Ralph Nader, wary of Trump, offers to help Joe Biden win

[mahatmakanejeeves]

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Ralph Nader, wary of Trump, offers to help Joe Biden win

The political firebrand, long estranged from Democrats, fears fascism will be on the ballot in 2024 and it must be defeated

By Michael Scherer
September 26, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT



Ralph Nader at the National Zoo in Washington in May 2017. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)

The liberal activist Ralph Nader still remembers nearly the exact words Joe Biden used to banish him from the U.S. Senate 23 years ago, after Nader’s Green Party presidential bid in 2000 won 97,000 votes in Florida. ... “Ralph Nader is not going to be welcome anywhere near the corridors,” then-senator Biden had declared, blaming the consumer advocate for Democrat Al Gore’s defeat to Republican George W. Bush.

So began Nader’s long exile from Democratic Capitol Hill hideaways, where Nader had once been feted as a conquering policy genius. Nader, a spry 89-year-old who works remotely because of covid concerns, still resents the slight. But if you ask him these days about Biden’s reelection fight in 2024, he does not respond with his old gibes about Republicans and Democrats being nothing more than “Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

“We are stuck with Biden now,” Nader says in his cantankerous way. “In a two-party duopoly, if one should be defeated ferociously, the logic is that the other one prevails.” ... Former president Donald Trump is, of course, the one deserving ferocious defeat in that calculation, and for the moment Nader wants everyone to know that this has become his overriding political mission.

“I know the difference between fascism and autocracy, and I’ll take autocracy any time,” Nader said in a recent telephone interview. “Fascism is what the GOP is the architecture of, and autocracy is what the Democrats are practitioners of. But autocracy leaves an opening. They don’t suppress votes. They don’t suppress free speech.”

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Nader reaches out to consumer advocates around the United States in October 2000 hoping to win their support in the presidential election. (Joyce Naltchayan/AFP/Getty Images)

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By Michael Scherer
Michael Scherer is a national political reporter at The Washington Post. He was previously the Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, where he also served as the White House correspondent. Before joining Time, he was the Washington correspondent for Salon.com. Twitter https://twitter.com/michaelscherer

[quaint]

1. Mom said if I can't say anything nice...

[JohnSJ]

2. Go away Ralph. You opened the door to Fascism here

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Nader was Rove's puppet

I will never forgive Nader. Rove funded Nader in 2000 and 2004 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065.html

Furthermore, Karl Rove and the Republican Party knew this, and so they nurtured and crucially assisted Nader’s campaigns, both in 2000 and in 2004. On 27 October 2000, the AP’s Laura Meckler headlined “GOP Group To Air Pro-Nader TV Ads.” She opened: “Hoping to boost Ralph Nader in states where he is threatening to hurt Al Gore, a Republican group is launching TV ads featuring Nader attacking the vice president [Mr. Gore]. ... ‘Al Gore is suffering from election year delusion if he thinks his record on the environment is anything to be proud of,’ Nader says [in the commercial]. An announcer interjects: ‘What’s Al Gore’s real record?’ Nader says: ‘Eight years of principles betrayed and promises broken.’” Meckler’s report continued: “A spokeswoman for the Green Party nominee said that his campaign had no control over what other organizations do with Nader’s speeches.” Bush’s people - the group sponsoring this particular ad happened to be the Republican Leadership Council - knew exactly what they were doing, even though the liberal suckers who voted so carelessly for Ralph Nader obviously did not. Anyone who drives a car the way those liberal fools voted, faces charges of criminal negligence, at the very least. But this time, the entire nation crashed as a result; not merely a single car.....

