Father_Brain
Banned
Salon.com interviews Ralph Nader.
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After this, I don't understand how anyone can possibly defend Nader
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Saint Cornelius
Banned
Or get Salon's Free Day Pass.
Nader is a fucking tool.
Nader is a fucking tool.
Saint Cornelius
Banned
I read Slate AND Salon.
Fair and balanced, biatch
Fair and balanced, biatch
evil solrac v3.0
Member
Wolfy said:
be quiet you.
Um, that last sentence pretty much sums it all up. From what I could gather, Nader isn't really defending Murdock. He says he's attacked him on different points, and he openly admitted that Murdock supports dictatorships and played a role in the Iraq War propoganda machine. But Nader seems to be willing to compromise that in order to reach a wider audience. If he's toning down his rhetoric to be published, or compromising his beliefs in any way, that's one thing. But if he's sticking to his message while allowing Murdock's company to publish him, then I don't see the big deal.
He's got a point. Salon would just as well take the free exposure offered by a Fox News piece. It's publicity. I like it to signing a book deal with the devil. It's alright as long as you're still preaching the word of god. If you start tempering your words to match those of the devil, then you've compromised. But if the devil is dumb enough to spread your anti-devil message, then more power to him.
This is a predicament for Nader, b/c he cannot get the exposure he needs without dealing with some of the seedier elements of the media. The very corporate entities he wants to bring down hold the keys to his success. It's gonna be a balancing act, and he's not gonna get it perfect. But the lesser of two evils thing comes to mind. Nader is doing the best job of the 3, and by a comfortable margin IMO. And Camejo kicks all kinds of ass. There's been quite a Nader smeer campaign being put on by the Dems. It won't matter to people like me until Kerry/Edwards start catering to some of my views. PEACE.
He's got a point. Salon would just as well take the free exposure offered by a Fox News piece. It's publicity. I like it to signing a book deal with the devil. It's alright as long as you're still preaching the word of god. If you start tempering your words to match those of the devil, then you've compromised. But if the devil is dumb enough to spread your anti-devil message, then more power to him.
This is a predicament for Nader, b/c he cannot get the exposure he needs without dealing with some of the seedier elements of the media. The very corporate entities he wants to bring down hold the keys to his success. It's gonna be a balancing act, and he's not gonna get it perfect. But the lesser of two evils thing comes to mind. Nader is doing the best job of the 3, and by a comfortable margin IMO. And Camejo kicks all kinds of ass. There's been quite a Nader smeer campaign being put on by the Dems. It won't matter to people like me until Kerry/Edwards start catering to some of my views. PEACE.
Alcibiades
Member
I saw Ralph Nader promoting his book on Fox and Friends recently, BIG DEAL...
If the supposed "conservative" audience Fox has buys his book how is this bad? Will Murdoch's "agenda" suddenly gain this new awesome power because he publishes a book from a man that actually despises him and his media company?
If the supposed "conservative" audience Fox has buys his book how is this bad? Will Murdoch's "agenda" suddenly gain this new awesome power because he publishes a book from a man that actually despises him and his media company?
Saint Cornelius
Banned
Nader is a douchebag, not surprised to see the Bush sheep in here defending him
Alcibiades
Member
Kerry's a douchebag, so it's not surprising to see Kerry sheep in hear attacking Nader...
Saint Cornelius
Banned
Sweet reverse-psychology action.
Nader's an egomaniacal, self-righteous idiot who knows that he's doing nothing but being a giant pain in the ass. He speaks of wanting "real change," but can't grasp the fact that on a national level you're almost *required* to be a centrist candidate to win any kind of majority support.
I swear that everytime a network gives him airtime, every time a magazine interviews him, he squanders it. He speaks of duopolies, "pig" conglomerates, and how he's bullied. It's verbose whining, and he wonders why people don't take him seriously. Regardless of all of this, he'd be a piss poor President. He exudes "leadership" about as much as Bush does, which is to say, "You've gotta be kidding." He's a public advocate, a job at which he's admittedly done very well. But his complete lack of political experience, or rather, his implicit claims that years of criticism of both big companies and big government qualify him for the job, is rather poor.
Even Bush was governor of Texas, figurehead position notwithstanding.
I swear that everytime a network gives him airtime, every time a magazine interviews him, he squanders it. He speaks of duopolies, "pig" conglomerates, and how he's bullied. It's verbose whining, and he wonders why people don't take him seriously. Regardless of all of this, he'd be a piss poor President. He exudes "leadership" about as much as Bush does, which is to say, "You've gotta be kidding." He's a public advocate, a job at which he's admittedly done very well. But his complete lack of political experience, or rather, his implicit claims that years of criticism of both big companies and big government qualify him for the job, is rather poor.
Even Bush was governor of Texas, figurehead position notwithstanding.
Bingo! He's offering us another option. A third choice. We've gotta break the 2-party system. It's part of what's enslaving us. They get people so worked up into a lather over this Bush v. Kerry bullshit that no one notices they're pretty much the same person. Same shit, different day. At least Nader's trying to break the hold. Lots needs to change, primarily campaign finance. 2-party systems wouldn't be so bad without it, although it's still a mess. But at least controlling campaign finance means you can control who's influencing our government. Right now, we're voting for people who do not have our best interests at heart. So why vote for these shmucks? PEACE.
Alcibiades
Member
xsarien said:
of course being a "pain-in-the-ass" to two conglomorate parties should be discouraged as much as possible...
Of course, Republicans weren't whining (or at least deliberatly trying to keep him off the ballot) about Ross Perot in '92 and '96 and he made much more of an impact than Nader...
Saint Cornelius
Banned
Yeah he's a great guy.
(from Salon.com)
Ralph Nader spent his 70th birthday with Bill Maher on his HBO show "Real Time," where Maher pressed him on exactly what his controversial fourth presidential campaign will contribute to the national debate. Nader repeated once again that he's the only candidate not beholden to "corporate America."
While Nader's legacy as a consumer advocate is unparalleled, it is worth noting that the onetime national hero wasn't celebrating his landmark birthday surrounded by the hundreds of people he has worked with and influenced over four decades. Indeed, virtually no one who worked with him since the heady days of Nader's Raiders is supporting him politically or personally today. He has inspired almost no loyalty and instead has alienated many of his closest associates. The estrangement between Nader and many of his former intimates is not a new phenomenon; it's not the result of his ruinous campaign for president in 2000; it dates back to his earliest days as a public figure.
Dozens of people who have worked with or for Nader over the decades have had bitter ruptures with the man they once respected and admired. The level of acrimony is so widespread and acute that it's impossible to dismiss those involved as disgruntled former employees, disillusioned leftists or self-seeking turncoats. Usually it was Nader himself who ratcheted up what was often just a parting of ways into professional warfare and vitriolic personal attacks.
While Nader continues to campaign against corporate abuse, his own record, according to many of those who have worked closely with him, is characterized by arrogance, underhanded attacks on friends and associates, secrecy, paranoia and mean-spiritedness -- even at the expense of his own causes. If he were a corporate CEO, subject to the laws governing publicly held and federally regulated firms, there can be little doubt he would have been removed long ago by his company's board of directors.
Nick Jacobs' blood boils every time he sees another poll showing Nader within striking distance of costing John Kerry the election. For him, it isn't just that Nader was indispensable in President Bush's 2000 victory over Al Gore. Nader's latest run for president is infuriating for personal reasons as well.
"He puts himself out there as pure as the driven snow, and he's not," says Jacobs. "He's paranoid, secretive and manipulative, at best. It galls me that he talks about how corrupt the two-party system is when he trashed someone to the FBI who was his best friend."
That someone was Jacobs' father, Theodore Jacobs. Ted Jacobs met Nader when they were both freshmen at Princeton and then attended Harvard Law School together. Later, as an attorney in private practice, Ted provided personal and professional legal assistance to his old college friend after he was catapulted to national prominence over the issue of automobile safety with the publication of "Unsafe at Any Speed." Ted became, in effect, Nader's chief of staff. And from 1970 to 1975, Ted was executive director of the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the first organization Nader founded.
The two men's ugly and painful falling out -- in which Nader trashed Jacobs to the FBI when Jacobs was up for a federal job and Jacobs retaliated with an explosive affidavit alleging financial and legal improprieties by Nader -- was the first of many destructive breaches between Nader and onetime allies. The story hasn't been told before, but the Jacobs family recently made private papers available to Salon that document the sad split.
