Anyone else see this coming?

AP wire reports today that "liberal activist Lenora Fulani resigned from Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign and withdrew her support, saying the socially conservative candidate has divided the Reform Party by excluding other viewpoints." (Minor nit: Fulani is not a "liberal activist"; that's simply false. The AP should know better and usually does.) I want to avoid being arrogant as a white man speaking about Lenora Fulani, but I can only wonder if Fulani really thought Buchanan had any intention to actually work or share power with her? I suppose what she may have been hoping is that Buchanan was in some regards redeemable, and that perhaps by directly engaging him, she might be able to shame or sway Buchanan into more sensible positions.

The specific sticking point turned out to be Buchanan's unwillingness to support Fulani for the National Chair position of the Reform Party, and his unwillingness to name someone on the left as his VP running mate.

I'm not surprised by either of these, but then I haven't been trying to engage Buchanan from the left directly as Fulani has been doing. As Bay Buchan, the sibling-Eva-Braun of Buchanan's set, says, "It simply could not and would not be with the best interest of the party to support her for chair," which I take to mean that rising above merely using Fulani to sharing power with her is unacceptable.

There is a lesson here for Ralph Nader and the Green Party to learn, and it is a simple one: the (very negligible) value of Buchanan's opposition to the WTO and IMF -- which is grounded in xenophobia and racism -- will never outweigh the enormous costs of his xenophobia and racism.