Ralph Nader to run for president

[letsgetfree]

Ralph Nader to run for president

Ralph Nader says he does not see himself as a "spoiler"
Ralph Nader has announced plans to run again for the US presidency.
The anti-establishment consumer advocate made the announcement in a televised interview on Sunday.

Mr Nader was accused by many Democrats of handing the presidency to George W Bush in the November 2000 elections. He ran again unsuccessfully in 2004.

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are vying for the Democratic ticket. John McCain is almost certain to run for the Republicans.

Nearly three million Americans - more than 2% of the vote - backed him when he stood as the Green Party candidate in the 2000 presidential election.

That election was so close that a small proportion of those votes - particularly in the key state of Florida - would have put Al Gore in the White House.

Disenchanted

"I'm running for president," Mr Nader said as he announced the move on NBC's Meet the Press.

He said most Americans were disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties - who were not discussing the urgent issues facing American voters

Democrats, he said, were "complicit" and if they did not win by a "landslide" this year, "they should just close down".

He called Washington "corporate occupied territory" that turns the government against the interest of its own people.

Mr Nader denied he was seeking to be a spoiler candidate - and accused the main parties of shying away from fair competition.

Consumer agenda

Mr Nader, 73, was born in Connecticut in 1934 and was educated at Princeton and Harvard universities.

He has spent most of his life fighting for consumers and workers against corporations.

In the 1960s his work on car safety led directly to seat belts and shatter-resistant glass being fitted in every American car.

From the 1970s he built a reputation for dealing with issues including workers' rights, public safety, the environment and the influence of corporations.

He founded a number of groups including Public Citizen, which in recent years has been active in organising protests against the World Trade Organization and World Bank/IMF.

[ArabRASH]

It's great! he's not perfect but he's definitely the least evil...definitely! Although i don't think he really has a chance of winning. But i'll vote for him!(I have American citizenship). And it's not throwing my vote away...cause i wasn't even gonna vote anyway

[Keyser]

Another bourgeois candidate announces his intentions to court voters for the job who can run the American capitalist and imperialist system the best.

Is this even newsworthy.:rolleyes:

[chegitz guevara]

It's alway a good thing when the bourgeoisie fights itself.

[SouthernBelle82]

Nader wasn't a spoiler in 2000. The Supreme Court was. I get pissed off when people say Nader can't run for president and then turns around and people claim we're the best democracy in the world. What hypocrisy.

[SouthernBelle82]

Oh and Nader is a hypocrite himself. He bashes the two parties and then he takes money from republicans. Oh brother.

[ArabRASH]

Can you show me some proof that Nader took money from Republican parties?
I'm not challenging you and defending him, I've just heard this often, and would like to know if this is really true. If so, then...yuck...

[Encrypted Soldier]

Ralph Nader is a piece of shit.

Why don't we unite all left groups into a broad leftist umbrella group? I bet you we could get at least 5% behind our votes.

[Ismail]

Nader isn't a leftist, at all.


Why don't we unite all left groups into a broad leftist umbrella group? I bet you we could get at least 5% behind our votes.Let's assume by "left" you mean Communist. Try to imagine the Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, Left-Communists, Maoists, Khrushchevites (Reform Communists) etc all bonding together. Won't happen. Also, we shouldn't be running in bourgeois elections unless a revolutionary movement is already well-established. (See the Bolsheviks for an example)

[Wanted Man]

5% of the votes? And what would you do with that? "All left groups" (I assume you mean the "revolutionary" ones) still do not amount to much in the grand scheme of US politics. If the faithful worshippers of every cult would unite to vote for one "unity list", you'd still only find that 5% of Americans are cultists (and they would probably split up over minutiae after the electoral defeat).

That doesn't mean that serious communist groups, no matter how small, should abandon that kind of campaigning at all. But it's ridiculous to spend so much money and effort "just to make a statement", "to put us on the map", "to get media attention" by making just another toothless third party.

If you have three shovels full of shit, you can pile them on top of each other, but it still won't rise as high as the giant heap of shit that is the capitalist system.

[SouthernBelle82]

Sure no prob. Here a couple of news links about this.

Links- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/07/09/MNGQQ7J31K1.DTL

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/30/bush.nader/index.html

Of course the republicans are doing it for their own agenda but the fact Nader gets holier than thou about the two parties and then he takes republican money.


Can you show me some proof that Nader took money from Republican parties?
I'm not challenging you and defending him, I've just heard this often, and would like to know if this is really true. If so, then...yuck...

[Encrypted Soldier]

Let's assume by "left" you mean Communist. Try to imagine the Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, Left-Communists, Maoists, Khrushchevites (Reform Communists) etc all bonding together. Won't happen. Also, we shouldn't be running in bourgeois elections unless a revolutionary movement is already well-established. (See the Bolsheviks for an example)

It could happen. We can still bicker all of the small issues but unite and agree on a few broader ones (changing the economy, for one).


5% of the votes? And what would you do with that? "All left groups" (I assume you mean the "revolutionary" ones) still do not amount to much in the grand scheme of US politics. If the faithful worshippers of every cult would unite to vote for one "unity list", you'd still only find that 5% of Americans are cultists (and they would probably split up over minutiae after the electoral defeat).

That doesn't mean that serious communist groups, no matter how small, should abandon that kind of campaigning at all. But it's ridiculous to spend so much money and effort "just to make a statement", "to put us on the map", "to get media attention" by making just another toothless third party.

If you have three shovels full of shit, you can pile them on top of each other, but it still won't rise as high as the giant heap of shit that is the capitalist system.

Five percent could start a bigger change within the Democratic Party, which might try to move further left to try to gain some more votes.