"My dad kept everything," said Jacobs. "He had boxes of papers in our basement. They pretty much sat there until Nader announced that he was going to run again, and I decided to go through them." Nick was shocked by his discovery of this dark chapter in his father's otherwise enemy-free life.
In various articles from the early 1970s, Ted Jacobs was described as "Nader's closest friend and advisor" and the person who stood "between Nader and the world, absorbing the fury of the attacked, offering solace to the ignored, always speaking the absolute truth within the limits of what he believes Nader would wish him to reveal." But, according to the private papers shared with Salon, he informed Nader sometime in 1974 that he planned to leave the Center for the Study of Responsive Law but would first finish several projects.
On March 8, 1975, Jacobs arrived at the office to find the contents of two large file cabinets missing (including his personal diaries and documents relating to "financial matters") and his desk drawers ransacked. Nader arrived at the office a short while later to tell him he had ordered the files removed. In a state of near shock, Jacobs tendered his resignation and demanded to know what was going on. According to contemporaneous notes written by Jacobs, Nader said he had confiscated the files because a year earlier, Jacobs had signed checks for magazine subscriptions without Nader's permission. Nader also accused Jacobs of writing a check to himself for about $75 for expenses. Dismayed and shaken, Jacobs searched for a new job.
He was being seriously considered for a position as a staff member on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, which required a routine background check conducted by the FBI (which collects raw data on individuals but does not seek to confirm it). While waiting to hear about the job, Jacobs was told that questions had been raised about his character, honesty and trustworthiness. He subsequently learned that the source of the innuendoes was Nader. According to Jacobs' son Nick, to find out why he was denied a security clearance, Jacobs asked for and received a list of the people the FBI had interviewed and what they had said. He told the agency the accusations were untrue.
Nick says he has repeatedly asked the FBI for access to his father's FBI file, but although the agency has said the file is OK to release, he has so far not received it.
On Aug. 7, 1975, Jacobs wrote his former friend a letter expressing his distress: "I thought that we had settled after our long talk in April ... If I misunderstood you that day, it was surely the most costly misunderstanding in the 24 years I've known you. I was prepared to let you go your way in the hope that you would let me go mine and I was feeling very kindly disposed to you. That was until I learned of your statement to the FBI. The impact of that statement was as if I had been kicked in the stomach ... We must have some sort of resolution to undo the damage done by your statements. As the record now stands, it will be an impediment for the rest of my life."
It may be hard now to fathom just how credible and influential Nader was at the time. He had taken on General Motors and won, launched a new movement on behalf of consumers and recruited earnest young Raiders to work for organizations founded solely on his credibility. By 1975, Nader was regarded as an exemplar of righteousness, the ultimate advocate of the ordinary citizen. For someone of his stature to impugn the reputation of a former employee to the FBI was devastating.
According to a statement Jacobs wrote after he was dismissed, Nader told the FBI that Jacobs was fired for skimming money from the Center for the Study of Responsive Law and other irregularities. In the affidavit that Jacobs drafted in the hope of clearing his name with the FBI, he wrote: "I was the only person Mr. Nader trusted with his extensive and complicated financial dealings ... I regularly signed his name to leases, correspondence, contracts, tax returns, reports to government agencies and bank and stock brokerage accounts. Mr. Nader was aware of the fact that I regularly signed his name to these documents and would often specifically request we do so because he did not want his real signature widely known. ... The fact is that I did sign the checks which were in accord with regular practice of payment of legitimate office expenses."
In the affidavit, Jacobs indicated that the reason he decided to leave Nader's employ was his growing concern about the way Nader handled his personal and professional finances. Jacobs outlined in some detail what he characterized as questionable practices regarding taxes, bookkeeping, investments and stock transactions. He wrote, "Although Mr. Nader was earning approximately $500,000 per year in personal income, he paid little or no taxes since he deducted various expenses of his operations as 'business expenses' or he made contributions to 'charitable organizations' controlled by him." Jacobs continued, "He also engaged in what I viewed to be questionable end of year tax juggling, often pre-dating or post-dating checks to get a deduction in a particular year. He would often pad travel expenses and double-bill for travel expenses when he had two engagements in a particular out-of-town city."
The former associate also charged that Nader's nonprofit enterprises were run with very little oversight by their boards: "No independent outside audits were made of any of the Nader organizations until various states required Public Citizen statements."
Jacobs also wrote in the affidavit that Nader was "inordinately harsh in his dealings with his employees and others. Although he had amassed a reserve of over $2 million in various foundations, organizations and in his personal brokerage account, he paid extremely low wages and often refused to pay employees and others for work done."
Jacobs never filed his affidavit with the FBI, but some of the allegations it contains were confirmed by two former associates of Nader's on the Congress Project, an ambitious Nader-sponsored undertaking to investigate every single member of Congress up for reelection in 1972. Attempts to verify information about other people mentioned in the affidavit were unsuccessful because they could not be found or were unwilling to comment about events that occurred 30 years ago.
"The bottom line is, my husband knew everything," says Lenore Jacobs about her late husband. "When he died, everything died with him. Every file or notes that he had, Ralph took and would not return. There's no corroborating it because my husband's dead. It was a horrific time in our lives, not to put too fine a point on it."
Whether Jacobs' accusations about Nader's financial dealings were true or just a counterthreat to get Nader to recant his statement remains uncertain. Salon was unable to independently confirm the allegations about legal and financial impropriety. Nader refused to comment for this story, though he was informed about the nature of Jacobs' charges. What is certain is that shortly after Jacobs prepared his affidavit, Nader sent a letter to the FBI retracting what he had said about Jacobs. In a classic nonapology apology, Nader wrote, "This is to inform you that ... all outstanding differences have been settled ... [which] were insignificant in nature. In light of the above, I would now recommend Mr. Jacobs for a position of trust and confidence with the U.S. Government."
But the damage was done. The highly qualified Jacobs didn't get the job with the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, or any other position that required a security clearance. He reluctantly took a job on the staff of Bella Abzug, the late firebrand Democratic congresswoman from New York, and worked on Capitol Hill until he retired in 1994. Jacobs died in 1998 of a neurological disease.
"I believe the way Ted portrays things is accurate," says Nick Zill, a former Nader associate who knew Jacobs when he worked for Nader. "Ted was a straight shooter and not a frivolous person at all. He was very dedicated to Nader's causes." Though Zill didn't know the details of the men's falling out before being shown Jacobs' notes, he says he is not at all surprised by the characterizations of Nader's vindictiveness. Zill and his former wife, Anne Zill, both worked for the Congress Project. The Zills, too, had a bitter parting of ways with Nader.
"While I worked for the Congress Project, I had taken an idea to Nader, the only meeting I ever had with him," says Anne Zill. "He liked my idea about investigating how the media reports on things happening in Congress. So I worked on it during my own time, but I wasn't able to finish it."
Disillusioned by Nader's autocratic management style and with the paltry wages that the Congress Project was paying them -- the couple had three young children who attended a daycare center in Georgetown for the indigent while they worked -- they both decided to leave the project. After Anne left to begin a congressional fellowship, she began getting harassing phone calls from people working for Nader. "I would get phone calls late at night, demanding that I turn over these notes I had taken for this idea. They said I was breaking the law, that I wouldn't get away with this. They said my reputation would suffer." Anne refused to turn over her work, however, based on her belief that the project had been her idea and that she had done it on her own time.
After her fellowship, Anne applied for a job with Stewart Mott, a public-spirited philanthropist who was on President Nixon's enemies list. According to both Anne and Nick Zill, Nader attempted to torpedo her hiring with accusations that she had stolen notes from the Congress Project. She was hired by Mott anyway, and he even threw a party for her at the Kennedy Center. When Nader showed up at the party, Nick was so incensed he threw a glass of water in Nader's face. Thirty-five years later, Anne still works for the Stewart Mott Charitable Trust.
Nader "dealt very hierarchically with people through his underlings," says Anne Zill. "At any point, if he had asked me about the notes rather than sending his underlings to come get them, I would have talked with him about it."
"He demanded a kind of loyalty that we found disturbing," says Nick Zill. "Anytime he was going to come into the office, it was like the prophet Mohammed was going to appear. There was this blind obedience that we found cultlike. I think the real reason [Nader told Mott not to hire Anne] was that Stewart was an important source of funds for Nader, and he wanted someone more loyal to him in this position. This nominal dispute over notes is very similar to the Ted Jacobs situation."
While Jacobs may have been damaged more than anyone else by Nader, he was by no means the last intimate associate to suffer Nader's wrath. "These weren't just marginal people who he disagreed with," says Toby Moffett, a former Democratic congressman and another early and close associate of Nader's. "These are people who would have fallen on a sword for him."
