CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
June 20, 2008 – 12:52 a.m.
Running For President and Against the Past: Ralph Nader
By Rachel Kapochunas, CQ Staff
• See a video interview with Ralph Nader.
Ask John McCain or Barack Obama who will win in November, and each would undoubtedly point to himself.
But independent candidate Ralph Nader doesn’t rush to promote himself when faced with that same question.
“Well, that’s not the best question to ask a presidential candidate,” Nader responded.
In his Georgetown campaign office overlooking the Potomac River, Nader told CQ Politics last week he recognized many Americans continue to think of him as the “spoiler” who cost Democrat Al Gore the presidency in 2000. He also acknowledged the country’s “winner takes all” electoral system means that few people will cast a vote for a candidate they don’t believe could win. But Nader said he’s determined to use his 2008 campaign to promote his message of “putting people back in charge of America’s democracy,” by fighting against the two-party system.
“I’m trying to galvanize people nationwide and that’s how you do it. You don’t do it by running for a Senate seat,” Nader said.
But galvanizing is hard without a national spotlight. And Nader and his campaign staffers admit it’s been a struggle to get national media attention since he announced his candidacy in February.
“It’s extreme this year,” Nader said.
Nader believes he is receiving little mainstream press coverage because many journalists are Democrats, who blame him (and the Green Party) for George W. Bush ’s victory and, by extension, the war in Iraq.
He says he’s defended himself so many times on the issue, he resorts to satire.
“I say, ‘Well, don’t you think Barbara and George [Herbert Walker] Bush ... share some responsibility? They created him. They gave birth to him,” Nader said.
But some journalists say Nader’s not getting the media attention he wants because he’s not a serious candidate.
“I just think he’s a total and complete irrelevancy,” Eric Alterman, columnist for The Nation and liberal blogger, told CQ Politics. Alterman, an educator and author, has publicly criticized Nader in the past, and says he regards him as “the person most responsible for George W. Bush ’s first four years.”
Running For President and Against the Past: Ralph Nader
On Election Day 2000, neither Gore nor Bush secured the necessary electoral votes to win and an outcome in Florida remained uncertain. Bush bested Gore by 537 votes, according to the official tally, and Nader received 97,488. Some studies showed that had Nader not been on the ballot, enough Nader supporters would have voted for Gore to give him a win over Bush in the state.
“In most states, a vote for Ralph Nader has historically been a vote for the Republican party,” Alterman said.
But Nader notes that Gore would have won had many aspects of the election been different, including if Gore won his home state of Tennessee or former President Bill Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, or if some registered Democrats in Florida had not voted for Bush, or if Katherine Harris, the top elections official in the state and/or the Supreme Court had handled the Florida recount situation differently.
Nader also refutes the “spoiler” label, a moniker he characterizes as “a contemptuous word of political bigotry” because it’s only attached to the “smaller candidate.”
Nader criticizes the country’s electoral process, noting that a candidate such as Ross Perot, who received more than 19 million votes in the 1992 presidential election, received “nothing.”
“In what country would someone get 18 percent of the vote and receive nothing?” Nader asks. He prefers instead a proportional representation system, used in many countries around the world, in which candidates receive a proportion of seats in a legislative body, such as Congress.
But first things first. Nader and his running mate Matt Gonzalez, a lawyer and former San Francisco County official who lost a run for mayor in 2003 as a Green candidate, must get their names on ballots.
Nader’s team and his supporters will spend the summer filing petitions, paperwork and fees to have Nader appear on at least 40 state ballots, the campaign’s goal. As of Thursday, Nader’s campaign filed to appear on four state ballots: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Hawaii. Deadlines for states run throughout the summer.
Nader, who was the Green Party nominee in 2000, said he is getting on the ballots in any way he can, as an Ecology Party candidate, Independent or others.
Nader said the Green party continues to promote a “great agenda,” but he criticized the party’s organizational and fundraising skills. Nader said that after 2000, when he received nearly 3 million votes, the Green party was “on the deck” but says they “frittered it away.” He takes issue with party members he called “Green Democrats” whom he says believe Green party candidates shouldn’t run in swing states, ostensibly to avoid siphoning off votes from the Democratic nominee.
Green party media coordinator Scott McLarty expressed the party’s disappointment that Nader did not decide to run for their party’s nomination this year, but said their additional disappointment is that Nader is not helping to advance a specific party this year. “He’s gone off on his own and we see that as a dead end ... for progressive politics,” McLarty said, adding that Nader would have “nothing to show for it at the end of the day.”
When asked if he’s the right person to promote his platform, given his current reputation, Nader responded that he welcomes other people to champion similar ideas and run for president, but “I’m the only person that shows up significantly in the polls.”
