More on the smear campaign

The website Salon.com has long been in the forefront of the Democrats' efforts to smear Ralph Nader. I'm not really going to get into another discussion about why Nader's candidacy is important (few Democrats bother engaging him on actual issues, just on the fact of his candidacy). Nor am I going to discuss the bizareness of "ABB"ers showing their disgust for the Iraq invasion and the Patriot Act by demanding everyone on the left of center vote for two guys who SUPPORTED the Iraq invasion and Patriot Act. Those are essays for another time.

But, Salon's latest contribution to the attack campaign was interesting. They reported (it was reporting in the same way Fox News [sic] reports) on the recent debate between Nader and former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. The choice of Dean was ironic since Dean himself was once the main target of the Democratic establishment for which he's now the token progressive.

When challenged about a right-wing Oregon group that's supposedly working to get Nader on the ballot, Nader answered, "We don't even know this group. Don't try and tar us with this." Dean urged Nader to simply renounce the Oregon group. "I'll renounce them," Nader said, quickly shifting the focus of the debate. "Do you renounce Pfizer and Chevron and other companies who were criminally convicted of crimes by the federal government for giving millions of dollars in the year 2000 to the Democratic Party?"

Salon then criticized him for accepting money from a prominent Bush supporter and then objected vigorously when Nader stated, "Republicans are human beings too." And Nader's the extremist?

In an interview with the Democracy Now! radio program, Nader spoke of some of the strategies Democrats (not to be confused with democrats) are using to keep Nader and his running mate Peter Camejo off the ballot. Now, some might contend, with a straight face, that the Democrats [sic] are just making sure everything's done legally and it's not about lawyering Nader out of the race.

Nader explains, When I talked to John Kerry, I talked basically about the dirty tricks that the Democratic parties at the state level are using to try to keep us off the ballot on technicalities, drain our resources. In Arizona, the democrats hired three corporate law firms. They filed suit against us. They had filed suit on such things like one of our signature gatherers-- it takes 14,500 signatures to get on the Arizona ballot. One of the signature gatherers collected 550 signatures. He happened to be an ex-felon who paid his debt to society. He had been on juries. He was a registered voter. They found that he did not pay allegedly a $400 fine to the state, and they wanted to knock off 550 signatures. That would have cost us long days in litigation, and we had to drop our effort. We have limited funds under Federal Election Commission regulation. The Democrats have unlimited funds outside of any regulation. That's what they're doing in Oregon and elsewhere. I told John Kerry to-- words to the wise. He may be presiding over a situation, whether he knows it or not, that can be a mini-Watergate.

I've been saying for four years that Democratic whining about the 2000 election was disingenuous. Neither they nor the Republicans advocated the ethically correct option in the Florida recount. Their machinations in Arizona and elsewhere only further bolster my theory that both parties tried to steal Florida in 2000, but only one could be successful. Apparently, "Democrats" want to make sure they don't repeat that failure to win the dirty tricks contest this year.

I'm not big on online petitions but you can sign one to protest the unethical campaign currently being waged. I'm not sure how much good it will do; when they want to, Democrats can be just as scummy as Republicans. Still, at least it will let them know that there are a few on the left who are not seduced by this garbage.

We need more than two parties in the political process, something that every other western democracy has. If you can go to the store and be offered 50 different versions of white bread, then surely you're mature enough to have more than two political choices for all offices.

And we don't need it next year or when "it's safe" or when it's convenient for the duopoly. All of which amount to never.

Otherwise, we'll continue to be stuck with two tickets who offered 100% support for such odious policies as the invasion of Iraq and the war on civil liberties. The right time to have a backbone is always now.