Like Nader, Moffett grew up in Connecticut. Their fathers, both Lebanese immigrants, were good friends. When Moffett finished graduate school, his father urged him to get in touch with Nader, who was already a national icon. To Moffett's surprise, not only did Nader take his call, but he asked him to return to Connecticut and start an organization that would later become the model for Citizen Action groups around the country. "I saw a lot of Ralph because he would come back to visit his parents [in Connecticut]. I would stay and eat with the family. To me he was a gigantic hero."
After working closely with the old family friend, Moffett ran for Congress from Connecticut in 1974 and won. "Three months after I was elected, [Nader] attacked me," says Moffett. "So our relationship began to sour pretty quickly."
According to Moffett, Nader launched the first of numerous attacks against him over an aircraft noise reduction bill. While the bill stipulated that noise reduction measures would be funded mostly by the airlines, they were also to be subsidized by a tax on airplane travelers -- not the general public -- which Nader dismissed as a corporate handout. Moffett, along with nearly every environmental group, supported the bill. "It was an important piece of legislation that was supported by a coalition of progressive members of Congress, and it passed. Of course, now the Bush administration is tearing it apart."
Nader continued to criticize Moffett during his four terms in Congress, which was disturbing enough, but as with Al Gore, Nader would eventually play a crucial part in ending Moffett's career in elective office. After a fourth term in the House, Moffett ran for the Senate against Lowell Weicker, a Republican, in 1982. "My opponent was running these ads attacking me; the [National Rifle Association] was hammering me from the right," says Moffett. "And then Ralph Nader came up [to Connecticut] and endorsed him. I lost by a very slim margin. My family and I, and my supporters, we just had this blind rage and fury about it. So what he did in 2000 was no shock to me. And what he's doing now is no shock. It's always been about him and his ego."
"He has no interest in being a constructive part of anything," continues Moffett. "No one can name a coalition he has been in where he really rolled his sleeves up and tried to get [something] done. He's shown no interest in anything that could be construed as incremental change. [But] he has had success in empowering people, like Joan Claybrook and others. That's the legacy."
Claybrook is the president of Public Citizen, an organization that Nader founded in 1971. After Ted Jacobs left his position with Nader, Claybrook took over as Nader's right-hand person, and she remained his closest associate until she was appointed by President Carter to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which was created in the wake of Nader's auto safety campaign of the 1960s.
Within months of her appointment to the government agency, Nader attacked Claybrook. According to a biography of Nader by Justin Martin, "Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon," Nader wrote a vitriolic 11-page, single-spaced letter that was ostensibly addressed to Claybrook but was in fact distributed widely to the media; Claybrook herself didn't even get a copy.
The letter, parts of which were published in the Washington Post, complained about delays in air bag safety regulation, certainly a legitimate concern. However, Nader went on to berate her for what he perceived as her many shortcomings, and even accused her of being more beholden to the auto industry than to consumers. She felt compelled to call a press conference to address the accusations, and Nader showed up and proceeded to badger her.
Claybrook did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Rather than capitalizing on his unparalleled access to the Carter administration through the dozens of Raiders and other allies working for the administration, Nader adopted a harshly adversarial stance. While many activists find it easier to criticize a conservative administration than to work with a sympathetic one, what's different about Nader, observes one of his former supporters (who does not want to be named), is that his righteous view of himself "translates into a deeply pathological approach to targeting his allies."
Of course, his attacks on Claybrook and other progressives during the late 1970s were outlandish. But given the effectiveness of his uncompromising positions up to that point, his behavior was mostly tolerated and sometimes forgiven. In fact, Claybrook eventually went back to work for Nader after leaving the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fast-forward to the Clinton administration, however, and not much had changed. Despite having little influence during the Reagan and Bush I administrations, he picked up where he left off by attacking both people inside the Clinton White House and advocates who were trying to influence its policies.
"We worked with him on [the Clinton] healthcare initiative," recalls a left-leaning activist who now works as a staff member for a Democratic congressman. She asked not to be identified because of Nader's penchant for retribution. "While we didn't necessarily endorse the Clinton plan, we worked hard to make sure it had a single-payer option. Ralph disagreed with us, completely disagreed with us, and spent time attacking us for selling out. It was a very bitter period of time. If you disagreed with him, you could very quickly become a target even if you were fighting for the same thing."
"His organization has always been top-down," she continues. "He has been able to say, 'This is what it should be,' rather than having to be accountable to people who want to move the ball forward without scoring a goal every time. We had to decide how to respond to the Clinton healthcare bill, so we had a meeting and people argued it out and then we arrived at a position. Ralph [just] sat in a room with two people and said, 'This is what we're going to do.'"
"He lobbied me, or maybe I should say threatened me," says a senior official in the Clinton administration, who also asked not to be identified. "That's what he does. He will meet with you, you'll have a nice discussion about a policy issue, and you'll agree on goals and debate the means, and then he'll go out and say you're a traitor, that you're not a real Democrat. He's made a career out of it. It's never constructive, but it gets him lots of attention. The right wing, of course, loves it."
"Ralph in practice has been tougher on his friends than on his enemies," offers another Clinton administration staffer diplomatically, despite having been on the receiving end of Nader's condemnation. "He has seen his role to be the last honest man."
Bill Zimmerman, a political consultant, would probably disagree with the notion that Nader is the last honest man. As someone who has worked in progressive politics in California for the better part of 30 years, he has had numerous dealings with Nader. Indeed, one of Zimmerman's biggest victories came about because of Nader.
In 1988, Zimmerman was part of a coalition that got a pro-consumer initiative on the ballot promising to lower auto insurance rates as well as give California drivers a rebate. Not surprisingly, the insurance industry fought back hard. On Election Day, there were four measures on the ballot claiming to be insurance reform initiatives. Nader endorsed Zimmerman's proposal -- and it squeaked through. "Nader had a huge impact on getting it passed," says Zimmerman. "Ralph has a lot of clout when it comes to distinguishing the genuine article in a crowd of phonies."
But after several years, it became clear to consumer advocates that the measure wasn't delivering on its promises. Zimmerman and the coalition he worked with believed that fees paid to trial attorneys in auto accident lawsuits were a problem. "So we developed a consumer-oriented, no-fault insurance plan and got it on the ballot in 1994. It would have taken the lawyers out of the equation."
"Not only did Nader oppose it," continues Zimmerman, "but he wrote an Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times calling me and other people 'consumer traitors.' This is typical of how Nader operates. Rather than arguing the merits or revealing his own financial support from trial lawyers, he publicly demonized the people who were advocating for consumers as shills of the industry. We never took a nickel from insurance companies. There was no logical reason for him to oppose it other than to protect his own financial interest."
Zimmerman readily acknowledges Nader's many achievements. But like others who had bitter fallings-out with Nader, he searches for a psychological explanation for Nader's behavior. "In addition to living inside this bubble of fame, he leads a very monastic life. He has no intimate relationships; he lives without emotional ties to other people. As a result, he is isolated from the kinds of things that help people reach emotional maturity. He has childish and narcissistic reactions to things. If he led more of an ordinary life, some of these problems might be mitigated."
In the past, Nader has lamented his isolated existence. "I didn't socialize much in Washington when I was well-known and heavily reported," he told biographer Justin Martin. "I could have easily. I'm really sorry that I didn't do more of that. It was like postponing it: 'I'm busy on this, I'm busy on that.' People loom much bigger now than they did when they were within a phone call. I felt I could always meet with them, so I put it off. That was a mistake."
It seems that the personality traits that have made Nader an effective advocate -- doggedness, indignation and disdain for how he is perceived -- are the same ones that foment disaster when translated into personal relationships and, more important, electoral politics.
Despite having shunned electoral politics for the better part of his career, as his influence waned in the 1990s, Nader began testing the waters. His first run for the presidency came in 1992, when he entered the New Hampshire primary race, garnering only a bit more than 3,000 votes. In 1996, he "stood" for president [Nader's terminology] as the Green Party's candidate, but spent less than $5,000 -- some say to avoid disclosing personal financial information -- and got less than 1 percent of the popular vote.
In 2000, again with the Green Party, he ran a full-fledged campaign, raising and spending money to get on the ballot in all 50 states. He drew huge crowds at places like Madison Square Garden in New York and Key Arena in Seattle. While he assured Democrats that he wouldn't campaign late in the election season in key battleground states, he reneged on that promise, zeroing in on Florida, Oregon and New Hampshire in the last few weeks before the election.
