My response, "I Don't Know How To Put This Ralph Nader, But Fuck You":

http://thepersonalispolitical.tumblr.com/post/27171709

Who does he think is going to vote for him? Bloomberg won't even run because McCain and Obama (now that he is the likely nominee) both have appeal to independents. It seems there is no room in there for him.

Nader's not going to get that many votes. So, the Democrats should just take a cue from the Republicans and fund a Nader for their side. Obama should schedule a backdoor meeting with Huckabee, give him $15 million in a black briefcase, and let the rest work itself out. The Republican Party is on the brink of splintering into two parties: Crazy Christians on the one hand and the Corporate War-Mongers on the other, so let's just facilitate that eventuality with a little push of our own. Success!

Fuck Ralph Nader.

At least Ralph uses his critical reasoning to define his position. It is not a positioning for "electability" or spinning his positions so as not to offend. He is absolutely right if we are ever able to erode the "two horses, same color" party system we now endure. Wait for Bloomberg to enter!

"For example, nobody can reasonably deny that Nader's 2000 campaign changed the course of history."

Josh's 'Bush's Chief Enabler' remark and now this. Ugh. People around here--at least the journalists--should know better, I would have thought.

Nader also is probably nly relevent with a Clinton nomination. Nader's following has almost always been youth heavy and I just don't see a scenario where young people leave Obama for Nader. But certainly, you could see how Obama followers could vote Nader in protest of a Clinton nomination (which would only happen at this point by superdelegates undoing the pledged vote count).

With Obama as the nominee, the only people who will vote Nader are the people who would not vote otherwise because they feel the two parties are too close to Wall St. (a really not that off the wall opinion).

Again, let me say that I think that Nader is making a huge error in running again and will continue to lose respect and support rather than gain it.

Nader and Clinton are two peas in a pod... they are willing to take down the best opportunity to advance their agendas in the name of their over-sized egos... the end result, a suicide bomb.... both have outlived their usefulness to the country and their country's needs... they can only hope the truth will not be spelled out on their tombstones: co-destroyers of America......

Indeed, CTVoter. One might find it cross referenced with megalomaniac...

but as a great thinker and beneficiary of Nader once said.... fool me once shame on you... fool me twice.... the point is you ain't gonna fool me a second time...

if you want evidence of ralph's repuglitard backers, check out ralph's signature gathering campaign in Pennsylvania. most of the cash came from registered repuglitards. The repuglitard outfit that ralph hired to collect signatures butchered the job (lots of phony signatures)

but here's the funny part about ralph's new candidacy

the repuglitards are BROKE too

the RNC is about to be charged under RICO for money laundering

st john mccain had to resort to PUBLIC FINANCING in the general election cuz they cant raise 100,000,000 like they did in 2000

sorry ralph, the repuglitards who bought your campaign in 2004 are a little tight this year. You're on your own this time

but thanks for helping the repuglitards for free this time

some sold out pieces of shit really know how to give value for the repuglitard dollars they recieve

See Obama's response to Nader's decision here:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/obama-on-nader.php

Everyone who analyzes the 2000 election does it from the point of view that Nader joined the race on November 1st, and proceeded to grab just enough votes to deny a victory to Gore. The fact is---he was there for several months, and he caused Gore, and to a lesser extent Bush, to talk about subjects they would not have discussed very much. There is no way to calculate the effects of Gore talking about the environment, because nader made him, and taking votes away from Bush in doing so. There is no way to calculate whether Bush or Gore spent more time and money in certain states, because the presence of third and fourth parties changed the overall dynamics of what the race was about.------------------------------------no--far easier to do the simple arithmetic of letting nader join the race on November 1st, and calculating the effect. Far easier, and wrong.

But that was 2000. He is in a position to do some real damage this time----because both democrats still in the nomination race have terribly flawed healthcare plans----the contrast with nader's position could really cause trouble. I am voting for obama--and i do hope Nader reconsiders---

This might settle the question as to whether or not Hillary is going insane. Huffington Post just posted a video of Hillary mocking Obama's message of change and a new direction in politics, and by "mocking" I mean perhaps the most pathetic, childish display I think I've ever seen from a politician. Keep in mind, once again, that she cannot win the primary, the math just doesn't add up, meaning she is mocking our Democratic nominee. This is beyond contemptuous. I think she planned this campaign President Hillary or bust, and this is the bust...apparently she doesn't care about her political future if she can't be president, which makes sense since her taking up a seat in the Senate for the last 7 years has only been because she wanted to be president, not because she cared about making a difference or changing anything, so I guess if she can't get there, she'll go out in a ball of flames, taking everyone around her with her. I'm actually shocked by how crazy she is getting; it IS a bit like watching Brittney shave her head is it not?

