http://www.nypress.com/20/4/news&columns/feature.cfmHe will not say if he is planning a third straight run for the presidency in 2008, offering only that it is way too early for him to make that decision. Still, Nader is not shy when it comes to criticizing the Democratic Party’s current frontrunners.
Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards is becoming more progressive and has a good agenda on poverty, but he prefers Ohio Congressman and 2004 fringe candidate Dennis Kucinich. Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the current media golden boy of all potential candidates, is far too new to the political arena to even be seriously evaluated as a contender. But Nader saves particular ire for New York’s own Democratic candidate Senator Hillary Clinton, who made it official over the weekend that she would seek her party’s nomination.
For Nader, Hillary Clinton is the problem, not the solution. “I think she’d be a step down from Bill, who is not very high to begin with,” says Nader. If a more liberal Democrat is to be elected president in 2008, Nader’s machinations in 2000 might have set the stage for such an event. After failing to keep more left-leaning voters in line that year, prominent Democratic politicians have since taken to championing some of their causes more publicly.
In the ’90s Republicans were forced to begin to embrace the agenda of the Christian right in order to keep their electoral ducks in a row. Today, Democrats face a similar situation with their more liberal voting base. They have seen firsthand what can happen when you assume that a particular voting block will stay loyal based on a desire to avoid electing Republicans. This strategy, whereby liberals vote Democrat as the lesser of two evils, has diminished largely through the actions of a motivated activist base drawn in by new media methods, a strategy designed to force the party’s elite to pay attention.