I endorsed Ralph Nader in 2000. And while I didn't support his candidacy four years later, I defended his right to run. Nobody's vote "belongs" to any candidate except the one who wins it. The Democrats didn't lose in 2000 because Nader won a smattering of votes in Florida. They lost because Al Gore was a lousy candidate who couldn't carry his own state nor motivate tens of millions of potential Democratic voters to get off the couch. If had an 'enth of the capacity to inspire and engage the crowds of new voters that Barack Obama had demonstrated, we would have never heard of Dubya again.
But now that Nader has announced he will make a third run and while I would oppose any effort to keep him off the ballot, I am disappointed, even chagrined by his incipient candidacy.
Nader's anti-corporate message should not be shrugged off nor should his commitment to raise all of the issues that make most politicians of both parties squirm. "You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized, disrespected," he said in announcing his candidacy on Sunday. "You go from Iraq, to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."
Great message, Ralph. But absolutely no strategy. Politics is all about perception, and the perception of Nader's first run, fairly or not, was that of a tragedy. His redux in 2004 was more of a farce. His run this time will be doomed to be pathetic. It will accomplish absolutely nothing except to diminish Nader's own towering record as a citizens' advocate and to marginalize the crucial issues he raises.
In 2000, running as a Green candidate, Nader scored less than 3% of the vote. He left behind no infrastructure, no organization, no network of any significance. All that marked his legacy was a mountain of bitterness and recrimination. Four years later, in the middle of the Bush catastrophe and with the Democrats fielding a candidate equally lame to Gore, Nader was able to attract a flyspeck .3% of the vote - a tenth of what he garnered in 2000.
What does Nader expect this time around? He has no funding, no party structure behind him, and no rational way of explaining of what he could possibly accomplish. More disturbing, he has no visible constituency. The overwhelming bulk of what might be called the Nader Vote has been swept into the vortex of the Obama campaign. Nader can make the argument, if he wishes, that Obama is just one more corporate sell-out but it is unlikely that the millions who have flocked to Obama are all of a sudden going to be jolted into an about face that because Nader will appear on the ballot.
Nader is far too smart a man to know that he has any chance of winning anything. What he, and whatever few supporters who will join him, will argue is that by running he will somehow force Obama - or Hillary if she wins the nomination--to move to the left.
This is, of course, nonsense. All of the factors that contributed to Nader's dismal finish in 2004 are many times more potent this cycle. His candidacy will force nothing, except the voters to view Nader as some sort of bizarre spectacle. The competing candidates will see him as little more than a nuisance.
It doesn't have to be this way. Ralph Nader could play an essential and productive role between now and November without sacrificing neither his independence nor his principles. One could imagine a rolling, coast-to-coast chataqua over this coming summer during which Nader, precisely, would keep alive any and all of the issues neglected by the mainstream debate. It could be a role of great import and great dignity. Why Nader, instead, has chosen to further marginalize himself and his agenda is way beyond me.
If the USA is ready to elect it's President by Direct Popular Vote, it will require a constitutional ammendment to do away with Electoral College.
Barack Obama hasn't called for that, Nader has. And Barack Obama has neither responded to the request I made for his stance on this issue months ago - nor defined his position regarding a number of other issues that deserve attention, and the question is WHY?
What does that signify? An insufficient or poorly informed staff that doesn't have time or incentive to dig deeper than the canned answers they were provided with? (Edwards' Campaign included "Issues Interns" that did just that, although it took a few calls to get my request channelled correctly).
So if Nader's presence helps direct attention from the barackobama.com and hillaryclinton.com campaign teams (the candidates and those whose input is taken into account), to issues currently off the table; it will serve a useful purpose.
He's well within his rights, requires permission to run from none of those here and has a legitimate reason for doing so (and I am not about to second-guess his intentions, beyond his declared motivation).
An antecedent: No one did more to shape the major parties' platforms than Norman Thomas and he did so without winning a election, although he ran for President 6 times over 20 years (check wikipedia).
