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Column: My beef with Ralph Nader
Published: Friday, March 14, 2008 - 12:08am
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Once and for all, I’ve had it. You can sit in your ivory tower and ponder consumer safety all you want, but once you start messing with the Democratic Party, that’s when I get angry.
That’s right. I’m calling you out, Ralph Nader.
Back in the day (around the 2000 election) I actually thought you were pretty cool. The Green Party seemed like almost an interesting idea, and I didn’t actually think anyone would vote for George W. Bush. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Thanks to your bumbling, Al Gore only won the election by a slight margin, allowing Bush to fraud his way right into the Oval Office.
For those readers not aware of or apathetic about the 2000 election, the race between Gore and Bush was very close and ended up coming down to the Florida results.
After an overly complicated process, the Supreme Court decided to discontinue a statewide recount that would likely have turned the election over to Gore. As the count stood, Gore had only lost by 537 votes.
The votes that Nader received in Florida were greater than the difference between Gore and Bush. Statewide, he received 97,421 votes.
Keeping in mind that many of Nader's ideas are in greater keeping with Gore than with Bush, it's logical that had Nader not run, most of his voters would have voted for Gore, thus handing him the election. Even if 1 percent of his supporters had voted for Gore, the election would have gone the opposite way.
So, Ralph, had you kept your environmentally conscious nose out of the picture, we wouldn’t have been stuck with the worst administration since Ronald Reagan, if not Washington.
So this time around, I’m putting my foot down. Preferably right on your head. 2008 is not the time to be trying to send an unnecessary message. The fact is this: You cannot win the election. It’s that simple.
Once you understand that simple fact, I will stop becoming angry every time I hear your name or see your likeness in picture or caricature. What we need now more than ever is unified support behind an opposition candidate to the Republican Party.
Otherwise, we might be stuck with John McCain. I know that I don’t want a candidate who sang about bombing Iran.
As anyone who has heard me open my mouth might very well know, I support Obama in the 2008 election. As such, when he gets the Democratic nomination, I don’t want him to be hamstrung by your taking away his precious votes all for the reason of sending a message.
Now that the race for the Democratic nomination is even tighter, Obama needs all the votes he can get. However, just for the record, Obama will get the nomination. Period.
I’m sorry if I’ve been rather harsh, Ralph, but this is serious business here. I don’t want the America I go to college in to be tarnished by Republican hegemony just because you happened to think that there needed to be competition for the other parties. I am just going to reiterate that your “competition” is minimal at best.
Your early work was definitely important. Thanks to you, we now drive safer cars. It’s also pretty hard to hate on someone who was on “Sesame Street.” Unfortunately, that was years ago.
I’m not asking much here. All I’m saying is that you might want to reconsider your current goals.
Comments
I totally agree with you
I totally agree with you about Nader. The 2000 election made my parents furious, and only recently do I realize just why. However, I would go a little further to say that Ralph Nader is conscious of his effect on this election. I think he knows EXACTLY what he is doing to democratic votes, and I think he's being so selfish knowingly. He's a very intelligent person, there's no way he couldn't realize what he was/is doing to our country.
You're missing the point
You're missing the point entirely. Voting for Nader in 2000 (and, indeed, voting for any third party candidate) is a show of support for those unwilling to compromise their stances to please the masses or those already in power. Case in point: remember when supporting Obama didn't have to mean you were settling for the lesser of two evils? No offense to anyone who actually wholeheartedly agrees with Obama's politics, whatever they happen to be at the time of my writing this.
May I also add that your photo, Carl, is quite stunning.
But that is the point.
The point of a democracy is not that it is right for everybody, but that it is right for the majority of people. Very few candidates you will support throughout your lifetime will be perfectly aligned with your "personal beliefs." But the key is to pick the candidate that best fits your beliefs. Because Nader is radical, he is not the best candidate for most people. But I think it's fair to say that anybody who would vote for Nader would have personal beliefs that are far closer Obama's than McCain's. In this sense, a vote for Nader is a vote for McCain. Imagine if Huckabee were to run as an independent. A vote for Huckabee would be a vote for Obama.
No.
A vote for Obama, from a voter whose beliefs line up more strongly with Kucinich, is a vote for the system that tells us how liberal (I mean this in the purest sense of the word) our left-wing candidate can be. Living in a so-called 'majority rules' society does not mean that one should mould one's beliefs after those of the majority. There is nothing wrong with voting for Nader or any other third party candidate if you are dissatisfied with the candidates that the establishment offers us as worthy frontrunners.
First, you assume that
First, you assume that people's "personal opinons" are entirely individual. So called "personal opinions" are not nearly as personal was one might think. Research shows that the vast majority of people don't have clear personal opinons, and when they are asked to pick a stance on an issue (as with opinion polling), they simply reflect the opinon of the group of people they associate with.
But in a purely practical perspective: Ralph Nader cannot get all of Obama's constituents whereas Obama could get most of Ralph Nader's constituents. Compromise is expected in all aspects of life: business, marriage, foreign relations... why not politics?
