Given that it seems increasingly likely that Barack Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party, now might be an appropriate time to raise some doubts about his viability as a candidate in the fall.  A popular claim for some years on sites such as DailyKos, MyDD, and sometimes TPM, is that votes for Ralph Nader were responsible for putting (and keeping) George W. Bush in the White House.  Is the Obama candidacy primed to repeat this situation?

Marcy Winograd is an Executive Board member of the California Democratic Party.  She initiated a story that has played on MyDD, Huffington Post, etc., that Obama operatives have been involved in a purge of possible delegates from California to the Democratic Convention to be held this summer.  Winograd suggested that the California Obama campaign had purged almost all progressive anti-war activists from its delegate candidate lists. 

 I am reminded of the situation at the Democratic Convention in Boston four years ago when Kerry was nominated.  Anti-war demonstrators were shunted to obscure locations in pens surrounded by police and security so that they would not be seen or heard.  People carrying an anti-war message inside the convention floor, including delegates, on signs or on clothing or pins, were confronted by convention security and forced to remove the messages.  Of course, Kerry campaigned on what was essentially a pro-war position, which would have marginalized the anti-war people anyway.  I guess the thought on the part of the Kerry people was that with Bush as the Republican candidate, the anti-war vote would go to Kerry even though Kerry, too, was a pro-war candidate.  Even so, it seemed at the time to be foolish to thoroughly antagonize anti-war Democrats by marginalizing them physically as well as in terms of policy.

Now, the appearance is raised of similar Obama attitudes, with anti-war activists being purged from the roles of possible delegates.  Granted, some more recent reports have held that the purge is being undone, but the damage has been done to the extent that a basic tendency similar to Kerry’s of four years ago exists in the Obama campaign.  Whether this indicates that Barack is less anti-war than his posture has suggested is unknown to me, but it certainly raises that fear.  This fear is compounded by reports that Obama’s Iraq advisor, Colin Kahl, is saying that Obama will keep 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq for years to come. 

Quite independently from the question of how one should read the tea leaves in all of this in terms of what they portend for the policies of an Obama Presidency, there is the short-term question of what this means in terms of votes leaking from Obama to the very real candidacy of Nader, and the possible Green Party candidacy of Cynthia McKinney.  When Democrats complain about “Naderites” costing Gore and Kerry the past two elections, my thoughts go to the ways in which their candidacies encourages such votes.  I know several people who tried to vote for Kerry last time (because Bush/Cheney are so completely terrible), but ultimately couldn’t get themselves to vote for “the other pro-war candidate, Kerry.”  Don’t count out the possibility in a 2008 Obama race that many won’t be similarly tempted if Obama equivocates his positions.  I, for one, already am alarmed at his argument that the war in Iraq is distracting the US from “the real war in Afghanistan.”  So far as I can tell, Osama Bin Laden is long gone from Afghanistan and the poor folk who are dying there at US, British, and other NATO hands aren’t responsible to much of anything that merits what is being done to them. 

There are other signs that Obama is willing to give up many votes to Nader and/or McKinney.  His consistent pro-Israel tilt, of course, seems calculated on the perception that his candidacy cannot afford a vigorous anti-Obama attack from the pro-Israel lobby.  For me, however, some of the good of his famous “more perfect union” speech was undone when he referred to Israel as a stalwart ally and placed the blame for the problems of the middle East as “emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”  There are plenty of legitimate reasons for people the middle East to resent both Israel and the US that don’t follow simply from some perverse Islamic ideology.  The seeming dismissal of all responsibility for Israel and the US (and other Western powers) by Obama is appalling and it too will bleed votes from the Democratic nominee to Nader/McKinney. 

Obama repeatedly has stated a willingness to meet with foreign leaders who have been banished from diplomatic contact for years, including the leaders of Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, but he has resisted the possibility of meeting with the Hamas leadership of Palestine.  "They're not heads of state. They don't recognize Israel," Obama said. "You can't negotiate with somebody who doesn't recognize the right of a country to exist."  Yet, Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in an election that outside observers, including the pro-American politician, Jimmy Carter, as legitimate. 

So, even as Obama campaigns as the candidate for change, he is inviting many to view him as the same old same old.  He’s for talking, so long as the pro-Israel lobby won’t be prompted into attack mode against him.  Apparently the anti-North Korean and anti-Castro lobbies are perceived as less powerful, so he’s enthusiastic about change that they won’t like.  He’s anti-war in that he talked against the war when Hillary voted for it, but he has consistently voted to continue funding it since he entered the Senate.  Now, by all appearances, he has no enthusiasm to permit a visible and audible anti-war presence at the Democratic Convention.  If the election in November is as close as the current polls suggest that it will be (and as close as the last two Presidential elections were), should we be surprised if Obama’s losing margin is less than the votes that go to Nader and McKinney?  And if this happens, will the Democrats again be blaming the “Naderites” or will they blaming the failure of the Democrats to provide a clear alternative to the pro-war policies of the other pro-war party? 

I may yet find myself able to vote for Obama in November (although I cannot imagine being able to vote for Hillary, even against McCain; she hasn’t distinguished herself from the Republicans sufficiently for my vote).  Obama’s recent behavior, however, is lessening that possibility.