In a recent CNN/ Opinion Research Corp. poll Nader received 6 percent of the vote in a hypothetical general election match-up despite scant media attention.
Running For President and Against the Past: Ralph Nader
Nader believes Democrats are in the ideal situation to win the presidential race by a landslide this year, given President Bush’s unpopularity and widespread disapproval of the war and the economy. If Democrats don’t win by a “landslide,” Nader cautioned, “it’s because they have become too much like Republicans.”
“On issue after issue they’ll stand with corporate power, not with the people,” Nader said of the presumed major party nominees Barack Obama and John McCain .
Nader’s campaign has outlined 12 issues it believes are wrongly “off the table” for Obama and McCain, including cutting the military budget, creating single-payer national health insurance and taking action to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney .
Nader, a lawyer, has long been a consumer advocate and became well-known in the 1960’s for his automobile safety crusade. He continues to advance an anti-corporate message with the belief that “giant corporations are tearing the heart and soul out of our country.” He founded multiple advocacy groups, including Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and Public Citizen.
He promotes solar power and calls for a carbon pollution tax. Nader is also pushing to change the country’s electoral system by publicly financing campaigns, proportional representation and standardizing federal ballot access.
He has asked supporters to join his “Road Trip for Ralph” and commit one month to helping get Nader/Gonzales on a state ballot. The campaign expects to pay between $1.5 and $2.5 million for ballot efforts and hopes to raise $10 million overall for the campaign.
As of April 30, Nader reported raising $791,000, $41,000 from Nader himself. He raised more than $4.6 million overall in 2004, the majority of which came from individual contributions. He also expects to receive public funding.
Many critics have portrayed Nader, who is personally wealthy, as a hypocrite for “benefitting” from corporations. Nader has reported in the past that the majority of his finances come from lecturing and writing. Nader acknowledges that some of his money is invested in stocks, mainly technology stocks, including Cisco Systems Inc.
Nader counters that 85 percent of everything he’s ever raised has gone to built or extend consumer and other groups he’s established and said he gives 50 percent of his adjusted gross income to educational and charitable outlets.
Nader said he believes he’s the first candidate to donate in this way, and while it might seem revolutionary to some, he said for him, it’s “automatic.”
Nader may not be a grand-scale candidate, but he notes that in the steps of the anti-slavery Liberty party, the Woman Suffrage Party, and others, “most new ideas in politics come from small starts.”
Comments
Nothing Nader thinks is worth relating. Nothing Nader says is worth repeating. Nothing Nader does is worth reporting. Nader is Nothing.
Thanks to LarryMcD for providing an excellent example of how Nader's detractors minds have totally shut down. Eric Alterman is another example. Anyone see him in "An Unreasonable Man"? What a nut! These guys fixate on Ralph Nader as though he's the cause of everything that's gone wrong in the world today. Since they like to keep things simple, though, just remember: their bottom line is Ralph was wrong for exercising his First Amendment rights. This is a repressive, bigoted point of view. Sure, they claim to be "pragmatic," and that Nader doesn't understand how politics works in the so-called real world. Thank goodness Nader has more imagination than they do, so that voters don't have to sit on our hands hoping someday that the Democratic Party puts up a candidate worth voting for. PS on Alterman's weird psychology: why call a candidate "irrelevant"? It's like he takes Nader's candidacy as a personal affront. Meanwhile, Alterman makes his living criticizing conservative bias in the media. That's heavy stuff man - and relevant too!
Nader has nobody but himself for the lack of media coverage, and the total disrespect the public at large is showing towards him. He most definitely is responsible for The Bush presidency. Basic math will demonstrate that to anyone with even the most rudimentary cognitive skills. In addition, he has caused his very important message of making corporations and governments accountable to their customers and constituencies to become irrelevant and unheaded simply because the people no longer trust his judgment, and even view him as an egotistical, cranky, old man. If he would have simply admitted his accountability in the selection of Bush as president, and apologized for it, along with not running anymore in these tightly contested and incredibly important Presidential elections, no doubt he would regain the respect and admiration he would deserve for years of tirelessly fighting for the common man in America. But, instead, he will be scorned, ridiculed, and no longer be taken seriously by the majority of Americans, including those who would have supported his many non-Presidential endeavors, otherwise. It's quite a shame.
As the Democrats slide toward the ever illusive Republican center in search of Independents who -in fact- favor Nader's censored positions- Nader will attract their votes. Barack is now for sale. Nader and millions of Amnerican voters- are not.
