Nader accuses Democrats of trying to shut out smaller parties

[LoZoccolo]

READING, Pa. - Ralph Nader, appearing Saturday at the Green Party's national convention, said he is considering a 2008 presidential run but accused Democrats of trying to shut smaller parties out of the political process.

Waaaaaaaah! They won't sit back and let me attack them!

Nader said he is mulling a 2008 presidential run, but before jumping in he would have to put together an organization of thousands of volunteers and pro bono lawyers to defend him against the "Democratic quadrennial assault."

Quadrennial assault, lol! Now we have a name for our movement!

But here's the part that's really revealing.

Later, addressing a few hundred conventioneers chanting "Run Ralph Run," Nader exhorted Greens to focus on raising money to boost their competitiveness.

I am against any left-wing third party; this just shows you there are still Naderites in the Green Party.

http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/8511477.html

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

1. Argh. Nader keeps setting his sights on the more vulnerable of the two parties, to all of our

detriment, since it allows the RW some breathing room.

MKJ

[Stinky The Clown]

2. Go back to preening, Ralph

You self-promoting asshat.

[Totally Committed]

3. So far, all our candidates are in debates, and campaigning, but...

the Republicans have shut out Ron Paul.

A thought: Maybe he picks on this Party so much because he still sees hope for us? I dunno... never has any criticism for the Republicans, does he? -- Or have I missed it?



TC

[earthlover]

10. Why would Nader attack Republicans?

He knows that you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you....

[pnwmom]

14. He picks on the Democrats so much because he's a phony.

And because it's the Democratic voters he thinks he has a chance of seducing, not the Rethugs.

Actions speak louder than words. Twenty years ago he was a true progressive, but no longer. Listening to his words, he sounds like a progressive, but in his runs for the Presidency he has consistently worked to defeat the more liberal of the candidates. Why? Because it has become personal for him. He's determined to punish the Dems for imagined wrongs, and he doesn't care what damage he inflicts on the country in the process.


http://soc.qc.cuny.edu/Staff/levine/Ralph-Nader-As-Suicide-Bomber.html

RALPH NADER AS MAD BOMBER
_______________________________________________


Harry G. Levine

Department of Sociology, Queens College, City University of New York
March 2004 / [e-mail]

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.

SNIP

[ProudDad]

22. Bullshit!!

He's given up on the republicans, has since before nixon...

But, by the same token, he had to fight Kennedy/Johnson to get any social change too.

He, like me, realizes that only the Democrats are close enough in ideology (or used to be) and have a chance at rule and therefore, like me, wants them to become more Progressive and less republican lite...

You Nader-haters hate him because he's right and you can't stand that...

[pnwmom]

29. I dislike him because he worked to defeat Gore and hand the country to Bush.

His 97,000 Florida votes were critical and he knew that.

[ProudDad]

32. Gore won in Florida

and thanks to the republican coup, these were the ONLY votes that counted:

Scalia, Renquist, Thomas, Kennedy and O'Conner...

Don't see Nader in there...Nader was against BOTH RIGHT-WINGS of the Business Party...

The other 51,003,926 of us were disenfranchised by these 5...

Or you could get real pissed at the Electoral College; which is a bullshit mechanism originally meant to insulate the upper classes from a "mistake made by the mob"...

Gore doesn't think Nader cost him the election, why should you keep hugging that tired old meme to your chest? You'll just drive yourself crazy holding on to a convenient lie...

[pnwmom]

48. You are smart enough to know that SCOTUs wouldn't have been involved

if even a thousand of Nader's votes, out of his 97,000 -- if less than 1% of Nader's votes -- had gone to Gore instead. The election, even with all the cheating, came down to only about 500 votes between Bush and Nader. Actually, that's about one-half of one percent of Nader's votes that could have swung the election in the other direction.

Nader was not the only factor, but he was probably the single biggest factor in Gore's defeat. And he knew it, and that's why he campaigned so hard in Florida.

Nader is an adversary, not an ally, and he knows it. We're fools if we don't believe him.

[ProudDad]

55. More smoke

the fix was IN in Florida.