Few analysts predicted just how close the election would be, but a number of people who had worked with Nader over the years feared that his run for president would be disastrous. "When he announced [his candidacy in 2000] at a big gathering in Washington, I was the first person to stand up and say, 'How can you say there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans?'" says Gary Sellers, who was one of the original Raiders. "There was a big hush in the room. He had no response." Nader was the best man at Sellers' wedding; they no longer speak to each other.
Nader's share of the votes was the margin that threw New Hampshire into Bush's column and accounted for the difference in Florida that cast the state into the post-election turmoil that ended only with the 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in Bush vs. Gore. Nader nearly cost Gore other states as well, especially New Mexico. Every study after the election determined that almost all of Nader's votes would have gone to Gore if Nader hadn't run, but Nader continues to insist that he bore no responsibility.
Nader's justifications for running again are contradictory. One of his arguments is that he'll take more votes away from Bush than from Kerry, an assertion punctured by an analysis of polling data by DontVoteRalph.net. Nader has also said that he would help Kerry get elected. When the two men met on May 19, Nader emerged with Kerry all smiles and chuckles, indicating that he wouldn't campaign in hotly contested states. Then, just a few weeks later, he reversed that decision, saying he might campaign only in swing states. Republicans are reportedly aiding his campaign to get on the ballot in Arizona, and some conservative groups in Oregon that have helped his campaign in hopes of giving an advantage to President Bush were accused Tuesday of violating a federal campaign law that prohibits corporate contributions to presidential candidates.
Not surprisingly, Nader's arguments for running again are being rejected by Democrats and even by the Green Party, which failed to endorse him at its convention in Milwaukee on June 26. Indeed, the Green Party selected David Cobb as its candidate for president largely because he promised to campaign only in safely Republican and Democratic states. On June 22, Nader had a heated exchange with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to reporters who overheard people shouting and cursing. After the meeting, from which several people stormed out, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, told CNN, "This is the most historic election of our lifetime, and it is a life-or-death matter for the vulnerable people we represent. For that reason, we can't sacrifice their vulnerability for the efforts being made by Mr. Nader."
"The reality is, much of the fallout from having George Bush get elected is being dealt with by people other than Ralph Nader," concurs the chief of staff to a Democratic member of Congress. She says that very few members will even meet with Nader anymore. "I don't know what Nader does on these issues in between elections, but we're the ones -- progressive members of Congress and their staffs -- who are concerned about families who can't get visas to come see dying relatives, people being turned away from Pell grants, the war in Iraq. Every day it's something else. We know that if Gore were in the White House, we wouldn't be dealing with this. If we sound bitter, it's because we are."
Nader's many soured relationships have become the backbone of some well-organized challenges to his latest candidacy. United Progressives for Victory, an umbrella group that is trying to bring the various anti-Nader efforts together, is spearheaded by Toby Moffett and Bob Brandon, another early Nader associate. United Progressives for Victory has been formed as a PAC to raise money for advertising and grass-roots outreach, as well as to fund a celebrity bus tour planned for later in the election season.
In addition to legal challenges like the one in Oregon, other groups have emerged to scrutinize Nader's efforts to get on the ballot in swing states. For instance, former organizers for Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and Dick Gephardt have launched TheNaderFactor.com, which aims to persuade younger progressives by, among other tactics, airing television ads that feature former Nader supporters talking about the real differences between Bush and Kerry. "Everyone is working on this," says Gloria Totten of the Progressive Majority, one of the groups involved with United Progressives for Victory.
But no one expects that Nader will actually withdraw from the race -- despite the fact that even among those who maintain cordial relations with him, there isn't one former associate who thinks his campaign is a good idea. "I don't know of a single person who is supporting Nader now," says Don Ross, who worked for Nader years ago as head of a Citizen Action group and is a founding partner of Malkin & Ross, a progressive lobbying firm in Albany, N.Y. "There's no one that I know of walking around with 'Vote Nader' buttons on."
"He has lost credibility and respect, and he stands to lose it completely if takes enough votes away [from Kerry] to reelect Bush," adds Harrison Wellford, the first executive director of the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, who was involved with Nader's Raiders for Gore. He is now working with Nader's Raiders for Kerry, yet another group hoping to persuade people not to vote for Nader. "Passions are extremely intense now. He's taking a much bigger risk this time around. But he's been impervious to this point. It's difficult for him to give up the opportunity that the [presidential] stage gives him. For that reason, he's dead set on going ahead."
(from Salon.com)
Ralph Nader spent his 70th birthday with Bill Maher on his HBO show "Real Time," where Maher pressed him on exactly what his controversial fourth presidential campaign will contribute to the national debate. Nader repeated once again that he's the only candidate not beholden to "corporate America."
While Nader's legacy as a consumer advocate is unparalleled, it is worth noting that the onetime national hero wasn't celebrating his landmark birthday surrounded by the hundreds of people he has worked with and influenced over four decades. Indeed, virtually no one who worked with him since the heady days of Nader's Raiders is supporting him politically or personally today. He has inspired almost no loyalty and instead has alienated many of his closest associates. The estrangement between Nader and many of his former intimates is not a new phenomenon; it's not the result of his ruinous campaign for president in 2000; it dates back to his earliest days as a public figure.
Dozens of people who have worked with or for Nader over the decades have had bitter ruptures with the man they once respected and admired. The level of acrimony is so widespread and acute that it's impossible to dismiss those involved as disgruntled former employees, disillusioned leftists or self-seeking turncoats. Usually it was Nader himself who ratcheted up what was often just a parting of ways into professional warfare and vitriolic personal attacks.
While Nader continues to campaign against corporate abuse, his own record, according to many of those who have worked closely with him, is characterized by arrogance, underhanded attacks on friends and associates, secrecy, paranoia and mean-spiritedness -- even at the expense of his own causes. If he were a corporate CEO, subject to the laws governing publicly held and federally regulated firms, there can be little doubt he would have been removed long ago by his company's board of directors.
Nick Jacobs' blood boils every time he sees another poll showing Nader within striking distance of costing John Kerry the election. For him, it isn't just that Nader was indispensable in President Bush's 2000 victory over Al Gore. Nader's latest run for president is infuriating for personal reasons as well.
"He puts himself out there as pure as the driven snow, and he's not," says Jacobs. "He's paranoid, secretive and manipulative, at best. It galls me that he talks about how corrupt the two-party system is when he trashed someone to the FBI who was his best friend."
That someone was Jacobs' father, Theodore Jacobs. Ted Jacobs met Nader when they were both freshmen at Princeton and then attended Harvard Law School together. Later, as an attorney in private practice, Ted provided personal and professional legal assistance to his old college friend after he was catapulted to national prominence over the issue of automobile safety with the publication of "Unsafe at Any Speed." Ted became, in effect, Nader's chief of staff. And from 1970 to 1975, Ted was executive director of the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the first organization Nader founded.
The two men's ugly and painful falling out -- in which Nader trashed Jacobs to the FBI when Jacobs was up for a federal job and Jacobs retaliated with an explosive affidavit alleging financial and legal improprieties by Nader -- was the first of many destructive breaches between Nader and onetime allies. The story hasn't been told before, but the Jacobs family recently made private papers available to Salon that document the sad split.
"My dad kept everything," said Jacobs. "He had boxes of papers in our basement. They pretty much sat there until Nader announced that he was going to run again, and I decided to go through them." Nick was shocked by his discovery of this dark chapter in his father's otherwise enemy-free life.
In various articles from the early 1970s, Ted Jacobs was described as "Nader's closest friend and advisor" and the person who stood "between Nader and the world, absorbing the fury of the attacked, offering solace to the ignored, always speaking the absolute truth within the limits of what he believes Nader would wish him to reveal." But, according to the private papers shared with Salon, he informed Nader sometime in 1974 that he planned to leave the Center for the Study of Responsive Law but would first finish several projects.
On March 8, 1975, Jacobs arrived at the office to find the contents of two large file cabinets missing (including his personal diaries and documents relating to "financial matters") and his desk drawers ransacked. Nader arrived at the office a short while later to tell him he had ordered the files removed. In a state of near shock, Jacobs tendered his resignation and demanded to know what was going on. According to contemporaneous notes written by Jacobs, Nader said he had confiscated the files because a year earlier, Jacobs had signed checks for magazine subscriptions without Nader's permission. Nader also accused Jacobs of writing a check to himself for about $75 for expenses. Dismayed and shaken, Jacobs searched for a new job.
