Ames Progressive

On January 30, the same day that John Edwards dropped out of the presidential horse race, the much reviled consumer advocate and former Oval Office contender Ralph Nader launched an exploratory committee to consider a bid for 2008.

Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Nader announced his intentions to enter the race, much to the chagrin of angry liberals around the nation.

Take a look at some of the comments on the article posted at The Huffington Post. “It’s pretty simple:” writes ChiGuy. “Vote Nader, vote republican.” Writes squareyellowpaper, “Should it be another close election, he might give the election to the Republicans, again.” On the blogs, I’ve seen plenty “Fuck Nader!” comments and various derivatives thereof.

All this, of course, because Nader “stole” precious votes from Gore, causing him to lose Florida and, subsequently, the presidency, all thanks to a painfully antiquated electoral college.

Even Hillary Clinton joined the Nader-Gave-Us-Bush chorus. From Julie Bosman of The New York Times’ Caucus Blog:

Speaking to reporters on board her campaign plane, Mrs. Clinton expressed surprise at the news that Mr. Nader planned to run.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said, when a reporter asked for comment. “Wow, that’s really unfortunate. I remember when he did this before. It’s not good for anybody, especially our country.”

She added, “I didn’t know that he had said that this morning. Obviously it’s not helpful to whoever our Democratic nominee is. But it’s a free country and I don’t know what party he’ll run on. What did he run on last time, does anybody remember?

The Green Party, a reporter replied.

“Well, you know his being on the Green Party prevented Al Gore from being the greenest president we’ve ever had,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And I think that’s really unfortunate.”

It’s always good to see more great representation from a fellow journalist (Nader ran as an Independent in 2004, not a Green).

Clinton’s Gore comment is clever — in that snarky Clintonian way — I’ll give her that. But I feel compelled to suggest to her — and the Nader haters — to look into the real reasons Gore lost Florida in 2000. Just a few, off the top of my head: (1) The media’s premature call of the state for Bush; (2) Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’ manipulation of voter rolls; (3) the Gore legal team’s lackluster recount challenges; (4) the Bush legal team’s ludicrous legal arguments and the Supreme Court’s even more ludicrous decision to give them credence; (5) voter disenfranchisement — no matter how dumb you may allegedly have been, if your chad was hanging for Gore it should have been a vote for Gore.

No word on whether Barack Obama buys into the Nader-Gave-Us-Bush concept but, for what it’s worth, he had a fairer and slightly less condemnatory response. From Michael Powell, on the same blog:

When it comes to Ralph Nader, Senator Obama tends to circle him as a mongoose might a cobra.

That is, he rejects the likely three-time presidential candidate’s criticisms of him, but is careful to toss out a compliment his way before dismissing him.

“Ralph Nader deserves enormous credit for the work he did as a consumer advocate,” Mr. Obama said in Lorain, Ohio,. “But his function as a perennial candidate is not putting food on the table of workers.”

Mr. Obama, who briefly organized with a Nader-influenced group as a young man, suggested that Mr. Nader tends in recent years to assume that candidates’ are fatally flawed if they fail to recognize the wisdom of his views.

“He seems to have a pretty high opinion of his own work,” Mr. Obama said a day earlier.

Amidst all the haters, it must be noted, there are plenty of sympathizers, if not admirers. Back at The Huffington Post, HLMerkin inquires, “Why does everybody hate the messenger?” And the (aptly named?) sage25: “Nader’s right about one thing. The two parties should not be granted a monopoly over the electorate. Let him and other people run. Our country would be better off for it.”

I think it’s also important to consider the Nader voters in all this hoopla. Which brings me to another point. (6) Gore wasn’t as progressive as Nader, especially when you consider Gore’s running mate, Senator Joe Lieberman, who is now championing the Bush administration’s perversion of the Constitution and campaigning for John McCain.

One might come to the conclusion, then, that the Nader voters voted for the guy because they liked him. Maybe they, like their candidate, were protesting the two-party corporate stranglehold on the American political system. Maybe they were idealists shunning the conventional wisdom suggesting we should all vote for the “lesser of two evils” if it comes to that.

Sure, Nader’s name recognition helped him obtain some votes that probably would have otherwise gone to Gore. But isn’t that the point of campaigning, to get your voice out there? Seems to me it’s an insult to the Nader voters to essentially tell them that they messed up, that they, in essence, annointed George W. Bush. As if the Nader haters were necessarily brighter and more in the know about the whole spectacle.

So while Nader likely siphoned votes from Gore, it’s just as likely to assume that Bill Clinton did the same, considering his scandal-ridden exit from the White House. It’s also just as likely that Gore simply didn’t run a campaign that resonated with enough people (although that’s probably disingenuous — Gore did win the popular vote handily).

The Nader-Gave-Us-Bush mentality has “sense of entitlement” written all over it. One need look no further than Lieberman’s 2006 reelection campaign against progressive primary challenger Ned Lamont. Lieberman sulked, sneered, and smeared his way through all the televised debates and, really, the entire campaign, as if to say, “Piss off, you’ve got no right to upstage me!”

After getting his clock cleaned in the primary, Lieberman formed the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, won the general election with ample help from the Republican Party, and has now more or less hijacked the U.S. Senate’s Democratic majority.

Of course, all this Nader and Lieberman talk gets me thinking about Iowa’s 3rd district Boswell vs. Fallon primary contest. “I would hope that we don’t create a situation where we’ve got another Joe Lieberman,” said Fallon in his interview with the Progressive, referring to a scenario in which Boswell refuses to endorse a triumphant Fallon.

I’ve got to give the Boz the benefit of the doubt on this one — even if he did try an independent bid, Lieberman-style, he’s pledged enough loyalty to the Democratic establishment over the years (and he just signed on to Dennis Kucinich’s Cheney impeachment bill to boot) that I doubt the Republican Party shakers and movers would give him the boost necessary for a general election victory.

I’m not sure that I find his tactics effective, but Nader himself probably put this whole ordeal into best perspective Monday during a chat with Anderson Cooper on CNN. “I’m a fighter for justice, Anderson,” Nader said. “When there’s perennial injustice, you have got to keep going after it, whether inside the electoral arena, or getting progressive forces inside the Democratic Party to take over and replace the corporate Democrats.”

Fallon will continue to take heat for his endorsement of Nader in 2000, and lots of it. But suppose he’s been following the advice of what Nader just told Cooper, from endorsing Nader in 2000 to, more recently, working within his party to ward off its seedy corporate underbelly.