I've already said the Democrats wouldn't need to worry about Nader if only we had instant runoff voting in this country.  (See my post on 2/29/08.) 

 

Here's something they can do if they're worried about the effect Nader could have on the current election.  John Nichols writes in  The Nation, "The Democrats might finally nominate a candidate who 'gets' Nader....Instead of grumbling about Nader as a 'spolier,' Barack Obama says, 'I think the job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage [points] of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference.'"

 

 

A lot of people, including some I respect like Calvin Trillin and Katha Pollitt, say that Ralph Nader is running for President again because he has a huge ego.  I say he has good reasons to run: the same reasons he had in 2004.

 

Back then, I wrote:

 

"Say what you like about Nader's strategy and personality. He articulates many of the issues on which Kerry and Bush both remain silent. What follow are my summaries of his points:

1. Cracking down on corporate crime (think Enron, WorldCom, and Halliburton)

2. Creating a living wage--not a raise in the minimum wage (which Kerry supports but has hardly spoken about), but a commitment that no one should work and still be poor

3. Freeing the U.S. from trade treaties that hurt workers, consumers, and the environment

4. Making corporations and wealthy individuals pay taxes in proportion to the massive new wealth they have acquired over my lifetime. (If the rich paid income tax today at the percentage they did in 1950, there would be no budget deficit!)

5. Public funded health care for all, not patchwork policies for some needs of some people

6. Massive change in the way we use energy, to save money, the environment, and people's health

7. Reduction in the military budget, to save money for human needs--and to keep Presidents from waging unnecessary wars

8. Clean, publicly funded elections

9. Ending the failed "war on drugs"

10. Support for the peace camp in Israel, not Sharon or people even more nationalist than he

11. Withdrawal from Iraq, where the U.S. is now the cause of continued violence, not the solution to it

12. Not just Iraq, not just the military budget, but ending the permanent war economy (using peaceful methods as much as possible in world affairs and creating new jobs to absorb people now employed in bloated, wasteful, dangerous military industries)

13. Reopening the courtrooms to people injured by corporate products, policies, or pollution--the opposite of what Bush means by "tort reform"

(http://votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=107)

"Now, no one has ever accused Ralph Nader of being a groundbreaker for the liberation of women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or transgendered people. So, to the list of issues neither candidates will touch, I would add the following off the top of my head: equal pay for men and women working comparable jobs; non-discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations; real sex education in schools (none of this abstinence-only crap, and frank discussion of the fluidity of people's sexual identities); easy availability of morning-after contraception and RU-486 non-surgical abortion."

 

Maybe I'm the one with the big ego, quoting myself at such length!  But the reason I do it is to show how much hasn't changed since 2004.  True, Obama and even Clinton are making noises about changing NAFTA.  But neither of them is with Nader on the other dozen points (nor with me on my priorities).

 

Nader's critique in 2004 may have sharpened Edwards' progressive campaign in 2008.  Together, I believe, both those campaigns forced Obama and Clinton to pay attention to social and economic justice issues more than they ever would have on their own. 

 

If the eventual Democratic nominee runs on a platform that even approximates Nader's, and Ralph is still in the race, call him all the names you like.  I won't care, and he might not even care himself.  The point is that only by drawing clear distinctions can progressives win the power to make life better for people.  And that's the only good reason to run.

 

 

The Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector is the state agency that's supposed to make sure all of us in Massachusetts get health  insurance--or else.  The people at the  Connector have just heard bad news.  Now, they have hard choices to make.  If you're a family of four earning less than $65,000 a year, one of their choices might be: make you pay.

 

The bad news?  All the private companies that are bidding to insure the public are asking for more than Massachusetts has budgeted to pay--more than 10% more.  That's tens of millions of dollars the Connector has to find somewhere.

 

The hard choices? 

Ralph Nader has announced that he is once more running for President.  Predictably, Democrats are issuing cries of outrage.  Political cartoonists are showing GOP leaders pulling out the champagne.  Editorial writers are heaping scorn on the temerity and seeming self-indulgence of a man they once admired.

 

Is Nader really going to spoil it for the Democrats?  No.  The picture is much more complicated than that.  I’m going to take a week on this blog to explain why, and how a thoughtful progressive should really look at the Nader candidacy.  So, please check here for further installments.

 

Let me say one thing right at the start: there is a very simple way to make sure that voices like Nader’s can be heard in presidential elections without splitting the progressive vote and electing the more regressive candidate.  We need instant runoff voting.

 

Suppose you could vote for your #1 candidate for President, as you do now—but you could also mark your #2 choice, and your #3, and so on.  When the votes were counted, suppose that no candidate received more than 50% of the #1 vote.  For instance, McCain got 47 %, Obama or Clinton 49%, Nader 3%, and other candidates 1%. 

 

With an instant runoff, the vote counters would take a second look at the ballots for Nader and other candidates and see who the #2 choice was.  We could easily imagine that two out of three Nader voters went for the Democrat, one for the Republican.  We’d end up with something like McCain 49%, Obama or Clinton 51%.  No “spoiler effect.”  No confusion about who was elected President.

 

The one big difference from the present would be that we’d all know the Nader voters put the Democrat over the top. Can you imagine the Democrats would continue to ignore progressive issues the way they have done?  Well, maybe: the Democrats have shown a tremendous ability to act in ways that hurt their own cause!  But at least, progressives would be able to say to the party machine, “We elected the President.  You owe us.”  That would be a good place to start.

Hillary Clinton just gave the game away.  What happens, she was asked, if people can’t or won’t buy health insurance under her mandatory plan?  “She didn’t answer directly, but one option she didn’t rule out: Garnishing the wages of those who could afford to buy health insurance but wouldn’t do so, according to ABC.”  (This from the Washington Post’s health blog.)

Didn’t rule it out?  Didn’t bring it up herself, perhaps.  But when George Stephanopoulos pressed her about it, she said: "I think there are a number of mechanisms" that are possible, including "going after people's wages, automatic enrollment."

Clinton’s plan, like the Romney plan we are suffering under in Massachusetts, sees the uninsured as the enemy.  The problem isn’t the insurance companies who are making big bucks out of selling health insurance, then denying coverage at every opportunity.  The problem is the cheap, lazy bums who don’t want to do without heat or stiff their landlords on the rent in order to pay for health insurance.

Back here in Massachusetts, our state government is going after the uninsured in a different way.  MassHealth is the state version of the Medicaid program.  It pays health bills for poor people.  According to my friends at the Mass Law Reform Institute:

Thousands of MassHealth Households Subject to Termination for Non-Payment of Premiums

Starting in March, somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 MassHealth households who are currently responsible for premiums will receive notices that they are in substantial arrears on their monthly MassHealth premiums, and that they will be put on a six month payment plan to pay off their arrearage. Failure to comply with the terms of the premium arrearage plan as well as keeping current with their on-going premium obligation will result in termination of the households MassHealth benefits.

These are not the poorest of the poor.  These are people over 150% of the federal poverty level.  A family of four that brings in a whopping total of $32,000 a year will be expected to pay toward its health insurance.  Or the state will go after them.

I am disappointed in Deval Patrick, and I am getting what I expected out of Hillary Clinton: support for insurance companies and hospitals, taken out of the pockets of the working poor.  These corporate Democrats will not give anything to those who really need it unless we fight, fight, fight for it.  WE have to “go after” THEM!