He was being seriously considered for a position as a staff member on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, which required a routine background check conducted by the FBI (which collects raw data on individuals but does not seek to confirm it). While waiting to hear about the job, Jacobs was told that questions had been raised about his character, honesty and trustworthiness. He subsequently learned that the source of the innuendoes was Nader. According to Jacobs' son Nick, to find out why he was denied a security clearance, Jacobs asked for and received a list of the people the FBI had interviewed and what they had said. He told the agency the accusations were untrue.
Nick says he has repeatedly asked the FBI for access to his father's FBI file, but although the agency has said the file is OK to release, he has so far not received it.
On Aug. 7, 1975, Jacobs wrote his former friend a letter expressing his distress: "I thought that we had settled after our long talk in April ... If I misunderstood you that day, it was surely the most costly misunderstanding in the 24 years I've known you. I was prepared to let you go your way in the hope that you would let me go mine and I was feeling very kindly disposed to you. That was until I learned of your statement to the FBI. The impact of that statement was as if I had been kicked in the stomach ... We must have some sort of resolution to undo the damage done by your statements. As the record now stands, it will be an impediment for the rest of my life."
It may be hard now to fathom just how credible and influential Nader was at the time. He had taken on General Motors and won, launched a new movement on behalf of consumers and recruited earnest young Raiders to work for organizations founded solely on his credibility. By 1975, Nader was regarded as an exemplar of righteousness, the ultimate advocate of the ordinary citizen. For someone of his stature to impugn the reputation of a former employee to the FBI was devastating.
According to a statement Jacobs wrote after he was dismissed, Nader told the FBI that Jacobs was fired for skimming money from the Center for the Study of Responsive Law and other irregularities. In the affidavit that Jacobs drafted in the hope of clearing his name with the FBI, he wrote: "I was the only person Mr. Nader trusted with his extensive and complicated financial dealings ... I regularly signed his name to leases, correspondence, contracts, tax returns, reports to government agencies and bank and stock brokerage accounts. Mr. Nader was aware of the fact that I regularly signed his name to these documents and would often specifically request we do so because he did not want his real signature widely known. ... The fact is that I did sign the checks which were in accord with regular practice of payment of legitimate office expenses."
In the affidavit, Jacobs indicated that the reason he decided to leave Nader's employ was his growing concern about the way Nader handled his personal and professional finances. Jacobs outlined in some detail what he characterized as questionable practices regarding taxes, bookkeeping, investments and stock transactions. He wrote, "Although Mr. Nader was earning approximately $500,000 per year in personal income, he paid little or no taxes since he deducted various expenses of his operations as 'business expenses' or he made contributions to 'charitable organizations' controlled by him." Jacobs continued, "He also engaged in what I viewed to be questionable end of year tax juggling, often pre-dating or post-dating checks to get a deduction in a particular year. He would often pad travel expenses and double-bill for travel expenses when he had two engagements in a particular out-of-town city."
The former associate also charged that Nader's nonprofit enterprises were run with very little oversight by their boards: "No independent outside audits were made of any of the Nader organizations until various states required Public Citizen statements."
Jacobs also wrote in the affidavit that Nader was "inordinately harsh in his dealings with his employees and others. Although he had amassed a reserve of over $2 million in various foundations, organizations and in his personal brokerage account, he paid extremely low wages and often refused to pay employees and others for work done."
Jacobs never filed his affidavit with the FBI, but some of the allegations it contains were confirmed by two former associates of Nader's on the Congress Project, an ambitious Nader-sponsored undertaking to investigate every single member of Congress up for reelection in 1972. Attempts to verify information about other people mentioned in the affidavit were unsuccessful because they could not be found or were unwilling to comment about events that occurred 30 years ago.
"The bottom line is, my husband knew everything," says Lenore Jacobs about her late husband. "When he died, everything died with him. Every file or notes that he had, Ralph took and would not return. There's no corroborating it because my husband's dead. It was a horrific time in our lives, not to put too fine a point on it."
Whether Jacobs' accusations about Nader's financial dealings were true or just a counterthreat to get Nader to recant his statement remains uncertain. Salon was unable to independently confirm the allegations about legal and financial impropriety. Nader refused to comment for this story, though he was informed about the nature of Jacobs' charges. What is certain is that shortly after Jacobs prepared his affidavit, Nader sent a letter to the FBI retracting what he had said about Jacobs. In a classic nonapology apology, Nader wrote, "This is to inform you that ... all outstanding differences have been settled ... [which] were insignificant in nature. In light of the above, I would now recommend Mr. Jacobs for a position of trust and confidence with the U.S. Government."
But the damage was done. The highly qualified Jacobs didn't get the job with the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, or any other position that required a security clearance. He reluctantly took a job on the staff of Bella Abzug, the late firebrand Democratic congresswoman from New York, and worked on Capitol Hill until he retired in 1994. Jacobs died in 1998 of a neurological disease.
"I believe the way Ted portrays things is accurate," says Nick Zill, a former Nader associate who knew Jacobs when he worked for Nader. "Ted was a straight shooter and not a frivolous person at all. He was very dedicated to Nader's causes." Though Zill didn't know the details of the men's falling out before being shown Jacobs' notes, he says he is not at all surprised by the characterizations of Nader's vindictiveness. Zill and his former wife, Anne Zill, both worked for the Congress Project. The Zills, too, had a bitter parting of ways with Nader.
"While I worked for the Congress Project, I had taken an idea to Nader, the only meeting I ever had with him," says Anne Zill. "He liked my idea about investigating how the media reports on things happening in Congress. So I worked on it during my own time, but I wasn't able to finish it."
Disillusioned by Nader's autocratic management style and with the paltry wages that the Congress Project was paying them -- the couple had three young children who attended a daycare center in Georgetown for the indigent while they worked -- they both decided to leave the project. After Anne left to begin a congressional fellowship, she began getting harassing phone calls from people working for Nader. "I would get phone calls late at night, demanding that I turn over these notes I had taken for this idea. They said I was breaking the law, that I wouldn't get away with this. They said my reputation would suffer." Anne refused to turn over her work, however, based on her belief that the project had been her idea and that she had done it on her own time.
After her fellowship, Anne applied for a job with Stewart Mott, a public-spirited philanthropist who was on President Nixon's enemies list. According to both Anne and Nick Zill, Nader attempted to torpedo her hiring with accusations that she had stolen notes from the Congress Project. She was hired by Mott anyway, and he even threw a party for her at the Kennedy Center. When Nader showed up at the party, Nick was so incensed he threw a glass of water in Nader's face. Thirty-five years later, Anne still works for the Stewart Mott Charitable Trust.
Nader "dealt very hierarchically with people through his underlings," says Anne Zill. "At any point, if he had asked me about the notes rather than sending his underlings to come get them, I would have talked with him about it."
"He demanded a kind of loyalty that we found disturbing," says Nick Zill. "Anytime he was going to come into the office, it was like the prophet Mohammed was going to appear. There was this blind obedience that we found cultlike. I think the real reason [Nader told Mott not to hire Anne] was that Stewart was an important source of funds for Nader, and he wanted someone more loyal to him in this position. This nominal dispute over notes is very similar to the Ted Jacobs situation."
While Jacobs may have been damaged more than anyone else by Nader, he was by no means the last intimate associate to suffer Nader's wrath. "These weren't just marginal people who he disagreed with," says Toby Moffett, a former Democratic congressman and another early and close associate of Nader's. "These are people who would have fallen on a sword for him."
Like Nader, Moffett grew up in Connecticut. Their fathers, both Lebanese immigrants, were good friends. When Moffett finished graduate school, his father urged him to get in touch with Nader, who was already a national icon. To Moffett's surprise, not only did Nader take his call, but he asked him to return to Connecticut and start an organization that would later become the model for Citizen Action groups around the country. "I saw a lot of Ralph because he would come back to visit his parents [in Connecticut]. I would stay and eat with the family. To me he was a gigantic hero."
After working closely with the old family friend, Moffett ran for Congress from Connecticut in 1974 and won. "Three months after I was elected, [Nader] attacked me," says Moffett. "So our relationship began to sour pretty quickly."
According to Moffett, Nader launched the first of numerous attacks against him over an aircraft noise reduction bill. While the bill stipulated that noise reduction measures would be funded mostly by the airlines, they were also to be subsidized by a tax on airplane travelers -- not the general public -- which Nader dismissed as a corporate handout. Moffett, along with nearly every environmental group, supported the bill. "It was an important piece of legislation that was supported by a coalition of progressive members of Congress, and it passed. Of course, now the Bush administration is tearing it apart."
