What a sight: Michael Moore on his knees. The director of the scathing antiwar film Fahrenheit 9/11 was on national television recently, pleading with Ralph Nader to leave the Presidential race to John Kerry.
Huh? Kerry voted for the war and won't promise to end it. In fact he says he'll run it more effectively. So why is Moore supporting him, and trying to get the most prominent antiwar candidate out of the race?
Moore would probably say he's being "realistic". But this kind of "realism" on the part of Moore and other left-of-center Democrats has robbed the American people of any real choice.
Back in 1968, Nixon's Southern Strategy made the Republicans the dominant party; since then, that strategy (with minor variations) has put them in the White House for six out of nine Presidential terms, and it has won them statehouse after statehouse and governorship after governorship. You can't blame them for sticking with something that works.
But left-of-center Democratic voters continue to support a strategy that clearly doesn't work for them - the strategy of imitating Republicans that Clinton called "triangulation."
Here's how it works: Victories - like Clinton's - validate the strategy. Okay, there's some sense in that, even though Clinton did very little, once in office, to reward the trust of those who held their noses and voted for him. (He was too busy "triangulating" for the next election. Among other things.)
But here's the kicker: defeat validates the strategy too. The lesson that Democrats always learn from defeat is that they must try even harder to look, walk, and quack like Republicans.
My fellow lefties on the Upper West Side despise Bush, as I do. But the guy they really hate is Nader. "The spoiler!" they hiss. But what he's spoiling is a party that takes them, and me, for granted, while it spends its time "triangulating" for a small number of so-called "swing" voters - voters who are basically Republican property, and have been since '68.
Meanwhile, as the parties focus more and more narrowly on this smaller and smaller pool of "swing" voters, more and more people stay home on Election Day - almost half the electorate now. Among young people, it's much more than half.
In 2000, Nader brought a lot of these non-voters out. The Democrats could do the same, if they stop trying to turn the clock back to 1964. But don't hold your breath.
I liked Michael Moore's movie. But unlike him, I won't pull a lever for either of the war parties. The Greens, apparently frightened by their own success in 2000, haven't given Nader their ballot line. So I'll have to write him in.
But don't tell my neighbors.