Ralph Nader Thinks People Aren't Paying Attention to His Progressive Agenda

[brooklynite]

Politico

For over 50 years, Ralph Nader has served as the self-appointed conscience of the American left, the safety inspector of a Democratic Party that, in his judgment, is too corrupted by corporate influence and partisan hackery to pay attention to the problems that really matter. His invectives against mainstream Democrats — combined with lingering resentment over his ill-fated presidential campaign in 2000 — have relegated him to the margins of Capitol Hill, a sidelines position that he relishes as inverse proof of the righteousness of his crusade.

But these days, Nader’s marginality is proving to be more of a source of frustration than of pride. Even the most progressive members of the Democratic coalition won’t take his phone calls.

AOC?

“I stopped by twice in her office, sent her emails and telephone calls — she never calls back.”

Bernie?

“[He’s] the chairman of the Budget Committee, and he hasn’t had a hearing about corporate crime. He keeps talking about corporate crime, why not a hearing?”

[Hekate]

1. Ralphie go home. You always pop up just in time to trash Dem candidates...

…at election time.

[SharonAnn]

56. Nobody is paying attention to Ralph Nader.

[tavernier]

2. I thought the spoiler died.

[Demsrule86]

20. I know right?

If he had a conscience which he doesn't...he could look around and see what he caused. I literally hate his guts.

[BannonsLiver]

47. Unfortunately Nader is still breathing

Though now he’s kind of a joke.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. Like a bad penny, he always turns up.

Fuck that spoiler asshole.

[Cha]

31. Nader is the tweedledum & the

tweedledee.

[Dalton555]

4. I remember him for his duplicity in general

He refused to take up any gay rights issues and referred to LGBT oppression as "gonad politics" and said that it was beneath him to address

22 years ago, he sent his cult members to attack Al Gore for owning oil stock. He himself owned the same stock that his cult attacked Al Gore for

And dozens of others. He is the worst fake person in American politics

[electric_blue68]

24. Yes, I remember that ("gonad politics")! ...

Remember because it was a hateful thing to do.

I know I mentioned that on DU at some point.


BUT I didn't know about the Oil Stock & Al Gore thing!
😮

[kentuck]

5. Note to Ralph and Bernie:

Yes, we all support the progressive agenda.

But when democracy is under such a threatening attack, it is not the best time to fight over the agenda. The real world dictates that we address the problem at hand.

[Demsrule86]

19. Ralph Nader is not a progressive but a grifter. Fuck him. I will never forgive him.

[Elessar Zappa]

21. Exactly, he's different than Bernie.

Bernie can be a pain in the neck at times but he caucuses with us and, for the most part, supports Biden’s agenda. Nader is just a spoiling grifter, as you say.

[electric_blue68]

27. Haven't thought about him in a long time...

which is good bc he's on my shortish list of people I hate (but one I haven't thought about in a good while).
If these people weren't still causing/doing damage I wouldn't be thinking about them at all.

drumphf is still too dangerous to "forget" about him
As are McConnell, and Thomas in particular

drumphf
ghouliani
McConnell
thomas
Neeeewt
Nader

Newt just recently "resurfaced" more prominently 🤬


I probably will never forgive Ralphie either

I never thought of him as grifter, tho.
I think I got his Raiders group on Nuclear Energy way back

[Demsrule86]

33. Nader has been grifting for years...he is a complete jerk...and was never a progressive.

[electric_blue68]

34. I don't know if he was a jerk way back in the very early 70's

He did anti nuclear power stuff

Must look stuff up

[Demsrule86]

41. He was always a jerk.

[electric_blue68]

37. He was never a progressive?

[Demsrule86]

42. No, he was a guy who like to break things but never built anything...all he did was

destroy, destroy and destroy. He accomplished nothing ever...and he helped elect George Bush which lead to the destruction of Roe and United...a giant FU to this sleazy guy who left destruction in his wake and stood for nothing...not ever.

[Demsrule86]

44. No, he was a guy who like to break things but never built anything...all he did was

destroy, destroy and destroy. He accomplished nothing ever...and he helped elect George Bush which lead to the destruction of Roe and United...a giant FU to this sleazy guy who left destruction in his wake and stood for nothing...not ever.

[electric_blue68]

39. He was never a progressive?

Both way back
He did write Unsafe at Any Speed so car safety issues

And he do nuclear power safety issues

[Demsrule86]

43. He was out to destroy the car industry. Ask a union guy what they think of Nader.

[PJMcK]

6. Nader? He's still around?

He's less than a marginal character.

Frankly, all he's done for the past several decades is just get in the way. He hasn't contributed anything concrete, just a lot of smoke.