No matter how many votes Ralph or ANY of the 3rd party candidates got, the pukes were prepared to counter with dirty tricks and funny counts.

Get a new hobby horse, you nader-haters make yourselves look ridiculous with this old farce...

[riqster]

75. Nader is not blameless just because the Supremes got into it

He took Republican money and used it against the Dems.

No quantity of hate-filled, bilious posts can change that simple fact.

[defendandprotect]

50. Argue for IRV voting; STOP arguing against third-party choice --

Arguements based on personal attacks on Nader are foolish -- especially considering that most of what we know about politics we know because of Nader who has worked for decades to educate us all.

You can continue the "yes he did/no he didn't" debate re election 2000 -- but it will simply distract you from understanding the corruption of that election and that Nader was given to you as a scapegoat by the GOP so that you didn't come after them for their fascist rally at Miami-Dade Election HQs to stop the vote counting --

Nor did you go after the Supreme Court to STOP their appointing Bush . . . ??? Did you? . . .

And while you've lost yourselves in these ridiculous blame-games re Nader . . .
you haven't improved the election process one bit, have you . . . ???

Do we still have an electoral college?
Is it being used to help manipulate the stealing of elections?
Do we still have black box voting?
Do we still have "purges"?
Do we now have "caging"?
Extreme "Jerry-mandering"?

Again -- most nations have adopted IRV voting -- therefore, they don't have these silly discussions.

If you think that no third party will ever arise -- and you may be right -- then you don't need it.
But if you think there will some day be a true third party challenge on the left -- then you should work to pass IRV voting in America.

Or -- you can continue to waste your time with attacking Nader --

And, btw, he still has information which America needs to know --
he's a great educator. And if you ever bothered to read the platform he instituted when running on the Green Party ticket, you'd find it quite educational.

[ProudDad]

58. Best suggestion yet

It's refreshing to find an actual solution on a Nader-Hater thread.

Thanks :hi:

[Name removed]

70. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Redneck Socialist]

4. Redneck Socialist accuses Ralph Nader of being a stupid wanker. n/t

[EST]

5. Nader's criticism is spot on, though hardly news.

I suspect, even with the defections from the major parties, the chances for competition from a third party are pretty slim, this season.
People are really, really pissed and their anger with the status quo will probably force a lot of "hold your nose and vote," simply to get the remarkable fools into a lslightly less formidable position.

[saltpoint]

6. European countries have a pile of competing political parties and they have better

health care there and their kids graduate high school knowing more than our kids.

I'm not against a healthy, competitive political environment.

But Nader's grind on the Democratic Party is out of balance.

Christ, Ralph. Your own research should show you that Democrats have evolved from the days when Strom Thurmond WAS a Democrat, then later a Republican, and to the point where Russ Feingold represents a very evolved Democrat right now. I like to think that Thurmond is the long-ago model and Feingold is the right-now model. Quick ballot choice: Nader or Feingold. I take Feingold in a walk.

There are always degrees of social and political evolutions, but Nader conveniently sets those aside and just fires away.

I don't care for that knee-jerk response and won't vote for Nader, given his lopsided biases.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

7. Nader needs to STFU.

He is the reason we have Bush in power. As far as I'm concerned, Nader IS a Repugnican. To me, when he opens his mouth, fecal matter comes out.

[Deja Q]

8. Nader lost credibility some time ago.

[madfloridian]

9. Ok, time to find my Nader posts about where he got funding.

.

[bluedog]

11. from 2000..heavy GOP support

But the financial records show that $23,000 in checks of $1,000 or more have come from loyal Republicans. Among those who have given recently to Nader are Houston businessman Nijad Fares, who donated $200,000 to President Bush's 2000 inaugural committee; Richard J. Egan, the former ambassador to Ireland, and his wife, Pamela, who have raised more than $300,000 for Bush; Michigan developer Ghassan Saab, who has given $30,000 to the RNC since 2001; and frozen food magnate Jeno Paulucci, and his wife, Lois, who have donated $150, 000 to GOP causes since 2000 alone.

