Nader was right, but at what cost?

[charlyvi]

Found this at Ezra Klein's blog: http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2006/07/nader_was_right.html





Nader Was Right
Scott Lemieux takes up the Nader wars, arguing that Ralph was really Bush's best friend:

Actually, I am taking him at his word: "If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win." "Which, Nader confided to Outside in June, wouldn’t be so bad. When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: “Bush.""
Oddly enough, his word was correct, then, wasn't it? The Democratic Party really has diverged from the Republican Party. Its progressive and liberal strains have amassed vast amounts of influence and organizing capabilities. The most ostentatiously, unnecessarily conservative of its members are being seriously primary'd, an effort that, whether or not it succeeds, will worry all incumbents who would break faith with the left. The party is vibrating with new health care bills, national security strategies, economic philosophies, and progressive worldviews -- most all of which explicitly or implicitly reject the rightward drift of the 90's. And Gore, the man Nader helped beat, may well be the phenomenon's most compelling example: Where in 2000 he ran a mealy-mouthed, uninspiring campaign with few big ideas and even fewer moments of real liberalism, he's become an electric voice for progressivism and conscience, emerging a hero to lefties everywhere.

This, of course, is not to exonerate Nader. The damage Bush has caused is incalculable, the death toll staggering. But insofar as Nader believed his victory would reawaken the left's progressivism, he appears to have been dead on.




Question is.....would this have happened anyway without SCOTUS crowning the boy king? I think it would, but in a far less destructive way what with global warming and 9-11, if 9-11 would have indeed happened with Al at the reins. I probably agree with the last line of the piece the most emphatically.

[MADem]

1. Yeah, he was "right" all right

Got his money from the right.

Was right in the pocket of the Monkey.

Knew right how to fuck the American people.

Fuck Ralph, I wish he'd take his ass RIGHT off the public stage permanently.

[charlyvi]

2. LOL! True

Only Ralph has an ego large enough to take credit for the reinvigorated progressive movement after doing all he oould to create the mess that gave rise to it. At least he doesn't think small.....just diabolically (is that a real word???).

[wyldwolf]

3. LOL!

See, the "invigorated" left became so because of the Iraq war. So, in effect, Nader is taking credit for that, too.

[messiah]

4. Prediction - Another Nader Bash fest

The Democratic party fears leftism and even though right-wing democrats are being targeted the vast majority of elected democrats will still be right-wing by using the Nixon standard.
Many Democrats still don't realize that they are right-wing and Bush is extreme right-wing.

[wyldwolf]

5. of course, a complimentary Nader post is almost as bad as a ...

...complimentary Republican post. BOTH work for the demise of the Democratic party.

[zalinda]

6. Nader was wrong and STUPID!

Gore didn't come off as interesting because of the press. From all accounts, when he spoke at rallies he was quite amazing. As for dems being centrist........well, duh, most people in this country is in the center. The repubs have been pulling them right for decades, and the media has helped them. Clinton and Gore did some amazing things while in office, in spite of the repubs. I had expected Gore to continue on with smaller, tighter government, environment issues, balanced budget and diplomacy in other countries. We could have moved to a Department of Peace, instead of what we have.

Dems aren't spineless, stupid or too much to the right (okay, maybe Lieberman and Zell). Dems represent from the center to the left, and would have done a much better job if Nader hadn't stuck his big nose in.

Look where we are now. So much in debt, we could literally lose our country. People dead and on the verge of WWIII. Poor people fighting every day hoping to make it from paycheck to paycheck. And we are hated in almost every country!

Yeah, Ralph, good job! And, Ralphy baby seems to have forgotten this country's attention span. In 2012, people will have forgotten what a crap job repubs did and will vote for them again, if we don't get back the media.

zalinda

[Cha]

12. I just got into politics

in 2000 and was always reading neat things about Gore and Tipper and thinking what a great First Couple they would be..I was horrified when I saw what the corporate press did to Al Gore.

[lapfog_1]

7. The cost

could be millions or billions of human lives lost in the next 25 years.