Actually
Actually, I agree that the vast majority of people on't have clear personal opinions. But the vast majority of people are not informed and knowledgeable about the state of our country and our world. Unless you honestly believe that those who are concerned and familiar with the goings-on in politics should just give up trying to create change, you can't argue that other people being indecisive and uninformed is an excuse to compromise your own beliefs.
A vote for Nader, as a third
A vote for Nader, as a third party candidate, is not a vote for the left--wing or "progressive" political front. It's simply a vote towards the inclusion of a third party in the voting system, or a vote *against* the status quo of the current bipartisan voting system. The problem here is that in the case of the 2000 elections, Nader exists in this campaign race simply to prod both Obama and McCain on fundamental questions or environment, healthcare, etc. rather than to secure a real change in towards a truly liberal presidential election.
I completely agree with Q
I completely agree with Q here. This whole argument is rooted in the idea that there is some fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties.
The way i see it, both advocate neoliberal trade policies (i could go on and on about globalization, but just see their latest - both parties support the AFRICOM trade agreement that further monopolizes and oppresses the entire African continent, in humanitarian aid and in natural resources), preemptive and overaggressive military strategies (banana wars, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, this list is endless), and apathetic or cursory attitudes towards problems here at home (the "war on drugs", the death penalty, unending institutionalized racism, institutionalized sexism, health care, no immigration reform, no LGBT rights...).
To repeat what Kumars said, if you don't see these issues as important enough (or if you don't agree that they exist), then there is absolutely nothing wrong with casting your vote for Obama or Hillary or even Mccain, Bush, or Reagan. But there are a lot of people who do see these things as real tangible issues, and are sick and tired of not having a voice. And those people whose votes are not "lost" by voting for Obama or Gore or Kerry or whatever other mainstream politician, are in fact losing their votes by buying further in to the system that they by no means want to support.
To me, people like Kucinich, Nader, and Gravel are actually trying to salvage the American political system which has been corrupted for as far back as I can see, and we can all easily see that their votes will not win an election - as you say, Carl, they might even lose the election for the current democratic candidate, touting rhetoric full of "audacity" and "hope". At this point, calling that bluff seems like all a vote is worth.
I don't subscribe to the
I don't subscribe to the argument that only radicles can make real progress or real change. Obama's platform is based off the idea that politics in Washington D.C. today are corrupt, and that we need to move beyond partisanship as a country. Perhaps that's nothing more than a platitude, but if Obama really means it, as I believe he does, there is huge reward in a new direction for American politics.
Any radical, either left-wing or right-wing, however good or bad their ideas, simply can't bring about change because they don't have the ability to bring people together. Change doesn't happen overnight. Over time, what was perceived as moderate or conservative becomes very liberal, or vice versa. A non-political example: language, sex, and violence in the movies. If a 1960s movie would have dropped the f-bomb or had a steamy sex scene, it wouldn't fly, not even a little. Now look at what kind of standards we have for TV and movies today.
"I don't know the key to
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Cosby
Mainstream, middle-of-the road politics do NOT lead to any significant action, as they exist as a form of impotent compromise.
Your argument is great,
Your argument is great, Ralph Naders argument is great and makes complete and total sense- Just like Karl Marx's idea of a communal society and Thomas More's idea of a 'Utopia' were great ideas that made complete sense and attracted many people. But the fact, the FACT, here is that communism failed because human nature got in the way, 'Utopia' never became a reality because no one took it seriously. These great and radical ideologies only have one flaw, and that is the fact that they are IDEOLOGIES, and they only overlook one thing and that is...REALITY. On this issue, I am going to stick with reality. The reality here is that either a republican or a democrat will win the presidency. We will have Hilary, Obama, or McCain sitting in the oval office. This is the reality. For those who don't support any of these candidates, it SUCKS. According to our founding fathers, according to all the intellectuals, according to all the freedom fighters out there...this is WRONG...horribly wrong. And Ralph Nader knows this is wrong and is doing something about it, but is he acting upon a reality or an ideology? He preaches his great ideas and gives a 'second option' to a minority of the public, but the reality is ...the minority of the public cannot make a difference, unless they got a s*** load o' MONEY. The reality is, it is the rich people and the high-up government officials who can make a difference, sucks doesn't it?.. but its true. If Nader saw this reality, but still kept his determination to move forward with his ideas and make them into something other than just an ideology, he would dialogue and communicate with those "high-up" officials, the republicans and democrats alike, all the people and ideals that he speaks against...if he put himself in that realm and was willing to get himself dirty for a while, for the sake of the American people- maybe, just maybe his ideas could be heard by the majority of the people, and he would make a difference. But this man is not willing to go that far. The reality is, in this election, the people that would have voted for Nader, will vote for a democratic candidate, and a democratic candidate will put America (and the view of America in the eyes of the world) in a better place than would a republican candidate- this is the reality.
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