NADER'S SORRY LEGACY
The Green Party's goal: Ensuring that Republicans take over the SenateBy Joe Conason
June 10, 2002 | Ralph Nader can talk out of either side of his mouth about the consequences of his Green Party presidential candidacy and third-party spoiler strategies. What he says at any moment depends on whether he is avoiding blame for Republican advances or promoting himself and his followers as the inexorable progressive vanguard.
In the immediate aftermath of the November 2000 election, there were moments when Nader celebrated the defeat of Al Gore as his own victory. But there were also moments when he insisted that his third-party campaign didn't affect the outcome. He occasionally cited a poll that shows he took relatively few votes from Gore, although most surveys indicate that he drained away more than enough to "elect" Bush (for a convincing analysis, read this Reason article by Matt Welch).
Nader often threatens to deliver both houses of Congress to the Republicans unless the Democrats surrender to his ideology. But sometimes he will claim -- as he did not long ago in Slate -- that Green votes actually helped the Democrats gain control of the Senate, by mobilizing left-leaning voters who otherwise wouldn't have showed up at the polls.
In other words, he wants to have it both ways. As the self-appointed scourge of the Democratic Party, he feels entitled to destroy it for its political sins, without assuming any responsibility for the ill consequences of his moralistic posturing.
Only paying members can read the whole article at Salon. However, the article in entirity is posted off-site here:
http://www.hereinstead.com/sys-tmpl/naderssorrylegacy