Oh, and keep in mind this is the same Hillary who just two days ago smiled and shook Obama's hand at the debate and said she was honored to stand next to him. Do we need any more proof that her "special moment" at the end of that debate was nothing but scripted bullshit?

http://thepersonalispolitical.tumblr.com/post/27123632

Nader and Clinton need to drop out and throw their lack of political muscle behind the last Democrat in the race . . . Gravel.

Why shouldn't Nader run?

Because he ran in 2000 saying there was no difference between Bush and Gore?

Because he went from 2.7 percent in 2000 to less than .4 percent in 2004?

Because he's a doddering old fool drunk on his own press?

Because he has beshitted a once sparkling reputation as a public servant?

I can think of more if you like...

Eric and Josh you should both know better than this. Serious studies have been done of Nader's 2000 campaign, its intentions and effects, and it really is time for Dem operatives to get over it, because your history is wrong.

Click the link and watch the video--for once this is a Russert show worth watching. Obama handles the issue just about perfectly, and Nader debunks Josh & Eric's asinine historical analysis very succinctly, then shows again why he drew such a strong following then--he's still the only person on TV, pol or pundit, willing to state the obvious demonstrable truth that Bush &co stole that election. He's still the only person capable of getting on MTP willing to join the majority of Americans in supporting single-payer healthcare, or to call Israeli policies what they are, and on and on.

I'm sorry he never wholly embraced, and has now abandoned, the Green party, and hasn't focused on the voting reforms that are the prerequisite to getting his issues the hearing they deserve. But after 8 years of Democratic party complicity in Bush's crimes, I'm sick of the whining demonization of this American hero. He didn't affect the 2004 election, and affect this one, so get the fuck over it already.

Laurel - You made another typo. I think you actually meant "Nadir". He is the nadir.

Before you decide to vote for him ask yourself - was there really no difference made by Bush becoming president instead of Gore? If you don't really care about U.S. soldiers staying in Iraq - or being sent into other wars - then by all means vote for Ralph. But if you do have any conscience about this you have to face reality and vote for the Democrat. Because McCain will definitely stay in Iraq and very possibly invade Iran or any other country he deems intolerable.

In all my votes over the decades I voted only once FOR a candidate - Bill CLinton in 1992. Every other time I held my nose and vote Dem - including Clinton in 1996 because he was a huge dissapointment - because I knew the damage the Republicans would do was real and often deadly. After Bush no one can claim otherwise.

In the heat of a campaign we all get angry at the other side - I've dumped on Hillary more than I ever thought I would. But ultimately I can't put my high ideals ahead of real peoples' lives. McCain=More Death. No way around it.

laurel_nyc writes:

At least now, I’ll have more of a choice - I’d much rather vote for Nader than not vote at all. I’m too young to remember Nadar running, so I don’t have the same bitterness as some seem to have.

It's cool you are going to vote. However, it's not excuse to say "I'm too young to remember..."

If you are smart enough to use the Internet to post, you are smart enough to use the Internet to research. Anything else is a rationalization for laziness.

I'll start you off:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida%2C_2000

and one more thing to think about:

"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail." (Benjamin Franklin)

PS If you were very young in 2000, that means your male friends are now old enough to die in Iraq.

Why shouldn't Nader run?

Because he ran in 2000 saying there was no difference between Bush and Gore?

Nader was right. Both Bush and Gore ran as anti-environmentalist, anti-union, anti-working class, anti-civil rights conservatives. Bush called himself the compassionate conservative. Gore called himself a conservative Democrat. Both terms are oxymorons.

This Nader voter would not have voted for Gore under any condition. Might have chosen Bush if he had a gun to his head to pick one of the two since Bush was at least running as a Republican.

Nader has no good reason to run with the impending nomination of Obama but it is not terribly likely he will do any damage to Obama. Might even take votes from McCain.

Give back,
Give back,
Oh give back my Democrats to me.

Best, Terry

Saying the both Gore and Bush tacked to the middle during the election is well and good and even true.

Saying there were no differences between them is patently absurd. It was when he said it, and it is when you assert that he was right.

The issue is Palestine and Nader is RIGHT. Obama should reconsider his newfound love of Israel.

