Gore Endorses Obama, Not That It Matters

Former VP Al Gore decided to wait for the primary to finish to endorse a candidate, and then he waited a few more weeks. Well today is that magical day, when he finally decided to descend from wherever it is he comes from, and stated what was an obvious, foregone conclusion--that he is endorsing Obama over McCain. Shocker.

He isn't Lieberman, this wasn't really something that needed to be said, but it is nice that he is going to take a more active role in the campaign, finally. I hope he goes to every state advocating for Obama and fighting global warming.

I'll post more after he gives his speech.

Update: Still waiting for the video or full transcript. Not sure what is holding it up. Here is a story with some quotes though.

Update #2: Here's the video:

I Don't Know How To Put This Ralph Nader, But Fuck You

I’ll preface this by saying I heart what Ralph Nader stands for as a general rule. I think his messages concerning consumer rights, environmentalism, human rights, feminism, anti-corporatism and anti-imperialistic foreign policy are infinitely important and need to be front and center in our national spotlight, instead of relegated to dark dusty alley that is minority-party politics.

Having said that, there are positive steps that can be taken to achieve this, and then there are steps that are obviously very very imprudent. A prudent choice would be speaking out about the issues while challenging the Democratic Party to take on the issues as part of their continuing agenda. An example of an imprudent choice would be running for president when you obviously don’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell of winning, despite the high probability of hurting the chances of the only viable candidate with similar basic values.

In 2000 Ralph Nader made the imprudent choice of running for president in the “key” state of Florida. This could have very well handed Florida over to George W. Bush, but it didn’t. What it did do was give Gore a small enough margin of victory that Bush’s family and friends were able to use their political pull to steal the state, thereby stealing the presidency of the United States for the next eight years. Some may take exception to this, but the facts speak for themselves if you take the time to research the topic. Regardless, this blog isn’t about the Republicans stealing the 2000 election, it is about common sense.

Nader has continually been faulted by Democrats for causing Al Gore to be defeated in Florida in 2000. He has continually responded to such criticism by saying that it was the major parties that failed the American public in the election, and that the voters needed a real choice, so it was his duty to run. Rhetorically, that is wonderful. In principle, that is great. In reality, not so smart. In fact, I’d call it horribly irresponsible. The question is, was the principle worth throwing the presidency to Bush?

Let’s look at a counterfactual. Suppose Nader had decided that the risks of a Bush presidency to the country and the world were too great to chance siphoning a significant number of votes from Gore in a battleground state. Al Gore would have won by a wide enough margin in Florida that all of Bush’s connections in Florida, the Supreme Court, and the media couldn’t have stolen him the election. What could have gone differently? Chances are that Gore would have listened to the intelligence warnings that had come from the Clinton administration, instead of ignoring them as Condoleezza Rice had, and may have very well prevented the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11th. Instantly everything is different, without the shadow and repercussions of Sept. 11th looming over events, the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan would have never occurred. The shockwave of repercussions of this through the last six years are innumerable, but so as to not put too much weight on thwarting the terrorist attacks, let’s move on assuming that all occurred the same way.
Without the political and corporate interests of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld running the show, the illegal invasion of Iraq based on distorted intelligence and propaganda would have never occurred, and America would have been spared a historic blow to its image abroad. More importantly, the over one million Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of the bombing and invasion would be alive today, to say nothing about the countless wounded, crippled, orphaned and/or psychologically traumatized. There would also be 4,000 more American soldiers alive today than there are now (notice that that number far exceeds the number of Americans who died on 9/11), along with tens of thousands less wounded and crippled veterans. Iran would have also not been left to fill a power vacuum in the Middle East, nor would it be encouraged to develop nuclear weapons because of the lessons learned from US aggression toward Iraq. North Korea, a much greater threat to American interests, would have also not been wholly ignored while it developed nuclear weapons. With our attention and resources not diverted by Iraq, we would have most likely captured Osama bin Laden years ago (whereas Bush stated a few years ago that he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about bin Laden anymore), yet instead today he is a hero to millions around the world and the center of an organization whose ranks are swelling exponentially with each act and declaration from the Bush administration. Abu Ghraib would have never became a rallying symbol for anti-Americanism while it further blackened America’s credibility as a defender of human rights. Guantanamo Bay would have never become America’s gulag and black hole of human rights and Constitutional liberties. We wouldn’t have a government that believes torture is a sound method of making Americans safer. We also wouldn’t have a government that believes that breaking federal law by illegally wiretapping American citizens without a warrant is completely within the rights of the president. The United States wouldn’t have backed out of the International Criminal Court. The United States also wouldn’t have backed out of the Kyoto Protocol and our government wouldn’t have spent the last eight years fighting all attempts at curbing global warming.

Domestically we wouldn’t have given huge tax cuts to the richest Americans, while dumping billions into the war machine to benefit Halliburton and other key politically connected corporations, resulting in the largest budget deficits in American history. We wouldn’t have a government that aggressively targets social services that help lower and middle class Americans while giving corporate lobbyists full control over important regulatory agencies like the EPA, FDA, USDA and Dept. of Education, just to name a few. We would live in a country where we could have some faith in our government to tell us the truth and have our interests at heart, as opposed to one that is historically unrivaled in terms of secrecy and cronyism. We would also live in a country that believes in accountability and justice. We would live in a country where the president lying about a sexual affair was still shocking, instead of one where the Executive breaking federal statutory law, defiling the Constitution in nearly way imaginable, making torturing POWs national policy, and lying and distorting intelligence in the run up to an illegal invasion in which hundreds of thousands of people have died is viewed as business as usual and no cause whatsoever for impeachment or reprimand. We also wouldn’t have a Supreme Court and federal judiciary filled with conservative automatons (with life terms) just itching to expand the power of the Executive branch while attacking personal freedoms of ordinary citizens, like a woman’s right to make choices affecting her own life and health.

