NADER WATCH

A Jewish friend of mine called the other night—got me out of bed, as a matter of fact. Her question was simple: "Do I need to worry about Lieberman?" Nah, I said, you don't need to worry about Lieberman. My friend, you see, is one of those precious folks who votes her conscience, always. It had been suggested to her that she might want to waste her vote on Gore, as a symbolic gesture of approval for his choice of a Jewish running mate. This troubled her, since she objects to wasted votes and symbolic gestures. But the trouble was only momentary and all is serene now. She'll still be voting Nader come fall.

Of course, anyone who has bothered to read the four mainstream news articles about the Nader campaign might think this odd . There are, by the way, only four articles; do not be fooled by the number of headlines we post here at Nader Watch. These are merely more or less agile versions of the same article: Ralph the Spoiler, What About Abortion/Supreme Court/Environment, and Nader Is A Puritan. (We expect that last one to drop out of the line-up in the euphoria over Lieberman the Orthodox moral scold going after those Hispanics at the Playboy Mansion, but then again we could be wrong. Liberal hypocrisy knows no limits.) The newest entry, the fourth, is Don't Worry, It Will Fade; expect to see a glut of these in the coming weeks. Fortunately, we seem to be beyond the Why Is He Doing This? fad, showing that our friends in the Big Boys press are actually capable of progressing from one form of herd behavior to another.

The assumption that these articles all share—you can't really call it an idea—is that Nader supporters are childlike, fey sorts enamored of tilting at windmills, who require the mature voice of the New York Times, or perhaps an avuncular commentator like Barney Frank or RFK Jr., to remind them sternly but patiently that politics is a game for grown-ups. And, of course, it is. Only a grown-up could look at the ultimate success of a rich, spoiled frat boy who didn't do his homework and explain to the other children, "Well, that's the way it is. You'll understand when you're older."

The problem is that children have always understood, perfectly. No one has to get "older" to understand injustice and hypocrisy; ask any elementary school teacher worth her box of stick-on stars. The difference is that children still think someone ought to do something about it. Those who have "successfully" managed the transition to adulthood realize that no one is about to do any such thing, so we might as well forget about all those fundamental issues and worry about important things, like targeted tax cuts resulting in an annual savings of $125 and whether other people's children are listening to nasty rap CDs. The aging children who refuse to grow up, if that's what it's going to be like, are impervious to lectures from the NYT editorial cartel. From their perspective, it's just the same old baloney they used to hear on the playground from the adults who refused to do anything about the bullies. And it isn't any more impressive now than it was then.

You must admit that there is something surreal about the Gore camp insinuating that conscientious liberals ought to vote Gore because he had the "courage" to pick Lieberman. These are the same folks who tell us, in the next breath, that courage is too much to ask from a Democrat, at least when we're talking about campaign financing, corporate welfare, globalization, and so on. These are also the same folks who keep suggesting that Naderites are simply sentimental, not real-politikal enough to function in the real world. Allah knows you haven't heard the Democrats suggesting that voting for the son of Middle-Eastern immigrants would be a moral victory against the forces of bigotry and viciousness. Of course not. It's still cool to be anti-Arab—those rabid rogue-state Islamic terrorists, doncha know—and besides, Nader and his family are Christian Lebanese who are competely secular in political outlook. That's just too confusing, like having more than two politicians in a debate. Better to keep things real simple and stay mysteriously silent about Nader's ethnicity.

My advice to any Jewish person (or any person of conscience of any ethnic or religious condition) who wishes to vote for Gore in order to "endorse" the idea of a Jewish Vice President is this: you go right ahead, if that's where your conscience takes you. But lay off the Naderites about "symbolic votes," please. Genug iz genug, for Christ's sake.