All have donated the maximum $2,000 to Nader's campaign since April, records show.





http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/07/09/MNGQQ7J31K1.DTL

[ProudDad]

26. Ah, that old bullshit red herring

Nader gets crumbs from people registered republican...Oh yeah! Big Whoop....

----------------

"Kerry Receives 100 Times More in Contributions from GOP Donors than Nader

"Center for Responsive Politics Finds: 50,000 Republican-Kerry Contributions vs. 700 Republican-Nader Contributions

"$10.7 million for Kerry vs. $111,700 for Nader.

"Who is really in bed with Republican fat cats: Ralph Nader or John Kerry? Who is the real independent candidate with the independent message?

Washington, DC: Today, the Independent presidential campaign of Ralph Nader and Peter Miguel Camejo released the preliminary findings of research conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics. The findings demonstrate that Senator John Kerry has thousands of contributors who have supported the Republican Party. Kerry has more than ten million dollars donated by Republican donors."


When are you going to give that old meme a rest????

[LoZoccolo]

38. I have a question for you.

Do you think that people who give to both the Democrats and Republicans, are doing it in order to make the Republicans win?

[ProudDad]

45. No, republicans normally give to Dems in order to make the

corporations win...

Corporate Dems give to Dems (and republicans) in order to make the corporations win...


But in this case most were probably old-line, socially liberal Republicans who realized that bush doesn't serve their interests but Kerry and Nader did.

[LittleClarkie]

61. When asked about them, and I do believe Smearboat vets supporters were included

iirc, Ralph suggested that they supported his cause.

No, my dear, they just wanted you to be a spoiler.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

69. How are you refuting the fact that he received the contributions in 2000 by citing 2004 numbers?

:shrug: MKJ

[LWolf]

12. Not exactly news.

It's not news that the Democratic Party would not want any left-leaning 3rd parties to compete, and it's not news that you are against left-wing 3rd parties.

It's about keeping the left-wingers as an impotent branch of the Democratic party so that they can be squelched from within, and the dlc agenda can go forward.

I would suggest that all Democrats who don't want to see left-wing 3rd parties grow in membership and power work to move the dlc out of the party and into a right-wing 3rd party.

[Doctor_J]

13. I am almost as tired of Ralph as I am of Rove

just shuddup already.

[ProudDad]

27. Have you ever actually listened to him?

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/131226&mode=thread&tid=25

[ProudDad]

56. Hmmmm, I guess not

<crickets>

[Doctor_J]

65. Umm, at age 50 it would have been hard not to hear him

He has contributed next to nothing wrt useful dialog for many years now. What exactly would another of his "candidacies" do for this country?

[JDPriestly]

15. Nader, we just can't afford you right now.

Some of us fell for your third party promises in 2000, and look where it got us. The Democrats need more backbone, but it's up to us to provide the calcium and Vitamin D. Nader is old news. He should get with the program of the moment. Judging from the Republican candidates' stances, there won't be any second or third parties if the Republicans win in 2008. They will just take over and abolish our Constitution as we know it.

[TheBaldyMan]

16. If you are against any left wing third party who do the left wingers vote for?

the Democratatic party is hardly a hotbed of socialism. It can barely bring itself to acknowlege any left leanings and seems positively embarrassed by its own left.

[LoZoccolo]

17. They should vote Democratic.

You did see the sign on the door, right?

[TheBaldyMan]

19. what policy would you identify as left wing exactly?

[ProudDad]

25. YOU are NOT

the doorkeeper, ziccolo...

"what policy would you identify as left wing exactly?"

You know, I don't think I've ever seen any of these Nader Haters answer that question...

It's easy to find out what Ralph Nader believes: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/131226&mode=thread&tid=25

These haters though... :shrug:

[LoZoccolo]

37. You are right; I am the keymaster, not the gatekeeper. n/t

[ProudDad]

39. That was just weird, zicieloe (n/t)

[Sarah Ibarruri]

18. Whether that is true or not, the reason we have MONKEY BOY in the White House is Nader's

That's the reason the GOP supported Nader financially. I believe the GOP is also doing that with Hillary Clinton because they know if they run against her, they'll win again. The GOP puts lots of $ into whichever Democratic candidate will get a Republican into the White House easiest.

