Ralph Nader

Wow - this is a strong piece. I admit it - I voted for Nader in 2000. As a New Yorker, I did feel that I'd rather lend my vote to build a third party, and I still stand behind my choice. But I question Nader's motivation in 2000 after reading this piece, and I clearly and most definitely question his motivation for running this year. I feel like he's the new Don Quixote, but this article makes me wonder if it's much more insidious than that.

Granted, like any self-respecting progressive, I think that the two-party system in the United States is a somewhat vestigial remnant from a time when there was some substantive difference between the parties, i.e. the pockets of their suits weren't all identically lined with the spoils of big oil, big tobacco, big defense, or whomever else could pony up. But still, running on ego, and taking advantage of the pervasive distrust, cynicism, and anger for a personal vendetta is not the best way to write the final chapters of your legacy. Nader was a revolutionary. Now he's just a punk.


Ralph Nader, Suicide Bomber
by Harry G. Levine
Village Voice
May 3rd, 2004 1:20 PM

On Friday, October 13, 2000, at Madison Square Garden, the largest of Ralph Nader's "super rallies" kicked his campaign into high gear. It was a great event in many ways. Fifteen thousand ticket buyers cheered songs, jokes, skits, and pep talks delivering timeless radical truths about wealth and power in America. Nader's speech was actually the low point, circulating randomly through riffs about corporate power, health insurance, the environment, and what Ralph Nader had accomplished.

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Later I was introduced to Nader's closest adviser, his handsome, piercingly intelligent 30-year-old nephew, Tarek Milleron. Although Milleron argued that environmentalists and other activists would find fundraising easier under Bush, he acknowledged that a Bush presidency would be worse for poor and working-class people, for blacks, for most Americans. As Moore had, he claimed that Nader's campaign would encourage Web-based vote-swapping between progressives in safe and contested states. But when I suggested that Nader could gain substantial influence in a Democratic administration by focusing his campaign on the 40 safe states and encouraging his supporters elsewhere to vote Gore, Milleron leaned coolly toward me with extra steel in his voice and body. He did not disagree. He simply said, "We're not going to do that."

"Why not?" I said.

With just a flicker of smile, he answered, "Because we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them."

There was a long silence and the conversation was over.

Milleron's words are so remarkable they bear repeating: Ralph Nader ran so he could hurt, wound, and punish the Democrats. His primary goal was not raising issues, much less building the Green Party. He actively wanted Gore to lose. Where did this passion to punish come from?

Full Article.