Democrats rage against Ralph Nader for cutting into Al Gore's vote. They stigmatize his supporters as irresponsible spoilers. If it hadn't been for Nader, they say, Gore would have romped home in Florida, New Hampshire and still-contested Oregon, and thus captured the White House.

Insults about "irresponsibility" and "reckless sabotage" don't get us very far. What were the big issues for greens in Florida? The Everglades. Back in 1993, the hope was that Clinton/Gore would push through a cleanup bill to prevent toxic runoff from the sugar plantations south of Lake Okeechobee from destroying the swamp that covers much of south-central Florida. Such hopes foundered on a "win-win" solution brokered by sugar barons and the real estate industry and accepted by Clinton and Gore.

Nature's mightiest defender in these United States died Sunday in Berkeley, Calif., 88 years after he entered the world in that same city. His life thus briefly intersected with that of the greatest green champion of the nineteenth century, John Muir, who died in 1914. Thus, the aged Muir and the infant Brower were both alive at the moment of an event that profoundly shaped the imagination of American environmentalists: the flooding of the Hetch-Hetchy valley in Yosemite National Park in 1913.

The inundation of Yosemite's most beautiful feature taught Brower's generation of conservationists that without uncompromising defenders, the industrialization of the West would obliterate everything in its path; even the designation of a national park was no guarantee. As Brower famously put it, When they win, it's forever. When we win, it's merely a stay of execution.

The New Democrats may have outsmarted themselves.

A couple of months ago, the current Democratic Party leadership seemed to be firmly in control. The succession was orderly. The party's new ticket of "moderates" -- Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman -- gained momentum. If all went according to plan, President Lieberman would be wrapping up his second term in 2016.

The longstanding game plan kept boosting people who fervently embraced "the center." Why defend low-income mothers when you can brag about dumping them off the welfare rolls? Why make trouble for Wall Street when you can curry favor and rake in larger contributions? Why put a brake on the drug war when you can keep building prisons and filling them with more dark-skinned poor people?

Applauded by countless reporters and pundits, the New Democrats grabbed hold of the national party apparatus in 1992 and never let go. Journalists concluded that all the major policy issues within the Democratic Party had been settled. The mood was similar among most of the Democrats on Capitol Hill as they kowtowed to the party's hierarchy.

A political culture is under siege. Hear the panic as the waters pour into Atlantis.

Jesse Jackson cries out that, "Our very lives are at stake." Paul Wellstone quavers that George W. Bush will "repeal the 20th century." Martin Peretz, owner of the Gore-loving New Republic, writes furiously (and foolishly) that, "Naderism represents the emotional satisfaction of the American left at the expense of the social and economic satisfaction of women, blacks, gays and poor people in America."

Back in 1992, Jackie Blumenthal, wife of White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, was asked why she and her husband were such rabid supporters of a con man from Arkansas called Bill Clinton. "It's our turn," she hissed at once, as though that settled the matter once and for all.

And so indeed it was: the turn of that whole class that had endured the 12 long years of Reagan/Bush time to take their rightful place in Washington. Of course, in terms of substantive change, America remained a one-party state, under center-right government.

AUSTIN, Texas -- A dramatic new political ad reminding viewers of the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper two years ago has the Bush campaign in a royal snit, denouncing the ad as utterly disgusting and below the belt.

You may want some background on how it came about.

Byrd's hideous death attracted the national media to East Texas. The case and reaction to it were much-examined, as was the later case of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man who was lashed to a fence in Wyoming.

By the beginning of the 1999 session of the State Legislature, the black, brown and gay communities were demanding a hate crimes bill, and the issue had to be addressed by Gov. George W. Bush. He said he opposed the bill because "all crimes are hate crimes."

The House sponsor, Rep. Senfronia Thompson, in one of the finest speeches of her career, made a direct rebuttal: "Is cashing a bad check a hate crime? Is insurance fraud a hate crime?"