[TheBaldyMan]

20. Gore won in 2000, Kerry won in 2004

Bush stole it twice, even with Naders massive :sarcasm: share of the vote.

[ProudDad]

24. And the corporate wing of the Dem Party

blocked any real attempt to counter their theft...

But some just "Can't Handle the Truth!"

[TheBaldyMan]

28. seems that a captive left with no alternative is preferable to the alternative

left wing policies worth voting for.

[ProudDad]

30. Ah, but the democrats would WIN

if they embraced left-wing, progressive, populist politics.

Ah, but then THEY WOULD HAVE TO GOVERN...shudder. And every time they've tried that in the last 30 years those nasty republicans made them cry... :cry: :cry:


Seriously, We the People could win with a truly progressive agenda:

Will the Progressive Majority Emerge?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070709/perlstein

[defendandprotect]

51. Right!! Real 3rd party liberal challenge would drain Democratic Party and leave DLC standing alone

How many members of the DLC are there?

Most people are shocked to find that there is a right-wing organization in the Democratic Party.

The Dems have kept that kind of quiet . . .

[LoZoccolo]

53. We have liberal third parties in every election.

People can vote for them already, and they still don't.

Plus it is those same voters who put the DLC candidates you complain about on the ballots anyways. That is who they choose all by themselves.

[TheBaldyMan]

64. those voters put the DLC candidates on the ballots? I thought you were the 'turnkey'

or whatever fanciful notion you describe it as. We seem to have touched a raw nerve. You're quite happy to crow about keeping Nader off the ballot but are not so happy when somebody responds about the consequence of that action or the motivation behind it.

[LoZoccolo]

66. I can't remember calling myself the "turnkey".

I remember there was a song from the seventies that went "you are the magnet; I am steel", but I don't remember anything about a "turnkey".

[TheBaldyMan]

67. you claim to be "the keymaster not the gatekeeper" from post #37

Explain what that means exactly if my interpretation was wrong.

[LoZoccolo]

68. !

:rofl:

[ProudDad]

21. Hey, GUESS WHAT???

There are "naderites" in the Democratic Party too!!!

Booogidie, boooogidie, booogidie!!!! :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin:

Nader is not a candidate, he's a voice of complete and utter reason in an age of bullshit, spin and "triangulation"...

--------

And here's some of why I'm a Naderite (and a Kucinich supporter):

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/131226&mode=thread&tid=25

"RALPH NADER: Well, first of all, the corporations are very involved in the war machine. Remember President Eisenhower’s statement about the military-industrial complex. He might have called it today the industrial-military complex, because the industrial part is now a supreme influence on the US military budget, which now is half of the entire federal government’s operating budget, and as well as effecting foreign policy. Even Mr. Koppel has written that oil is very much involved in the invasion of Iraq. In fact, he went to say it’s mostly about oil in an op-ed in the New York Times -- Ted Koppel. So the domination, the corporate sovereignty over our political economy is very much related to our foreign, military and economic policy, including GATT and NAFTA, which are architectures of corporate supremacy over civil values and the rights of workers, environment and consumers."

<clip>

"RALPH NADER: Right now, the media focuses on the horse race: who’s raising the most money. The candidates who raise the most money get the most attention. They get the most specific polls. And the ones who aren’t raising the money, even though their record is far superior and their rhetoric is far superior, like Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, they don’t get hardly any attention. So the networks and the mass media have bought into the wealth election. That’s one.

The second is, they have made possible a private form of corporate government, known as the Commission on Presidential Debates. So this commission was created in 1987, as you know, to get rid of the League of Women Voters, which sponsored presidential debates, and they went around and they got money from Philip Morris and Ford and AT&T and Coors beer, and they now control the main gateway to tens of millions of Americans. No matter how many states you run in as a third party or independent candidate, if you don’t get on those debates, you don’t reach tens of millions of people.

