The case for Nader
Ralph has decided to run again, and he’s getting a beating for it. The argument goes like this: Green-leaning candidates “take” votes away from Democrats. This particular election is so critical that “we” can’t afford to lose. Nader therefore should do the “right” thing and withdraw.
I want to make the case for Nader’s candidacy. This is not an endorsement of the man or his program. His decision to run urges consideration of structural ‘democracy problems’ in America. 2008 may be more critical than 2004, 2000, 1932, 1896 or even 1796, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore our democracy problems. Run-of-the-mill condemnation of Nader reflects a choice to do just that.
The Democratic Party would benefit from three reforms that Nader’s run brings to mind. A direct election for President would decrease third party “spoiler” impact by taking the emphasis off battleground states. Remember Florida 2000. Second, instant runoff voting would translate most votes for Greens into votes for Democrats. Third, proportional representation would undo the conservative bias in Congressional elections that inheres in the nexus of our partisan geography and winner-take-all elections. In a sense, PR would unpack the packedness of those population-dense districts Democrats tend to inhabit.
The absence of each reform is a democracy problem. The electoral college33 silences voters in “safe” states and sometimes crowns the wrong winner. Plurality elections force voters to support candidates they don’t like and candidates to pay lip service to those voters, lest they defect to a spoiler like Nader. And the only real diversity of opinion in our two-party Congress comes from members’ personal predispositions. These old institutions diminish democracy for everyone.
If bad institutions hurt more people than Democrats, why the concern with Democrats? They are the likely agents of change. Politicians don’t improve institutions out of commitment to democracy. Reforms are self-interested. Nader’s candidacy underscores Democrats’ overall vulnerability in the present party system-cum-electoral system. As the vulnerable camp, with majorities in both houses and a prospect for united government in 2009, Democrats are best positioned to effect electoral reform.
Yet they don’t take their vulnerability seriously. Hence the case for Nader.
Two scenarios confront the Democratic Party. One is to learn the hard way. Nader costs the Dems another election, they make the institutions-outcomes connection, and they become a party of reform. The other option: skip step one, make the connection, and become a party of reform.
To blame Nader is to shoot the messenger. The conversation should be about lasting solutions. Browbeating Greens to depress their turnout, if doable at all, is not a lasting solution.3
- No caps; it’s a common noun.333
3
Jack on 24 Feb 2008 at 7:34 pm #
So, I mirrored this post at DailyKos. Mixed but overall unfavorable response.
Most read it as an “endorsement of the man or his program.” Two or three got the point about election reform. One half-got the main point: Nader’s candidacy gives the Democrats an incentive to take electoral reform seriously, and they’re in a relatively good position to implement it.
My fault. Bad writing. Should have said that up front.
A bunch of readers are voting to “hide” the diary, and someone has shut off my ability to reply to comments.
Anand on 25 Feb 2008 at 2:07 am #
Jack, as always, excellent analysis. I must admit, I;m not well-disposed towards Nader in the short run. But you put the long-run in perspective. Thanks.
AllAboutVoting on 25 Feb 2008 at 9:43 am #
I strongly agree with Jack about the underlying structural problems that are exposed when a ’spoiler’ enters the race. But I have differing views about the solutions.
Jack proposes:
>A direct election for President would decrease third party
>“spoiler†impact by taking the emphasis off battleground states.
Agree. I support a National Popular Vote. I believe that Jack is a supporter of the National Popular Vote interstate compact:
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
I am not a supporter of the compact plan because I can imagine too many ways it can go very wrong in practice.
>Second, instant runoff voting would translate most votes
>for Greens into votes for Democrats.
I strongly agree that there should be a way for voters to express their support of multiple parties. However, I think that instant runoff voting (IRV) is one of the worst alternate single winner election methods out there and cannot support it. Personally, I like approval voting.
http://minguo.info/election_methods/approval_voting
>Third, proportional representation would undo the
>conservative bias in Congressional elections that
>inheres in the nexus of our partisan geography and
>winner-take-all elections.
Depending on the specific proposal for how PR is accomplished I could support this. I certainly agree that using single winner districts to elect representatives is seriously flawed and becomes even more flawed in the presence of all-too-common gerrymandering of districts.
Chris N. on 25 Feb 2008 at 1:26 pm #
The argument for brow-beating greens.
First of all, Jack, I take issue with your straw-man characterization of the attacks on Nader. Putting “arguments” you don’t “agree with” in “quotation marks” does not make them untrue. The goal of going after Nader is not to depress Green turnout, but rather to have them vote for a party capable of winning the general election that will represent their interests.
The problem is not Nader’s ideas, but rather his candidacy in a FPP system. Many people have great ideas on how to change the U.S. political system for the better. Only one such person is running the same campaign to draw support away from the more closely aligned candidate with a viable shot of winning, while refusing to later throw support behind said candidate. These are issues of agency as well as institutions, and Nader as a political agent has been somewhat of a catastrophe.
U.S. political institutions, like very nearly any political institution, certainly do produce distorted outcomes. The fact still remains that (to quote dear Rummy) we must work with the institutions that we have and not the ones that we would like to have.