I don't know if President Gore could have

1) Prevented a war with Iraq while stopping terrorism

2) Started us years ago down a path to renewable energy

3) Kept nukes out of the hands of evil or insane people

4) Led the charge toward limiting greenhouse gas emissions

5) Led the world on population control (the next crises)

I don't know if President Gore could have done all this or not...
But it sure is a shame that we didn't have the opportunity to find out.
Eight years later might just be too late.

Thanks, Ralph :puke:

[ulysses]

8. who's responsible for the cost?

The ones who redirected the party or the ones who steered it towards the GOP in the first place?

[calico1]

9. Of couse!

::::::slapping forehead::::::::

He did it to HELP us and to save the country! THANK YOU, RALPH!

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[Outer_Limit]

10. ......... here we go

:popcorn:

[LincolnMcGrath]

11. As long as Democrats keep playing the victim card in regards to R N,

They will be stuck repeating the mistakes of the past.

Ralph was a statistical non issue by historical standards in 00 and 04.

Stop chasing the windmill! Do some learnin'


2000

Ralph Nader Winona LaDuke --- Green 2,883,105 ..........2.73%

Patrick Buchanan Ezola Foster --- Reform 449,225 ..........0.43%

Harry Browne Art Olivier Libertarian --- 384,516 ..........0.36%

Other ------------------ 236,593 ..........0.22%


1992

H. Ross Perot James Stockdale --- Independent 19,743,821 ..........18.91%

Andre Marrou Nancy Lord --- Libertarian 290,087 ..........0.28%

Other ----------------- 375,659 ..........0.36%


1912

Theodore Roosevelt Hiram Johnson --- Progressive 4,122,721 ..........27.40%

Eugene Debs Emil Seidel --- Socialist 901,551 ..........5.99%

Eugene Chafin Aaron Watkins --- Prohibition 208,157 ..........1.38%

Other ---------------- 33,880 ..........0.23%

[zalinda]

13. Maybe by historical standards

but he did real damage in swing states, which is all he needed to do. And any Ralph support doesn't help dems at all.

If you want to move the party to the left, then get involved, run for office, campaign, vote for pete's sake. But, Nader did and is still doing damage to the dem party. The press loves to show him and the crap that comes out of his mouth, goes directly in voters ears. Those ears that would vote dem, but now hears Ralph spout off against them, so they don't vote at all.

Give me a break, if you love Ralph so much, go join him and leave us dems alone.

zalinda

[LincolnMcGrath]

18. Why call me a Naderite? Give me a break! Ralph is a douche.

Why also would you think:

A. that I want to move the party left or right?

B. that I am not already heavily involved locally?

Why not ask me?

Roughly 96 percent of all votes cast in 00 were for the two major players, D & R. That is pretty good.

04 was even higher, almost 99 percent voted for the two major players.

And we lost, both times not so much to * as we did to the machine.

So, focus on Ralph all you want, but that doesn't change the fact the the GOP came to play (and steal) in 00 and 04, and that gop machine will still be there in 06 and 08. They have already proven they can get morans elected from one end of this nation to the other.

Dems could sure as sh*t pick up a hell of a lot more votes across this nation than the one third of one percent that pissed away their vote on R N.

But not if they keep whining about him.

[WildEyedLiberal]

14. How many innocents have died because of Ralph's ego?

How many lives lost because Ralph decided that throwing the election to Bush would "reinvigorate the American left"?

Is partisan political gain really worth hundreds of thousands of lost lives? Is it, Ralph?

That man continues to disgust me more every day.

[MardiGras Bandit]

15. A vote for Gore

is a vote for Bush because it takes a vote away from me.

-Ralph Nader

Nader sucks for a lot of reasons, but running for president is not one of them.

[PlanetBev]

16. Two Fascist Supreme Court Justices

And most likely, another on the way.

As I've said many times before, thanks Ralph...

[Totally Committed]

17. I'm sorry... I don't give a ratf*ck WHY he did it....

Nader is an A**HOLE!

Look at this quote:

Actually, I am taking him at his word: "If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win." "Which, Nader confided to Outside in June, wouldn’t be so bad. When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: “Bush.""

Aaaarrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

If he was in front of me right now, I'd spit in his face.

TC

[AtomicKitten]

19. you are correct, mam

In 2000, Nader went balls-out after Gore, not Bush.
Plus he has accepted money and help getting on ballots from the GOP.
Nader can kiss my ass.