Barney Frank Versus Ralph Nader.

Nader or Gore? That is the question for many progressives on their way into the voting booth November 7. Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader has been traveling the country, making his case for breaking away from the Democrats and holding rallies outside the debates. Meanwhile, Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, the Congressman known in Washington as the left's attack dog for his devastating confrontations with the right, has lately been on Nader's trail, warning voters that they'll be sorry if they don't support Al Gore.

Nader points to Al Gore's support for the death penalty, the drug war, and global trade agreements. He decries the overwhelming power of corporations in funding campaigns and influencing policy, and he calls for a massive citizen revolt. "How can the system regenerate itself? It gets into our very minds, our own psychology--this internalized feeling by millions of people that `[third party candidates] can't win because they can't get our votes, and they can't get our votes because they can't win.' And so people trundle listlessly down to the polls to vote for the bad, because someone is worse. In so doing, we legitimize exactly what we're repulsed by," Nader told 2,000 people in Madison. "If we've got any self-respect in this country, we've got to mount a political system where the people write the rules, not the corporations."

Around the same time, Barney Frank also spoke to a crowd in Madison. It would be a "terrible mistake" to vote for Nader, since it will take votes from Al Gore and help George W. Bush, Frank said. "Some people say, `I don't want to decide between the lesser of two evils.' Well, why are you supporting the greater of two evils? That makes no sense." Frank points out Gore's support for abortion rights, gay rights, and affirmative action as major differences with the Republicans: "I want to see the Democratic Party become more liberal, but the way to do that is within the party."

I spoke with both men during the final weeks before the Presidential election, asking them to make their best pitches for progressive votes. Here is what they said.

Q: What do you say to people who support Ralph Nader as the voice of a new movement against corporate power and unfair global trade? Isn't that a constructive role for him to play?

Barney Frank: I wish Nader would run in the Democratic primary, the way Jesse Jackson did. If the Democrats take back the House, I will chair the subcommittee that deals with the World Bank and the IMF, and I will make it exactly the issue, how to come up with a global New Deal. The question is, how do you best affect the policy changes you want? Not by taking the left out of the Democratic Party.

Q: What about these huge crowds coming out to see Nader--the 10,000 people in Portland and Boston and Minneapolis? They seem to have a tremendous sense of catharsis because he is talking about issues the other candidates won't touch--the death penalty, fair trade, and the growth of corporate power.

Frank: The purpose of voting is not catharsis. The purpose of voting is to help poor kids and gay kids who are getting beat up. It is to affect public policy. It's not to feel good emotionally. We share this country with 250 million other people. That means you almost never reach a consensus on everything. You have to ask, "What is most likely to move forward a social justice agenda?" Get the people whose interests we represent to register to vote, to vote in the primaries, and to lobby. That is the way you carry your policies forward.

Q: Can you ever see a legitimate moment for bailing out on the Democrats?

Frank: Sure. If people fall below the minimum acceptable level. If Sam Nunn were the Democratic nominee. In Philadelphia, when the Democratic candidate for mayor was terribly anti-gay, and people said no, we're not going to vote for him. That's legitimate. But you hear Nader say that the two parties are really one party with two heads and different makeup. I don't think gay rights are cosmetic. I don't think abortion rights or gun control are cosmetic.

Q: What about the fact that less than half of the public even votes?

Frank: How do you make that better? By minimizing the real differences between the parties? Do you overcome that by telling people to vote for a third party candidate? I think that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I want to reinvigorate the left to make public policy. The Democratic and Republican Parties are both somewhat malleable. And right now the right is much more powerful within the Republican Party than the left is within the Democratic Party.

Look at Congress. Nader is very contradictory here. He says he will draw disaffected voters to the polls, and that will help the Democrats running for Congress. So he deserves credit for helping to take back the House. Then why are the Greens running candidates against Democrats? It's just intellectually dishonest. I thought they were supposed to be pure.

Q: Do you agree with anything Nader says?

Frank: I agree with some of the substance. I think he's wrong on strategy.

Q: This discipline you're talking about, it seems to make sense for Democratic Party insiders, for politicians you think should work together under one banner, but not for the ordinary voter.

Frank: No. It's for people who are serious about public policy. Discipline is for people who think policy matters. The more idealistic you are, the more morally obligated you are to be concerned about how you effectuate the ideals you hold.

Q: So you say to people who just can't stand Al Gore ...

Frank: What does that mean? Can't stand Al Gore?

Q: Who say, for example, that Gore is not a credible advocate on health care, since there are more uninsured now than when Clinton and Gore took office ...

Frank: That's because the Republicans were in power for six years. Who's responsible? How do you change that? There are more uninsured people because the Republicans took over Congress. If the Democrats take it back, we'll have health insurance. And what about the overwhelming view of black leaders, gay and lesbian leaders, labor leaders, and pro-choice leaders? These are the advocates of the issues we progressives care about. Doesn't their support for Gore say something?

Q: What about the overwhelming influence of moneyed interests in politics?