[Renew Deal]

7. The only people more responsible for Alito and Roberts than Nader

Are the ones that voted for him. He screwed his own agenda in 2000

[LetMyPeopleVote]

8. Nader is the asshole who got Bush 43 elected

Due to Nader’s stupidity and arrogance, we got The Iraq war, Citizens U items, Shelby County (the gutting of the Voting Rights Act), the overturn of Roe v. Wade and other horrors

Nader I is an asshole

[electric_blue68]

28. Thank You! I couldn't remember the name of the ruling (Shelby)

when I mentioned the initial gutting of the VRA in a post recently!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

53. My hobby is voter protection

I have been volunteering since 2004. I was one of 3000 out of state attorneys in Florida for 2004

[electric_blue68]

35. I know it was awful 2000 election

[MineralMan]

9. Who?

[dalton99a]

10. 88-year-old narcissist seeks subscribers for his very smart print newspaper

[Demsrule86]

16. I would rather read a cereal box.

[JHB]

11. Say, Ralphie-Boy, just what are you doing that would rate paying attention to you?

I know this may not have occurred to you in the quarter century you've been dabbling in politics, but organizing an effective liberal/left voting bloc would have been very useful in trying to enact some of what you claim to advocate.

Or maybe you could have helped get some wealthy liberals to bankroll genuinely liberal media outlets, or at least connect and promote the smaller operations already doing so but have to scratch out hand-to-mouth existences. We really could have used a liberal/left media space that didn't ultimately answer to Vladimir Putin.

And organize people to work on media execs the way conservatives did, trying to get them as fretful of conservative bias as the cons got them to be over "liberal bias".

Instead, you just keep disappearing between election years. The Greens are a hot mess, a circle-jerk for egos that are high on drama but small on accomplishment.

Why don't Bernie and AOC return your calls? Because they're elected politicians. They already have a lot of hot air to deal with. They don't need more from you, especially hot air as stale and ineffective as yours.

Maybe go organize some people to join "Postcards to Voters" (https://postcardstovoters.org/) and do the un-glamorous hard work of getting people out to the polls.

And do it for Democrats. You don't have to fully like us, but by now at least admit there's more than "a dime's worth of difference" between us and the Republicans.

Do some practical action for once and maybe people will start returning your calls.

[electric_blue68]

29. Omg - that "not a dime's worth of difference" comment blew me through the roof!

[Wounded Bear]

54. Yeah, he was the original bothsider...

[electric_blue68]

55. Woah! 🤬

[NNadir]

12. He's looking for relevance so his PIRG groups can scam college students again. n/t.

[Retrograde]

30. Are those still a thing?

There was one at my school back in the early 70s: their MO was to demand a student vote on whether they should collect a fee from all students, then when the lost move the goalposts so that their proposition passes with only 40% of the vote instead of 50%+1, and when that failed move the goalposts again to only require a 30% vote - and by that time I'd graduated.

Put me off Nader and his supporters ever since.

[NNadir]

38. I don't know if he's still scamming college students but...

...I had PIRG nuts knock on my door asking for money. It used to happen every few years, but happily it's been a while.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. 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.

[electric_blue68]

32. 2000 was a rough year for me so some things I did hear about...

Last edited Sun Sep 4, 2022, 04:03 PM - Edit history (3)

I do remember when those out of town repugs harrased the FLA 2000 count!

?Brower's County?

And the Senator who's name began w a D? I can almost picture him. ..

Went out for errands. Revved a few brain cells up..
Remembered...


It was EFFING Dick Army!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

51. I was headed to Florida fo the recount when Bush v Gore

The recount showed that Gore actually won Florida.

Nader, Michael Moore, Sarandon and Bill Maher supported Nader and screwed the coiuntry

Nader is an asshole who needs to be shunned

[Meowmee]

49. ++++

[LetMyPeopleVote]

14. Nader is an asshole who gave us Citizens United, Shelby County and the overturnin of Roe

Nader is responsible for the Iraq war, Citizens United and the gutting of the voting rights act. Nader was solely responsible for bush being elected in 2000 and for bush putting Alito and Roberts on the SCOTUS. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065.html

Nader-voters who spurned Democrat Al Gore to vote for Nader ended up swinging both Florida and New Hampshire to Bush in 2000. Charlie Cook, the editor of the Cook Political Report and political analyst for National Journal, called "Florida and New Hampshire" simply "the two states that Mr. Nader handed to the Bush-Cheney ticket," when Cook was writing about "The Next Nader Effect," in The New York Times on 9 March 2004. Cook said, "Mr. Nader, running as the Green Party nominee, cost Al Gore two states, Florida and New Hampshire, either of which would have given the vice president [Gore] a victory in 2000. In Florida, which George W. Bush carried by 537 votes, Mr. Nader received nearly 100,000 votes [nearly 200 times the size of Bush's Florida 'win']. In New Hampshire, which Mr. Bush won by 7,211 votes, Mr. Nader pulled in more than 22,000 [three times the size of Bush's 'win' in that state]." If either of those two states had gone instead to Gore, then Bush would have lost the 2000 election; we would never have had a U.S. President George W. Bush, and so Nader managed to turn not just one but two key toss-up states for candidate Bush, and to become the indispensable person making G.W. Bush the President of the United States -- even more indispensable, and more important to Bush's "electoral success," than were such huge Bush financial contributors as Enron Corporation's chief Ken Lay.