Ralph Nader is a tool who is censoring people who use his online forums and who traditionally gets a substantial amount of his money from Republican donors, hoping to make inroads in Democratic support.

See http://community.livejournal.com/greenparty/333727.html
http://www.voy.com/8188/

bvd,

-- Before you decide to vote for him ask yourself - was there really no difference made by Bush becoming president instead of Gore?--

Honestly, I don't remember Gore running for Presidency so I have no idea what either Bush or Gore were saying at the time. The only thing I know about Gore is his work on Global warming. I'm not going to judge the 2000 presidential race based on that. Perhaps Gore would've been a better president, but we will never know since he didn't win. I doubt people who elected Bush in 2000 knew that he would turn out to be such a war-monger. Perhaps he gave some type of indication, but since I don't remember that race, I can't say for sure. What I am upset about was the fact that Bush was re-elected since Bush had proven himself to be a terrible Prez.

My point is that I doubt that Nader will spoil the election since people who vote for him are most likely the ones who won't vote for either Dem candidate. I have no idea if I would vote for him since he just announced his candidacy and so I will have to get to know him, however, I don't like Obama and if he's the nominee I won't vote for him. So now I at least have the option of making a symbolic vote, if I happen to discover that I like Nader. I'm not really concerned that my vote will make much of a difference since I live in NYC, which will surely go Blue no matter what. Perhaps I'd reconsider if I lived in a state where my vote might have some significance, but I have the luxury of making a purely symbolic vote.

As for the other person who wants me to imply that I'm guilty of the Iraq war if I don't suck up and vote for Obama, I disagree. I don't have to vote for someone that I don't like. It's true that I would probably have a different opinion if I lived in a swing state, but I have no doubt that New York will solidly support the Dem candidate. Therefore I will vote for whomever I like or I will not vote at all.

Perhaps Gore would've been a better president, but we will never know since he didn't win.

I know trafficking in hypotheticals is a dangerous business, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I can pretty much guarantee this isn't true!

Laurel--do vote. Whatever you do, vote. I want everyone to vote, but especially people who use "whomever."

Wikepedia reports that Bush beat Nader by 537 votes in Florida while Nader took 97,421 votes in Florida. Nader is reported to have revealed that exist 2000 exit polls showed that of his voters 20% stated they would have voted for Bush, 38% for Gore and the rest would not have voted.

Need I say more?

Time for some clear thinking:

Nader and his supporters are trying to have it both ways. The only reason why Nader has gotten coverage at all, is because people believe he *did* affect the election -- and Nader likes that part of the equation.

If Buchanan threw his hat into the ring would anyone really care? Would he get on MTP?

One last thing: why do the Nader supporters want to support someone who refused to campaign in 1996?

My feelings on Nader are that he forgot that he had made so much change within the system. Politics isn't always a zero sum game. In a parlimentary system, smaller, fringe political groups can take a degree of power if their relatively small number of members of parliment are needed to form a coalition. But in America's two party system, a third party has few chances to gain power. Ralph Nader was presented with one of those rare opportunities and he and his supporters pissed it away in some vainglorious notion of protest.

If Nader had approached Gore and asked for something in return for his endorsement, there is a very real possiblitly that Gore would have won and Nader could have become the Secretary of the Interior or Agriculture. That would have given Nader the opportunity to set agendas in those agencies and give appointments to his supporters in key roles in either of those agencies. A naderite heading up the EPA or the FDA would have been a serious amount of power given to an otherwise marginalized group, the Green Party.

Instead they chose to protest. Yet, protest is a political tool which is for those with no other avenue of political influence. People protest a war because they can't affect the workings of their government in another way(in addition to other motives of course.) 2000 was a huge missed opportunity for the Green Party. It is one of the sadder chapters in American Political history.

Message To Ralph Nader.

Nader is and was a great patriot, a great citizen who made real change. We should all have at least a sense of this, but instead we know him as the "spoiler" who ruined our country. He helped give us seat belts, air bags, crash-worthy cars, better labeling on food, lower levels of lead in the environment, worker protections, etc. etc., but rather than this, we can all talk about those 500 votes he "lost".