Also, having 5% in the House or in the Senate would be a nice thing, don't ya think? More pro-worker bills could be passed with the help of just a few far-leftists.

[SouthernBelle82]

Yeah it's pretty pointless I think to run a national campaign when you know you won't get much of anything. Nader I think only does it for his ego personally because he's not around any other time except election year. Where is he for the other elections? Does he help with other third party candidates he agrees with in other elections? You're better to work locally than to waste so much time and resources on a national campaign. You start from the ground up and not opposite.


5% of the votes? And what would you do with that? "All left groups" (I assume you mean the "revolutionary" ones) still do not amount to much in the grand scheme of US politics. If the faithful worshippers of every cult would unite to vote for one "unity list", you'd still only find that 5% of Americans are cultists (and they would probably split up over minutiae after the electoral defeat).

That doesn't mean that serious communist groups, no matter how small, should abandon that kind of campaigning at all. But it's ridiculous to spend so much money and effort "just to make a statement", "to put us on the map", "to get media attention" by making just another toothless third party.

If you have three shovels full of shit, you can pile them on top of each other, but it still won't rise as high as the giant heap of shit that is the capitalist system.

[Ismail]

It could happen. We can still bicker all of the small issues but unite and agree on a few broader ones (changing the economy, for one).No, we can't. "Changing the economy" is too broad. You can allow social democrats in with such a view. Even if we got a 'Socialist' party in office via bourgeois elections, the best possible would be small improvement. Any more (And especially any attempt to take power out of the bourgeois) would result in at best the party declared illegal, at worst a Fascist coup.

[SouthernBelle82]

No, we can't. "Changing the economy" is too broad. You can allow social democrats in with such a view. Even if we got a 'Socialist' party in office via bourgeois elections, the best possible would be small improvement. Any more (And especially any attempt to take power out of the bourgeois) would result in at best the party declared illegal, at worst a Fascist coup.

Your post reminded me: has anyone ever read "The Plot to Overthrow the White House"? I've seen the documentary based on the book but basically it's about how a bunch of rightwing fascists tried to over throw FDR or make him be their puppet because of his "New Deal" plans and they thought he was a communist and whatnot. It's quite interesting and a part of history we never hear about in school even at the college level. I've already taken my US History credit and even my professor didn't talk about this and her class was pretty good.

[Red October]

The system is designed to be used by the bourgeois to exercise their power over the workers. By it's very nature the workers cannot use the capitalist system to eliminate capitalism. Even if Nader was a leftist, which he isn't, his candidacy wouldn't amount to shit.

[SouthernBelle82]

Well how else are you going to change the system without a revolution? Even leftist countries around the world have elections. Cuba just had their's.


The system is designed to be used by the bourgeois to exercise their power over the workers. By it's very nature the workers cannot use the capitalist system to eliminate capitalism. Even if Nader was a leftist, which he isn't, his candidacy wouldn't amount to shit.

[Ismail]

Well how else are you going to change the system without a revolution?You can't. The answer? Revolution.


Even leftist countries around the world have elections. Cuba just had their's.But they are supposed to actually represent the workers via being socialist states. It isn't like Communists are opposed to elections, we just don't find bourgeois elections to be particularly democratic.

[Guerrilla22]

You would have thought Nader would have learned his lesson 4 years ago and stop wasting his time and money, apparently he hasn't.

[renegadoe]

RevLeft really shouldn't tolerate all these topics about the elections. I mean, they're useful for elongating my ignore list with reformists, but c'mon - this is supposed to be a board for the revolutionary left.

As RS2k said, for we revolutionaries, bourgeois elections are like masturbation - if we must do it, we should do so in privacy and wash our hands afterwards.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Why not spoil one's vote in contempt, instead? :)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yeah, I agree. This kind of muck gets dug up every time a bourgeois election goes down..

Still, while we can merge some of the similar threads, there's really no way we can stop people from posting about this sort of thing (and it's probably not desirable to do so anyway).

Liberalism is a plague on the left, and needs to be rooted out. If nothing else, these sorts of threads offer a chance to do something in that direction.

On Nader: he is an anti-immigrant, capitalist politician; plain and simple. A discontented section of the bourgeois supports him, and this kind of "third party" move generally. The main goal of this election is to steer discontent back into the circus of bourgeois electoral politics, and as we can see with posts like "But i'll vote for him!.. it's not throwing my vote away...cause i wasn't even gonna vote anyway," it actually works to some extent.

[RedAnarchist]

I hate hypocrisy, but to be anti-immigrant when your own parents were immigrants is nothing short of moronic.

[Cheung Mo]

Can you show me some proof that Nader took money from Republican parties?
I'm not challenging you and defending him, I've just heard this often, and would like to know if this is really true. If so, then...yuck...

I don't know if Nader himself has any personal ties to the GOP, but I do know that he sided with the looney-tunes right on the Terry Schiavo thing, that he had many of the same backers as Ross Perot when he ran in 2004 as an indie, and that the Green Party itself was funded by GOP backers in PA when Santorum ran against Casey (a right-wing bastard whose main strength is not being Santorum) and in MN when Wellstone/Mondale ran against Coleman (ironically, I don't believe that Green candidate Tricomo would have run had Wellstone voted against DOMA)...I also know that prominent Hollywood Green backer Susan Sarandon counts far-right banana magnate, worker butcher, and perennial Ecuadoran presidential runner-up Alvaro Noboa among her best friends...Personally, I think that befriending Noboa is worthy of the guillotine, but maybe I'm just a jerk.

[RedDawn]

WTF? How is Nader anti-immigrant?

http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Ralph_Nader_Immigration.htm