Ralph Nader - "Stay Silent and Stay Powerless Against Trump's Tyranny"

[sarchasm]

https://nader.org/2025/03/14/stay-silent-and-stay-powerless-against-trumps-tyranny/

By Ralph Nader

March 14, 2025

There are reasons why influential or knowledgeable Americans are staying silent as the worsening fascist dictatorship of the Trumpsters and Musketeers gets more entrenched by the day. Most of these reasons are simple cover for cowardice.

Start with the once-powerful Bush family dynasty. They despise Trump as he does them. Rich and comfortable George W. Bush is very proud of his Administration’s funding of AIDS medicines saving lives in Africa and elsewhere. Trump, driven by vengeance and megalomania, moved immediately to dismantle this program. Immediate harm commenced to millions of victims in Africa and elsewhere who are reliant on this U.S. assistance (including programs to lessen the health toll on people afflicted by tuberculosis and malaria).

Not a peep from George W. Bush, preoccupied with his landscape painting and perhaps occasional pangs of guilt from his butchery in Iraq. His signal program is going down in flames and he keeps his mouth shut, as he has largely done since the upstart loudmouth Trump ended the Bush family’s power over the Republican Party.

Then there are the Clintons and Obama. They are very rich, and have no political aspirations. Yet, though horrified by what they see Trump doing to the government and its domestic social safety net services they once ruled, mum’s the word.

What are these politicians afraid of as they watch the overthrow of our government and the oncoming police state? Trump, after all, was not elected to become a dictator—declaring war on the American people with his firings and smashing of critical “people’s programs” that benefit liberals and conservatives, red state and blue state residents alike.

Do they fear being discomforted by Trump/Musk unleashing hate and threats against them, and getting tarred by Trump’s tirades and violent incitations? No excuses. Regard for our country must take precedence to help galvanize their own constituencies to resist tyranny and fight for Democracy.

What about Kamala Harris — the hapless loser to Trump in November’s presidential election? She must think she has something to say on behalf of the 75 million people who voted for her or against Trump. Silence! She is perfect bait for Trump’s intimidation tactics. She is afraid to tangle with Trump despite his declining polls, rising inflation, the falling stock market and anti-people budget slashing which is harming her supporters and Trump voters’ economic wellbeing, health and safety.

This phenomenon of going dark is widespread. Regulators and prosecutors who were either fired or quit in advance have not risen to defend their own agencies and departments, if only to elevate the morale of those civil servants remaining behind and under siege.

Why aren’t we hearing from Gary Gensler, former head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), now being dismantled, especially since the SEC is dropping his cases against alleged cryptocurrency crooks?

Why aren’t we hearing much more (she wrote one op-ed) from Samantha Power, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under Biden, whose life-saving agency is literally being illegally closed down, but for pending court challenges?

Why aren’t we hearing from Michael Regan, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Biden about saboteur Lee Zeldin, Trump’s head of EPA, who is now giving green lights to lethal polluters and other environmental destructions?

These and many other former government officials all have their own circles – in some cases, millions of people – who need to hear from them.

They can take some courage of the seven former I.R.S. Commissioners — from Republican and Democratic Administrations — who condemned slicing the I.R.S staff in half and aiding and abetting big time tax evasion by the undertaxed super-rich and giant corporations. I am told that they would be eager to testify, should the Democrats in Congress have the energy to hold unofficial hearings as ranking members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees.

Banding together is one way of reducing the fear factor. After Trump purged the career military at the Pentagon to put his own “yes men” at the top, five former Secretaries of Defense, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, sent a letter to Congress denouncing Trump’s firing of senior military officers and requesting “immediate” House and Senate hearings to “assess the national security implications of Mr. Trump’s dismissals.” Not a chance by the GOP majority there. But they could ask the Democrats to hold UNOFFICIAL HEARINGS as ranking members of the Armed Services Committees!

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker can be one of the prime witnesses at these hearings – he has no fear of speaking his mind against the Trumpsters.

On March 6, 2025, the Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller, put her rare byline on an urgent report titled, “‘People Are Going Silent’: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves.”