Nader continued to criticize Moffett during his four terms in Congress, which was disturbing enough, but as with Al Gore, Nader would eventually play a crucial part in ending Moffett's career in elective office. After a fourth term in the House, Moffett ran for the Senate against Lowell Weicker, a Republican, in 1982. "My opponent was running these ads attacking me; the [National Rifle Association] was hammering me from the right," says Moffett. "And then Ralph Nader came up [to Connecticut] and endorsed him. I lost by a very slim margin. My family and I, and my supporters, we just had this blind rage and fury about it. So what he did in 2000 was no shock to me. And what he's doing now is no shock. It's always been about him and his ego."
"He has no interest in being a constructive part of anything," continues Moffett. "No one can name a coalition he has been in where he really rolled his sleeves up and tried to get [something] done. He's shown no interest in anything that could be construed as incremental change. [But] he has had success in empowering people, like Joan Claybrook and others. That's the legacy."
Claybrook is the president of Public Citizen, an organization that Nader founded in 1971. After Ted Jacobs left his position with Nader, Claybrook took over as Nader's right-hand person, and she remained his closest associate until she was appointed by President Carter to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which was created in the wake of Nader's auto safety campaign of the 1960s.
Within months of her appointment to the government agency, Nader attacked Claybrook. According to a biography of Nader by Justin Martin, "Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon," Nader wrote a vitriolic 11-page, single-spaced letter that was ostensibly addressed to Claybrook but was in fact distributed widely to the media; Claybrook herself didn't even get a copy.
The letter, parts of which were published in the Washington Post, complained about delays in air bag safety regulation, certainly a legitimate concern. However, Nader went on to berate her for what he perceived as her many shortcomings, and even accused her of being more beholden to the auto industry than to consumers. She felt compelled to call a press conference to address the accusations, and Nader showed up and proceeded to badger her.
Claybrook did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Rather than capitalizing on his unparalleled access to the Carter administration through the dozens of Raiders and other allies working for the administration, Nader adopted a harshly adversarial stance. While many activists find it easier to criticize a conservative administration than to work with a sympathetic one, what's different about Nader, observes one of his former supporters (who does not want to be named), is that his righteous view of himself "translates into a deeply pathological approach to targeting his allies."
Of course, his attacks on Claybrook and other progressives during the late 1970s were outlandish. But given the effectiveness of his uncompromising positions up to that point, his behavior was mostly tolerated and sometimes forgiven. In fact, Claybrook eventually went back to work for Nader after leaving the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fast-forward to the Clinton administration, however, and not much had changed. Despite having little influence during the Reagan and Bush I administrations, he picked up where he left off by attacking both people inside the Clinton White House and advocates who were trying to influence its policies.
"We worked with him on [the Clinton] healthcare initiative," recalls a left-leaning activist who now works as a staff member for a Democratic congressman. She asked not to be identified because of Nader's penchant for retribution. "While we didn't necessarily endorse the Clinton plan, we worked hard to make sure it had a single-payer option. Ralph disagreed with us, completely disagreed with us, and spent time attacking us for selling out. It was a very bitter period of time. If you disagreed with him, you could very quickly become a target even if you were fighting for the same thing."
"His organization has always been top-down," she continues. "He has been able to say, 'This is what it should be,' rather than having to be accountable to people who want to move the ball forward without scoring a goal every time. We had to decide how to respond to the Clinton healthcare bill, so we had a meeting and people argued it out and then we arrived at a position. Ralph [just] sat in a room with two people and said, 'This is what we're going to do.'"
"He lobbied me, or maybe I should say threatened me," says a senior official in the Clinton administration, who also asked not to be identified. "That's what he does. He will meet with you, you'll have a nice discussion about a policy issue, and you'll agree on goals and debate the means, and then he'll go out and say you're a traitor, that you're not a real Democrat. He's made a career out of it. It's never constructive, but it gets him lots of attention. The right wing, of course, loves it."
"Ralph in practice has been tougher on his friends than on his enemies," offers another Clinton administration staffer diplomatically, despite having been on the receiving end of Nader's condemnation. "He has seen his role to be the last honest man."
Bill Zimmerman, a political consultant, would probably disagree with the notion that Nader is the last honest man. As someone who has worked in progressive politics in California for the better part of 30 years, he has had numerous dealings with Nader. Indeed, one of Zimmerman's biggest victories came about because of Nader.
In 1988, Zimmerman was part of a coalition that got a pro-consumer initiative on the ballot promising to lower auto insurance rates as well as give California drivers a rebate. Not surprisingly, the insurance industry fought back hard. On Election Day, there were four measures on the ballot claiming to be insurance reform initiatives. Nader endorsed Zimmerman's proposal -- and it squeaked through. "Nader had a huge impact on getting it passed," says Zimmerman. "Ralph has a lot of clout when it comes to distinguishing the genuine article in a crowd of phonies."
But after several years, it became clear to consumer advocates that the measure wasn't delivering on its promises. Zimmerman and the coalition he worked with believed that fees paid to trial attorneys in auto accident lawsuits were a problem. "So we developed a consumer-oriented, no-fault insurance plan and got it on the ballot in 1994. It would have taken the lawyers out of the equation."
"Not only did Nader oppose it," continues Zimmerman, "but he wrote an Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times calling me and other people 'consumer traitors.' This is typical of how Nader operates. Rather than arguing the merits or revealing his own financial support from trial lawyers, he publicly demonized the people who were advocating for consumers as shills of the industry. We never took a nickel from insurance companies. There was no logical reason for him to oppose it other than to protect his own financial interest."
Zimmerman readily acknowledges Nader's many achievements. But like others who had bitter fallings-out with Nader, he searches for a psychological explanation for Nader's behavior. "In addition to living inside this bubble of fame, he leads a very monastic life. He has no intimate relationships; he lives without emotional ties to other people. As a result, he is isolated from the kinds of things that help people reach emotional maturity. He has childish and narcissistic reactions to things. If he led more of an ordinary life, some of these problems might be mitigated."
In the past, Nader has lamented his isolated existence. "I didn't socialize much in Washington when I was well-known and heavily reported," he told biographer Justin Martin. "I could have easily. I'm really sorry that I didn't do more of that. It was like postponing it: 'I'm busy on this, I'm busy on that.' People loom much bigger now than they did when they were within a phone call. I felt I could always meet with them, so I put it off. That was a mistake."
It seems that the personality traits that have made Nader an effective advocate -- doggedness, indignation and disdain for how he is perceived -- are the same ones that foment disaster when translated into personal relationships and, more important, electoral politics.
Despite having shunned electoral politics for the better part of his career, as his influence waned in the 1990s, Nader began testing the waters. His first run for the presidency came in 1992, when he entered the New Hampshire primary race, garnering only a bit more than 3,000 votes. In 1996, he "stood" for president [Nader's terminology] as the Green Party's candidate, but spent less than $5,000 -- some say to avoid disclosing personal financial information -- and got less than 1 percent of the popular vote.
In 2000, again with the Green Party, he ran a full-fledged campaign, raising and spending money to get on the ballot in all 50 states. He drew huge crowds at places like Madison Square Garden in New York and Key Arena in Seattle. While he assured Democrats that he wouldn't campaign late in the election season in key battleground states, he reneged on that promise, zeroing in on Florida, Oregon and New Hampshire in the last few weeks before the election.
Few analysts predicted just how close the election would be, but a number of people who had worked with Nader over the years feared that his run for president would be disastrous. "When he announced [his candidacy in 2000] at a big gathering in Washington, I was the first person to stand up and say, 'How can you say there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans?'" says Gary Sellers, who was one of the original Raiders. "There was a big hush in the room. He had no response." Nader was the best man at Sellers' wedding; they no longer speak to each other.
Nader's share of the votes was the margin that threw New Hampshire into Bush's column and accounted for the difference in Florida that cast the state into the post-election turmoil that ended only with the 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in Bush vs. Gore. Nader nearly cost Gore other states as well, especially New Mexico. Every study after the election determined that almost all of Nader's votes would have gone to Gore if Nader hadn't run, but Nader continues to insist that he bore no responsibility.
