The party of whiners didn't waste a minute to start the blame game. Shortly after the networks erroneously gave Bush the presidency at 2:17 a.m. Wednesday, former Bill Clinton speechwriter Paul Begala started crying on MSNBC that it was Nader 's fault that Gore lost Florida and with it the presidency.

The Democrats can't take responsibility for their own shortcomings. It 's bad enough that the Democrats under Clinton/Gore have taken the party so far to the right with welfare reform, militarism and corporate whoring that a candidate like Nader had to run to finally provide progressives with a real alternative. It's shameful that the Democrats first ignored Nader and his issues, then, when it appeared that Gore 's victory was in jeopardy, ran a fear-and-smear campaign.

It 's even more distressing that the campaign worked. Accommodating Nader supporters abandoned the Green Party in droves. In key states such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon and Michigan, Nader support was cut in half. And guess what? Despite all the hullabaloo over Internet vote-trading and the Molly Ivins strategy of voting your heart in states where the race wasn't tight and holding your nose and voting for Gore where it was, Nader support didn't balloon in states like New York and Texas and California.

The half-hearted strategy of voting for Nader only when it couldn't hurt Gore was a disservice to Nader 's brave, proud campaign and to the volunteers who worked so hard to get Nader on the ballot despite long odds. It also failed miserably. It cost the Greens their five percent and the prospect of federal matching funds, and it still wasn't enough to get the hapless Gore elected.

Once you start accommodating ruthless, abusive power, there is no end to it. So now we have the horrid spectacle of Democrats still blaming Nader for the Florida loss, even though Green support went from six percent in the polls in that state to two percent on Election Day. We caved, and we still get blamed. At least one commentator - Diane Rehm on NPR - opined that Nader 's three-percent tally nationwide showed he was never a viable candidate who had issues that appealed to voters, so what was he doing running anyway? This is where fear leads - to the sewer,

It should be clear that the so-called Democratic Party is now profoundly undemocratic. Its message is loud and clear: Nader had no right to run. No third party that challenges the Democrats from the left has a right to exist unless it can somehow guarantee in advance it won't make a difference in the outcome of the election. In other words: you are not legitimate unless you 're powerless.

Co-dependency is the term for a person who can 't let go of an abusive relationship. And being co-dependent only encourages more abuse. It is an apt metaphor for the relationship between too many feckless Greens and the shameless Democrats.

Contrast some Greens' behavior with that of another third-party candidate, Pat Buchanan. Buchanan told the Washington Press Club that his campaign was responsible for Bush losing in Michigan and other states and perhaps losing in Florida. Buchanan tried to inflate the importance of his support by proving he was a spoiler.

Meanwhile, Michael Moore is trying to mount a campaign to support Al Gore in his bid to overthrow the likely results of the Electoral College. Moore wrote of the candidate who got the support of maybe 26 percent of all eligible U.S. voters: "Al Gore is the choice of the people" and called on Greens to join Democrats to "stop this potential theft of our majority democratic rule."

So Gore's winning the popular vote by the slimmest plurality, thanks to massive Green capitulation, is the expression of the people's unfettered democratic will? Wasn't Nader 's entire campaign dedicated to proving that our democracy is being held hostage by corporate power?

This entire election was obscene. Four billion dollars was spent, most of it on deceitful, pandering TV ads. Both candidates said nothing that wasn't focus-group-tested. They both tried to exploit the Electoral College system by concentrating only on "battleground" states and ignoring voters elsewhere. That the popular vote is meaningless isn't because of a conspiracy by Bush. It's the law of the land, and also it's the way Gore and Bush played the game, completely abandoning any obligation to talk issues with all the voters.

The Democrats, who seem constitutionally incapable of taking responsibility for their actions, programs and candidates, could very well embark on a campaign (which Moore already supports) to overturn the Electoral College results, screaming that the rules they played by and sought to exploit are unfair -- and blaming everyone for Gore's defeat but themselves. The only way they won't pursue this strategy is if it doesn't test well in polls and focus groups.

Down this road lies ruin. Let 's not go any farther.

Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke certainly took responsibility for what they were doing and what effect it might have on the outcome of the election. They didn't shrink from the prospect of being spoilers. But too many potential Green voters did, as if the exercise of real political power were too frightening, as if fighting for democracy really wasn't worth alienating a few friends and co-workers.

Greens, we need to be bolder. If we weren't in the presidential game to make an impact, then what were we doing there? If we continue to accommodate the Democrats, we will end up further marginalized.

Everyone who cast a vote for Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke should be proud. We tried to redeem our democracy by supporting candidates who were unowned and uncowed by power. We didn't spoil the election. It was already rotten.

Michael Betzold is a Michigan-based freelance writer whose articles have appeared in many publications including The New Republic and The Witness. He is the author of four books: Appointment with Doctor Death, on Jack Kevorkian's assisted suicide campaign; Queen of Diamonds: The Tiger Stadium Story, with Ethan Casey, on baseball and stadium subsidies; End of the Line: Autoworkers and the American Dream, with Richard Feldman; and a surrealistic feminist baseball revenge fantasy novel, Casey and the Bat. See www.mbetzold.com for a complete publications list. Betzold is a locked-out former reporter for the Detroit Free Press and won an Emmy for his work on a PBS Frontline documentary on Kevorkian.

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