And who is the gatekeeper? The Democrat and Republican parties, who even kept Ross Perot off in 1996, after he got 19 million votes in 1992. I called him up, and I said, “Ross, how does it feel for a billionaire to be excluded?” And he says, “Absolutely right.” He said, “I couldn’t even buy thirty minutes of airtime.” They refused him to buy thirty minutes of airtime so he could do his charts on, you know, on the deficit.

And, yeah, these TV stations are using our property. We own the public airwaves. We’re the landlords. They’re just tenants. And they use our property free. They don’t pay as much as you pay for your auto license. And they decide who is on and who isn’t on TV or on the national debates. So if you don’t break that connection between the Debate Commission and ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN, you can’t break the power of this corporation called the Debate Commission and have more diverse debates with more voices and choices, which, by the way, the American people want. In the year 2000, at least three national polls had a majority of the people wanting me and Buchanan on the national debates, and I don’t think that’s just because people wanted to stay awake. "

-----------
AND THIS:::
-----------

Activism

Hundreds of young activists, inspired by Nader's work, came to DC to help him with other projects. They came to be known as "Nader's Raiders" who, under Nader, investigated government corruption, publishing dozens of books with their results:

* Nader's Raiders (Federal Trade Commission)
* Vanishing Air (National Air Pollution Control Administration)
* The Chemical Feast (Food and Drug Administration)
* The Interstate Commerce Omission (Interstate Commerce Commission)
* Old Age (nursing homes)
* The Water Lords (water pollution)
* Who Runs Congress? (Congress)
* Whistle Blowing (punishment of whistle blowers)
* The Big Boys (corporate executives)
* Collision Course (Federal Aviation Administration)
* No Contest (corporate lawyers)
* Destroy the Forest (Destruction of ecosystems worldwide)
* Operation:Nuclear (Making of a Nuclear Missile)

In 1971, Nader founded the NGO Public Citizen as an umbrella organization for these projects. Today, Public Citizen has over 140,000 members and scores of researchers investigating Congressional, health, environmental, economic and other issues. Their work is credited with facilitating the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act and Freedom of Information Act, and prompting the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

Non-profit organizations

In 1980, Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen to work on other projects, forcefully campaigning against what he believed to be the dangers of large multinational corporations. He went on to start a variety of non-profit organizations:

* Capitol Hill News Service
* Citizen Advocacy Center
* Citizens Utility Boards
* Congress Accountability Project
* Consumer Task Force For Automotive Issues
* Corporate Accountability Research Project
* Disability Rights Center
* Equal Justice Foundation
* Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights
* Georgia Legal Watch
* National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform
* National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
* Pension Rights Center
* PROD (truck safety)
* Retired Professionals Action Group
* The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest
* 1969: Center for the Study of Responsive Law
* 1970s: Public Interest Research Groups
* 1970: Center for Auto Safety
* 1970: Connecticut Citizen Action Group
* 1971: Aviation Consumer Action Project
* 1972: Clean Water Action Project
* 1972: Center for Women's Policy Studies
* 1980: Multinational Monitor (magazine covering multinational corporations)
* 1982: Trial Lawyers for Public Justice
* 1982: Essential Information (encourage citizen activism and do investigative journalism)
* 1983: Telecommunications Research and Action Center
* 1983: National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
* 1989: Princeton Project 55 (alumni public service)
* 1991: GLAAD sponsorship committee
* 1993: Appleseed Foundation (local change)
* 1994: Resource Consumption Alliance (conserve trees)
* 1995: Center for Insurance Research
* 1995: Consumer Project on Technology
* 1997?: Government Purchasing Project (encourage the government to purchase safe and healthy products)
* 1998: Center for Justice and Democracy
* 1998: Organization for Competitive Markets
* 1998: American Antitrust Institute (ensure fair competition)
* 1999?: Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest
* 1999?: Commercial Alert (protect family, community, and democracy from corporations)
* 2000: Congressional Accountability Project (fight corruption in Congress)
* 2001?: League of Fans (sports industry watchdog)
* 2001: Citizen Works (promote NGO cooperation, build grassroots support, and start new groups)
* 2001: Democracy Rising (hold rallies to educate and empower citizens)

