Nader Advises Kerry on VP Candidates

[No2W2004]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&e=3&u=/ap/20040524/ap_on_el_pr/kerry

BOSTON - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said he had advised John Kerry to choose North Carolina Sen. John Edwards or Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt as his running mate on the Democratic ticket.

Kerry won't discuss whom he is considering for vice president, but his advisers have been examining Edwards and Gephardt, two of Kerry's rivals from the Democratic primaries.

"They're very careful," Nader said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "They're not going to cause him any embarrassment. And they do bring an additional voter support for him."

Kerry met with Nader in Washington on Wednesday, but didn't ask the third-party candidate to quit the presidential race despite widespread Democratic fears that his candidacy could ensure President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election

[KuroKensaki]

1. Edwards or Gephardt?!

Nader advised slightly left of center Kerry to choose a centrist or a centrist for his running mate?

:wtf:

[KuroKensaki]

2. Addendum

Don't get me wrong, I like Edwards, though I'm not a fan of Gephardt.

It just seems out of character, and Gephardt is basically exactly what Nader stands against. He's a DNC centrist Beltway insider career politician. I suppose Nader wouldn't have much of a problem with Edwards, though.

I honestly would have expected him to suggest Kucinich, Sharpton, or Moseley-Braun for a running mate.

[AP]

12. Nader is using head, not heart. He wants Kerry to win. He picked people

who help Kerry win and who are good Democrats, with the primary concern being winning, and secondary concern being that they pass his liberal litmus tests. If they fail a few but bring a win, that's fine, even though they both probably pass every test that really matters, which includes being pro-labor and smart on taxes.

[ronnykmarshall]

18. If he wants Kerry to win .....

he should drop out of the race.

[AP]

19. Or maybe when the Reform Party nominates him, he should decline because

he doesn't really want to be on ballots.

Oh wait, that's is happening, it looks.

Look, he's probably not going to be on the ballot in a single battleground state. If he drops out now, the media is going to ignore him and then they'll replace his face time with people who are so helpful to Kerry, like Dick Morris and Ann Coulter.

You'd rather have that?

[bryant69]

3. That is a little wierd

I sure hope it's not Gephardt. I do hope he picks Edwards, but I don't think that's very likely.

I don't know why Nader's opinion on this particular subject is of any more validity than Karl Rove's. I mean both Karl Rove and Ralph Nader want to see Kerry defeated in the election in November. So why should we take political advice from them?

That's not to say that there aren't plenty of non-campaign related subjects on which Nader's views are still valid.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[AP]

11. Edwards is the fourth most liberal senator (2003) according

to the survey cited here a few days ago which ranked Kerry number one, and that same survey said that Edwards has taken a sharp turn to the left since announcing he wasn't running for reelection.

[KuroKensaki]

15. Link to the poll?

I don't think Kerry gets the number 1 spot, so I suspect that poll right off... Feingold? Kennedy? Inouye? There are more people to look at for #1...

[AP]

20. It's the national journal ranking. Very respected.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=national+journal%27s+2003+most+liberal+senator&spell=1

[AP]

21. Kerry Edwards-"stunningly left-wing" according to Humaneventsonline.com

I've never heard of this organization, but it came up in the google search I linked above.

When Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry won 9 of 10 states on Super Tuesday, putting a virtual lock on the Democratic presidential nomination, the Washington Post greeted the news with a banner front-page headline almost worthy of a moon landing: "Kerry Locks Up the Nomination" the paper declared in massive letters.

No wonder the Post was so thrilled. Just a few days earlier, the non-partisan, non-ideological National Journal had published its annual analysis of congressional voting records. The conclusion: John Kerry is the most liberal U.S. senator.

"The results of the vote ratings show that Kerry was the most liberal senator in 2003, with a composite liberal score of 96.5%," the publication reported.

If Kerry picks North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as his running mate, as many commentators now suspect he may, the Democrats this year will have a stunningly left-wing ticket--even by the Democrats' standards. Edwards, the National Journal said, "had a 2003 composite liberal score of 94.5%, making him the fourth-most liberal senator."

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3212

[AP]

22. Here's the link (not a poll, a vote rating).

http://nationaljournal.com/members/news/2004/02/0227nj1.htm

Judging by National Journal's congressional vote ratings, however, Kerry and Edwards aren't all that different, at least not when it comes to how they voted on key issues before the Senate last year. The results of the vote ratings show that Kerry was the most liberal senator in 2003, with a composite liberal score of 96.5. But Edwards wasn't far behind: He had a 2003 composite liberal score of 94.5, making him the fourth-most-liberal senator.

National Journal's vote ratings rank members of Congress on how they vote relative to each other on a conservative-to-liberal scale in each chamber. The scores, which have been compiled each year since 1981, are based on lawmakers' votes in three areas: economic policy, social policy, and foreign policy. The scores are determined by a computer-assisted calculation that ranks members from one end of the ideological spectrum to the other, based on key votes -- 62 in the Senate in 2003 -- selected by National Journal reporters and editors. (For more details on how the vote ratings are calculated, click here.)

The fact that Kerry and Edwards had such similar scores in 2003 is striking, because during the course of their Senate careers, their ratings have often placed them in different wings of their party.

Kerry has compiled a generally more liberal voting record. After winning election to the Senate in 1984, he ranked among the most-liberal senators during three years of his first term, according to National Journal's vote ratings. In those years -- 1986, 1988, and 1990 -- Kerry did not vote with Senate conservatives a single time out of the total of 138 votes used to prepare those ratings. (See PDF chart on Kerry's lifetime vote ratings.)

