Ralph Nader, the consumer activist and environmentalist, has run for President numerous times, including the infamous Election of 2000, when he helped to cause the defeat of Al Gore by George W. Bush in Florida. Nader won 97,000 votes in Florida, with George W. Bush defeating Al Gore by 537 votes in the Sunshine State, and therefore winning the election, after the Supreme Court intervened to stop the vote recount! 🙁
Now, Nader is discontented with Obama as not “progressive enough” and is considering another campaign for President, which can only help the Republicans in their campaign to defeat President Obama! 🙁
There has been a growing trend of progressives and liberals, particularly in the news media, being critical of Obama for failure to accomplish all of his goals after 17 months in office!
The problem with these progressives and liberals is that they fail to recognize the realities of American politics! The opposition from conservatives and Republicans is so strong that when one looks back 17 months, one must be amazed that Obama has accomplished all that he has so far!
If these media critics and others do not recogize the realities of the circumstances that Barack Obama faces, they may be faced with a Republican President in 2013! 🙁
They will have lost the best opportunity in 40 years to accomplish the goals that progressives and liberals have been desirous of since the last major period of reform, which occurred during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s!
If this opportunity for measured reform is lost, it may be another 40 years before there will again be a chance to accomplish the goals that all progressives and liberals share! 🙁
So instead of holding Obama’s “feet to the fire” and working to undermine him publicly, what is needed is a sense of appreciation and loyalty to a man who has advanced the progressive agenda far more than the other two Democratic Presidents since the end of the 1960s–Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton!
And a word to Ralph Nader: Don’t do the progressives any
favors by threatening to run again! 🙁
We do not want you to destroy another chance for progressivism by your unwillingness to accept the “real” world! 🙂
Do everyone a favor, Ralph! Stop looking for attention and be gone! 🙁
Incredible that ten years later these hoary myths and scapegoating whining hasn’t abated! Nader didn’t “help” cause the defeat of Gore, or “hand the White House to Bush” because, in fact, GORE WON Florida, and hence the popular AND Electoral College vote! The 537 vote mantra is bogus, as the media consortium proved; no official recount validated the 537 figure, but the media consortium showed that if ALL ballots had been counted, including legal overvotes or undervotes, Gore would have won in every instance. So it was GORE’S failure to fight to protect his win, as well as the SCotUS’s no-precedent violation of states’ rights, that “gave” the presidency to Bush. Also, Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush throwing tens of thousands of LEGAL black voters off the rolls (which the Dems knew about but didn’t contest), the prospect of VP or PRESIDENT Joe Lieberman, Gore’s many slip-ups or personal shortcomings (losing his own home state and Clinton’s; when has THAT ever happened?!!) or his position on the Everglades and wooden performances on the stump. YET HE WON! So your complaint is moot!
Also, nearly 300,000 registered Dems in Florida voted for BUSH, which votes were IN Bush’s column and SHOULD have been in Gore’s! That way overwhelms the 97,000 votes for Nader, many of which might have gone to Bush or to another third party candidate (EACH of which had more than the “537” vote margin of Bush’s supposed “victory” so why not blame them too?), but mostly would have NOT VOTED. In any case, they were the equivalent of staying home and not voting, as they took no votes OFF of Gore’s tally, and added NONE to Bush’s, unlike the 300,000 Dem votes that went TO BUSH and had to be overcome. Or why not blame the roughly 50% of the electorate that simply didn’t vote? Why aren’t THEY responsible for the result, as there was no attempt to get a few thousand of THEM to vote for Gore, as all the effort was on persuading NADER supporters to give up their principles to vote for a guy who didn’t even take them seriously until that point (Nader not being let in the debates, for example), and then didn’t even fight to defend those who DID vote for him, throwing in the towel after trying to be too clever by half by asking for a SELECTIVE recount, when a FULL recount would have proven him THE WINNER!
Nader was running at about 7% in the polls in Florida the week before the election, but only got 3%, which strongly suggests that at least 100,000 Nader supporters held their nose and voted for Gore, thanks to the fearmongering, thus insuring Gore’s win! You’re welcome!
Oh, and to consider Gore, Kerry, or Obama “progressive” is risible to the max! Nothing in their previous records, or Obama’s current policies, suggests anything but center-right corporatism, which is why those of us who voted for Nader in EACH election since 1996, have been vindicated and not surprised by the various wimp-outs and betrayals by the DNC-sanctioned Dem puppets.
