[Standard introduction: Politics can bring out the best in people. It can also bring out the worst. All Nader supporters are, or will be, under attack from Democrats. Sometimes the best response, especially when personal friends or family members are involved, is to agree to disagree -- and postpone any discussion until a couple weeks after the election.

Some folks are so wrought up they are not just unwilling, they are truly incapable of dealing with reasoned analysis.

But for those with whom you can have a civil discussion during the next week you might consider the following.]

Consider our independence from England, the abolition of slavery, the creation of unions’ rights to organize, World War II, or the civil rights movement.

Freedom involves risk analysis, benefit-cost analysis. How big is the evil we’re confronting? What risk do we assume in trying to do away with it? Is the risk worth it?

So it is today with the evil of corporate money eating at the core of democracy. It has turned off over half the electorate, now cynical or apathetic. It blocks the legislative reforms that are desperately needed by all of us as consumers, taxpayers and citizens. It increases the ever-widening gap between rich and poor. It distorts the political dialogue in the mass media. And every year it gets worse.

What strategies are available to us to fight it?

For 30 years I’ve worked with Ralph Nader, and as a national board member of Common Cause, to make appeals to members of the U.S. House and Senate for meaningful campaign finance reform. Most thoughtful politicians agree about the seriousness of the evil. After all, they have to live with it. But none is able to cut the cord. The two major parties, now dependent upon their millions in soft money, have proven themselves to be incapable of change.

Others are willing to keep trying. “Be patient,” they say. I say 30 years is enough patience. It’s time to try something else.

What "something else"? I’m open to suggestions. But my friends who are Gore supporters offer none.

I’m a life-long Democrat. For over 50 years I’ve worked at every level from precinct chair to Democratic National Committee task forces. I’ve run for Congress as a Democrat, and held three presidential appointments from two Democratic presidents.

Working with a third party is not something I seek or undertake lightly. I’m quite serious when I say I would welcome some other strategy. But, as the saying goes, "desperate times call for desperate measures."

Third parties have worked in the past when big business has become too powerful (Democrats late 19th Century; Republicans in 1912). No strategy is foolproof, including that of the Green Party. But history indicates it’s the best chance we have.

So, what’s the risk?

The risk is that George W. Bush may become president. Is that something I’d just as soon not happen? You bet it is.

But who’s responsible if Gore loses?

• The Democrats who’ve taken millions from the same corporations that fund the Republicans.

• The Democrats who’ve served their corporate beneficiaries.

• The Democrats who’ve turned their backs on the trade unions, working class, and poor who have given them overwhelming majorities in the past.

• The Democrats who have ignored and alienated their own progressive wing.

• The Democrats who have contributed to the cynicism that kept 51 percent of the electorate at home in the 1996 election.

• The Democrats who selected as their candidate a Vice President known to be stiff, lacking the charisma necessary to turn on the inattentive and undecided voters necessary to win, who projects that “there’s no there there” as handlers remake him from time to time, and who has a tendency to exaggerate.

But put that aside for the moment. Does support of Ralph Nader in a close state create a modest risk (today’s poll indicates Nader has but 1.3 percent in Iowa) that Bush may win?

Yes.

Is it a risk I am, reluctantly, willing to take?

Yes.

I won't take the space to repeate what Common Sense 2000, No. 1, “How Nader Helps Democrats,” and Common Sense 2000, No. 2“Bush's Supreme Court Appointments: A Halloween Fright?” have to say about why I think the Gore supporters' hysteria over Nader is unfair and inaccurate both as to Nader and to Bush. You can click and read them if you wish.

But when I compare the risks (or lack thereof) of a Bush presidency with the risks Americans have been willing to take over the past 200 years they seem miniscule by comparison.

• The Revolution. Consider the risks associated with our assertion of independence from the corporate control exercised by England in 1776. For starters, the revolutionaries were “traitors.” There was not only a risk, but a probability, of war. There was a significant risk that war would be lost. One shudders to contemplate the possible consequences for the revolutionaries had they been defeated.

  There were plenty of their friends and neighbors who were, quite reasonably, fearful of these risks. Presumably they were outspoken in their opposition and their appeals to the revolutionaries to call off their crazy scheme.

  Freedom ain’t free. They paid a heavy price. Many lost their lives. Were those risks worth it?


 
• Slavery. Or how about the abolition of slavery? Had you known that it would result in 624,511 Civil War dead and decades of regional hostility would you have joined with the abolitionists or not? How big an evil was slavery? What was the risk of war? Were those risks worth it?

 
• Unions. The same can be said for the early efforts to give working people the right to organize in unions. How big an evil were five-cents-an-hour wages, domineering bosses, long hours and unsafe working conditions? Worth the risk of dead and severely beaten union organizers? Worth the layoffs of organizers no longer able to support their families?

 
• WWII. Or World War II. Lots of folks thought we should have stayed out of that war. It cost us 405,399 lives. What was the evil? What was the risk? Was it worth it?

Reasonable people can differ today about the evil of corporate takeover of our democracy. Reasonable people can differ about the risk of a George W. Bush presidency.

But for those who think a vote for Nader -- when he won't win, and Bush may -- is a "wasted vote," Herschel Sternlieb summarizes the issue as well as anyone. He writes:

"If a losing vote is a wasted vote then the following holds true:

“You wasted your vote on Adlai Stevenson and got Eisenhower and you survived. But very little changed and you ended up with no voice and no power.

“You wasted your votes on Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern and you got Nixon and you survived. But very little changed and you ended up with no voice and no power.

“You wasted your votes on Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale and you got Ronald Reagan and you survived. But very little changed and you ended up with no voice and no power.

“You wasted your vote on Mike Dukakis and you got George Bush and you survived. But very little changed and you ended up with no voice and no power.

“You voted for Bill Clinton and he won but in a sense it was a wasted vote because he turned out to be the most successful Republican  president of the 20th Century, but you still survived. But very little  changed and you ended up with no voice and no power.

“When will you wake up to the fact that it is time to have a voice in your own destiny? It is time for you to seek power for yourself. It is time to get the twin monkeys of the Democrats and the Republicans off your back.

“It is time to establish a new party. In doing so you will not be any the worse off than you were under Nixon or Reagan or Bush. You will survive. And you will survive with the possibility of eventually ending up with the power in your own hands.

“It is time to build the Green Party into a force that will free America from the shackles of big money that control the Republicans and Democrats and are poisoning our political system. The time to start is now. Don't be afraid to vote for Ralph Nader. It will be the best vote you ever cast.”

I’m just one of those who thinks the evil of corporate domination of our politics and government is so serious, and so infests every other issue of public policy, that ridding ourselves of it simply must be our top national priority. The only feasible strategy that I can see for doing so is to build a party outside of the Democratic and Republican Parties that are perpetuating the present corruption.

Our democracy has taken risks to rid itself of evils in the past. Any risks posed by a Bush presidency are as nothing compared to those taken by our forebearers.

Freedom still ain't free.