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Nader in...Again

Bikewer

Penultimate Amazing
Bikewer
Joined
Sep 12, 2003
Messages
13,242
Location
St. Louis, Mo.
Ralph Nader "announced" this morning; he was on Meet The Press.

Denies spoiling the Gore election, made a certain amount of sense.

Actually, the man makes a certain amount of sense. The things he complains about are real problems. The political system in this country is indeed dominated by big money and a lack of input from other voices on all sides.
Corporate power is frightening, and the military budget is obscene. The lot of working middle-class citizens is nothing to write home about.

Will his candidacy get these concerns a bit of "spotlight time"? Who knows....

I worked the debate a couple of elections back where the Nader supporters coupled up with the "anarchist-and-others" crowd to put on a big march and demonstration. It was....Interesting.
 
I see he is still operating under the delusion that he is relevant.

Bikewer said:
Actually, the man makes a certain amount of sense. The things he complains about are real problems. The political system in this country is indeed dominated by big money and a lack of input from other voices on all sides.
Corporate power is frightening, and the military budget is obscene. The lot of working middle-class citizens is nothing to write home about.
Click to expand...

I suspect "Ralph Nader of 1800" would have said exactly the same thing. Nothing is new.
 
May his anal orifice and adjacent areas be covered with festering boils for the rest of it's unnatural life.
 
Nader will get the least votes he ever has in 2008. Either Obama will continue his momentum and win comfortably, or he'll be exposed as a Dan Quayle empty suit and crash and burn. The few votes Nader will get are not going to make a difference in any states.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
I see he is still operating under the delusion that he is relevant.

I suspect "Ralph Nader of 1800" would have said exactly the same thing. Nothing is new.
Click to expand...

So, these concerns aren't relevant...how?

Man, this is seriously the best news I've heard in months!
You guys have no idea how happy I am right now!

Go NADER GO!
 
Yay Ralphie boy!

This forum was getting boring after the Paulistas gave up on old boy. But now the Nader-ites can make it interesting again while they attempt to justify their support for a candidate even loopier than Ron Paul!
 
Bikewer said:
Actually, the man makes a certain amount of sense. The things he complains about are real problems. The political system in this country is indeed dominated by big money and a lack of input from other voices on all sides.
Corporate power is frightening, and the military budget is obscene. The lot of working middle-class citizens is nothing to write home about.
Click to expand...
Those are about the most sensible observations I've heard in a while.
 
WildCat said:
Yay Ralphie boy!

This forum was getting boring after the Paulistas gave up on old boy. But now the Nader-ites can make it interesting again while they attempt to justify their support for a candidate even loopier than Ron Paul!
Click to expand...

I don't know if he is as crazy as Paul. I mean, at least his positions have been done in other governments. But he shouts about corporations like Paul shouts about Neocons and the NWO.
 
It would be nice if having Nader running would force the others to address the issues he will raise, but it won't. He will not be allowed to debate the others and neither will any other third party. Unfortunetly, he can and will be comfortably ignored by both the Republicans and the Democrats. Sadly, all his running will do is give the Democrats someone to blame if they lose just like last time. ( Personaly I do not belive Nader takes anymore votes from Dems then he does from Reps.)
JPK
 
I'm kind of ambivalent about him. I agree with him on most issues and live in Massachusetts so I don't have to directly worry about the spoiler effect too much, but there's just something about him that rubs me the wrong way.

Perhaps part of it is Ron Paul by allowing me to clearly see the annoyances of when candidates are so ****ing antiestablishment without the rose tinted glasses of agreeing with a candidate, but I don't think that Nader is quite that bad, and I get a stronger sense of wanting to work within the system from him. Although there's definitely parts of the Green Party and the more left-wing part of the Democratic Party which is more vocally "fighting the man."

That said, even if Nader doesn't have the "everyone else sucks" position as strongly as Ron Paul, (although there's that aspect to his message) he does have a very strong sense of perfectionism, that since the Democrats are "not quite good enough" that he needs to step in and bring things right. I do think that in an ideal political system third parties would have more of a voice, but I feel that this sort of perfectionism (besides the tactical problems it can induce because of vote-splitting and whatnot) is generally counterproductive.

Also, I suppose in a practical sense, even though I don't have to directly worry about the spoiler effect, it's possible that by voting for Nader here I might encourage people to vote for Nader in swing states.
 
WildCat said:
Yay Ralphie boy!

This forum was getting boring after the Paulistas gave up on old boy. But now the Nader-ites can make it interesting again while they attempt to justify their support for a candidate even loopier than Ron Paul!
Click to expand...

I think it will be interesting to see which candidate gets the most votes between the two. I imagine they'll both get 0%.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
I don't know if he is as crazy as Paul. I mean, at least his positions have been done in other governments.
Click to expand...
And what, exactly, are his positions? His web site lists 12 issues, all of which could fit on a bumper sticker. No details at all on what these slogans actually entail. He is by far the shallowest, most soundbite-driven candidate yet. But maybe Naders supporters don't need those annoying details before they throw him their unwavering support?
 
WildCat said:
And what, exactly, are his positions? His web site lists 12 issues, all of which could fit on a bumper sticker. No details at all on what these slogans actually entail. He is by far the shallowest, most soundbite-driven candidate yet. But maybe Naders supporters don't need those annoying details before they throw him their unwavering support?
Click to expand...

I agree that that's a pretty pathetic issues page and I hope he beefs it up, (not so much because I want to him to get support, but just on principle political candidates should not have issues pages that lame) but it's not like Nader has never run before. There's plenty of ways to find out where Nader stands on the issues, such as by looking at the platform he ran under in 2000 or his personal website or whatever.

(The phrase "There are many more where these came from. We’ll be adding them as we go along" implies that he might beef up his issues page, but that phrase could be interpreted to mean merely that he intends to add more bumperstickers. It seems rather self-destructively silly for him to not at some point link to more substantive arguments, though. He's not some hippy who decided to become president to save the world, he'd been working substantively in politics for around thirty years before he first started running for president.)

But to critique that page further, I'd also like to point out that Obama (and Clinton too I think) have not said that single payer health care is off the table, but that they think that single payer health care might be a good idea in principle but that it's not politically feasible at this time. I'm less familiar with the rest of that list, but I am pretty sure that that list mixes things that Clinton and Obama are legitimately opposed to (like saying no to nuclear power) with things that Clinton and Obama merely think aren't particularly feasible (like single payer health care) with things that Clinton and Obama arguably support, just not in the same sense as Nader (such as reversing policy on the Middle East).
 
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So, how many Nader supporters here would have voted for Hillary or Obama lacking a Nader candidacy?
 
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