Vote Ralph Nader in 2000

Tireless advocate of consumer rights and safety, veteran in the fight against corporate greed, Ralph Nader is now challenging the stranglehold of two-party politics in the United States by running for President. Already, many anxious Democratic politicians, as well as many sincere progressives, insist that we can't afford to vote for Nader--doing so could swing the election.

Gore is compromised, runs this argument, but Bush is unbearable. If we vote with our hearts, we'll wind up with a stroke. On the surface, this case would seem to have some merit. There is just no escaping the reality that Governor "Dubya" is a nasty, narrow, murderous piece of work. Who can forget Bush's comic routine after he executed Karla Faye Tucker? But the truth of the matter is that Al Gore and the Democrats have spent the last eight years breaking every one of their promises to do anything decent; they have themselves done a lot of nasty, narrow, and murderous things along the way.

What has eight years of Clinton-Gore honestly given us? More people on death row and in prison; more kids in overcrowded, underfunded schools; millions more people without health insurance; and more blood shed in cynical "humanitarian" wars. And then there's the celebrated "miracle economy"---a real "miracle" for the crowd on Wall Street, but something else entirely for ordinary working-class people. Namely, more work, more stress, and more personal debt.

As Ralph Nader so eloquently puts it, you can't spoil a spoiled system. But there is no better time than now to build an alternative to it. Nader's campaign is part of that alternative; it symbolizes a new mood and a new movement that are beginning to take shape in this country. You can witness this mood and movement in plenty of places. It was on display in Seattle last November, when 50,000 workers, students and activists of all stripes shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO). You can even read about the new anti-corporate mood in the latest issue of Business Week, of all places. The magazine's cover story is titled "Too Much Corporate Power?" The polls inside are revealing. Just about three-quarters of Americans asked agree that big companies have too much political influence and too much power, and that top CEOs are paid too much.

One of Nader's favorite maxims belongs to Louis Brandeis: "We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both." Nader proposes making the minimum wage a wage of $10 an hour. For the 44 million people in the United States without health insurance, and the millions more robbed by bureaucratic, profit-driven HMOs, Nader argues that we need universal health- care. Nader stands against corporate welfare, and for union rights. This summer, he walked the picket line with workers at the telephone giant Verizon, who successfully struck for better wages and conditions. Both Gore and Bush collected hand-outs of $1 million in communication services from the Verizon for use at their conventions.

On social as well as economic issues, Ralph Nader is far more progressive than the corporate candidates. He is the only presidential candidate who opposes the death penalty. He is the only candidate who supports real equal rights for gays and lesbians, including same-sex marriage, and the only candidate who has stated that he is unconditionally for a woman's right to have an abortion, without restrictions.

Ralph Nader is not perfect. He must take up the key social issues more forcefully. It is crucial that Nader speaks out against racism in an active way, particularly the racism of the criminal justice system, where blacks and Latinos are disproportionately incarcerated and executed. Nader's campaign should champion the rights of immigrants, in opposition to the Buchananite immigrant-bashing that has contaminated the American labor movement. But the real beauty of Nader's campaign is that it represents a work in progress.

While the campaigns of Bush and Gore have already been bought and paid for by Corporate America, Nader's run is being built from the ground up by students and working people. It's a grassroots campaign that goes hand-in-hand with building new movements that can organize and fight well after Nov. 7. We should vote with our hearts after all.