D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April
2008
2008 Editors Note
Page: 2Unsafe at Any Speed
Perennial candidate Ralph Nader reaches a nadir.
If somebody shoves a clipboard in your face and asks you to sign a petition putting Ralph Nader on the ballot in New Mexico, just say no. Nader's recent descent into complete egomania, opting to run for president yet again, can only serve to muddle one of the most important elections in a generation. The fact that Nader has chosen to inject himself into the race despite the candidacies of two of the US Senate's most lobbyist-bashing, reform-minded members — Barack Obama and John McCain — gives the lie to his purported reasons for running, not only in 2008 but in 2004 and 2000. The awful truth is that this twisted little zealot, a caricature of the consumer advocate who once truly deserved headlines, can't stand to relinquish the spotlight.
If that sounds harsh, if you believe Nader is still guided by principle rather than an ego that's run off the rails, read Ron Klain's "Campaign Stops" column in the New York Times. Klain devastatingly reminds us of Nader's willfully insidious effect on the 2000 presidential election.
Nader knew full well that he might throw the 2000 race to George W. Bush, Klain reports — which is why Nader "initially promised supporters that he would not campaign in swing states or take other steps that might make him the 'spoiler' in the race." That's a promise Nader broke in the closing weeks of the campaign, with predictable results.
Not only did Nader know he might get Bush elected, Klain continues, he apparently actually preferred that outcome. Noting that "the Sierra Club doubled its membership under James Watt," Nader told the Times on Nov. 1, 2000, that "a bumbling Texas governor would galvanize the environmental community as never before." We wonder if Nader's fellow progressives now think that eight years of George Bush's environmental policies — or 4,000 Americans dead in Iraq — were a price worth paying for this "galvanizing."
By now, anyone who believed in 2000 that there wasn't much difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush has been proven wrong to an extent perhaps unprecedented in history. Bush gave us the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, among other legacies. Gore has since won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to combat global warming.
In hindsight, as Klain recalls, Ralph Nader's slanders against Gore look even more unforgivable. Nader called Gore "a coward," "an environmental poseur" and a "broker of environmental voters on corporate terms"; he said environmentalists backing Gore had a "servile mentality." Nader has never apologized — to Gore or to the American people.
Moreover, in light of Nader's glee at the prospect of throwing the 2000 election to Bush, his subsequent protestations that he isn't to blame for Bush's narrow victory ring hollow. He's also simply wrong mathematically: Nader's votes not just in Florida but also in New Hampshire were larger than Bush's margin of victory over Gore — 97,488 Nader votes in Florida versus Bush's contested 537-vote margin, 22,198 Nader votes in New Hampshire compared to a 7,211-vote Bush edge in New Hamphire. (Yes, switch tiny New Hampshire's four electoral votes and Gore would have won even without Florida.) Exit polls in 2000 showed that, had Nader not been on the ballot, his votes would have overwhelmingly gone to Gore instead.
Countless factors contributed to Bush reaching the White House in 2000 — culminating in "hanging chads" and a dubious Supreme Court decision — but it is irrefutable that without Nader on the ballot, Gore would have been elected president.
And New Mexico barely escaped the status of Florida and New Hampshire in 2000, remember. Gore's margin of victory here was a razor-thin 366 votes — while 21,251 New Mexicans voted for Ralph Nader.
In 2004, another nail-biter election, Bush carried New Mexico by 5,988 votes — barely more than Nader's shrunken total of 4,053.
Be careful, in short, when you decide to cast a "protest vote."
But shouldn't New Mexicans have that option? Don't independent candidates and third parties deserve a chance?
Go ahead, if you must, and help the Purple Party or the New Communist Prohibition People's Workers Alliance get a position on the ballot. But not Ralph Nader. He has proven himself unworthy of your signature on a petition.
Supporters of Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, who sign a petition for Nader are being pernicious, playing tricks with the machinery of democracy. And progressives who would give Nader yet another chance suffer from memories that are unpardonably short.