I’ll discuss Nader’s ideas when he’s out of the race. Until then, he should be treated a spoiler candidate who is, at best, responsible for disenfranchising his few remaining supporters by misallocating their votes, and at worst, conspiring against his own interests to give the Republican party another 4 years in the White House.
By all means, beat up on Nader. It’s for his own good.
Chris N. on 25 Feb 2008 at 1:41 pm #
Sorry, one last point after reading your response to your own post on the DailyKos mirror.
Jack: “Nader’s candidacy gives the Democrats an incentive to take electoral reform seriously, and they’re in a relatively good position to implement it.”
Pretending that Nader running as a candidate is a good thing because it will inspire the Democrats for electoral reform strikes me as foolish. This might have been a decent argument up until November 2000, when Nader’s refusal to endorse Al Gore–who was CLEARLY more closely aligned with Green interests than George Bush–truly did make him a “spoiler” candidate rather than an actual one. The fact remains that the winners get to implement their policy and the losers go home, and Nader either did not help Al Gore win, or helped him to lose.
Furthermore, Democrats would be in a position to take electoral reform seriously if they controlled the White House, and not been relegated to total powerlessness for the last eight years.
Unless Nader comes to his senses, the Democrats might not be in a position to implement anything come November.
To quote Judge Judy, “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
Jack on 25 Feb 2008 at 3:21 pm #
It’s a question of long- versus short-term calculation, a point to which Anand aptly alluded. You see a straw man because your time horizon is short.
The Democrats face structural disadvantages in the congressional district system and, of late, in single-winner contests more generally because today’s spoilers are mostly on the left. (There are exceptions; the LP is the dominant minor party in Texas, for instance.)
The problem is that Democrats’ short-term calculations (read: incumbent protection) prevent them from taking action against those structural disadvantages. The thinking goes: “As a career pol, I’d rather be likely to end up in a Congressional minority than risk losing my seat in a bid to improve the party’s majority-winning prospects.”
Others have countered me the way you have: The Democrats can’t do anything anyway unless they control the White House and Congress together. To say that is to wet someone else’s leg. If Democrats win both branches under the current set of institutions, their short-term calculus is unlikely to change, and their structural disadvantages are likely to persist.
The virtue of a Nader candidacy - as distinct from Nader himself - is that it underscores a need to think about the long term.
Chris N. on 25 Feb 2008 at 5:16 pm #
To use a bad analogy, I still think that’s like saying that the virtue of a bank robber, as distinct from the act of robbing a bank, is that the existence of bank robbers forces banks to think about security in the long term. Fine. But don’t expect me to treat bank robbers any differently, and don’t tell me that they’re doing the bank a favor.
I think that you’re trying to draw an artificial divide between Nader’s “candidacy” and Nader “himself”. The problem isn’t Nader as a person, or as a political thinker, but as a third party candidate in a system that fundamentally does not allow stable third parties to exist. In a FPP system, three parties is a fundamentally unstable configuration, as each party can improve its outcome by expanding its platform to achieve 51% of the vote to capture 100% of the power. You’re right that this wouldn’t happen in a PR system, but here’s the thing, we do not have a PR system. To take a “long-term” view here, we will never ever have a PR system, no matter how many elections are decided by well-intentioned third-party candidates.
So, I believe there is a much simpler lesson to learn here, but it is not the Democrats who have learned it. The Republicans learned the hard way when Ross Perot ran, as he drew significant support from groups that supported George Bush, that third-party candidates are the kiss of death if they can capture any of your platform in the run, as most elections are decided along 49%-51% lines, so even 1% or 2% of your party base is crucial. As a result, Republican donors have learned that they can get more bang for their buck by funding Nader than they can investing those same dollars in Republican campaigns.
Here’s one source, but there’s many more:
There’s better ways to win elections other than demanding a constitutional change in the electoral system. There’s better ways to raise issues of institutional disadvantage other than punishing the disadvantaged party.
Jack on 25 Feb 2008 at 9:54 pm #
Really, we’re talking about PR. (Statutory, not constitutional, change.) And really, we’re talking about helping two groups: Democrats and minor parties.
Nader’s presence in the race has nothing to do with PR. It bears only on single-winner contests decided by narrow margins in which Greens take the plurality from Democrats. The solution for Democrats is (1) some sort of majority system or (2) direct election to minimize the impact of minor party candidacies. But Democrats won’t take the solution seriously. Nader forces serious consideration of the solution. This is my first point.
My second point is that, by forcing serious consideration of one structural reform, he also makes now a good time to talk about other Democrat-benefitting reforms like (low magnitude, candidate-based) proportional representation.
I would dispute the following claim:
“To take a ‘long-term’ view here, we will never ever have a PR system, no matter how many elections are decided by well-intentioned third-party candidates.”
Electoral rules change in response to changes in party systems. That is, parties change electoral laws when ‘exogenous’ factors change the self-interest calculation.