Nader's justifications for running again are contradictory. One of his arguments is that he'll take more votes away from Bush than from Kerry, an assertion punctured by an analysis of polling data by DontVoteRalph.net. Nader has also said that he would help Kerry get elected. When the two men met on May 19, Nader emerged with Kerry all smiles and chuckles, indicating that he wouldn't campaign in hotly contested states. Then, just a few weeks later, he reversed that decision, saying he might campaign only in swing states. Republicans are reportedly aiding his campaign to get on the ballot in Arizona, and some conservative groups in Oregon that have helped his campaign in hopes of giving an advantage to President Bush were accused Tuesday of violating a federal campaign law that prohibits corporate contributions to presidential candidates.
Not surprisingly, Nader's arguments for running again are being rejected by Democrats and even by the Green Party, which failed to endorse him at its convention in Milwaukee on June 26. Indeed, the Green Party selected David Cobb as its candidate for president largely because he promised to campaign only in safely Republican and Democratic states. On June 22, Nader had a heated exchange with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to reporters who overheard people shouting and cursing. After the meeting, from which several people stormed out, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, told CNN, "This is the most historic election of our lifetime, and it is a life-or-death matter for the vulnerable people we represent. For that reason, we can't sacrifice their vulnerability for the efforts being made by Mr. Nader."
"The reality is, much of the fallout from having George Bush get elected is being dealt with by people other than Ralph Nader," concurs the chief of staff to a Democratic member of Congress. She says that very few members will even meet with Nader anymore. "I don't know what Nader does on these issues in between elections, but we're the ones -- progressive members of Congress and their staffs -- who are concerned about families who can't get visas to come see dying relatives, people being turned away from Pell grants, the war in Iraq. Every day it's something else. We know that if Gore were in the White House, we wouldn't be dealing with this. If we sound bitter, it's because we are."
Nader's many soured relationships have become the backbone of some well-organized challenges to his latest candidacy. United Progressives for Victory, an umbrella group that is trying to bring the various anti-Nader efforts together, is spearheaded by Toby Moffett and Bob Brandon, another early Nader associate. United Progressives for Victory has been formed as a PAC to raise money for advertising and grass-roots outreach, as well as to fund a celebrity bus tour planned for later in the election season.
In addition to legal challenges like the one in Oregon, other groups have emerged to scrutinize Nader's efforts to get on the ballot in swing states. For instance, former organizers for Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and Dick Gephardt have launched TheNaderFactor.com, which aims to persuade younger progressives by, among other tactics, airing television ads that feature former Nader supporters talking about the real differences between Bush and Kerry. "Everyone is working on this," says Gloria Totten of the Progressive Majority, one of the groups involved with United Progressives for Victory.
But no one expects that Nader will actually withdraw from the race -- despite the fact that even among those who maintain cordial relations with him, there isn't one former associate who thinks his campaign is a good idea. "I don't know of a single person who is supporting Nader now," says Don Ross, who worked for Nader years ago as head of a Citizen Action group and is a founding partner of Malkin & Ross, a progressive lobbying firm in Albany, N.Y. "There's no one that I know of walking around with 'Vote Nader' buttons on."
"He has lost credibility and respect, and he stands to lose it completely if takes enough votes away [from Kerry] to reelect Bush," adds Harrison Wellford, the first executive director of the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, who was involved with Nader's Raiders for Gore. He is now working with Nader's Raiders for Kerry, yet another group hoping to persuade people not to vote for Nader. "Passions are extremely intense now. He's taking a much bigger risk this time around. But he's been impervious to this point. It's difficult for him to give up the opportunity that the [presidential] stage gives him. For that reason, he's dead set on going ahead."
Chesapeake Silt
Member
efralope said:
Democrats weren't sponsoring Ross Perot's candidacy.
I don't get this bullshit about 3rd party candidates "stealing votes." The votes aren't Bush/Kerry's to begin with, they aren't guaranteed those votes. If someone identifies with Nader, what teh fuck is the problem with voting for him? Likewise, if someone identified with Buchanan in 2000, what's the problem with voting for him?
Kerry doesn't deserve any leftist vote. He doesn't deserve mine, he doesn't deserve yours, he has to earn it. If he doesn't represent your beliefs, then why vote for him? If George Bush doesn't represent your belief, why vote for him?
"omg omg because LESSER OF TWO EVILSOMG"
Give me a break
Kerry doesn't deserve any leftist vote. He doesn't deserve mine, he doesn't deserve yours, he has to earn it. If he doesn't represent your beliefs, then why vote for him? If George Bush doesn't represent your belief, why vote for him?
"omg omg because LESSER OF TWO EVILSOMG"
Give me a break
Saint Cornelius
Banned
Better yet, why don't we give you four more years of Bush? That seems to be what you want.
xsarien: So...are you espousing the virtues of the other two candidates here? I don't see your point. The biggest thing Nader brings to the table is change and a break from the current monopoly of power. I don't think you need to be centrist on the national stage. I think people just need to gets their heads pulled from the asses of these national parties. Everyone's so quick to don their political colors, but forget what it's all about. Kerry and Bush don't offer anything new. If marginal/incremental changes left/right is the answer, then by all means, vote on of those corporate shills in. They'll take special interest money, cater to people who are funding them and their constituencies, and of course, accomplish next to nothing in their tenure.
If Nader could get the support he needs from the grassroots, then that would be great. But he can't. And I don't want him to dilute his message just to get on tv. Be leftist if you have to, but have some conviction. I think that no matter what you believe in, you can convince people to vote for you if you can give it a spirited defense. The reason neither Bush nor Kerry wants Nader in the debates is for this very reason. He will eat their lunch and ask for seconds. He might *gasp* convince people from both of their bases to support him. If he was really leftist, and such a detriment to Kerry, then Republicans would fight to have him in the debates. That he's still excluded is very telling IMO. Neither party wants to lose its death grip on US politics, so they will stay centrist and keep pushing these vanilla robots at us in hopes that the masses will be so busy feuding that they won't notice that they're still being marginalized politically. PEACE.
If Nader could get the support he needs from the grassroots, then that would be great. But he can't. And I don't want him to dilute his message just to get on tv. Be leftist if you have to, but have some conviction. I think that no matter what you believe in, you can convince people to vote for you if you can give it a spirited defense. The reason neither Bush nor Kerry wants Nader in the debates is for this very reason. He will eat their lunch and ask for seconds. He might *gasp* convince people from both of their bases to support him. If he was really leftist, and such a detriment to Kerry, then Republicans would fight to have him in the debates. That he's still excluded is very telling IMO. Neither party wants to lose its death grip on US politics, so they will stay centrist and keep pushing these vanilla robots at us in hopes that the masses will be so busy feuding that they won't notice that they're still being marginalized politically. PEACE.
Saint Cornelius
Banned
Nader is psychotic, he has a messiah complex, just like Bush
I'm all for destroying the two-party system (I'm a registered Libertarian, for fucks sake!), but Nader is NOT the answer. He's so convinced that he IS, though, I'm surprised he doesn't fucking glow
I'm all for destroying the two-party system (I'm a registered Libertarian, for fucks sake!), but Nader is NOT the answer. He's so convinced that he IS, though, I'm surprised he doesn't fucking glow
Alcibiades
Member
Chesapeake Silt said:
Republican's aren't sponsoring Nader's candidacy (the only deal I've heard is some Repub's in Michigan collecting signatures and some libertarian group in Oregon also helping with signatures)...
besides, aren't libertarian's allowed to support a candidate that is against foreign troop deployment, corporate welfare for US companies, oveseas tax-shelters for tax evasion, and having the government watching over people's private behavior...
Pimpwerx said:
I'm not defending the virtues of Kerry or (especially) Bush, they're both pretty lame, but I'm first and foremost a realist. I'm all for 3rd party candidates, but legitimate ones. Nader, I'd argue, isn't, because he represents such a fraction of this country that he'd be lucky if he got that magical 5% of the vote needed to get federal assistance. My issue with him - in a more secondary manner - is that he whines (yes, whines) about how he's always shut out, how he's the underdog, and how the two D/R candidates are always the same, but when asked what he stands for, that's usually precisely what he says. He's against "big" companies, "big" government, at least that's what I've been able to garner. It's what he manages to eek out when he's not complaining about how much it sucks to be a 3rd party candidate.
He (and others) need to understand the simple equation that if you have strong, unified support in states like New York and California, you're most likely NOT going to have strong, unified support in states like Alabama or Georgia. Conservatives vote too, not just extreme-leftists, and the former would sooner vote a Clinton back into office than even consider Nader and his radical policies. You want change? Hey, awesome, me too. But you don't swing a hard left while doing 75mph on the Interstate. Change comes slowly, and some of the more fervent Green Party members, and people who will either abstain from voting or write Nader in under some impression that they're being defiant don't seem to realize that. Even Bill Maher said, to Nader's face, that he considers a vote for him this year to be a "bratty indulgence." This from a man who's quick to make sure everyone realizes that both the Democrats and Republicans suck the same amount of dick.
