Ralph Nader was right. The Democrats didn't need his help to lose. Nader's share of the vote was miniscule. He thought, as many people did, that John Kerry would win. Nader held his final rally at a rundown library in the District of Columbia to draw attention to the misplaced priorities of a city focused on a new stadium while neglecting the needs of its citizens. "Welcome to John Kerry's America," he concluded, satisfied that even if few people were listening, he had spoken out and put pressure on Kerry to do better by America's urban communities.
Nader offers a plausible if self-serving analysis for what went wrong for Kerry and the Democrats. He blames the "Anybody but Bush" mindset that led Democrats to set aside their issue differences with Kerry and give him a free ride. "Leave Kerry alone--make no demands on him," that was the mantra, says Nader. The party's various factions--labor, liberals, women, environmentalists--took a holiday. "They allowed Kerry to adopt ambiguous wishy-washy positions and they deprived him of the key to victory, which is bright lines," says Nader.
On college campuses, Nader would ask at the end of each rally if anybody had any announcements they wanted to make. Inevitably there was an antiwar rally coming up on Nov. 9 or Nov. 15. "Why not before Nov. 2?" he would ask. Because nobody wanted to cause trouble for Kerry.
A month ago, with his own campaign sinking and desperate to be heard, Nader dispatched 10 of his people with silver platters and white waiter coats to the Kerry headquarters. They served up 10 ways to beat Bush. This was not utopian stuff, says Nader. Raising the minimum wage and attacking corporate subsidies are positions that can get a majority behind them; they are long overdue and practical. (The full list is at VoteNader.org.)
Amidst the rubble of what was the Democratic Party, Nader doesn't sound like a voice in the wilderness. He's saying what a lot of Democrats are coming to grips with, that they will be a permanent minority party for the next 20 years if they don't come up with some compelling ideas. It's insufficient to say how bad the Republicans are. The Kerry campaign didn't want to rattle the electorate. They thought Bush would fall of his own weight.
Kerry's advisers told themselves that with war, terrorism and an uncertain economy dominating the news, the cultural issues would fade. But when the exit polls were analyzed, 78 percent of those who voted for Bush cited moral values as a top concern. Democrats knew for months that amendments to ban gay marriage would be on state ballots, yet they did nothing to create a counterweight. David Bositis at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank, observed that the U.S. Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the presidency in 2000, while the Massachusetts Supreme Court handed it to him in this election.
The court's May ruling in favor of gay marriage put the issue in play, and Bush's support for a constitutional ban allowed him to draw a bright line between himself and Kerry. It was the clearest difference voters could see. On the war, Kerry supported it; on the economy, Kerry offered words, few of them memorable. "No wonder enough of the voters go for the moral issues," says Nader. "What else do they have? When you take away the economic issue, then you allow the presidency to be personalized. If Bush happens to be more likeable--don't ask me why--he becomes the transmitter of the moral issues. They garnish it with gay marriage and abortion and occlude all the secular immorality."
President Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act when he was in the White House, advised Kerry in a phone call early in the campaign to find a way to support the state bans. Kerry never considered abandoning his principles to that extent, but he also didn't take seriously enough the threat. Expanding the definition of "values" beyond opposition to gay marriage and abortion is the challenge for Democrats. Nader points to the fact that initiatives calling for an increase in the minimum wage won in Florida and Nevada. What if the Democrats had gotten behind those initiatives with the same fervor Republicans backed same-sex marriage bans? Paying people a decent wage can be framed as a moral issue.
Many religious people are upset that moral values are defined so narrowly around reproductive rights and sexual identity when the Bible pays far more attention to issues of poverty. A Blue State Catholic friend says the biggest immorality is that Bush took the country to war on a lie that is costing thousands of lives--American and Iraqi. He half jokes that he will retire in a few years, buy a gas station and sell $80 a barrel oil. Customers who fill up their tank will get a free Bible. "Bush's presidency is like a church revival," he says. Maybe so, but if the Democrats want to win elections, they'll have to figure out a way to fill up the pews.