I can see why this angers our unimaginative voters who must be allegiant first to the two-party (Dem and Repub) system. He isn't a compromising individual. He could never have been if he wanted to do what he has done. Should those of us who voted for him apologize for his unyielding fight for things we take for granted in public life, while we fall in line and vote for the lesser of evils that we are stuck with? I can just hear the current Dem candidates above, the Gore voters, the Kerry backers echoing..."Third party efforts are a waste of time! Just vote for one of the majors, the one most like your candidate and work for real change!" And while I'm at it, I'll have forget the deep history of our past parties, since according to this logic, no other parties will exist or ever have existed other than these lesser of two evils. Hmmmm...where are the Whigs on this ballot?

I'm speaking hypothetically here, because my vote this year is not likely to go to Nader. BUT I don't begrudge anyone the right to vote in any way they see fit. Further, scapegoating a leader who, as a matter of record, has given the American public more valuable policies (not to be confused with promises of policies, or the taking credit for policies) than any current or former presidential candidate in my lifetime, is just an exercise in ignoring history and disregarding not just a man but a movement, that those who claim to be liberal, should revere.

Why can't Democrats all take a step back and say, yes, Nader is an important voice and he and his like minded voters deserve to be heard out and recognized. After all, his policy recommendations aren't as crazy as unlawful wiretapping or illegitimate wars with out end.

BO begins to show some recognition, but paints him an egomaniac, ultimately disregarded. Why not try out that position that he's heralding for foreign leaders of our so-called enemies, the one that says we engage first before we condemn? Why not formally sit down with him and make an overt gesture?

magurakurin makes a good point. Nader could do a lot of good if he were enfranchised and brought into the fold. Everyone says he's choosing to play for keeps (President Nader or nothing), while I'd argue he's just sick and tired of being shut out by people claiming to be on his side, that meanwhile protect corporate interests and corrupt party hacks that are taking our country into the toilet.

Nobody is diminishing what he's did for product and labor safety. But his 2000 campaign indirectly caused greater damage to this country (and to the world) than anything that he ever did for the country, and he doesn't have the integrity to even admit responsibility. It's not all his fault, but he had more impact on that race than any single person other than Gore and Bush. I believe that his priorities have become misplaced and that his ego and dogmatism have distorted the lucidity that he once had. In short, I do not trust him to lead the causes that he once championed, and I feel that he is a poor representative for alternative voices in this country. I'm frankly shocked that there are so many voices supporting him in this thread after all that we've been through for the past 8 years, and I'm not easily shocked.

Josh & Eric:

On balance I value TPM quite a lot, but I'm more than a little disappointed by the two Nader-related articles in which you glibly refer to him as "Bush's biggest enabler" and implicitly state that he somehow singlehandedly caused Bush to win in 2000. These two posts are strikingly lacking in anything resembling the analytic thought that usually characterizes your work. I'd have thought that, after all the ink that TPM has spilled on the subject, that it'd be undeniable that it is in fact Congress that is Bush's biggest enabler. With respect to Nader's influence on the outcome of the 2000 election, I think that it's unfortunate that the TPM staff have the same difficulty with understanding causality as the MSM. In any case, TPM is exhibiting some pathologically deficient reasoning in their coverage of Nader.

I voted for Nader in 2000 and I have absolutely no regrets. I do regret voting for Kerry in 2004 however. And, given that I can't stomach either Obama or Clinton, I'll be voting for Nader again this year. His priorities seem to be well placed to me and I am incredibly grateful that he remains such an uncompromising voice of dissent. Frankly *I'm* shocked that there aren't more posters offering their support here given what Nader adds to our nation's embarrassingly stunted political discourse.

And just to emphasize again, both Gore-ites and Nader-ites were equally fools in 2000 - neither of us realized how determined Bush was to steal it.

Nader took 97,000 votes in Florida, how many Dem votes were lost by voter "caging" and the removal from lists because names were similar to a list of felons from Texas, by roadblocks by county sheriffs & state police, rigged machines and we still don't know ... why wasn't there a Dem mob twice as big hanging around when Bolton's mob of DC aides stopped the Dade county vote counting?? That's what changed the course of history ...

For more on Nader from a former Nader campaign insider, see my post on the Nader thread of Sunday over at The Washington Note, under my other screenname Pacific Coast Ron ... so much work to be done, people !

Buchanan has huge name recognition as well (also ran in '00) but I doubt he would merit MTP time.

However, you are a rare find since you worked for him pre-2000: how could you work for him after he didn't campaign in '96?

featherfamily, I checked out your poste on the Washington Note and I'd like to get in touch with you, but I'm not sure how. I don't think your email is listed. What's the best way to reach you?

Sorry about the tripple post up there. I'm having problems with the interface I think.

Dave