Consumer advocacy, public interest, and civic action
Ralph Nader (right) appears with Bob McGrath on a 1988 Sesame Street episode, singing "People in Your Neighborhood". For the episode, Nader included a verse about consumer advocates, unique for a song featuring mail men and firefighters. Nader has since criticized the types of sponsors the show has accepted, such as McDonald's and Discovery Zone.
Ralph Nader (right) appears with Bob McGrath on a 1988 Sesame Street episode, singing "People in Your Neighborhood". For the episode, Nader included a verse about consumer advocates, unique for a song featuring mail men and firefighters. Nader has since criticized the types of sponsors the show has accepted, such as McDonald's and Discovery Zone.

Because his early work stressed consumer (and worker) protection from unsafe products, Nader is often referred to as a "consumer advocate". This description should not be misinterpreted to suggest that Nader is an advocate of consumption. On the contrary, his message of civic engagement (citizen activism in the public interest), like his harsh critique of "rapacious" corporations, calls for resistance to excessive consumerism. According to Nader, mass advertising creates artificial and often harmful desires. Nader's "consumer" should not be conceived as a free-spending shopper, but rather as an active participant in democratic institutions. For example, in criticizing television news as largely empty sensationalism, Nader acknowledges that most Americans may have been trained to behave as the passive "consumers" of what passes for news; Nader's call for engagement urges citizens to work together to organize community-based news production.

[ProudDad]

23. To sane, open-minded DU'ers

Please, don't listen to the haters.

Check out Ralph Nader in his own words from Democracy Now just a couple weeks ago:

Listen, read and/or watch here:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/131226&mode=thread&tid=25

[LoZoccolo]

35. To ProudDad

The Quadrennial Assault Team thanks you for being the #1 kicker of Nader threads! :toast: :party: :bounce: :thumbsup:

[ProudDad]

40. I love it when you start this shit...

I can drop in the truth, in Ralph's own words.

The intelligent, open minded DU'ers, the majority who come to your flame bait threads, then hear the truth and you're outed again...

If you didn't keep posting anti-Nader drivel, not that many folks would even think of him...


Keep the flame bait coming... :hi:

You are to Nader what bush is to Bin Laden....

[LoZoccolo]

41. Outed again?

As what? A staunch partisan Democrat? Welcome to Democratic Underground! :hi:

[muffin1]

31. Sit and spin, Ralphie

:hi:

[blondeatlast]

33. That's mostly what he does, but when he sees Dems gaining momentum

he gets up, pisses on them, then cries to momma that the mean ol' Democrats won't let him play.

[AtomicKitten]

36. that seems to be the way it goes

as far as Ralph is concerned

[wyldwolf]

34. Proud member of the Democratic Quadrennial Assault Team

[ProudDad]

42. What do you do, wolfie?

Search for my posts, follow me around and try to provoke???

STALKER!!!! :crazy:

[LoZoccolo]

43. This is insane.

You are so attached to my threads, that you have begun to claim ownership of them for yourself! :crazy:

[wyldwolf]

46. so, proudpoopy has a crush on you, too?

[ProudDad]

59. Someone has to counter your flame bait

with the truth...

It's a dirty job but someone has to do it... :evilgrin:

[wyldwolf]

44. see what I mean? My posts are like a moth to a flame for you.

[LittleClarkie]

62. But you're responding to him. Shouldn't it be the other way around if he's stalking you?

and if you suspect such things, shouldn't you alert rather than accusing him?

[greenbriar]

47. nadar should just shut the fuck up

he is the reason we are in the shit hole of a bush mess

[zulchzulu]

49. I know some Greens that can't stand Nader...he hurts their cause

I admire Nader pre-2000 a lot. It's when he thinks that running for President is going to come to any good is where he's wrong. Green politics is local.

If he runs, he'll just shave off votes the Democrats may not need anyway.

[defendandprotect]

52. Green leadership was frightened of the "swiftboating" of Nader . . .

as the cause of Gore's "loss."

