The WSWS received the following letters in response to our June 27 article “US Green Party candidate Ralph Nader courts Buchanan supporters” http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/gp1-j27.shtml
To: editor@wsws.org
Your article was stupid and uninformed. People opposing China in WTO are not anti-Chinese people, they are anti-Chinese totalitarian government & anti-US corporations having license to exploit Chinese workers. Same with Mexican truck drivers in US, if that's not a formula for massive wage reductions, what is? One can agree with Buchanan on WTO & NAFTA without endorsing other views of his. On abortion, etc. Or is that distinction too hard for you to make? Nor does Nader need to have a position on Mumia. Nader needs to reach to reasonable conservatives & others & if that's not PC enough for you, tough.
MH
27 June 2000
What's wrong with trying to move the Democratic Party to the left? I strongly disagree with the writer's assertion, in "Nader Courts Buchanan Supporters" that “this underscore[s] the highly superficial character of the organization's independence from the Democratic Party." As Nader and other Green Party folks have said, we're trying to build a third party. But as we have to constantly deal with the imbecilic charge that Nader can't win the election, so why vote for him? We naturally talk about trying to push the Democratic Party to the left and other such noble pursuits, as good reasons to vote for a candidate everyone knows isn't going to win the presidency. Your criticism of the Greens smacks of the tiresome motivation of ideological purity, which has been the bane of the left's existence in America. It has led to endless backbiting and infighting, rather than coalition building; as long as it continues, it dooms the left to virtually no significant influence over the political process in the US. While the various splinter parties of the left fight over who is the most sincerely radical, the corporate duopoly continues right on dominating the political system.
GS
Arcata, California, USA
27 June 2000