Nader letter to Moore - Democratic Underground

Adenoid_Hynkel

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Fri Apr-16-04 11:15 AM
Original message

Nader letter to Moore

This one's going to make some of you go ballistic, some of you will agree with it. I still have mixed feelings and am setting on the fence for the time being. Anyway, it's going to get posted eventually, so I might as well do it. Love him or hate him, here's Ralph:

Friday April 16, 2004
HEY DUDE WHERE'S MY BUDDY!!!???

COME BACK HOME MICHAEL!!!
Ok Michael, you've had your realpolitik fling with ex-General Wesley Clark. Your endorsed Presidential candidate in the Democratic Primaries has withdrawn. It is time for you to come home, to join your buddies and resume your only genuine role which is that of defiance and resistance. Compliance and assistance with the Democrats does not accord with your past, your character, your bold writings and, most memorably, your long corrosive assaults on the Party that betrayed the working classes and plunged our country into corporate globalization. Remember, Michael, you're the flinty man from Flint, Michigan. You've never forgotten your roots. The heady Hollywood, Manhattan scene with the celebrities and Academy Awards have never gotten to your head but rather have gotten into your deserving pockets. How we all recall your standing before one billion people in Los Angeles at the televised Academy Awards in 2003 and, breaking the customary cant of the awardees, throwing the gauntlet down to George W. Bush and his "fictitious" war mongering.
Now the War has become a quagmire, with both Republicans and Democrats complicit (check the votes in Congress). The Draft may be on the way. So what are you doing going on the Al Franken Show very nearly breaking down when Al Gore (he of the pro NAFTA/GATT, anti-worker, regime-change, Iraq-bombing, lethal sanctions on half a million children Administration) called and thought you were apologizing. You have nothing to apologize for, Michael. Gore has a lot to apologize for-blowing the election he won in Florida and the country as a whole and for blowing, with Bill Clinton, the many opportunities the rich-booming Nineties and the collapse of the Soviet Union gave this country to turn a peace dividend into a pro-worker, pro-environment, pro-consumer and anti-poverty resurgence.
Come back and join our Presidential campaign, Michael. Talk to those "Reagan Democrats"-those 35% of union members who still vote Republican and against their own interests-as only you can. Michael, if you go pumping for the Democratic Party this year, just what are you going to say to the unemployed steelworkers near Sparrows Point in Maryland? To the megathousands of laid off textile and furniture workers in North and South Carolina? To the abandoned auto workers waiting and waiting near their empty factories that went to repressive countries? To the millions of blue-collar workers, who fought our wars, only to learn that the two parties won't fight for their company pensions and health insurance? Are you going to tell them how the Democratic Party pushed through the WTO, let their pensions erode or disappear, were too busy collecting checks from the corporate bosses to pay attention to the corporate crime wave that looted and drained trillions of dollars from millions of workers, their retirement and small investments? Will you tell them that the cowardly Democrats, who couldn't win the fewer elections they are now not losing without the labor vote, won't even mount a determined drive to repeal the notorious, union-blocking Taft Hartley Act?
How can you be free to be what you are, or to depress Bush's vote, to jolt into consciousness the moribund Democratic Party?
Hey Dude, join your real buddies! The ones you may be thinking about just don't fit either your message, your vision, or our website VoteNader.org.
Come back home Michael. The workers and the youth of America are looking for you.
Best regards,

Ralph Nader