She writes: “The silence grows louder every day. Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents [one exception is Wesleyan University President Michael Roth] fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute.”

To be sure, government employees and other unions are speaking out and suing in federal court. So are national citizen groups like Public Citizen and the Center for Constitutional Rights, though hampered in alerting large audiences by newspapers like the Times rarely reporting their initiatives.

Yes, Ms. Bumiller, pay attention to that aspect of your responsibility. Moreover, the Times’ editorial page (op-ed and editorials) are not adequately reflecting the urgency of her reporting. Nor are her reporters covering the informed outspokenness and actions of civic organizations.

Don’t self-censoring people know that they are helping the Trumpian dread, threat and fear machine get worse? Study Germany and Italy in the nineteen thirties.

The Trump/Musk lawless, cruel, arrogant, dictatorial regime is in our White House. Their police state infrastructure is in place. Silence is complicity!

[gulliver]

1. Can you point me to the link where Nader begs forgiveness for getting Dubya elected?

And helping set off the whole chain of events that created Trump...

[Kid Berwyn]

3. He has a right to run for office.

Bush and his brother’s Florida vote count was good enough for Rehnquist and his mob, 5-4.

Ralph Nader had nothing to do with that.

[JohnSJ]

8. Sorry, he sure did, with his constant "there is no difference between the two parties". He is an arrogant,

egotistical jackass.

[PSPS]

14. His editorial piece is still excellent even if you don't like him.

[JohnSJ]

22. Raskin, Schiff, AOC, Sanders, etc. have said the same thing. Nader lost any credibility he ever had in 2000, and why

he resonates mostly with just his fan base. Because of the damage he has done, he is probably the worst spokesperson on this. He helped divide Democrats against each other that still resonates today.

[LuvLoogie]

251. This. Nader is like a TikTok'r weeks late on a big trend

trying to gain clout riding on someone else's kinetic wave.

He is a back stabber.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

130. I strongly disagree

Nader is wrong here just as he was WRONG in 2000 and 2004

[Pris]

151. He shows his naivete

"hapless"? He minimizes Kamala as he minimized abortion rights.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

268. Nader's hypocrisy knows no bounds

Nader made it possible for W to get close enough in Florida to have his little brother steal the 2000 election with an all-out assault on democracy. Rump is using the Bush brothers election stealing road map and is their election stealing protege. W's not about to criticize his election stealing protege.
Nader's out of control ego is just as big as Rump's. Our country will never be the same because of Nader's behavior in 2000. No one should ever forget that what Nader did in 2000. it helped make Rump possible.

[Wifes husband]

28. I agree

This arrogant ass cost Gore the election. He has blood on his hands.

Gore might have paid attention to the intelligence reports before the attack on 911, and for damn sure would not have invaded Iraq.

[alarimer]

88. This is a myth that is not true

1,000,000 registered Democrats in Florida either voted for Bush or did not vote at all. 24,000 of them voted for Nader. And exit polls indicated that Nader drew from both parties.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

138. Your numbers are totally wrong

Do you have any authority for your claims?

[GoreWon2000]

166. Your own numbers prove you wrong

The fraudulent Jeb/Harris Florid vote count shows a 537 vote difference between Al Gore and W. 24,000 Nader votes that Nader siphoned off with his big lie that there were no differences between Al Gore and W should've gone to Al Gore were it not for Nader. Lets also not forget the $5 million in tv campaign ad money that Nader got from the repugs to run tv ads promoting his big lie in battleground states like Florida. BTW, several hundred thousand legal Florida votes located in the largest and most heavily democratic voting counties in Florida now sit uncounted in the Florida archives. Based on the location of the uncounted Florida votes, it's beyond all reasonable doubt that Al Gore got the most votes in Florida. I can say this because this is territory that I personally know very well since15 of my 24 years spent working on dem election campaigns were spent in Florida working under the election laws that Nader helped to shred with his behavior in 2000. Nader knew what the stakes were for our country and he didn't care.

[MadameButterfly]

213. Yes, I recall vote differences of 6-600 (depending on where in the count) and Nader pulled more than enough

to make the difference. Pulled equally from Dems and Republicans? (from a previous poster) I don't think so.