If you like, I can provide more numbers, polls, studies, and LOGIC to show you position doesn’t hold water, but is just one more weak attempt by a scapegoating Gorebot who can’t accept the REALITY of what happened, nor accept that Ralph WAS RIGHT THEN AND NOW!
If you really believe in the “spoiler” myth, then fight for fixing the electoral process! Eliminating the EC or having one of various run-off voting would be a way to avoid even the possibility of this, but why don’t the Dems fight for this? Because then they’d have no excuse or scapegoat for their failures! Did Nader “give” Bush the win over Kerry? Did he “help” Gore lose Tennessee? Indeed, polls cited by DNC head Al From showed that WITHOUT Nader in the 2000 race, Bush WOULD HAVE WON OUTRIGHT, by a full percentage point! From and Gore concede that Nader DID NOT cause the outcome that put Bush in the Oval Office, but Gorebots like the above author haven’t gotten the memo and keep up the drumbeat to prevent REAL progressive voices from having any REAL influence in the Dem party hierarchy, which betrays and ignores their base at every opportunity.
I am following up with a recall of my use of phrases like “Gorebot,” which, though at the time was an apt description for those who defended Gore blindly, seems a bit harsh, and perhaps undeserved.
When one can’t see any serious difference in policies or appointments from Dems or Repubs, but only what Nader called a one-party duopoly with two faces and slightly different makeup, with a clearly corporatist agenda uniting them, it does seem, at times, like a difference with no discernible distinction. Nader NEVER said there was NO difference between the two major parties or their candidates, only that the SIMILARITIES were greater than the differences.
As Michael Moore points out, when you actually poll Americans on the issues, they consistently come out on the progressive side of the debate by considerable margins. So why the fear and hesitation to stick to principles and put forward the best persons who will espouse those majoritarian positions?
Compromise? The Repub/Conservatives never seem to yield, and consider “bipartisanship” to be everyone else just going along with THEM on every instance! Obama should have figured that out after the first dozen or so times they refused to cooperate. How long must we keep “compromising” on core principles, as the leaders say, “Not now! It’s too soon! Don’t rock the boat!”? WE keep being presented with ever lesser “lesser evils”! The best of the sorry lot, such as Wellstone or Kucinich, are just kept around as bait, to keep real progressives from going to Nader or the Greens, but they are never given a fair shot, or even respect from their own party leaders.
IF we had a better election system, with ranked voting, or proportional representation, Nader might have already been elected! Trying to “game the system” by voting for whom you THINK will win, and not vote for those the media tells you has “no chance” of winning, is NOT the way democracy SHOULD work. *I* always vote for the person *I* think is best, and if EVERYONE did THAT, we MIGHT get the persons we want, or at least MOVE the candidates more to those positions we support. AS Eugene V. Debs said, “I’d rather vote for what I want and not get it, than vote for what I don’t want and get it.”
There is also the philosophy, which some have attributed to Nader and also to some Greens, without evidence, that things have to get worse before they get better, or that we should LET the worst of the worst take over a government that they have no ability or intention of fixing, so things get so bad that a real grassroots uprising will finally occur and throw out the whole stinking mess, and we can rebuild it from scratch. But those things rarely turn out well, with messy bloodshed and pain all around for years. Still, things ARE going to get worse no matter who is the figurehead, and most pols *I* have seen and know (having already run for and BEEN in public office myself!) are completely clueless as to what is REALLY happening and have neither the vision nor skill to address what is coming down the pike.
Under financial disclosure laws, if Nader runs in 2012, will he have to reveal how much the Republicans paid him to sabotage the 2000 election?
Hey linotypist, can you please tell us where you got this info from ? The Republicans paid Nader ? ! Let’s see if you give us an answer…..
& Thank you, Steve Krulick, for your well researched, intelligent comments here
linotypist, please reveal the source of your information. Can you ? The Republicans paid Nader ? !
You folks are so out of touch it is comical. Thank you for empowering so many idiots.
This election season has been drearier than most. Why deny American voters a little comic relief? Run Ralph, run !!!
Let’s see… once every 4 years the American Nation elects what is little more than a war leader into office and acts surprised that what they elective was… nothing more than a war leader.
The Executive Branch has no power! It’s all congress or nothing.
I mean, the president does not even have a line item veto; and he can only turn down an important act so many times before he has to approve it.
The Judicial Branch is even worse, when they should be telling the congressional branch how completely unconstitutional their actions are… they instead wait until the “storm” has blown over and makes little more than a press statement.
If you want to change washington, you need to get dirt on all the congressmen and then blackmail them into hanging themselves… and then, at the end of your term, expose them all 😀