Meanwhile, Kerry, who recently selected North Carolina senator John Edwards as his running mate, continues to have a hard time gaining an edge over the Republican incumbent. He is running a campaign that is difficult to distinguish politically from that of George W. Bush.

At its convention in late June, the Green Party rebuffed Nader’s bid for endorsement. Instead the party nominated California lawyer David Cobb as its presidential standard-bearer. Nader mistakenly calculated that his selection of Peter Camejo, a “socially responsible” financier and Green Party leader in California, as his running mate, would clinch the organization’s support.

The Greens, who act as a left wing of the Democratic Party, decided to follow a “safe states” strategy of campaigning for their slate only in states where either Bush or Kerry is considered likely to win by a substantial margin. In contested states, Cobb urges people to “vote their conscience,” that is, to vote for Kerry. A group called Greens for Kerry is openly canvassing for the Democrats in disputed states.

Nader himself says that in states where there is a tight race his supporters should campaign for him but that in the voting booth “they can make up their own mind.” Campaigning for him is a pressure tactic on the Democrats to “give them a little scare before you vote for them on November 2nd,” Nader said in a June 23 interview by Robert Siegel on National Public Radio.

Nader has been endorsed by the rightist Reform Party, giving him ballot status in seven states. He has also courted ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan, who gave him a sympathetic interview in the June 21 issue of The American Conservative.

Denied the Greens’ ballot spots in 22 states, Nader’s campaign is also facing increased pressure from Democratic Party forces. Former Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Nation magazine, and filmmaker Michael Moore have all called on him to pull out of the race, claiming his candidacy might jeopardize Kerry’s bid. In several states the Democrats are seeking to deny Nader a ballot spot. In Arizona they challenged the validity of 22,000 signatures his supporters had submitted—far more than the 14,694 required—and the Nader campaign withdrew the petitions.  
 
Kerry-Edwards campaign
As the Democrats head toward their national convention, which will be held July 26-29 in Boston under the slogan “Stronger at Home, Respected in the World,” the Kerry campaign is having a hard time distinguishing itself from Bush’s mainstream Republican policies. Kerry and his running mate Edwards, both “New Democrats” like former president William Clinton, register the converging course of the twin capitalist parties and their gradual but steady shift to the right. Their stance was summarized in a July 9 statement by the Democratic Leadership Council that said, “Kerry has outlined an aggressive strategy to win the war on terror by strengthening America’s military and building strong alliances with the friends we need around the world. His economic plan is built on concrete ideas to curb federal spending, promote growth, and expand opportunity.”

Kerry, who supports the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and differs with the White House only on how to make it more effective for U.S. ruling-class interests, failed to gain much ground when the Bush administration was hit by revelations about the torture and degradation of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. military. In fact, most in the U.S. ruling class back the Bush- and Rumsfeld-led “war on terrorism” and the administration’s strategy of transforming the U.S. military into a more agile force capable of deploying rapidly to any part of the world.

Given the Kerry campaign’s lack of appeal, many liberal Democrats are campaigning against Bush more than for Kerry, and their “Dump Bush” efforts are getting more high-pitched. An example of this is the Michael Moore “documentary” film Fahrenheit 9/11. Asked by USA Today whether his anti-Bush movie is aimed at galvanizing the “choir” of faithful Democrats, Moore said, “The choir needs a wake-up call. A large part of the choir isn’t energized by John Kerry and is not voting.”

To try to energize the pro-Kerry troops, Moore’s film pushes conspiracy theories about Bush “stealing” the 2000 elections and about a nefarious Bush-Osama bin Laden connection. He promotes the Democrats’ argument that Bush is incompetent to deal with “terrorism” and resorts to low-level personalized attacks including the fallacy that Bush is “stupid.” This tone, common to other liberals and radicals, has been part of the coarsening of discourse in bourgeois politics.  
 
 
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