That was just a short counterfactual, providing the smallest glimpse at a few of the major repercussions of the presidency of the United States being in the hands of George W. Bush for the last eight years. It was unfortunately neither comprehensive nor exhaustive. Nearly everything mentioned affects us all in one way or another. Virtually everything Bush has done in the last eight years has been to the detriment of every issue Ralph Nader and his supporters stand for. Not only has there been no progress on these issues, the Republicans have actually rolled back the advances of the pre-Reagan, and have been hard at work targeting programs that go as far back as FDR. In essence, the last eight years represent the worst-case scenario for Ralph Nader and his supporters.

So why did he run? Ostensibly for the principle. Because of the “statement” it would supposedly make. My question is, was it worth it Ralph? Was your political statement worth losing ground on every issue that matters to you? Maybe you can say it was worth it in the end, at least for you. Maybe you can say that the satisfaction of refusing to back down was worth decades of progress in all you profess to believe in. But was your political statement worth the lives of over a million innocent Afghan and Iraqi civilians? Was it worth the lives of 4,000+ American soldiers? 3,000+ American civilians on 9/11? Tens of thousands of wounded American soldiers? Was it worth the hundreds of thousands who were lucky enough to come back physically sound, yet have seen things that no person should ever see, things that will leave a mark on them for the rest of their lives? What about the millions of Iraqis with the same mental scars? What about all the Iraqi children that are growing up in a war zone? What about the ethnic cleansing and civil war? Was it worth all those lives Ralph? You were apparently more than willing to sacrifice all them for your so-called principles. I don’t think you had the right to sacrifice them though, those were their lives and livelihoods to sacrifice, not yours. Of course it’s not fair to blame Ralph Nader for all of these deaths, not directly at least, those sins fall on Bush and his Republican allies, and those in Congress who supported his war. Ralph in 2000 couldn’t have known the exact magnitude of the damage Bush would eventually cause as a result of his election; he couldn’t have known the magnitude, but he knew there would be damage, we all did. Therefore what he was guilty of in 2000 was negligence and recklessness. Hindsight is 20/20 though, as they say.

Hindsight is 20/20…Yet in 2004, we had a chance to truncate Bush’s reign, to right the wrongs of the 2000 election. We had a chance at damage control. Certainly after four painful years of facing the repercussions of the 2000 election it would be clear that we must rally together to remove Bush from office. Yet Nader had the audacity to run again, obviously still favoring intangible principles over real life consequences. However his numbers in the 2004 election were anything but shock and awe, showing that most of his supporters from 2000 had since learned the lessons that continued to elude the candidate himself. Despite his lackluster impact, going into the race there was still the possibility that he would again have a decisive spoiling effect. Despite the previous four years, he nevertheless tried to do it again, knowing full well this time both the meaninglessness of his actions, and the possible grave consequences. The first time was negligent; the second time, inexcusable.

So, it is obvious that Ralph Nader is consistently willing to put his purportedly beloved social issues, the reputation of an entire nation, AND the lives and livelihood of millions of innocent people behind his “principles” and political statements. We know what the cost has been, but what has stubbornly sticking to his principles in the last two elections gained him? An obvious place to start: when is the last time you heard anyone praising Ralph Nader’s heroic stand? Or another question: when you think about Ralph Nader and the 2000 election, what comes to mind first? 99 times out of 100 the answer will either be “that bastard gave the election to Bush” or “that stupid ass liberal gave the election to Bush, yeehaw!” How about: when you think about Ralph Nader and the 2004 election, what comes to mind first? You’ll probably get a response falling somewhere between “who gives a shit?” and “Nader ran in 2004?” The conclusion: his “political statement” in 2000 and 2004 didn’t mean anything to anyone but himself and a handful of diehard supporters, yet they made a world of difference to millions in this country and around the world. But have his bold political statements at least pushed his pet issues into the mainstream? Of course not. Instead of being able to add more progressive reforms to their agenda, the Democrats have been forced on the defensive; thus for the last eight years their only hope has been to try to mitigate the damage caused by the Republican-controlled government. In short, Nader has nothing to show for making his stand, except helping the Republicans hijack American politics for eight years.

Break back to 2008. We are fast approaching another opportunity to take a new path. Bush is out no matter what, but the same party and the same policies and priorities are on the ballot. We may be too late to undo much of the damage done by the Republicans in the eight year reign of the Bush administration; however there remains damage that we may still have one last chance at reversing. The nation is still divided and the stakes are still incredibly high. If nothing else, the last two presidential terms have taught us that politics matter, and that who we elect is indeed crucially important. We have to be smart about whom we elect, and politicians need to be smart about the consequences of their actions. Today Ralph Nader officially announced that he was running for president again in 2008.

I don’t know how to put this Ralph Nader, but fuck you.

Update: I should say, I don’t think his run will hurt Obama’s ability to beat McCain, because Obama has filled the change void that existed at the end of the Clinton administration. I believe Obama’s appeal far outshines that of Ralph Nader, and most of his margins of victory will be more than enough to defeat McCain, in theory. That still in no way diminishes the recklessness of his candidacy. I also believe that this is just reason #9915 why Hillary Clinton is a horrible choice for a nominee, because I think her nomination would likely push some disillusioned progressives over to the Nader camp, as would it push some moderate Democrats and most Independents over to McCain. This just makes a strong showing in this election all the more necessary.