{news} Fake "Greens" (Greens for Kerry!)fake out Nader- Push DLC's pro nuke Gov. Richardson! YIKES!!!

[Green Party-CT]

        Commentary: Green support  Nader may not run for White House if diplomatic Democrat presidential candidate emerges  Abraham Gutmann
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 
          

  in a recent interview on "Democracy Now," Ralph Nader said he would most likely run for president if Hillary Clinton were to be the Democratic nominee, "because there would be more of a need to run."


  Nader strongly suggested he would not run if either Barack Obama or John Edwards were the nominee, and he had some good things to say about both of them.
  While presidential candidate Gov. Bill Richardson is not yet on Nader's list of acceptable Democrats, Richardson has already stated that repairing the damage done to U.S. relations with the rest of the world by the Bush administration is his highest priority and that he is the best candidate to realize this goal.
  If he sticks to this message, he is well positioned to appeal not only to Nader but also to Democratic primary voters and the voting public in general, who are increasingly alarmed about the steady drumbeat to war with Iran and who are seeking candidates who consider diplomacy, not war, the answer.
  I believe Nader has targeted Clinton because of her stubborn refusal to admit she was wrong to vote for the Iraq war and, more alarmingly, for her recent statement concerning her willingness to move toward a military confrontation with Iran.
  Sen. Clinton has put a nuclear strike on Iran on the table and refused to take it off. Her pledge is the logic of someone who would set a prescribed burn in a New Mexico forest in high drought on a 90 degree day with no humidity and a 50 mph wind.
  It is also revealing of Clinton's character that, in the same speech, she said the only reason the United States would ever talk to opponents is because it "enables us to get a better idea of how to take on and defeat our adversaries." How is this better than President Bush's blunt refusal to negotiate, when the result of both is war?
  Who is better positioned than Richardson, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to run as an alternative to the grim visions of Bush and Clinton?
  Democrats who present themselves as alternatives to Clinton must be intent not only on avoiding war but on being adept at the delicate diplomacy that will be essential in repairing the damage done by this rogue administration.
  These are times when Richardson's skills are more in demand than ever.
  The results of the 2000 election were enough to move me from campaigning with Nader in my Senate run in 1996 to founding Greens for Kerry in 2004. When I think about an alternative universe in which Al Gore is president, I imagine how dramatically different the world would be.
  In spite of my feelings that we all would have been so much better off had Gore and Nader come to an understanding, I support Nader's new, more nuanced approach, in which he has, in effect, given a thumbs down to only one Democratic hopeful.
  Look at it this way: Nader is trying to save Democrats from making a fatal mistake. Clinton, with all of her triangulation, has managed to alienate both the left and right to the point where she will galvanize an otherwise dispirited conservative movement to unite around a winnable moderate Republican candidate. As if that weren't bad enough, we may also see a tragic repeat of the 2000 vote-splitting scenario, in which the Nader/Green Party vote, though small, was enough to cause Democrats to lose key states.
  Nader's clear message to Democratic primary voters is: Stop me before I run again. In spite of what we feel about his role in the 2000 debacle, we ignore Nader at our own political peril. By choosing from the rest of this impressive Democratic candidate field, instead of Clinton, primary voters will help to elect a real Democrat with Green support.
   
  Gutmann teaches Middle Eastern history at Santa Fe Community College and is a former Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate.


  
  

  

  
© 2006 The Albuquerque Tribune




       
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    Tim McKee cell (860) 778-1304 or (860) 643-2282
   National Committee Member of the Green Party(Connecticut)





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