Ralph Nader's War

[LoZoccolo]

Earlier this month Ralph Nader spoke at a protest rally outside the White House demanding an end to US occupation of Iraq. I know that Nader was an early and vocal opponent of the war. But I wonder if he ever considers his own responsibility for this tragic war. Without Nader, there'd have been no President George W. Without George W., no war in Iraq.

Nader has been hinting that he's considering another presidential run in 2008, especially if Sen. Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic Party nomination. You'd think that by now Nader would feel some remorse for helping elected George Bush in 2000 and wouldn't want to make that mistake again. But Nader doesn't seem to have learned much from that experience.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/ralph-naders-war_b_65532.html

I think what he says in these two paragraphs is true of Nader, his supporters, and the flakiness of his apologists: it's a matter of taking responsibility for your actions. I don't think anyone can call themselves "progressive" for what they believe should be, while at the same time they are taking actions which grossly give the right wing power. I don't call that progressive, I call it going out like a punk ass.

[jpgray]

1. He has to own up to indirectly helping Bush, but he wasn't the sole factor in 2000

The media coverage, for one, made way more difference than Nader did or could.

[0007]

2. Far from it! The fix was in no matter what.....nt

[pnwmom]

7. Nader, singlehandedly could have changed the outcome of the 2000

election.

You can't say that about any person in the media.

In 2000, more than 97,000 Florida voters cast votes for Nader. The final margin was less than 600 votes. If Nader -- in the last weeks of the campaign -- had swung his support and asked his voters to vote Democratic in Florida -- Gore would have won by an overwhelming margin.

Yes, there were other factors, but Nader chose to help the Republican party and hurt the Gore candidacy by campaigning hard in Florida and the other swing states.

And he deceived the voters by pretending that there would be no difference between a Gore presidency and a Bush presidency.

[bluestateguy]

3. nader voters in 2000 were young and naive and/or over privileged limousine liberals

The rich liberals who backed Nader, like Michael Moore and Barbara Ehrenreich, didn't have to suffer from the real world consequences of a Bush presidency. That's why working class people and non-whites shunned Nader: they knew what was at stake.

[LoZoccolo]

4. True, and a person's sense of risk is not fully developed until they reach their mid-20s.

This may be why Ralph Nader preys on college students.

[pnwmom]

11. And that they're inexperienced enough to believe him. n/t

[TechBear_Seattle]

5. SSDD

Claims that Nader threw the election for Bush have been roundly disproven. Even the Democratic Party has admitted its error in blaming Nader.

For further reflection, I direct your attention to a recent thread titled, "Two Minute Hate."

[LoZoccolo]

6. Arithmetic. Learn it.

The Democratic Party is not going to blame Nader because that would give Nader and his supporters all kinds of flaky jollies and encouragement towards spoiling the next time.

[pnwmom]

9. Those claims haven't been disproven.

Nader campaigned hard in the swing states in 2000, even though many people asked him to endorse vote swapping instead. If he had swung his support to the Democrats in the waning days of the campaign, only a small fraction of his 97,000 Florida voters would have been enough to swing the election. But he wanted to punish the Democrats, not help them.

http://www.hereinstead.com/Ralph-Nader-As-Mad-Bomber.html

By Harry Levine, Dept. of Sociology, Queens College, City University of New York

In the year 2000, Ralph Nader strapped political dynamite onto himself and walked into one of the closest elections in American history hoping to blow it up. He wanted to punish the Clinton-Gore Democrats for having betrayed him and the causes he believes in. His primary campaign mission was defeating Al Gore, but Nader concealed this from his supporters, even as he went after votes in swing states like Florida. On the day after election day, when everyone else was grim, and many Democrats were furious at him, Ralph Nader was a happy man.

The following essay presents evidence for this large claim and describes how I first learned this in the fall of 2000. Since the election, political discussions about Nader's campaign have often focused on its electoral effect. Did Nader's 97,000 votes in Florida defeat Al Gore making George W. Bush president? Most observers seem to agree that they did, but others insist that many factors defeated Gore. However, independent of the effect of the Nader campaign on the election results, one can ask about what Nader wanted to have happen. Now that he has decided to run again, in what promises to be another very close election, it is worth examining what Ralph Nader intended the last time.

The Nader Campaign

Before October 2000, I regarded Ralph Nader as a heroic public figure. . . .Eventually I was introduced to Tarek Milleron, Ralph Nader's nephew, the single person closest to him in the whole campaign. Over the years, Nader had alienated many of the people who worked with him, but as family Tarek could be trusted.

SNIP

I then turned to my favorite argument. . . . . Tarek did not disagree with that at all. Instead, leaning toward me, with a bit of extra steel in his voice and body, but without changing his cool tone and demeanor, he simply said:

"We are not going to do that."

"Why not?" I said.

With just a flicker of smile, Tarek said: "Because we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them."

SNIP

[Moochy]

8. RAWR! SMASH NADER

MONGO NO LIKEY!! MONGO H8 NADER!! MONGO SMASH !! MONGO REMEMBER OP FROM OLD IGNORE LIST... MONGO ADD OP BACK TO IGNORE!! MONGO THE INTERNETTOUGHGUY IS HAPPY!

[pnwmom]

10. Mongo's not making a lot of sense.

:shrug:

[LoZoccolo]

15. I think there's a slim chance that it may be related to my original Nader documentary.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=385&topic_id=9382

[depakid]

12. Yay! Another Green bashing thread

to avoid the REALITY that

1. There wouldn't have been a Green constituency in the first place, had not Clinton and other Dems tirelessly pandered to, enabled and legitimized far right policies for 8 years;

2. That the vast majority of the Dems voted for the war (don't tell me that they were "misled'); and

3. Nader had nothing at all to do with electiorial defeats in 1994, 1996, 1998, 2002 and 2004.

Don't you think its high time for the Democratic party to start taking responsibility for its own repeated failures and sell outs?

A party that abandons its traditional values and alienates its base is going to create a vaccuum that another party or leader will fill.

That's political science 101- though apparently, some people were absent the day that topic was covered.

[LoZoccolo]

14. The reality is...

1. There wouldn't have been any Green votes if certain people weren't mentally deficient.
2. Nader and all his supporters are terrorists in that they threaten to unleash the doom and destruction of the Republicans if they don't get their way, and thus share in the violence of the Republicans, and thus kill and maim both Americans and people all over the world.
3. Nobody who thinks that Nader didn't have anything to do with the 2000 can claim to believe in basic arithmetic.

[bread_and_roses]

13. too bad that in a democracy the candidates are supposed to put forth a platform that appeals to

the people who they want to vote for them. Many progressives felt sold-out by Clinton, Gore was not the candidate then that he could be today, and many saw Gore as a continuation of the Clinton policies they did not support. Nader offered a platform they could get behind. That's what democracy is supposed to be about.

It always fascinates me that "the looney left" is dismissed as unimportant to elections, discounted by the beltway power-brokers right to this day, but blamed for Bush's victory - can't have it both ways, seems to me.

[LoZoccolo]

16. Too bad the Republicans want you to vote for Nader. n/t