Ralph Nader, whoring for attention... again
 

Nader Announces Run for President

 

Ralph Nader speaks at a news conference in Reading, Pa., in this July 14, 2007 file photo. The consumer advocate will appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday Feb. 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) (Carolyn Kaster - AP)

By HOPE YEN
The Associated Press
Sunday, February 24, 2008; 10:16 AM

WASHINGTON -- Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will "shift the power from the few to the many."

Nader, 73, said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy. The consumer advocate also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly policies under the Bush administration that he said have left many lower- and middle-class people in debt.

"You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized and disrespected," he said. "You go from Iraq, to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."

"In that context, I have decided to run for president," Nader told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Nader also criticized Republican candidate John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for failing to support full Medicare for all or cracking down on Pentagon waste and a "bloated military budget. He blamed that on corporate lobbyists and special interests, which he said dominate Washington, D.C., and pledged in his third-party campaign to accept donations only from individuals.

"The issue is do they have the moral courage, do they have the fortitude to stand up to corporate powers and get things done for the American people," Nader said. "We have to shift the power from the few to the many."

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, speaking shortly before Nader's announcement, said Nader's past runs have shown that he usually pulls votes from the Democratic nominee. "So naturally, Republicans would welcome his entry into the race," the former Arkansas governor said on CNN.

Nader also ran as a third-party candidate in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. He is still loathed by many Democrats who call him a spoiler and claim his candidacy in 2000 cost the party the election by siphoning votes away from Al Gore in a razor-thin contest in Florida. Nader vociferously disputes the spoiler claim, saying only Democrats are to blame for losing the race to George W. Bush.

Though he won 2.7 percent of the national vote as the Green Party candidate in 2000, his percentage dropped to just 0.3 percent as an independent in 2004, when he appeared on the ballot in only 34 states.

time to go see this asshole on meet the press

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his fucking website is censoring negative comments btw

Ron Paul's wouldn't :cool:

I am voting for him, so my votes don't count. That is what I heard, that people who vote for him their votes don't count.

They do count, however insignificant. My prediction is that Hilary and Barack will end up on the same ticket, which is:
a) an almost guaranteed winner
b) an assassination waiting to happen

So true, Obama will be the first to go right?

I just don't understand Nader. I think he has some great ideas, but why doesn't he run in contests he could actually win AND effect change? We need more independants in the senate. His vote could block many Republican bills from passing. He could really be effective in that context, I think less and less people take him seriously every time he runs for presidant, he looks less and less like a man who really wants to change the way politics are conducted, and looks more and more like just a selfish, media stealing ass.

na-ah. hillary rove clinton will be secretary of state or health and human services or something.

the right ticket is obama + bill richardson

and yeah HRC would get obama killed within the first 90 days

another kennedy/johnson

I think at this point he's just fucking with us. He has to know that he'll never win the presidential election. Either that or he's too senile to realise it.
I just want Bill to be first bitch.

even if for some freak accident he "won", how the fuck would he get anything done without the congress?

the fucker is delusional...

Nader is completely deluded if he thinks he would actually accomplish anything during his tenure as president.

exactly.

he's a self-absorbed holier-than-thou prick

And he's totally the only one in politics with these personality traits.

add "dangerously delusional" to the list of traits

ralph nader kind of reminds me of my grandpa...like he would put meat in the cabinets instead of the refrigerator or accidentally burn the house down.

my question is how many people here who supported nader in 2000, now hate him? i bet a lot, and im not surprised....im convinced people like tesla and !@#$% voted for nader in 2000, with many here.

hypocrites,,,as i always say, this board is full of them

god dammit man, you're a dunce and a bore.

I hate it when people call out political hypocrisy. People change their minds as they age and as new situations develop. I supported Nader when I was 22, but now that I'm older, I don't support his efforts to publicize himself. It would be far worse if I simply "stayed the course" with my political opinions.

good, maybe his participation will reveal the fraud of the the supposed two-party system.

like it did all those other times?

don't get me wrong, the system needs fixin', but he's not the one that's going to do it - no one person can.