Bush is that dangerous. Get him out now, get the mediocre guy in, then hand me a Nader brochure in 2008.
Saint Cornelius
Banned
efralope said:
Actually, if Libertarians want to represent, they need to support THEIR candidate, don't you think?
And as far as Republicans not sponsoring Nader's candidacy - but then saying that Republicans in Michigan did JUST THAT - well, color me confused.
The point is, what's Kerry gonna do that's so much better?
.
.
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Well...he's not Bush. Yippee. :| I'm overwhelmed with apathy. If it was Dennis Kucinich, I would be postering and campaining for the guy. Kooch supports my views. Kerry doesn't. Edwards doesn't either. They label Kerry as liberal, but I don't know on what bizarro world he falls into that category. Maybe the world where self-respecting liberals vote for a war that was seriously lacking in evidence. Post-9/11 let us all see just how pathetic US politics has become. Democrats were bending over backwards to support Bush b/c to not do so in the time of crisis might have been poltically unfavorable. Well, they made their beds, now sleep. Patriotism does not trump common sense. We need leaders who believe in what they do, not b/c it will keep percentages of their constituents happy, but b/c it is what they believe. And if the public doesn't want it, at least offer your defense before capitulating. What we got post-9/11 was a serious assfuck. Democrats went mute for far too long and signed over our rights in the Patriot Act and with the Iraq War. Fuck 'em. Dems deserve to lose b/c they were spineless. Cons are some of the biggest douches around, but at least they stick to their guns. See today as further proof. That gay marriage ban had no legs, but that big-eared freak Sanctorum still had the sack to sit there and rant about how we have to save marriage and blah blah blah.
Political expediance is not a reason to support something. Fuck anyone who thinks that, and anyone who supports that. I used to wonder how the serfs would stay under the brutal rule of the lords without staging a massive revolt. I mean, they had numbers, right/ Same thing with slaves. It's amazing how a few people in power can brainwash the multitudes into subordination. Well, I'm having no part of it anymore. My vote may not help Kerry, but I don't expect him to help me much. And besides, maybe if Bush runs the wheels off the wagon enough in the next 4 years, Dems can nominate someone worth a damn. Stranger things have happened I guess. PEACE.
Alcibiades
Member
Saint Cornelius said:
collecting signatures is a pretty minor deal, that's just what I'm saying...
Unless Republicans are pouring in tens of millions into his campaign coffers, I don't see Nader making any significant impact anyway...
who saying Libertarians aren't supporting their candidate, but also supporing the Reform Party, and Constituation Party, the No-Tax party, etc...
they can support more than one candidate for ballot access, especially if their goal (like Greens and other 3rd parties), is for the 2-party system to have more competition...
Saint Cornelius
Banned
Pimpwerx said:
Okay fine, but man, John Titor spooks the fuck outta me. Maybe that's gay, maybe that's stupid - all I know is, Bush has done ENOUGH to the U.S., both home & abroad. He doesn't DESERVE a second chance.
Saint Cornelius
Banned
Half the country?
Saint Cornelius
Banned
Are you of voting age, Wolfy?
Saint Cornelius
Banned
I don't "see polls much", Wolfy, but I do read Time.
Jul. 5, 2004
NUMBERS
55%-43% Margin by which Democratic front runner John Kerry leads President George W. Bush in the latest Gallup poll 53%-43%
Do you like apples, Wolfy?
Jul. 5, 2004
NUMBERS
55%-43% Margin by which Democratic front runner John Kerry leads President George W. Bush in the latest Gallup poll 53%-43%
Do you like apples, Wolfy?
Alcibiades
Member
He has a 51% job approval rating, I think that is what he is getting at, but truthfully it wavers from about 45%-55% depending on the poll and time, but generally hangs around 50%...
edit: of course there are people that approve of Bush, but may prefer Kerry...
edit: of course there are people that approve of Bush, but may prefer Kerry...
Saint Cornelius
Banned
I really hate when 17 year olds decide they know something about politics. I'm sure you live with your parents too, Wolfy, am I right?
Saint Cornelius
Banned
I'm not "bashing" you man, it's just that you lack the real world exposure to understand politics.
But I am bashing you because, you know, polls that show your point = good, polls that show *MY* point = bad, evidentally, and that's really lame
But I am bashing you because, you know, polls that show your point = good, polls that show *MY* point = bad, evidentally, and that's really lame
Alcibiades
Member
Saint Cornelius said:
me too, they should just remain ignorant about politics and let older voters deal with the situation, no?
the majority of under-30-year-old's don't vote or care about politics, and instead of discouraging debate and interest among that group, it should be cool that some youth are at least taking a shot at understanding this crap...
Saint Cornelius
Banned
efralope said:
If you're supporting Bush, then your "understanding" needs some fine-tuning
Alcibiades
Member
Saint Cornelius said:
I also supported Gephardt, Dean (my vote in the Democratic primary), Lieberman and Edwards (one at a time, but my favorite was Dean, the only ones I didn't like were Clark, Kerry, Kucinich, Braun, and Sharpton) and I'm going to vote for Ralph Nader in November, and if he wasn't in the ballot I'd be voting for Bush, so in this case he is taking away from the Bush vote even though Democrats claim a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush...
Should I need some fine-tuning because I supported liberal candidates also...
In fact, my senior year of HS I was bigtime Nader fan (I couldn't vote though cause I was 17 and my 18th birthday was like a week after the election)...
Okay fine, but man, John Titor spooks the fuck outta me. Maybe that's gay, maybe that's stupid - all I know is, Bush has done ENOUGH to the U.S., both home & abroad. He doesn't DESERVE a second chance.
Oddly enough, as much as we're all arguing in this thread, I think we all hold this statement to be true. Bush sucks, get him out.PEACE.
You believe this and you're supporting Nader?
Alcibiades
Member
Pimpwerx said:Oddly enough, as much as we're all arguing in this thread, I think we all hold this statement to be true. Bush sucks, get him out.
I don't think so, I don't support a lot of the policies that have taken place under his administration, but interestingly enough, the Democrats have been support of his initiatives anyway (education, iraq, corporate welfare for the airlines, etc...), so I don't think Kerry is going to be much different, except that I do support Bush on foreign policy, where I think Kerry wouldn't do a good enough job of fighting terrorism...
Wolfy said:
...And replaced with a good 3rd party candidate. Nader's a shitty choice, but for different reasons than Kerry being a shitty choice. But given what's at stake, I'm at least going to do my part to make sure the guy who at least stands a chance gets in.
efralope said:
Like Bush is doing a bang up job fighting terrorism? Terrorist acts are up over the past two years, we've managed to get on the nerves of middle-eastern governments, piss their people off outright, and alienated many of our allies with our "Our way or the highway," approach to foreign support for the "war on terror."
Please. At least Kerry wouldn't let a "Fuck anyone who doesn't think we're right" environment fester in this country.
Alcibiades
Member
I never expected Middle-Eastern governments or the people living there to be happy with America, at least no unless they lived in a place where there is a free an open press and no punishment for criticism of government (like Turkey and Israel maybe)...
efralope said:
You're kidding yourself if you actually think we can force feed democracy to a country that, up until last year, lived under a strict dictator. Democracy needs to come about by itself, "installing" it is a very dangerous proposition that can backfire big time.
Pimpwerx said:
http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/
Anyone who thinks Kerry and Bush aren't different deserves to have their ears and testicles stapled together.
Or something else really painful. That was the best I could come up with.
*cue Hito making rational arguments about why driving for the presidency isn't a good way to fight the two party system and promote liberal causes*
Baron Aloha
A Shining Example
Nader is nothing but a republican owned spoiler. And that's funny that he should say he wouldn't go on MSNBC. I watch the channel daily and I know for a fact that I've seen him on there at least a half dozen times on the political shows like Hardball. Chris Matthews asked him if it was true that more than half of the donations to his campaign come from republicans and he acknowledged it was true. Then Chris asked him if he thought that was right and he was like "I don't care where the money comes from". This guy is working for the republicans. I really wish the more liberal folks out there who plan to vote for him would realize that. I also wish I had a link to the video of the interview. It's really something else.
Catchpenny
Member
The best part of that interview:
Hilarious. Nader is coming unhinged.
Hilarious. Nader is coming unhinged.
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