Well, Ralph Nadar has officially entered the presidential race, and not surprisingly, the “big” news is Clinton and Obama “ripping” Nadar’s decision.
“He thought that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush and, eight years later, I think people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about,” Sen. Barack Obama said a town hall meeting Sunday.
Calling Nader’s move “very unfortunate,” Sen. Hillary Clinton told reporters, “I remember when he ran before. It didn’t turn out very well for anybody — especially our country.”
The focus is on Nadar’s 2000 run for president, and he is still being blamed for Al Gore’s loss regardless of the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. As I recall, there were Nadarites that ended up voting for Gore, because the vote was so close and a Bush presidency was too disgusting to think of. Thus, the relatively low votes for Nadar
Let’s face the facts of that election, Nadar got less than 3% of the vote. I’m not going to argue that an additional 2.8 million votes wouldn’t have helped Al Gore, because, yeah it would have. But, the wing-nuttier votes for Buchannan would have given Bush the popular vote as well as the electoral vote (if you don’t count the Nadar vote). So, really, the assertion that Nadar lost the 2000 election for dems is a red herring and shame on both Hillary and Barack for asserting as much.
Which brings me to Nadar’s stance.
“In the last few years, big money and the closing down of Washington against citizen groups prevent us from trying to improve our country.”
Well, Ralph, no one I know argues against this. And I’d hazard to guess that there are plenty of former Kucinich and Edwards supporters that believe the same. However, it is not the people that are picking the presidential candidates, as you well know.
Why so much focus on a Nadar run, when the wing-nuttier third party candidates have been more divisive than Nadar in the past?
[...] is one of those rare occasions that I agree with this blogger. So, really, the assertion that Nadar lost the 2000 election for dems is a red herring and shame on [...]
Ralph Nadar is running in 2008 because the REPUBLICANS are paying him to run in 2008 — just like they paid for his campaign run in 2000. Once again, they made an offer he couldn’t refuse. He is unfortunately weak enough to be brainwashed by the Right into thinking he is doing the country a FAVOR by running. They don’t want him to win of course, they just want him to peel votes away from Obama because McCain can’t win without serious help.
If Nadar were truly justified in running, he would have been out hitting the airwaves and college campuses 24/7 like Al Gore promoting all his “green ideas”. The problem is, no one sees or hears from him for four years and then right at election time when the Republicans are doing poorly — out he comes just like clockwork, fomenting the same disingenous outrage.
Come on, Ralph, you could care less about us. That’s why you ran in 2000. And even after, if you had truly cared about this country, you would have been out there speaking out. If you had of been, maybe we wouldn’t be in an unending war, maybe our oil prices wouldn’t be sky high, maybe our jobs and our borders would be protected. But you choose to hide away in your self-imposed isolation to avoid us! And you think people are going to be so clueless they would actually vote for you?!?!
To be fair, Ralph Nadar has every right in the world to run for president. This is a democracy, and anyone should be allowed to run if they want to. If Farakan wanted to run, he should be allowed to. But I certainly hope that new or disenfranchised voters aren’t naive voters. Your vote DOES count. Don’t let some charlatan steal it away for the benefit of the highest bidder.
The fact that Nadar outed a unreliable car back in the 60’s is not necessarily a reason to be allowed to be the President of the United States. The fact that he now takes financial contributions from the Republicans regardless of their obvious motives is self-serving, neutralizing and negating any and all the good he has done in the past.
CORRECTIONS TO MY LAST POST:
First of all, I apologize for misspelling Mr. Nader’s last name.
Secondly, the Republicans supported Nader not only in 2000, but in 2004 as well.
Two excerpts taken from Wikipedia on Mr. Nader:
In the 2000 election:
“The Republican Leadership Council ran pro-Nader ads in a few states in a likely effort to split the “left” vote, a tactic from which the Nader campaign disassociated itself.”
In the 2004 election:
“In this campaign, Democrats accused Nader of having his bid funded by Republicans who wanted a repeat of his effect on the 2000 election. The campaign was marred by the court finding that thousands of signatures on petitions to get Nader on the ballot in Pennsylvania were fraudulent.
You can read more about his Republican donors in the links included below.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/naders_grassroots_campaign.php
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/07/09/MNGQQ7J31K1.DTL
Many more articles can be found on the web.