I wish I were half the writer Billmon is. Whiskey Bar puts the smack down on Ralph Nader. Go read it. It's even better than the smacking Matt Yglesias laid down on Nader not too long ago.
A sample:
If the robber baron economics, constitutional obscenity and foreign policy lunacies of the past four years haven't convinced progressives of the need for a united front against Bush and the authoritarian right, then nothing I can say now will, either.But up until the past few weeks, I've never questioned Nader's motives or his sincerity. As destructive as I think his actions have been, and as much as I detest his stubborness and his increasingly bizarre egoism, I've taken it for granted that Ralph's objectives were exactly what he said they were: to give the voters a progressive alternative to the Republicrat political duopoly.
I may have thought he was wrong - disastrously wrong - but I always assumed Nader was basically an honest person, and a man of the left. And as high as I know the stakes are in this election, it still made me uncomfortable to see the Dems using hardball tactics to try to keep him off the ballot in as many of the key states as they could. In my book, the Democratic Party was (and still is) just an instrument, a tool - a weak one, but the only one we've got - for fighting the movement conservatives. Ralph, on the other hand, was more like a crazy uncle - a real pain in the ass, but still, when it comes right down to it, family.
But Nader's increasingly open and shameless alliance with the GOP - as demonstrated so flagrantly in Michigan - leaves me with the sinking feeling that I've misjudged him.