On July 9th, the San Francisco Chronicle headlined “GOP Doners Funding Nader: Bush Supporters Give Independent’s Bid a Financial Lift,” and reported that the Nader campaign “has received a recent windfall of contributions from deep-pocketed Republicans with a history of big contributions to the party,” according to “an analysis of federal records.” Perhaps these contributors were Ambassador Egan’s other friends. Mr. Egan’s wife was now listed among the Nader contributors. Another listed was “Nijad Fares, a Houston businessman, who donated $200,000 to the Bush inaugural committee and who donated $2,000 each to the Nader effort and the Bush campaign this year.” Furthermore, Ari Berman reported 7 October 2004 at the Nation, under “Swift Boat Veterans for Nader,” that some major right-wing funders of a Republican smear campaign against Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam service contributed also $13,500 to the Nader campaign, and that “the Republican Party of Michigan gathered ninety percent of Nader’s signatures in their state” (90%!) to place Nader on the ballot so Bush could win that swing state’s 17 electoral votes. Clearly, the word had gone out to Bush’s big contributors: Help Ralphie boy! In fact, on 15 September 2005, John DiStaso of the Manchester Union-Leader, reported that, “A year ago, as the Presidential general election campaign raged in battleground state New Hampshire, consumer advocate Ralph Nader found his way onto the ballot, with the help of veteran Republican strategist David Carney and the Carney-owned Norway Hill Associates consulting firm.”

It was obvious, based upon the 2000 election results, that a dollar contributed to Nader in the 2004 contest would probably be a more effective way to achieve a Bush win against Kerry in the U.S. Presidential election than were perhaps even ten dollars contributed to Bush. This was a way of peeling crucial votes off from Bush’s real opponent - votes that otherwise would have gone to the Democrat. That’s why the smartest Republican money in the 2004 Presidential election was actually going to Nader, even more so than to Bush himself: these indirect Bush contributions provided by far the biggest bang for the right-wing buck.

[Phoenix61]

10. My Dad hated Nader for giving Bush the WH. nt

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. I was headed to Florida to help on the recount when the SCOTUS ruled in Bush v. Gore

I did go to Florida in 2004 for the Kerry Edwards voter protection team. Nader is an asshole and I do not care what he has to say on any issue

[dalton99a]

16. +1

[niyad]

4. go away, ralph. you have done enough damage.

[Rebl2]

15. Yep!

I second that. Go away Nader.

[Bleacher Creature]

5. Way too little and even more way too late.

I'm thankful that his influence these days is practically nonexistent and that we don't have to pretend to humor him any longer.

[marble falls]

6. Gee. He helped bring them in, and now he wants to show them the door. Better he sit this one out ...

... and vote Blue in November 2024.

Maybe he should consider a book on the fire potential of Tesla autos,

[Aristus]

7. Oh, so both parties AREN'T the same?

Sorry, Ralph. You stayed too long at the fair. And you are one of the reasons we’re even having to deal with this shit. You helped get Bush/Cheney in the White House door, where they lit the fire under their paralyzingly corrosive brand of ultra right-wing politics that gave us the Iraq War, and a demented public ravenous for the kind of cruelty dinner theater Trump exemplifies.

Your day is done.

Go to Hell.

[awesomerwb1]

8. Blah blah blah

Me me me me.

[Atreus]

9. Oh, FFS!

Piss right the F off, Ralph!

[TygrBright]

11. Thanks Ralph! You can STFU and STHD (sit the hell down). That'll help a LOT! n/t

[LetMyPeopleVote]

12. Nader is still an asshole who refuses to admit he elected Bush or that Stein elected TFG

Nader is still an asshole. I noted that Nader does not admit that he was wrong in helping to elect Bush or Stein in helping to elect TFG
Here is the article cited in OP
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/26/ralph-nader-joe-biden-election/

True to form, Nader refused to accept his punishment. He remains offended by the accusation that he cost Democrats the 2000 election in Florida. He similarly scoffs at the claims that Green Party candidate Jill Stein hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“They have no idea of all the other sine qua non variables,” he says, using Latin to refer to other Democratic failures that factor in their two defeats.

And he still brims with the sort of advice most Democrats consider heresy, when spoken publicly. For instance, he says Democrats need a better plan in case something happens over the next year to prevent Biden from standing for reelection. He considers Vice President Harris “just not capable” and all but certain to lose in a general.

“Things happen rapidly in the 80?s unfortunately to human beings, so they need to have a Plan B in case something happens,” he said of Biden, who is nearly nine years his junior.

I really do not care what Nader has to say on any issue

[twodogsbarking]

14. He is only happy when he is miserable. It brings him joy.