They -- the international party -- were cowards --

And they understand that they're not going to really succeed here until we get IRV voting --

[Alexander]

54. Not surprising - Nader's 2004 run was largely FINANCED by Republicans.

[ProudDad]

57. Ah, that big lie

The truth:

http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/summary.asp?ID=N00000086

He's accused of accepting about $120,000 from registered republicans out of $4,549,032 he spent in '04.

Last time I looked 2.6379238484 percent was not even close to "largely"... :shrug:

Do you work for Dr. Gupta???

You are seriously fact challenged and owe us all an apology...


PS: Note he didn't get one fucking dime from PACs.


PPS: Dodd, Romney and Hillary are the top 3 getters from the Insurance Companies... No single-payer from them!!!


You'all ought to check this out -- all the dirt is there:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/q2.asp?cycle=2008

[LittleClarkie]

63. He doesn't owe me shit. Get your own apology if you want it, but leave "us" out of it

Iirc, some Republicans also supported him by gaining signatures for him and such. So maybe it wasn't a majority. Even so, the fact that Ralph didn't recognize that the support he DID get from the Republicans was because they wanted a spoiler and not because they supported his cause makes his judgement suspect.

He has a raging persecution complex.

[ProudDad]

73. Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders?

Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders?

Republican Contributions: $10.7 Million for Kerry vs. $111,700 for Nader

http://www.counterpunch.org/wire10192004.html


Why, it's the Democrats, not Nader....

[LittleClarkie]

60. They're not going to bend the rules for ya Ralph, even with the lawyers

Much as you might want them to. You have to get the proper signatures and have the proper conventions and such.

Is that the assault? Dems insisting you play by the rules?

[ProudDad]

74. "Dems insisting you play by the rules?"

While, AMAZING, they and the republicans WRITE the rules... :shrug:


"RALPH NADER: Right now, the media focuses on the horse race: who’s raising the most money. The candidates who raise the most money get the most attention. They get the most specific polls. And the ones who aren’t raising the money, even though their record is far superior and their rhetoric is far superior, like Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, they don’t get hardly any attention. So the networks and the mass media have bought into the wealth election. That’s one.

"The second is, they have made possible a private form of corporate government, known as the Commission on Presidential Debates. So this commission was created in 1987, as you know, to get rid of the League of Women Voters, which sponsored presidential debates, and they went around and they got money from Philip Morris and Ford and AT&T and Coors beer, and they now control the main gateway to tens of millions of Americans. No matter how many states you run in as a third party or independent candidate, if you don’t get on those debates, you don’t reach tens of millions of people.

"And who is the gatekeeper? The Democrat and Republican parties, who even kept Ross Perot off in 1996, after he got 19 million votes in 1992. I called him up, and I said, “Ross, how does it feel for a billionaire to be excluded?” And he says, “Absolutely right.” He said, “I couldn’t even buy thirty minutes of airtime.” They refused him to buy thirty minutes of airtime so he could do his charts on, you know, on the deficit."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/131226&mode=thread&tid=25

[bread_and_roses]

71. Are we not - theoretically - living in a democracy? Democracy is pretty meaningless

without ballot access. Your post seems to me to boil down to "I want to control everyone else's actions and choices." Real democratic, that, eh? So what if you don't "like" "Left" Parties? You don't get to choose for anyone but yourself what Party to belong to and vote for.

All this ire and spleen against Nader is a waste of energy. Nader is not the problem. Bought and sold and in the last resort stolen elections are the problem. The solution lies in systemic reforms like IRV and publicly funded elections. But we don't see either wing of the Corporotocracy out there fighting for real reform, do we?

[LoZoccolo]

72. Look at the gubernatorial recall election in California in 2003...

...and you'll see how meaningful democracy was to a lot of candidates with very easy ballot access.

[bread_and_roses]

76. Doesn't matter: you - nor I - get to control

how others choose to exercise their democratic rights. Doesn't matter if they are pure in motive or self-serving; smart or dumb - we don't get to control them. As it should be. And I'd rather spend my time doing something more productive than railing against actions I can't control. I just have some sort of bizarre fascination with these Nader threads....they so perfectly summarize why I'm not a capital D Democrat.

[spirit of wine]

77. Very interesting

yep