Nader's Raid
By Andrew Buncombe
23 August 2004
The Independent
Ralph Nader holds a unique position in
American politics. Hated by Democrats, adored by his hardcore supporters
and now championed by trouble-making Republicans, the 70-year-old consumer
rights candidate represents many different things to different people.
The situation of
the independent presidential candidate is also odd, because many progressives
and those on the left who strongly agree with his politics - indeed,
many of those who have long supported him - are adamantly and angrily
opposed to him running. In some cases that ire - evidenced by a string
of special websites as well as an orchestrated campaign against him
by the Democrats - boils over into fury.
Nader does not seem
to care. It may simply be a thick skin, or a huge ego, as his detractors
claim, that protects him, but he says he has no regrets. "[If George
Bush were re-elected] the blame would go to the Democrats," he
says. "If Bush wins, the blame would go to the number two party,
that lost. That is where the responsibility lies; they started with
40 per cent of the vote."
Such comments infuriate
Democrats who blame Mr Nader for Al Gore's defeat in 2000 and say his
presence in this year's contest threatens to condemn the US to a second,
and potentially more radical, Bush term. This has led to all manner
of people, among them the Democratic Party's chairman, Terry McAuliffe,
pleading with Mr Nader not to run. A few weeks ago on national television,
the film maker Michael Moore - who supported Mr Nader in 2000 - and
the comedian Bill Maher got down on bended knee in front of the candidate
and pleaded with him to drop out.
Their argument is
straightforward: in 2000, though Nader won only 2.7 per cent of the
vote, in key states such as Florida and New Hampshire, his presence
on the ballot and the votes he took from the Democrats proved fatal
to Mr Gore. In Florida, his critics argue, if just 1 per cent of Nader's
97,488 supporters had voted for Gore, he would have been president.
In New Hampshire Nader took 22,198 votes, and Bush won the state by
only 7,211 votes.
This time the election
is shaping up to be as close. Mr Nader's opponents say that no matter
how unsatisfactory a candidate one might consider John Kerry to be,
he is still many times preferable to Bush; and that Mr Nader should
find himself being supported in some states by Republicans working to
get him on the ballot to split the anti-Bush vote should be a warning
sign. He is, say his critics, nothing more than a spoiler, driven by
ego and self-indulgence. Mr Nader dismisses such talk. First, he says
the Democrats can blame only themselves for allowing Mr Bush to steal
an election he did not win. Second, he says, exit polls showed that
up to 25 per cent of those who voted for him in 2000 would have otherwise
voted for Bush, up to 41 per cent for Gore but that the rest would not
have bothered to vote at all.
He adds: "The
other thing is that 10 times more Democrats voted for Bush than voted
for Nader." Democrats never want to discuss the matter he says.
"Once you accept the anybody-but-Bush position the brain really
does close. They don't want to hear anything."
But however he may
wish to frame it, Mr Nader's argument boils down to a choice between
incremental change in November or more radical change over a longer
period. For Mr Nader there is little practical difference between the
Democrats and the Republicans, and the real challenge is to try to establish
a third party in US politics,something, he says, the Democrats bitterly
oppose.
"The corporations
have won this election. They have been winning these elections for years
... If there is a difference [between the parties] it is rhetoric. Why
is Kerry identical to Bush on Iraq? I evaluate the Democrats on defence
as well as offence ... Why did they not stop Bush? They [say] they were
against the tax cuts for the wealthy but they did not stop it even when
they controlled the Senate."
He says that at
a congressional level, for many Americans it is not even a choice between
two parties. In a majority of seats, districts are either totally Democrat
or totally Republican, an arrangement party leaders have agreed to.
"The gift that they have given us is one-party choice," Mr
Nader says. "There is no real choice ... It isn't even choice,
it's selection ... These are strange times we live in."
Many of Mr Nader's
outspoken critics say that while they support his views and may have
supported him in 2000, President Bush has shown himself to be so dangerously
right wing that those on the left cannot risk giving him a second term.
The circumstances of this election are unique, they say, and it is not
the time for experiments in breaking the two-party system.
Mr Nader's tactic,
they say, should have been to run in the Democratic primaries or else
to now throw the weight of the radical left behind the Kerry campaign
and work for a more progressive party after the election.
Theodore Lowi, a
professor of government at Cornell University, said: "[The election
in 2000 came] before the true identity of George Bush had been revealed.
Nader knows as well as the rest of us that, despite Kerry's lacklustre
leadership, there is now a radical difference between the two major
parties. Moreover, Nader is running as a bullet candidate without any
party affiliation; he is a mere spoiler with no future."
Again Mr Nader is
again quick to dismiss such claims. He is fond of quoting the 19th-century
Indiana socialist Eugene Debs, "I'd rather vote for something I
want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it".
He concedes that if someone is adamantly of the anyone-but-Bush mindset
they should not vote for him but Kerry, "if your expectations levels
are so low".
Mr Nader says he
is trying to transform the political landscape rather than tweak it.
Again turning his focus to the corporations, multinationals and lobbyists,
he says: "They have shut us out from everything. You cannot get
anything done. For-sale signs are up everywhere."
He has long been
pushing against closed doors. Born in Winsted, Connecticut, to Lebanese
immigrants who ran a bakery, Mr Nader studied at Harvard and edited
the Harvard Law Review before graduating and setting up a small practice.
Mr Nader soon started
speaking out against the abuse of corporate power, making headlines
with his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, in which he condemned the car
industry for producing unsafe vehicles. Nader's status soared when executives
of General Motors hired private detectives to harass him and were then
forced to apologise publicly before a nationally televised Senate committee
hearing.
Backed by a group
of young activist lawyers known as Nader's Raiders, he went on to produce
exposés of industrial hazards, pollution, unsafe products, and
governmental neglect of consumer safety laws. He is credited with a
key role in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Freedom of Information
Act and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
In this latest fight,
Mr Nader knows he has no chance of winning more than a few per cent
of voters. He remains in the election campaign, he says, to draw attention
to issues that are not being discussed, and to try to force the Democrats
to move to the left to attract those people considering voting for him.
He says he is amazed
that the Democrats do not campaign on more populist issues; why they
do not try to appeal to the millions of Americans outside the political
system who do not bother vote. "Ask yourself why Kerry does not
bring up these issues," Mr Nader says. "Forty-seven million
Americans make under $10 an hour. Millions work for five-and-half, six
dollars. You cannot live on that."
The Democrats, he
says, have lost sight of what they were supposed to be fighting for.
"It's all about money, who has raised the most. It becomes the
end itself. When you ask the members of the House and Senate why they
lost [seats] in the 2002 election they say they did not have enough
money."
THE CV
Born 1934
Education Gilbert
School; Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs at Princeton
University; Harvard Law School
1959 US Army
1959 Lawyer, Connecticut
1961-63 Lecturer,
University of Hartford.
1967-68: Lecturer,
Princeton University
1969-1990: Founded
centres for research and published books on consumer protection
1996 & 2000
Green Party presidential candidate
2004 Independent
presidential candidate