Garypen says if only Nader would stop running for office in close elections, "no doubt he would regain the respect and admiration he would deserve for years of tirelessly fighting for the common man in America." I guess that disproves the tired claim that Nader runs because he's egotistical - not that we won't continue to hear it over and over again from Democrats who need a scapegoat. I don't know why these people think they have the right to attack any American citizen - much less one as uniquely accomplished as Ralph Nader - for doing nothing more than exercising his constitutional rights. If your party can't win elections in which voters have a free choice of candidates, that's your problem, not Ralph Nader's.
Now that the mainstream media has eliminated Hillary as a candidate, watch for Obama to be decimated in the upcoming months. Public financing? yes/no Nafta? yes/no This guy should either sell flip flops or work in a waffle factory, and we as Americans should have more than two bad choices. I'll waste my vote with Ralph, and feel better about it, than wasting it with corporate republicrats. Those of you who feel left out, there is a choice, it's at votenader.org.
The fact that we have just one more choice than in comunist China should open peoples eyes to the problems with U.S. politics. Not to mention that the two parties have become increasingly more alike. Ralf Nader is a serious candidate offering real change. As for the loss of the white house in 2000 how about blaming the Suprime Court, or the half a million Dems who voted for Bush, how about blaming Gore for running an awful campaign? Im voting Nader!
Any number of candidates, had they not been on the ballot in FL in 2000, could have provided Gore with the votes he "needed" to win. The Green Party (www.gp.org) and Nader were only one of several choices the voters had. Why is it not Monica Morehead and the Worker's World Party's fault? She won more than 537 votes, most of which one might assume would have been split between Nader and Gore. In fact, there are close to 30 recognized political parties in FL. Why single out Nader and we Greens? This year the voters will have, in many places, not only McCain and Obama, but Nader and TWO former members of Congress, Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party and Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party. Once again, and this is a CLEAER pattern, the President will be elected with less than a 50% voter support. Institute Instant Runoff Voting and the Presidential Nominee most voters support will win. Without that, Democrats *and* Republicans risk loosing, because we Greens are NOT going away, and neither are the rest of us smaller party supporters. Get used to it. For more about the Green Party please visit the #1 source for Green Party news and views, Green Party Watch. (http://www.GreenPartyWatch.com)
The information contained in the following excerpt is insulting. Having been doing footwork for the San Francisco Green Party for several years now, I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Ralph Nader has not contributed one penny to us, nor has he in any way lent himself to help us raise money. And his running mate? Matt has endorsed Democrats in partisan races. I do not fault him for doing so, as there are many excellent candidates who happen to be registered Democrat, but I wonder if Mr. Nader would consider his running mate a "Demo'Green" for having done so. In terms of fundraising, Matt, like Nader, has in no way been a team player. He has not lent his "star" power to our fund raising events, let alone contributed money to help us pay our rent and produce slate cards and voter guides. Nor has he ever contributed money to the local party, to my knowledge. This does not in any way diminish what Nader has accomplished as a consumer advocate or what Matt accomplished while on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. "Nader said the Green party continues to promote a "great agenda," but he criticized the party's organizational and fundraising skills. Nader said that after 2000, when he received nearly 3 million votes, the Green party was "on the deck" but says they "frittered it away." He takes issue with party members he called "Green Democrats" whom he says believe Green party candidates shouldn't run in swing states, ostensibly to avoid siphoning off votes from the Democratic nominee."
Ralph, More power to your ideas. Keep working to end this insane war and bring our people home. You've been out there making speeches, doing interviews and writing articles and have written at least three books in the last 6 years. And you've been writing weekly commentary on the things that really matter, at http://www.nader.org .The question is where has the Press been on these important matters you discuss? where have the "Talking Heads" been on corporate crime and the profiteers of this war? The population is too busy being entertained and watching Sporting events to get involved, they take the easy route and don't bother to think, settling instead for snippets and quick slogans. Knowing what's going on in a Corporate controlled State takes work. Thank you Ralph, for all the good things you've done to protect the People of this Country. Amazing how quickly they forget, or perhaps they just don't know. Almost everyone's lives and/or that of friends and relatives of theirs, have been improved and made safer because of you, Some wouldn't be alive today, if not for Ralph Nader! Their minds have been intentionally bombarded with with Corporate propaganda and the Democrat Party scapegoating machine. That phony Terry McAuliffe should be ashamed of his comments regarding you. He continues the DNC scapegoating myth. thank you for your great service to this Country. More power to your ideas. http://www.votenader.org..... all the rest of you out there, buckle-up! ....... Other Great websites about Nader; Click on play at http://thewomandirector.com./ AND after that go to http://www.dianeszoo.com/ralphnader.htm to vote and comment
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