I got this forwarded email from a friend who was voting for Gore. I wrote a response explaining why the arguments in this argument are completely weak.
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 09:44:15 -0700 Subject: Gloria Steinem's Top 10 Reasons I'm Not Voting for Nader TOP TEN REASONS WHY I'M NOT VOTING FOR NADER (ANY ONE OF WHICH WOULD BE ENOUGH) by Gloria Steinem: 10. He's not running for President. He's running for federal matching funds for the Green Party! 9. He was able to take all those perfect progressive positions of the past because he never had to build an electoral coalition, earn a majority vote, or otherwise submit to democracy. 8. By condemning Gore for ever having taken a different position--for example, for voting against access to legal abortion when he was a Congressman from Tennessee--actually dissuades others from changing their minds and joining us. 7.Nader is rightly obsessed with economic and corporate control, yet he belittles the movements against a deeper form of control--control of reproduction, and the most intimate parts of our lives. For example, he calls the women's movement and the gay and lesbian movements "gonadal politics," and ridicules the use of the word "patriarchy," as if it were somehow less important than the World Trade Organization. As Congressman Barney Frank wrote Nader in an open letter, "your assertion that there are not important issue differences between Bush and Gore is either flatly inaccurate or reflects your view that...the issues are not important...since you have generally ignored these issues in your career...)" 6. The issues of corporate control can only be addressed by voting for candidates who will pass campaign-funding restrictions, and conducting grassroots boycotts and consumer campaigns against sweatshops? not by voting for one man who will never become President. 5. Toby Moffett, a longtime Nader Raider who also served in Congress, wrote that Nader's "Tweedledum and Tweedledee assertion that there is no important difference between the major presidential candidates would be laughable if it weren't so unsafe." We've been bamboozled by the media's practice of being evenhandedly negative. There is a far greater gulf between Bush and Gore than between Nixon and Kennedy? and what did that mean to history? 4. Nader asked Winona LaDuke, an important Native American leader, to support and run with him, despite his possible contribution to the victory of George W. Bush, a man who has stated that "state law is supreme when it comes to Indians," a breathtakingly dangerous position that ignores hundreds of treaties with tribal governments, long-standing federal policy and federal law affirming tribal sovereignty. 3. If I were to run for President in the same symbolic way, I hope my friends and colleagues would have the good sense to vote against me, too, saving me from waking up to discover that I had helped send George W. Bush to the most powerful position in the world. 2. There are one, two, three, or even four lifetime Supreme Court Justices who are likely to be appointed by the next President. Bush has made clear by his record as governor and appeals to the ultra-rightwing that his appointments would overturn Roe v. Wade and reproductive freedom, dismantle remedies for racial discrimination, oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians, oppose mandatory gun-registration, oppose federal protections of endangered species, public lands, and water--and much more. Gore is the opposite on every one of these issues. Gore has made clear that his appointments would uphold our hard-won progress in those areas, and he has outlined advances in each one. 1. The art of behaving ethically is behaving as if everything we do matters. If we want Gore and not Bush in the White House, we have to vote for Gore and not Bush? out of respect for the vote and self-respect. I'm not telling you how to vote by sharing these reasons. The essence of feminism is the power to decide for ourselves. It's also taking responsibility for our actions. Let's face it, Bush in the White House would have far more impact on the poor and vulnerable in this country, and on the subjects of our foreign policy and aid programs in other countries. Just as Clinton saved women's lives by rescinding the Mexico City policy by executive order as his first act as President--thus ending the ban against even discussing abortion if one received U.S. aid--the next President will have enormous power over the lives of millions abroad who cannot vote, plus millions too disillusioned to vote here. Perhaps there's a reason why Nader's rallies seem so white, middle class, and disproportionately male; in short, so supported by those wouldn't be hurt if Bush were in the White House. Think self-respect. Think about the impact of our vote on the weakest among us. Then we can't go wrong.