. Barack Obama may be a person of greater personal integrity and stylistic appeal (which is why I support him), but it's not as if he's Moses come down from the mount with a radically different brand of politics for us. In fact, methinks I've seen his "hope" shtick somewhere before. So what these people thinking of jumping ship really mean, in large part, is that they're willing to sacrifice the country to another four years of Republican mismanagement in order to satiate a self-absorbed need for Pyrrhic "change." Indeed, Packer cites his friend's litany of third party candidacies, that, though unsuccessful in their immediate aims, helped reshape the political landscape:

...the Teddy Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” Party got Wilson elected in 1912 and laid the ground for Republican Progressives to switch allegiances and bring F.D.R. to power in 1932. Go back even further: in 1848, the Free Soiler Martin Van Buren planted the seeds for the arrival of Lincoln and the Republican Party in 1860. Third parties remake American politics when the established parties stagnate and fail to solve chronic, structural problems (slavery, economic inequality); they bring not just a new program but new forms of politics.

Of course, the more recent tradition of Democratic defections is not nearly so illustrious, as Packer himself points out: abandoning Humphrey in '68 wrought Nixon, John Anderson's progressive candidacy helped torpedo Carter and usher in Reagan, and, well, there's no need to rehash the 2000 election. Perhaps in some distant future these events will ultimately be seen as net positives by liberals, but it's less the ideas these candidacies espoused than the subsequent havoc wreaked by their more immediate benefactors, i.e. arch-conservative Republicans, that provoked any real change in the Democratic Party. It can certainly be argued that the progressive agenda has more momentum now than at any time post-1980, though I would be more inclined to credit that fact to the successive disasters of the war in Iraq and the destruction of New Orleans, than, say, Ralph Nader.

Scuttling a prospective Hillary ticket is not going to usher in a new era of progressive politics, destroy a moribund Democratic establishment (nominally headed, it's worth noting, by Howard Dean), or even unify the party behind Obama in 2012. What it will do is keep us in Iraq longer, forestall meaningful health-care reforms, and ensure that our tax policies continue to favor the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the rest of us. Every subsequent setback and disaster will be on the heads of those "Democrats" holding out for a spotless white knight embodying each and every one of their pure-as-the-new-driven-snow "latté liberal" wet dreams to emerge on horse back and spirit the country off to some inconceivable post-partisan utopia. The rest of us, meanwhile, have already figured out that he's holed up somewhere with the Easter bunny and Santa Claus, who also don't fucking exist. This year, to borrow a familiar phrase, you are either with us or against us.