As mentioned earlier, Nader won't get my vote but hopefully, his presence in the race will help make the rest of the candidates more accoúntable. That's all he says he wants and so do I.
Not that I am blaming Nader. I agree that Gore ran a poor campaign, the poorest decision being the choice of Lieberman for VP. We can only hope that the Democrats pick up few more seats in the Senate and they can tell Jomentum to pack his bags and get completely out of our party.
Everyone has the right to run for president, including Nader. He addresses important issues. The biggest problem America has is that our political system is fundamentally corrupt. Most of our solvable problems stem from this fact. If he truly had the power to awaken Americans to this fact and do something about it, it would be a great thing.
I think this time around few will take him seriously at election time and doubt he'll make much of an impact on the results. Although both parties are corrupted by corporations, there are still significant differences. Anybody who thinks things would be as bad as they have been under Bush if Gore had been elected is seriously confused.
The answer is obvious. If I had his notoriety and access to some financial backing, there's a lot I (or anyone) could do to have moved some of these issues forward into the public limelight over these past 7-8 years. But he has done nothing of the such. He's an egomaniac with problems. What a shame.
But I believe Cooper is right. Nader will accomplish little if anything this time. When you have a Barack Obama running, you don't really need a Ralph Nader.
Barring an unforeseen event, Obama will be the next President of the USA. The question is: Is he really prepared to be as all-inclusive as he says he'll be, or is he only willing to relate to to those that subscribe to his movement with no questions asked (folks he can be condescending with)?
I know this much: At this point, don't expect a reply to a request for his stance on any issue for which a canned response is not on hand. All you'll get is a form letter thanking you for your participation, assuring you how important it is to them - but no concrete reply relevant to the comment or request made.
Has the public's response overwhelmed his staff's capacity to respond? Probably so - but there's no way to tell whether that will be corrected any time soon or even whether the intention exists to do so. So far, he's gotten all the blank checks he needs from adherents that don't ask tough questions and want only to be part of the movement, rather than help provide direction for it. Will he define his stance on the issues Nader refers to, or consider them a threat?
Interestingly, Nader predicted the Obama phenomena after his attracting 5 million votes in 200 caused Al Gore to lose the elections. He claimed that the USA would unite against George Bush. We'll soon know whether the candidate best able to agglutinate the publics desire for change is a "True Believer" or a True and Visionary Leader.
He ought to join up with Michael Moore and collaborate in making scathing documentaries about things that need exposing.
Of course between his ego and Mr Moore's . . .
who knows?
My point is that I think Nader is an icon and worthy of respect; his short term legacy shouldn't be that of a bitter has-been; an ego-driven profoundly negative old man.
Long term, history will be reward him.
BTW Marc, this is Nader's fourth run. He was candidate in 1996.
I like his ideas, but he is unrealistic and dangerous to American simply because he does not seem to understand the consequences to the rest of us of his ill-conceived bid for election.
The best thing Nader can do to "help" Americans is to get out of the race and stop working for the Republicans. You will never hear them suggest he resign the race! They love him after 2000 when he DID CAUSE THE ELECTION OF BUSH despite his cries to the contrary.
Impeachment means nothing but a slap on the reputation, so to speak. The next step would be criminal indictments, and that could never come close to happening given the present membership of the Senate and the precarious "majority" in the House.
If there were another election, which probably won't happen, and a Democrat were to be elected president along with a healthy majority of Democrats in the Congress, then criminal proceedings could begin against the vermin, preferably via the Hague. I just wish we could haul them off, from Cheney, Addington, and all the restof the cabal of thugs and murderers now reigning, to one of our detention centers, preferably Guantanamo--in the secret part (where the "good" stuff happens).
They tell themselves that the odds are so against their vote for Ralph putting the GOP in the White House that it's more important that they register their ideological purity.
They're narcissistic, passive-aggressive power-trippers. They're responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Middle East, trillions in debt, etc.
But, just watch, many of them will do it again. The GOP will pour money into Nader's campaign because for Republicans it's a smart gamble.