Ralph Nader: go away, you silly man...

After months of being coy about whether he'll run for president this year, that foolish old cod, Ralph Nader, coming down off his high from his Redemption Tour 2007, announced his 2008 presidential candidacy Sunday on Meet The Press. 

Nader, who's been ransacking America for parades to shit on, turns 74 this week; and the McCain camp is grateful for the cover. McCain advisor Charlie Black says, "This definitely takes the cootishness issue off the table!"

Mike Huckabee is delighted -- Nader makes even him look viable.

The cynical refusenik in 2000 traded his friends, his liberal icon status, and his political effectiveness for the role of pariah, and irrelevant ideologue after refusing to release his voters to Al Gore in the final weeks of his 2000 spoiler presidential campaign.

In case you haven't heard, George W. Bush won that race.

And in part it was because Nader took just enough of Gore's votes: 97,500 in Florida and 10,000 in New Hampshire.

It's sad to see this once-noble pitbull and progressive hero turn himself into the Harold Stassen of the era. He proved to be irrelevant in 2004, so we don't expect him to do much damage, though it's not for wont of his trying.

Comments

[lukobe]

This is why you should all support IRV: http://irvwa.org/ .....

Anyway, it never should have been that close...

[dave]

It should never have been that close but it was and the votes he took made a difference in the election. Moreover, he still claims then and now that there is no real difference in the two major parties. Most of us who have lived thru the last 8 years would differ. Yes Gore should have run a much better campaign, as should Hillary today, however its hard to imagine us in worse shape had Gore won. Not in the deficit, the Supreme court, the conservative judgeships, medical research or energy policy, and on and on. Naders time has come and gone and now he can only be known as a spoiler.

[lukobe]

I hope you'll support instant runoff voting, then...

[barf]

I'd rather drink a beer.

[Ryan]

Don't be a hater!

Nader got Cantwell elected in 2000 via the unlikely voters he brought to the polls.

Obama is running on Nader's 2000 platform and will be elected the 44th president. It only took 8 years and a Democrat to pull it off.

[Upton]

Nader has the blood of 4000 Americans and countless Iraqi citizens on his hands. For if he hadn't of run in 2000, Gore would have been elected and there would have been no Iraq. How do you sleep at night Ralph?

[Fremont]

Nader was mighty impressive on Press the Meat (watch here and here).
He is an icon of consumer justice in America and he advocates single-payer health care (YES!). It's a damned shame that his legacy has been spoil(er)ed!

[Fremont]

Oops! Trying to reach Nader again...
here and here.

[Fremont]

Okay, the second link works...but Bla'M's point has obviously been made... Nader (and I) should give up!

[gk91]

Sure would be nice if mainstream liberals and Dems displayed half the outrage they focus on Nader on the Dems who've voted with Bush on the Iraq war, approving torture, wiretapping, approving Bush's judges, AGs, not impeaching or investigating the numerous crimes of the Bush administration--all that's Nader's fault too no doubt.
The only people who 'took votes' were the Supreme Court when they stopped the counting in Florida.

[abob]

Gore has the blood of 4000 Americans and countless Iraqi citizens on his hands. For if Gore had demanded a recount of the entire state of Florida in 2000, Gore would have been elected and there would have been no Iraq. How do you sleep at night Al?

[Gay Gary]

No one - except Gay Gary - has realized the truth of Nader's candidacy yet. He's either (1) running to force Clibama to pick John Edwards for their eventual Democratic ticket (he did endorse JE not that long ago, a fact David seemed to miss this morning when he hysterically shrieked that Nader should just endorse someone), or more likely, (2) he has embraced the basis of Green ideology instead of Green policy ... the structural foundation of Green ideology is closer to the anti-capitalist super-far-right of European radical traditionalism and the perennial philosophy as cataloged by Evola and Guenon and the post-left anarchism of influential Eugene curiosity Wolfi Landstreicher than it is to US-style liberal/progressive politics. This would well explain Nader's vocal disdain for gay rights and obsession with the end of the "juristic person" in corporate law. I also note that the only place that anti-capitalist rightism survived after Rome's 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing was in Lebanon in the shape of the National Falange (until the recent return to prominence of Britain's National Front, the Iron Guard in Romania, Forza Italia, etc., of course). Would we be surprised to learn that Nader's Maronite-Catholic relatives still in Lebanon were, or are, members of The Kataeb?

Local connection ... has anyone else happened to notice a certain ex Seattle School Board member is Nader's national campaign manager!?

[joanie]

European radical traditionalism

Isn't that called "monarchy?"

C'mon, Gigi, everybody's against "juristic person" even the judge who originally heard the case way back when and wrote an opinion against it. It was the clerk who put it into law and so it remains to this day.

A pitiful mistake.

Only in America do pitiful mistakes stand. Just look at Shrub and Darth Vader.

And now, it seems, Ralph Nader.

[joanie]

You're a twisted man, a-boob. Or, are you a man? Might you be, after all, of the Isle of Lesbos?

[abob]

joanie: With all due respect, my sexual preference for surf or turf has no bearing on my political views. You looking kinda cute lately; you lost weight?