It just so happens that Democrats would benefit from a modestly proportional electoral system, regardless of the exogenous. Why they don’t make the change, I don’t know. I can think of four hypotheses:
1) The two parties have agreed that proportional representation is off limits. (Would apply to the National Popular Vote compact as well.)
2) The Democratic leadership doesn’t know it would benefit from proportional representation. (Also would apply to the National Popular Vote compact. But unlikely in either case. I suspect they’re aware of the difference between the average margins of victory for either party.)
3) The Democratic leadership prefers to protect its incumbents over rewriting the electoral law. Or party discipline is too weak. Two sides of the same coin.
4) The Democrats know proportional representation is a non-starter, whether because of the President’s party (this can change) or because of the need for 60 votes in the Senate. (Doesn’t make sense. As one of two major parties, they are well positioned to message the issue. Kind of like universal healthcare - another non-starter that’ll never clear 60 votes in the Senate.)
rtio on 25 Feb 2008 at 10:35 pm #
The socialist in me wants to support Nader for his anti-corporate stance, the democrat in me likes the idea of reform and plurality. Sadly, the realist in me is concerned with 2008 and not so much the long-term.
Nonetheless, I agree with Jack here that Nader (while he may deserve being ridiculed) should shake up the stasis of American politics.
SystemsThinker on 26 Feb 2008 at 1:38 am #
Jack,
I loved this piece. It says so much that I’ve been screaming into the wilderness for so long.
Structural democracy reforms are where it’s at. Nader’s campaigns bring the need for such reforms to the surface. So we shouldn’t blame him for running.
However, we should blame him for failing to acknowledge the problems he helps elucidate and talking about the solutions. I’ve written about that in The Key Issue Suspiciously Missing from Ralph Nader’s “Table”. Hope you’ll check it out and leave some feedback.
PoliBlog ™: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » Back to Nader for a Sec on 26 Feb 2008 at 1:21 pm #
[...] a real reform movement, or about affecting changes to the party system over time, regardless of the very real intellectual argument that can be made for his [...]
Chris N. on 26 Feb 2008 at 1:22 pm #
Jack- There is no reason to throw out ignorance and conspiracy theories to explain Democratic stubborness on this issue. There’s a simple point that explains it all through basic rational choice:
5) If the Democrats win the White House, then there’s no incentive to change the rules of the game, because they are the winners of the game. If they don’t win, then there’s no power to do so anyway.
To rephrase this in classical terms: “When I am out of power, how can I change the system? When I am in power, why should I change the system?” This is why, sure, sometimes the rules change, but it is very rare and generally happens incrementally over a long period of time. Still, I doubt that it could happen in the U.S. without a major reworking of the Constitution, which would be a catastrophe, or an outright revolution.
Democratic behavior is not only explainable, but perfectly rational: their interest is in maintaining the two-party system bounded by the FPP rules. The Democratic party functions as an interest-aggregating body, such that it attempts to incorporate interests to represent 51% of the vote while maintaining its party “brand.” Included in this “brand” are compromise positions that include some of Nader’s brand, most specifically environmental issues, because Democrats want to win elections and they know that these interests need representing in government.
Let’s try explaining this with a story:
If you have two teams playing football, and half of one team A decides to suddenly start playing baseball, then you don’t “shake things up”: you just see team A lose the game, both baseball and football players alike. The game we are playing is football: pick a team, play the game, and argue about what type of game you want to play when the bloody game is over.
Nader is not “shaking up” anything, and he’s certainly not an “exogenous” factor in the equation, he is behaving in a politically irrational manner that will dearly cost the interests he claims to represent. If you want to argue for a PR system, then do it, but I’d argue against using a back-door endorsement of Nader’s candidacy to broach the idea.
Failure is hardly original, and after eight years of Bush, it’s certainly not acceptable. Success requires differentiating between the validity of Nader’s ideas and the consequences of his candidacy.
Jack on 26 Feb 2008 at 8:00 pm #
Your model of Democratic behavior is premised on short-term instrumentality. I’m saying Nader gives Democrats an incentive to be long-term instrumental.
Fruits and Votes » Prof. Shugart's Blog » Nader 2008? on 26 Feb 2008 at 9:03 pm #
[...] jackms, in his other persona as Jack (a frequent propagator here) also posted the DK entry at TDP, where there is a discussion ongoing in the comments. ___________ By the way, jackms was banned [...]
MSS on 26 Feb 2008 at 9:05 pm #
Hmm, this blog king of ate up the trackback. What I was hoping it would do is take up my excerpt:
“I certainly do not believe the Democrats own my vote just because they have better (to me) policies and are better at governing than Republicans. Nor would a potential vote for a third-party or independent presidential candidate be my way of saying “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two big parties. These standard narratives of voting decisions are caricatures.”
Anyway, nice post Jack.
The Democratic Piece » Gravel joins the LP on 25 Mar 2008 at 4:08 pm #
[...] again, Gravel’s self-interest calculation probably has shifted to long-term instrumental. The Dems having rejected him, he has to seek voice through other channels. One is electoral [...]