Are there people out there who actually want him to be president? I mean, was he persuaded to run again because so many people asked him to, or is he just trying to get some spotlight attention once again for more personal reasons?

if that was his intention, he should have founded a third party. but this is a "me me me me me me" play. most lame.


apparently he talked to obama, but obama wouldn't do his bidding, so nader threw a hissy fit.

figures.

also, am i the only person who finds it amusing that Nader is always referred to as a "consumer advocate"?

well he was the founder of US PIRG and did his seatbelt thing, etc, but yeah, consumer advocate, that's his place. they could also call him "presidentially deluded consumer advocate".

I didnt say he was going to fix it. I said his participation revealed the fraud of the electoral process in Amerikan so-called democracy, just as it did in the previous two elections. I apologize if people out there still believe in this system, but I am not so convinced.

man, i'm surprised you didn't say shitstem. you're growing complacent!

ha ha.

but seriously no, he didn't "reveal" any "fraud". he just made an ass of himself.

the current parties didn't exist throughout american history. new parties can appear, the problem is all "third party" jackasses of recent times base their organizations more on cults of personality than on ideology.

and then groups like the libertarian party, i dont know what the fuck they do.

and that's just how they like it!:D

they work hard to make a bad name for libertarians everywhere, and they seem to be pretty good at it.

they should try to capture some mayoral chairs & congresional districts.

what the fuck is a party without a base? everyone wants to focus on the presidency as if we lived in some kind of monarchy. stupid fuckers.

i was just sayin.... libertarians = pro-privacy = you don't know what the fuck they do. and they like it.





true story.

yeah, but I kinda see his brand of consumer advocacy as a double-edged sword. I'm not saying all his ideas are bad, but he fully believes in the parental role of government - that people need to be told what to do in order to be kept safe.

His advocacy certainly has gotten a lot of safety features into consumer products more quickly than the "free market" route, but it has also had the consequences of removing certain choices (who knows - there could have been some alternatives to air bags, but it doesn't matter because air bags won out politically) and allowing companies to justify price increases that arguably place more of a burden on the very people for whom Nader claims to be an advocate.

unsafe in any office.

i've never understood why the LP insists on running presidential candidates but fails to run for more local seats. In certain states, they would do well (Georgia, New Hampshire, Montana, probably more)... besides the more pragmatic version of libertarianism is making government more effective at the local level.

i've been posting on this board for too long now... actually I really was going to post shitstem, but I thought it would sound more intellectual to use political terms rather then the truth there, which clearly worked because you did successfully interpret my insinuations

in intellectual matters i tend to favor accurate observations and insightful analysis over language formalities, but that's just me.


yes-- i'd tell them get on the city council, get a state governor elected, take over a state legislature, show you what you can do at the local level before we can take you seriously to run the country.

the way they run they're doomed to receive a perpetual 1% of the vote.

i agree ith nadar more than any of the rest of them, but come on he failed twice badly, no reason to for him to run at all.

in 2000, i used to make fun of nadar, but i didn't understand what he was about. i voted for gore. i probably wouldn't have voted for nadar anyway even if i knew his stances. he seemed like a waste of a vote then, like he is now.

like, look at this stupid shit:

http://www.lpconvention.org/

what the fuck for??

It's more important that people with libertarian ideas get elected than members of the Libertarian Party though. For the most part, the party represents some of the worst things about libertarians. They don't speak to the issues that many people are concerned about such as the environment or health care, but rather continue to push the old ideological battles like gun ownership, etc. There are new issues for the times we live in, and there are indeed libertarian perspectives that can address these issues. So yes, they need to focus locally but they also need to focus on issues that they have generally avoided in order to gain more support for their ideas.

well see that supports my point refuting suchfriend (sorta): one can't blame the 2-party system for the way alternative political organizations are so shittily run. that's a matter of self-determination, lack of strategic skills, and a love of failure.

I'm sure you know I consider myself a libertarian, but I've never supported the idea of the national party. It's such a waste.

For now, it's better to work on the local scene and try to get the major national parties to incorporate our ideas. Ron Paul does a decent job at that, but he's a more conservative breed of libertarian than I am and is by no means perfect.

I consider myself pretty pragmatic too. I initially liked Bill Richardson, it's a shame he couldn't present himself any better. I think an Obama-Richardson ticket would be the best we could ask for this time around.