All polling studies that were done, for both the 2000 and the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections, indicated that Nader drained at least 2 to 5 times as many voters from the Democratic candidate as he did from the Republican Bush. (This isn't even considering throw-away Nader voters who would have stayed home and not voted if Nader had not been in the race; they didn't count in these calculations at all.) Nader's 97,488 Florida votes contained vastly more than enough to have overcome the official Jeb Bush / Katherine Harris / count, of a 537-vote Florida "victory" for G.W. Bush. In their 24 April 2006 detailed statistical analysis of the 2000 Florida vote, "Did Ralph Nader Spoil a Gore Presidency?" (available on the internet), Michael C. Herron of Dartmouth and Jeffrey B. Lewis of UCLA stated flatly, "We find that ... Nader was a spoiler for Gore." David Paul Kuhn, CBSNews.com Chief Political Writer, headlined on 27 July 2004, "Nader to Crash Dems Party?" and he wrote: "In 2000, Voter News Service exit polling showed that 47 percent of Nader's Florida supporters would have voted for Gore, and 21 percent for Mr. Bush, easily covering the margin of Gore's loss." Nationwide, Harvard's Barry C. Burden, in his 2001 paper at the American Political Science Association, "Did Ralph Nader Elect George W. Bush?" (also on the internet) presented "Table 3: Self-Reported Effects of Removing Minor Party Candidates," showing that in the VNS exit polls, 47.7% of Nader's voters said they would have voted instead for Gore, 21.9% said they would have voted instead for Bush, and 30.5% said they wouldn't have voted in the Presidential race, if Nader were had not been on the ballot. (This same table also showed that the far tinier nationwide vote for Patrick Buchanan would have split almost evenly between Bush and Gore if Buchanan hadn't been in the race: Buchanan was not a decisive factor in the outcome.) The Florida sub-sample of Nader voters was actually too small to draw such precise figures, but Herron and Lewis concluded that approximately 60% of Florida's Nader voters would have been Gore voters if the 2000 race hadn't included Nader. Clearly, Ralph Nader drew far more votes from Gore than he did from Bush, and on this account alone was an enormous Republican asset in 2000.

[The Magistrate]

40. Good Link, Sir

It's something a good many people need to get through their heads, even today.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

52. I was literally headed to Florida for the expanded recount

I did go to Florida for the Kerry/Edwards voter protection team. I was part of 3000 out of state attorneys in 2004 and I have worked on voter protection efforts ever since

[Meowmee]

48. Yes +

[Demsrule86]

15. He is not the conscience of American...he is a fucking Green who cost us 2000...two justices

who helped overturn Roe were appointed as a result...fuck Nader 1000 times. Go away, you will never be forgiven. Traitor to the Party and liberals everywhere.

[Hortensis]

17. :) Lol. I-Sanders wouldn't take his calls back before 2016 either.

Nader tried to make it a thing then when Sanders starting getting more attention.

But, really, how could he expect anything else when he can't cooperate and compromise? Only one person can be the only one who's right about everything and entitled to carry the banner of LW virtue. The only question would be how long it would take a Nader-Sanders alliance to split into two factions.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

18. Fuck Ralph Nader

[MurrayDelph]

22. Ralph refuses to recognize

that his fifteen minutes expired 7,971 days ago.

Go away, Ralph. And take Susan Sarandon with you.

[gulliver]

23. Can't stand him. Nader's the boy who drilled holes in the dike.

He gave us eight years of Dubya, the Iraq War. Trump is arguably Nader's political grandson.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

25. Hope your Cisco Systems stock is doing better Ralph

You were pretty vocal at a shareholders' meeting a while back that your dividend wasn't large enough.

[electric_blue68]

36. Oh, ho! 💸

[Just A Box Of Rain]

26. Fuck Ralph Nader.

That is all.

[betsuni]

45. "The Grudge" starring Ralph Nader.

[demtenjeep]

46. he ain't shit

and he can FOAD

[Meowmee]

50. I had no clue

That idiot was still around. Then one day a radio station I was listening to said he had a weekly blog pod or whatever they call it which was broadcast by them.

[SunSeeker]

57. He needs to apologize for handing Bush the presidency in 2020, the horror show that resulted.

[LudwigPastorius]

58. Oh boy

Ralph “We Have To Destroy The Village To Save The Village” Nader

Yeah, how’d that work out for all of us, asshole?

There’s a reason you’re persona non grata among progressive Democrats.