Unreasonable

Apparently, there's a movie coming to a theater near me soon all about Ralph Nader. Like most Gore 2000 voters, I bear no small level of bitterness toward Nader and those who supported him or voted for him. Certainly, I think the events of the past six years have amply demonstrated that there both is a dime's worth of difference between the two major political parties and that a dime can buy you an awful lot.

On the other hand, one of the memes floating about in the Nadersphere has, I think, been vindicated: Namely the basically Leninist idea that a Democratic loss and a period of Republican governance would pull the Democrats in a more progressive direction in terms of, for example, questioning "Washington Consensus" globalization. At the time, that argument didn't make sense to me. And in some important ways I still don't think it makes a ton of sense logically. But it does seem to be what's happened. Now, was that a price worth paying for the dead in Iraq, the torture, etc.? I don't really think so.