Letters to the Editor
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Bla bla Nader bla my eye!
Can anyone seriously say that there was no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush? Sure, some of you can say it to piss people off, and a couple of you can even say it with a straight face, but to serious suggest such a thing is like suggesting that the sky is red or that water is dry.
Can anyone give me an reason for Nader running for President in 2008 that is equally as plausible as the one Mr. Conason is suggesting? The only impact such a campaign could possibly have is to throw the election to someone who stands against everything Nader supposedly stood for in the past. Unless that is Nader's intention, that makes about as much sense as washing your car with a bucket of axle grease.
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Not Smart
dataguyX: you are right the people going for Nader are not very smart like the ones who go for moron Bush. Nadar is the jerk who put Bush in the White House instead of a real president AL Gore.Nadar is old ugly and silly.
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dataguyx
It must be handy to have so many FACTS at your disposal, eh?
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Talk about back firing!
The Nader Haters on the left are probably going to drive me to vote for Nader this year, if only to show that I support his right to run in the first place. It helps that I agree with him on pretty much everything.
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Better to
many FACTS at my disposal than using a disposal (that would be Ralphie, for the irony-challenged) for a candidate, like you Nader lovers.
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Sorry to repeat myself
It's just amazing to hear and read people who call themselves liberals scream bloody murder when an actual liberal runs for the presidency. You'd think the fact that Ralph Nader has done more for American workers and consumers than anyone alive would give him a certain credibility among, well, everyone, but definitely among liberals, but apparently not. He's made our lives far safer than they were before he came on the scene, but when he asks us for something as humble as our votes, liberals go berserk. It's disgraceful.
Here's the deal: As we all know, politics has been steadily moving to the right for many years. The Democratic Party has moved right along with it. The Democratic Party today bears scant resemblance to the Democratic Party of FDR and LBJ. You know, the one that brought us Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, Civil Rights, progressive taxation and support for unions. And that's no surprise, is it? Every election year liberals let everyone within shouting distance know that they're voting for the Democratic candidate irrespective of his/her actual politics. "Take us for granted," liberals cry. "Run anyone you want regardless of how conservative, regardless of how at odds his/her record is with my values. I'll vote for him/her anyway." All that does is send a loud clear message to Democratic candidates that they can move as far to the right as they want and liberals will come with them. Play the game of politics that way my friends and you lose every time and frankly deserve to.
And by the way, the evangelical right wing, on which you are so fond of looking down, is far smarter than you are. They know that if they withhold their votes, money and activism from candidates who don't toe the line, they'll get more power next time. And they do. Liberals would love to have the stroke with Dems that the religious right has with Reps, but we don't because we flunked Politics 101. Use your power or lose it.
Ralph Nader gives liberals the opportunity to show Democrats that you need to honor our values, promote our issues and conform to our principles or you don't get our votes. Yes, if we spurn Democrats this year it'll result in McCain being president, but we need a longer vision than the next four years. Until we become willing to accept the consequences of voting our princples, we can't be surprised or angry when those principles vanish from the public debate as they have.
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@ shaggylocks
It helps that I agree with him on pretty much everything.
You mean like taking donations from Republican corporate fatcats - while simultaneously lambasting the Democrats for being corporate sellouts?
Look, shaggylocks - if you were going to vote for a hyprocritical psuedo-liberal who kisses conservative ass thinking it will win him votes...then why didn't you just vote for Romney?
At least he, unlike Ralph, was brutally honest enough to run as a GOP candidate...which is what he is.
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Too Bad
It is a shame that Nader went from being a serious and concerned citizen to a tool that gave us eight years of Bush.
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Note: Shhh! If You Acknowledge Nader's GOP Support, You're a "Hater."
Anyone who votes for Nader on the basis that Nader is being appropriately called out for the financial and legal support he takes from Republicans doesn't sound like someone who seriously planned to vote for anyone other than Nader in the first place.
If you're so hardcore for Nader that it doesn't bother you that the guy's accepting a lot of cash and favors from the GOP, then, by all means, vote for Ralph (or just cut out the middleman and vote for the party who's funding him).
Anyone who genuinely believes in the principle that both the Democrat and Republican parties are seriously corrupt might want to find a candidate who actually lives by that idea, not one who just talks about it while winkingly accepting scads of cash and help from one of those parties.
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Disaster?
"Even in 2000, when he made his strongest (and most disastrous) showing..."
The disaster, I presume, is that in a three-way election for Florida's electoral votes, the candidate Joe Conason did not favour officially took the state.
Elections are like that. Sometimes the candidate you like doesn't win. That's true of 2-way elections, 3-way elections, and so on.
That is not in itself a disaster. It is democracy.
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Bashing who?
I just went to RalphNader.org and voteNader.org and I saw a lot about Bush and conservatives, but not much Democrat bashing...