Frank: If the Democrats take back the House and Gore wins, we'll get the McCain-Feingold bill passed. How do you reduce corporate power in politics? By withdrawing some of the most committed liberals from the party? Politics is a question of your means. How do you accomplish it? And the Clinton Administration has done some things corporations didn't like: on tax policy, on raising the minimum wage, on several environmental issues, even trade, when they didn't go forward with the Seattle accord.

Nader wants to say he'll pressure the Democrats--that they'll be so scared of him, they'll move. That assumes there is this entity called the Democratic Party. There is no monolithic, sentient element called the Democratic Party. Jesse Jackson understood that, and that's why he was a much smarter strategist than Nader for moving the Democrats to the left. I don't think it was a given that the Democrats would hold the line on affirmative action, for example, when there were all those referenda around the country and public opinion was turning against it. But Jackson had real influence there.

It's unpredictable what will happen. It might fracture. They might say, well, there's no pleasing the left, we may as well move to the right. Again, the issue is strategic.

Q: What about Nader's statement, if you want members of Congress to vote their conscience, so should you?

Frank: You should vote for what's going to affect public policy. Yes, you should vote your conscience. But your conscience should be interested in what affects public policy. Not in catharsis.

And now, Ralph Nader:

Q: What do you say to people who agree with you on policy but are afraid of Bush and so are likely to vote for Gore?

Ralph Nader: If they believe in public financing for public campaigns really, not just in theory, if they believe in the right to organize and repealing Taft-Hartley, if they believe in ending corporate welfare, if they believe in strong civil rights and anti-poverty programs, if they believe in universal health insurance now, fifty years after Truman proposed it, if they want a watchdog party that will tell the two major parties if they don't shape up, they'll lose votes, if they believe in building a Green Party after November, and if they want the Democrats to stop electing very bad rightwing Congresses, vote Green. It will give millions of progressives power within the Democratic Party because they can't be told anymore, "You have nowhere else to go."

Q: What about Frank's point that the defection of the left will only strengthen the more conservative, Democratic Leadership wing of the party?

Nader: That doesn't say much for the Democratic Party--that it'll prefer marginalizing itself and weakening itself to responding to the demands of its constituents. There's no magnet on the left of the Democratic Party other than the Green Party. There's a heavy magnet on the right. Frightened liberals are letting things get worse and worse for fear of doing anything.

Q: What will your run accomplish?

Nader: We will come out with millions of votes, and that is going to be a very invigorating feeling, even though people become subject to fear in the voting booth, and some will vote for Gore--even so, we'll get a lot of votes. There are a lot of young people who don't want to waste their first vote. Young people don't chicken out.

In forty states, either Bush or Gore is going to win by a landslide. There's no problem in New York [where Al Gore will win regardless of how many people vote for Nader] and Texas [where Bush will win no matter what]. So there's no real risk in voting for me there.

Q: What's the end game of your run?

Nader: A watchdog by a growing third party is very important. And that's the end game as of now. It's a double end game. It says to the Democrats, "We're going to suck votes away from you big time unless you overcome the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and its leaders, who are the leaders of the party, Gore and Lieberman." The DLC elected a Republican Congress three times running. If you have someone guarding your school, and it keeps getting burglarized and vandalized, you change the guard. The Democrats can't change the guard. They keep letting the Republicans burglarize the country on behalf of corporations. And they raise money from the same corporations.

Q: What about the inherent conflict in saying that you will help elect a Democratic Congress, yet you are running as a Green, and there are Green Congressional candidates opposing the Democrats in a few races around the country?

Nader: This is probably the last chance the Democrats will have to avail themselves of a spillover Green Party vote to retake the House. The Greens are not running enough candidates. We're not strong enough yet.

Q: After November, will you pledge your time and energy to the Green Party, to help build it, the same way you built your public interest organizations over the years?

Nader: Sure. But I won't do it from the inside. I'll do it from the outside. I won't get involved in factional battles.

Q: How will that work?

Nader: I'll encourage them to become citizen advocates between elections, with storefronts in every community and full-time staff. We'll have a coordinated third party with citizen groups on the ground, and civil rights and environmental groups. That's what will distinguish it from the Republicans and Democrats. The Green Party is the beginning of the end for the Democratic Party.

Q: You do seem to prefer a Democratic Congress, though.

Nader: Only because certain people are better than others, [David] Bonior [of Michigan], for example. They can keep bad things from happening. They can't make good things happen, but they can forestall the bad and free our time a bit so we can spend our time offensively. If George Bush had been elected in 1992, we wouldn't have had phony welfare reform and we wouldn't have had NAFTA. The Democrats would've stiffened instead of being charmed by the snake charmer.

Q: Anything else you want to say to voters?

Nader: I'd urge people to invest their votes in a growing progressive party that will either make their Democratic Party better or replace it. That's not a bad choice. That's what made this country great. The women's rights movement and the anti-slavery movement didn't say, "Let's go for 20 percent on the first try." The Revolutionaries didn't say, "Let's not offend King George. Look what the Red Coats could do to us!" Vote your dreams, your hopes, and your interests, not your fears.

Ruth Conniff is Washington Editor of The Progressive.