I saw a headline this morning that said “Ralph Nader praises Sarah Palin,” and I was going to link to it under a headline that said “Ralph Bleeping Nader, Will You Please Go Now?” But there is more to the story.
Apparently Ralph and fellow geniuses such as Cornell West and Gore Vidal have declared that President Obama should be primaried. They apparently think this is an original idea, which tells us they don’t read blogs much. They also don’t have a specific candidate in mind, but acknowledge that filing deadlines are fast approaching. Maybe Ralph will decide he’s the only available choice on short notice.
In other words, they aren’t pushing to oust Obama because they have somebody better in mind. They just want to punish Obama for not being progressive enough.
At Balloon Juice, Dennis G. writes,
This Nader/West effort to marginalize the left is just another example of the progressive death wish. This recent editorial from The Nation is another. I’m 56 years old. I’ve watched the so called leaders of the Left do this dance of self-destruction over and over and over again. The results have never been good.
Humphrey had to pay a price for LBJ. They had to “punish†Carter to teach him a lesson, even if it gave us Reagan. Gore had to be disciplined for the sins of Clinton and these fools claimed there was no difference between Al and Bush. Kerry never “excited†them and also required election year chastisement. Now it is President Obama who is the target of these strategic geniuses.
Nader, West and these other fools always function as the reliable Left flank of wingnutopia. Without these useful idiots the GOP and their ideas would always be defeated. With them to serve as comic foils, vote sponges, and advocates of apathy, the GOP can get close enough to steal any election.
Ralph argues that a primary challenge will actually be good for Obama. We might remember that Ralph’s political instincts are nearly as sharp as Mark Penn‘s. Going back several years, the only incumbents who have lost the White House faced tough primary challenges. Those incumbents who enjoyed unified party support won, usually easily.
As ABL notes, there are some unfortunate consistencies here. Nader began the Obama presidency by wondering if Obama would be an “Uncle Tom for the corporations..” He now joins forces with West who derides his “dear brother Barack Obama” as a “black mascot for Wall Street interests” with a “fear of free black men.” Perhaps Michael Moore shall join them and we can hear these three explain to us why Obama is actually a white president.
And the moral is, sometimes people need to learn when to shut up. Even former Naderite James Fallows thinks so.
But since Nader is too oblivious to reality to know when to shut up, I propose that any progressive who says he will vote for Nader be crowned with a dunce hat labeled “Florida 2000” and made to sit in the corner.
Update: BTW, if you aren’t already overdosed on stupid, David Brooks’s column will do the job.