The Progressive Populist Moment Has Arrived

[cryofan]

Tom Hayden (yeah, THAT Tom Hayden) wrote in www.alternet.org about how the Democratic presidential candidates have co-opted the goals of the Progressive Populist Movement for the primaries:


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It's been a remarkable shift after the past decade of Democratic catering to corporate interests and conservative voters, Only one year ago, candidates John Kerry, John Edwards and Richard Gephardt had voted for the Iraq war resolution, and Gephardt alone, among the leading contenders, opposed pro-corporate trade agreements like NAFTA.
....

Not only Iowans but voters across multiple primary states were outraged by millions of manufacturing job losses which they blamed on trade agreements which the Democrats had promoted just a decade before. On the 10th anniversary of NAFTA, the proponents were embarrassingly silent. No one wanted to admit that eccentric billionaire Ross Perot was more right than wrong in 1994. Now Democratic voters in states like South Carolina, Missouri, Arizona and Wisconsin overwhelmingly preferred candidates critical of the Democrats' own trade agreements. Even key Democratic insiders, like Mickey Kantor who wrote the Clinton Administration's pro-investor rules of trade, were admitting that it was now "correct to challenge some of the rules." (NYT, Jan. 31, 2004)
....

The candidates' language was straight from the streets to the candidates' mouths. They could have been written by Lori Wallach or John Sweeney. There were no spoilers on hand to observe that the Democrats had embraced the Ralph Nader message four years too late. As for Nader, he apparently was too busy plotting another possible campaign to notice that his most compelling platform had been coopted.



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This next paragraph really hits the sweet spot:
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None of these questions should muddle the fact that American politics is being realigned swiftly and unexpectedly in a progressive direction. On war and peace, jobs and trade, civil rights and civil liberties, and the environment, the Democratic Party is being shaped more by its own insurgent constituencies on the ground than by its internal leadership, consultants and pollsters, fundraising professionals, revolving-door law firms and their clientele.


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more here:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17880

[sadiesworld]

1. Exactly. Nader is irrelevant.

[deminflorida]

2. From the rules....Nader should not even be mentioned here....

"If you wish to contribute to the defeat of the Democratic candidate for president, then you are welcome to use someone else's bandwidth on some other website. As the election season draws closer, we may expand this rule to include Democratic candidates for other political offices.

Democratic Underground may not be used for political organizing activity by supporters of any political party other than the Democratic party. Supporters of certain other political parties may use Democratic Underground for limited partisan activities in political races where there is no Democratic party candidate."

Trying to sell your justification for voting on a third party progressive ticket is paramount to organizing opposition to the Democratic Party Candidate.

[cryofan]

3. huh? Your post makes no sense to me

Are you a moderator, or what?

[sadiesworld]

4. Isn't this post more about neutralizing Nader, not supporting him?