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A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
by Philippe Dambournet

Dear Ralph Nader,

Your response to The Nation's "An Open Letter to Ralph Nader" is far more striking for what it leaves out than for what it covers.

It ignores, to put it simply, the rest of the world. All 6,008,000,000 of us.

You fling back the decrepit Democratic Party and the deadening American electoral system at your American critics.

But you never, ever, mention anything outside the narrow confines of the American political system.

Shall I tell you what the rest of the planet wants?

They do not want to hear about ''more voices and choices."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''large areas of agreement with the undersigned on policy matters and political reforms."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''the Democratic Party's stagnation, the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council and its domination by Big Money."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''a tawdry electoral system -- ridden with fraud and manipulation."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''the deliberate barriers -- statutory, monetary, media and others -- to third parties and independent candidates."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''the longer run effect of small candidacies (civil rights, economic populism, women's suffrage, labor and farmer parties)."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''the hapless state of the Democratic Party, which for the past ten years has registered more and more losses at the federal, state and local levels."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''external ways to stiffen the resolve or jolt the passivity of Jefferson's party."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''the latest collapse of the party's opposition to the subsidy-ridden wrongheaded energy and Medicare drug-benefit legislation."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''conceding the practical politics of servility."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''being held hostage to antiquated electoral rules, from the Electoral College to the winner-take-all system."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''the conclusions of George Scialabba, who wrote last year in The Boston Review."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''predicting where my votes would come from, beyond correctly inferring that there would be few liberal Democratic supporters."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''a second front of voters against the regime, which could raise fresh subjects, motivating language and the vulnerabilities of corporate scandals and blocked reforms."

-- They Want No More Bush.

They do not want to hear about ''a hostage to prevailing dogma and electoral straitjackets."

-- They Want No More Bush.

Sitting smug in your catbird seat at the heart of the American solipsism, you are broadcasting your utter unconcern about the single most pressing political agenda to billions everywhere.

By running, you will help convince incredulous multitudes that Americans are too foolish, too self-involved, too astonishingly selfish to muster the collective will to turn out an extremist whom they loathe and despise.

By helping Bush return to the White House, you will help demonstrate to an angry planet that the problem is not the American president but America itself.

And that will be an ominous development in the short history of this republic.

Sincerely,

Philippe Dambournet

Translator of your November 1, 2000 Op-Ed in the French daily, Le Monde.

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY