Ralph Nader Might Announce Run For President

SonicSpike writes "According to the AP, Ralph Nader could be poised for another presidential campaign. Nader will appear on NBC's 'Meet the Press' tomorrow to announce whether he will launch another White House bid. Nader kicked off his 2004 presidential run on the show. Kevin Zeese, who was Nader's spokesman during the 2004 presidential race said, 'Obviously, I don't think Meet the Press host Tim Russert would have him on for no reason.'"

I voted for Ron Paul - don't blame me!

[SonicSpike]

Yup - don't blame me, I voted for Ron Paul. :-)

Re:Should we just call it now?

[jjohnson]

To me there should only be one party, American Citizens

All this would accomplish is to make the U.S. like the Soviet Union with its one-party system. The end result is informal parties called factions. You'd just be moving the factional politics inside the party itself. What the U.S. needs is a parliamentary system with the possibility of coalition governments so that candidates aren't forced into one of two molds.

Nader should be on Slashdot

[Tiger4]

He has an Iconoclastic view of the world,
He pulls obscure facts out of nowhere to make trivial debating points,
He thinks ThePowerStructure is out to ruin everything,
He knows how everyone else should run their lives,
And he's a total Karma Whore.

Ralph Nader is getting nominated by the Greens

[Kligat]

whether he likes it or not. He won in California, the state with the most delegates, by 60%. They have over 100 while all other states have 4 to 16. In states where he can't be on the ballot in the Green primaries, they have someone from the Draft Nader committee, who will presumably tell his delegates to all vote for Nader. What happens if he wins, but doesn't run? He essentially gets to single-handedly pick the Green nominee. In second place is Cynthia McKinney, a former Democrat member of the House of Representative and the Green running with the most political experience, but nearly all media attention she's received is for striking a security guard with her first after being caught running through the halls without the badge identifying her as a Congresswoman, and also saying "Al Gore's Negro tolerance level isn't very high. He only has one Negro around him at maximum at all times." As someone earlier mentioned, the Green Party weirdly doesn't seem fond of Al Gore. In third place is Kat Swift, whose main political experience is being co-chair of the Texas Green Party and coming in 2nd place for city council. Get this---while running for president, she's also running for city council! Just because it's a third party, doesn't mean it's better than the two in power. The Green Party seems to be the only third party tracking how many delegates each candidate has, but I saw while researching third parties that in Minnesota, all Constitution Party candidates available in their caucuses were Republicans or Democrats, minus one guy I'd never heard of with 2.5% of the vote, and Ron Paul won with over 80%, despite saying he would not run on a third party ticket. The Constitution Party, from their website, looks like the Republican Party without support for the Iraq War or warrantless wiretapping or anti-drug laws, but they mention Jesus in the preamble of their platform. It's pitiful that 2 out of 3 of the third parties the media ever talks about seem to be in favor of people that are not running. Also, I'm new here, so be nice.

Re:Should we just call it now?

[mr_matticus]

We've already got that. We don't have a two-party system. We've got a 100-party system. California Democrats and Wyoming Democrats couldn't even ideologically be considered part of the same party, to say nothing of New York Republicans and Alabama Republicans. The factional politics ARE inside the party itself. There is no "national" party since we don't elect national candidates, with the exception of presidents and vice presidents. The national leadership is the faction within the party that can wield the hammer best at a given time. Parties for Congress are run at the state level. Once they all get to Washington, they figure something out as a pool of a couple hundred individuals.

Are you saying that Ronald Reagan is a Republican in the mold crafted by the current leadership? Is Ron Paul? Hell, is John McCain? Is Eisenhower?

Is Harry Reid the same kind of Democrat as Nancy Pelosi? As FDR? As Wilson?

Each party has a fully realized set of factions, but only one gets to lead at any given time. There's no problem with the "number of parties" in the United States. There's a strong party line dictated by the leadership, and whips keep Reps and Senators on short leashes. All that needs to happen is for the caucuses within the parties to start banding together and voting on the issues, but there's always going to be someone in charge, and that means they've got the loudest voice. The basic problem is that the voters are too lazy to elect people based on their values and ideals. Getting rid of the neocons and Jesus people would be easy if the people wanted it.

Who is Ralph Nader?

[orangepeel]

Before he ran for president the first time, all I really knew about Ralph Nader was that he appeared on Sesame Street once long ago.

During his run for president (both in 2000 and 2004), I learned a little more about him here on Slashdot. 90% of what I read here was negative.

I was deceived -- the reality was that 90% of the comments I read here on Slashdot were just gross oversimplifications and instances of senseless finger-pointing.

What changed my point of view? Just one thing: an Independent Lens documentary, "An Unreasonable Man" [pbs.org].

After watching that documentary, I still don't know if Ralph Nader would have made (or would make) a good president. Instead, what I do know is that I'm sorry I took most of the Slashdot comments back in 2000 and 2004 as a good source of information. Ralph Nader has been unfairly dragged through the mud by many, and by some has been blamed for everything they care to believe went wrong with American leadership over the last 8 years. From some of the comments I'm reading here, it seems there's still a lot of unfair hostility aimed at him.

If you have the opportunity to watch that documentary, do so. It might create a more complete picture of the man for you, as it did for me.

Re:Should we just call it now?

[mr_matticus]

The problem is that the U.S. system winnows it down to one person representing all those factions.

Every system winnows it down to one person.

The virtue of a parliamentary system is that factions retain their relative power after the election, and a continual process of compromising with them is required.

Well, for starters, you're conflating parliamentary and proportional systems, and even allowing that for the moment, a "continual process of compromise" isn't necessary in majority governments, and coalition governments of more than two parties rarely last more than six months, if that.

The US system requires compromise, too. Reps are technically free to vote as they like. There are frequent bipartisan votes, and winning any major issue often requires at least a few members of the other party, particularly if the president is opposed. If enough of the party base disagrees with the leadership, not much will get done in the US system. The reality of course is that you satisfy your caucuses by compromise in general, whether it's within your party or across to your coalition partner.

The visible result of this dilemma is that Christian Coalition now gets zero representation in their president.

They had their chance, and they lost. They were represented by their participation. We could certainly go STV for primaries, but the virtue of SMDP is that it's simple, decisive, and effective. At some point, the voters of unpopular candidates are going to wind up voting for someone else. The number of satisfied voters works out to be the same, though a different system would sometimes elect a different candidate.

As the Republicans have demonstrated repeatedly since Reagan with respect to the Christian Coalition, that threat carries very little weight.

Because it's an empty threat. If the people had actually ever summoned the strength to spend the five minutes carrying it out, it would be taken more seriously.

then those factions would be overrepresented.

The winners are overrepresented in every system. Take a government coalition of 55% in a parliamentary and proportional system: that 55% runs the show. The other 45% have zero input. In our system, the minority can still make plays and win sometimes.

Re:The man who put Bush in the White House

[ryanov]

Really? Let's take a step back for a moment -- why was this the closest Presidential election in American history? Gore's shit campaign? Republican meddling? Ralph Nader's margin NEVER should have mattered in an election where a man with a fairly distinguished record was running against an apish former cokehead. You can't blame that on Nader.

Re:if nader runs

[notamisfit]

If you're hoping for a fiscal small-government conservative, you're shit out of luck with McCain. Really, he's the worst of all worlds, simultaneously selling the country down the river to the religious wackos, the welfare statists, and the greens. No one else on the Republican side, not even Ron Paul, is a hell of a lot better. Really, my plan for this election is to vote Democrat and hope for gridlock. I despise their ideas, but at least they come from policy makers rather than invisible men in the sky.

Bills Nader would support never leave the table

[sethawoolley]

The range of bills the Republicans and Democrats will vote on is a mere fraction of bills third parties would offer for a vote.

The Democrats and Republican work in the committees that get bills onto the floor. So we only see their minor differences.

It really only looks like they are widely disagreeing, but it's all a show. They all support uncontrolled capitalism, the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and corporate control.

Do you not see the fallacy you're making? It's pure selection bias.

Gore is for carbon credits

[sethawoolley]

Which essentially means he wants to create a trading scheme on top of carbon, and the only way they can have value is that somebody would trade their right to call a generation mechanism carbon-free, so that carbon-consumption is something they are ok with -- they are ok selling it out.

So, you see, Gore isn't an environmentalist. He's a capitalist that wants to make money off of guilt -- guilt is the only way in which carbon credits have any meaning without real limits on carbon output (which don't exist). Moreover, carbon credits are fundamentally unfair. The rich get to buy their way out of carbon guilt!

Gore's a politician -- a salesman. He's sold the public, with his movie, carbon credits. After all of his speeches, he tells people they can all be carbon neutral if they just buy his promoted carbon credits!

I'm sorry, but the Greens were right to criticize him. He's just at the same old political lying.

Re:He is

[HappyEngineer]

But 99% of of you prefer to stick with the status quo.

No, 99% of us don't know how to get rid of the status quo. The system is strongly stacked against 3rd parties. There are 2 ways to make a 3rd party win. One is to put an immensely popular person in a third party. But, that's not going to happen because such a popular person would probably be able to be the candidate for one of the 2 main parties.

The other way is to get constitutional reforms passed which change how elections work. Good luck getting that to happen. That would require the help of at least one of the two existing parties and I don't see that happening.

So, the only purpose of a 3rd party is to draw votes from another party. Deciding to run in a 3rd party does not mean you're presenting a 3rd choice. It means that you're attempting to draw votes from the major party that agrees with you the most.

I don't like it. I very much wish we could alter the system to allow people to vote with some sort of multi-vote system as in I like person #1 but if they don't win then I prefer person #2. There are a variety of other voting schemes, any one of which would probably be better.

But, there is only one possible outcome of another Nader run. That is to draw votes away from Obama. If Nader runs and McCain wins then Nader bears the blame just like he bears the blame for getting Bush elected.

The only real possibility that I see for change is to push to get the primaries opened up more. That is where we have real choice. The primaries are corrupt in many ways. There are plenty of very undemocratic issues in the primaries for both major parties. That needs to change and it's the only way that change can occur.

Before you take the scapegoating too far...

[greenguy]

... let me point out several things you appear to have overlooked.

1. Gore won. There is no question that Gore won the popular vote. It was our outdated (and I question whether it was ever in date) Electoral College for the highly improbably but all-too-real situation where the candidate who came in second might actually win.

2. Gore won. The Supreme Court cut off recounts at a very convenient time for the son of the man who put several of them there. So much for the balance of powers.

3. Voter disefranchisement. African Americans were presented with many obstacles to voting, as has been well-documented in Florida in 2000, and in Ohio in 2004. As much as I'd personally like to think they were there to vote for Nader, the fact is, they overwhelmingly supported Gore (Kerry). And I'll just mention the difficulties people had with the ballots in passing. All these are, of course, merely emblematic of systemic problems in all 50 states, plus our assorted territories.

4. Gore lost Florida fair and square.
4a. There were a string of other third parties on the ballot, mostly on the left, who presumably "took votes from Gore." Can you name them? Did you know they added up to more than 534 votes?
4b. Vastly more registered Democrats voted for Bush than total people voted for Nader. Reread that sentence as many times as it takes.
4c. There is no -- I want to make this very clear -- no reason to presume had Nader not been on the ballot in 2000, his would-be voters would hae automatically gone to Gore. That's sheer arrogance. A handful would have, yes, but a lot would have gone to other leftist parties, a number would have gone Libertarian, and an awful lot would have abstained. Notice: please do not respond merely to the word "handful" outside the larger context of this message. Thank you.

5. Gore lost Tennessee and Arkansas. His own home state. Clinton's home state. 'Nuff said.

Re:How many times?

[sumdumass]

Why must hate come into it? I mean hate is the reason the world is as bad as it is in the first place. One person's self-righteousness in the application of hate doesn't ad legitimacy to it. I'm sure the 9/11 hijackers thought their hate was legitimate too.

Find another way to vent your anger and frustration before it becomes hate. Otherwise, you are the reason the world "hates" us. Because hate breads hate. It is a cluster fuckfest that doesn't deserve the light of day. Do you know why Iraq invaded Kuwait which has in many ways shaped our most recent history including causing 9/11? It is because a Kuwaiti ambassador told Iraq that he thought of Iraqi women as 10 dollar whores. Saddam said during his interrogations that this made him hate Kuwait so much that he had to find a way to invade them and make them pay. The entire slant drilling which was the "offense" or justification at the time was only a cover for Saddam's hate. Many bad things in recent history can be traced back to that. Both Iraq wars, the positioning of our troops in the middle east which was a chief complaint of Bin Ladin who hated us because of that which spured 9/11 and a few other act around the world. The war in Afghanistan, our perception in the world and many more things that you would see as bad. All because of hate.

Walk away, search deep inside yourself and find a way to overcome your hate. You don't have to like them, you don't have to love them, you don't even have to care for them, just don't hate them.