[onehandle]

4. Dupe about ten times over...

...and who cares what he thinks. He is just hanging onto Kerry for free publicity.

[Luvpurp]

5. If Nader is being sincere in his advice

Are we to assume that Nader will bow out of the race and throw his support to the Kerry campaign? If so, I would say that Nader has done some soul searching and realizes that he cannot afford to be a deciding factor again. Lets hope!

[lovedems]

6. Why does Nader feel that he is in a position to offer Kerry advice in the

first place? I don't know who that man thinks he is but his legacy won't be all of the good things he did in his life, it will be GWB*. I have heard Nader say that he is concerned with the direction of the country. If that is really the case, he could help out without being a spoiler.

He did alot of work in the 70's and 80's WITHOUT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT!!!!

Why he feels the authority to "give Kerry advice" is insulting.

[rvgwinn]

7. nader

DITTO...... DITTO ....... DITTO........hE ACTING LIKE kERRY ASKING FOR HIS ADVISE??????/

[KuroKensaki]

8. I don't subscribe to that.

There were a lot more factors in play in 2000 than just Nader. I will give you that if Nader hadn't run at all, Gore would have won--and if Nader hadn't campaigned in swing states, which he promised not to, Gore probably would have won. But Gore should have won Tennessee, should have pursued the Florida debacle, should have run a stronger campaign, there's blame to go around. Some rests on Nader, some rests on Gore, a lot rests on Katherine Harris, and the most rests on every Democrat who didn't vote.

I think Nader is more interested in changing the direction of the Democratic party than anything else. He knows he can't win, and he doesn't -want- Bush* to win. The problem is, he sees our two-party system as a choice between two evils, and doesn't want it to be that way.

Is he running to make Kerry lose? No. He's running to spook Kerry, and to put him in check--to make sure he doesn't dart for the center when to going gets tough.

All that being said--I can see WHY Nader would run, but I don't think it's prudent that he's doing so. Even if it's a race of the lesser of two evils in 2004--one evil is a LOT LESS than the other.

If * wins in 2004, Armageddon will arrive before 2008.

[lovedems]

10. So in other words, Nader is running to change the direction of the

democratic party? Sorry, not this year. You will give me the notion that if Nader hadn't run, Gore would have won. So, if Gore would have won we wouldn't be in Iraq, 800+ american soldiers would still be alive, environmental laws would still be intact, we wouldn't have record deficits, record tax breaks and tax cuts, and the wealthy wouldn't be amassing more money on the backs of the middle class. I won't give anymore examples.

This *is not* the year for Nader to issue his 2 cents worth. I don't see WHY he would run if he is so concerned with the direction of our country when he *knows* he takes more votes away from Kerry. Nader considers himself a progressive, that is a notion that conservatives despise. He will get very little voted from those conservatives who are not happy with *.

[KuroKensaki]

13. We're basically agreeing.

I agree that if Nader hadn't run, Gore would have won in Florida, and therefore the general election. I will give you that based solely on the numbers. All I'm asking is that you remember all the -other- reasons that Al Gore lost, of which Nader's candidacy was only one.

I think he went on the ballot in 2000 as a protest vote. In think in 2004 he's on the ballot because he's trying to force Kerry and the Dem party to take a more leftward stance, possibly choose a strong leftist VP, to minimize the loss of votes to Nader from disgruntled and disillusioned liberals.

And a leftward shift wouldn't be a bad idea for Kerry. There's almost no swing vote in this election. This election will be determined not by the swing voter but by the disillusioned/apathetic polarized voter.

If Kerry can energize the base enough that we get, say, 60% of Democratic voters out to the polls, we'll win in a landslide. 70%, nobody could touch us. God forbid we got every Democrat in the country out to vote. We'd have beaten Bush twice over.

Blaming Nader is fun and has some basis in fact, but that's not a full picture.

[lovedems]

16. I know we are basically agreeing, however, I am just making the point

that this is not the year for Nader to *force* the democrats or Kerry into anything. Nader can offer up all the advice he wants but I for one find it disingenuous and I find it insulting that he would risk 4 more years of the chimp in order to get the democrats to do things the way *he* wants.

This is not the year for that, so Nader does deserve alot of the blame, more so this year then in 2000 because he *knows* the consequenses of being on the ballot, especially in crucial states. He knows better, or he should anyway.

[KuroKensaki]

17. You're right.

Nader shouldn't be on the ballot this year and I disapprove of his decision. But he has the right to make that decision. But then by the same coin, I suppose everybody has the right to criticize him for it, too. :nopity:

[MO_Dem]

9. Yeah! Why in the world would Kerry

heed any advice from such a loser as Nader. C'mon, Nader, tell us just how many elections you've won? How many primary races? Looks to me like Nader could, and should, do a little more listening and a lot less advising. He's beginning to sound like GeeDub--thinks he knows it all.

[AP]

14. Since when isn't Nader allowed to have an opinion? Maybe we should leave..

...the airways and the punditry to all the right wingers who dominate the media.

You think people would be happy to hear the opinion of someone who wants Bush to loose.

Why don't people flip out like this when Dick Morris gives his opinon. Dick Morris has ceritainly caused more Democrats to lose elections than Nader (and may have played a bigger role in Gore losing than Nader played).