I used to admire Ralph Nader. He was smart and raised important issues. But his ego wouldn't let him step out of close battleground states when it was critical.

I can barely read his holier-than-thou of what life-risking stands he thinks all these people must take when he wouldn't safely retreat when faced with trauma to our civilization from W. To expect W. now to show morals and courage is a fantasy. He never was that guy.

The real statesmen, like Clinton and Obama, are perhaps choosing their best entry into the fray. Bill is old, remember? And I truly doubt Obama will hide for his own safety but will play the chess game brilliantly. We don't want him to sacrifice himself and find himself the first guy in jail with no movement organized to reap the pushback.

[CBHagman]

191. We'd also have no Roberts court and no Citizens United...

...and no Shelby v. Holder if votes hadn't been going to Nader.

I'm not suggesting there weren't other factors involved in the Florida debacle, such as ballot design and the Brooks Brothers riot. But Nader did play spoiler, and the cost is incalculable.

[Joinfortmill]

56. Maybe, but he's right this time.

[DinahMoeHum]

67. So is a stopped clock, twice a day.

n/t

[GoreWon2000]

162. Nader has never taken responsibility

for his actions in 2000 that put our country on this horrible path. tRump is now using W's 2000 election theft roadmap.

[CrispyQ]

61. SCOTUS & Joe Lieberman gave us Bush, but mostly SCOTUS. -nt

[GoreWon2000]

161. Nader got W close enough in Florida

with his big lie that there were no differences between Al Gore and W.

[CrispyQ]

174. I could argue Joe Liberman made it close enough, not Nader.

As far as the big lie, I've heard that "no difference between the two parties" excuse since I was a little girl so it's not new. Neither is "voting doesn't make a difference." When voters use those excuses, they're not inspired by either candidate. Then it gets down to messaging & repubs win every time, no contest.

[GoreWon2000]

233. Liebermann mobilized the Jewish community

and brought crucial votes to Al Gore. Nader did just the opposite. Nader took enough votes from Al Gore to make it possible for W to get close enough in Florida. There's no sugar coating this ugly truth. FYI, 15 of my 24 years of working on dem election campaigns were spent in Florida working under the election laws that were shredded in 2000 so I know the Florida election laws and the disputed territory like the back of my hand. I'm curious if you have any Florida dem election campaign experience?
In addition, do you think Al Gore would've appointed Roberts and Alito to the SCOTUS, started the disastrous Iraq war, cut taxes for the rich, denied climate change and waged war against women's rights, let majority African American populated New Orleans drown in hurricane Katrina and think that "Putin was a good man"? Think again. Nader knew full well what the stakes were and what he was doing would seriously harm our country but he didn't care. It's time for Nader apologists to face the ugly truth about the egotistical narcissist Nader who clearly did play a role in creating tRump that he doesn't want to take responsibility for..

[Stargleamer]

181. There are a number of reasons that each by themselves cost Gore the election

Last edited Sun Mar 16, 2025, 10:52 PM - Edit history (1)

such as the Butterfly ballots, the Supreme Court etc. Nader staying on the ballot is one of them for if Nader had stayed off the ballot like he should have, we would have never had Bush inflicted on us.

[CrispyQ]

196. "...if Nader had stayed off the ballot like he should have.."

Seriously?!

He had every right to run. Maybe Americans should sharpen up instead of being such dumbshits.

[Stargleamer]

205. And we have a right not to have someone not like George Bush as president and Alito et al as SC justices

We have a right to not be inflicted with the harm they caused, to us and Iraqis. Nader knew that being on the Florida ballot could bring George Bush into the White House, he didn't care and did it anyway, so he didn't care about our rights not to be harmed.

[CrispyQ]

220. Gore couldn't even carry his own state but keep telling yourself a third party candidate was the problem.

from Google:

Tennessee was won by Governor George W. Bush by a 3.87% margin of victory, despite having voted for President Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and being the home state of Vice President Al Gore. If Gore had carried his home state, he, instead of Bush, would have been elected president.

[standingtall]

232. Fox news talking point from 25 years ago

Tennessee had changed to the point by 2000 that no Democrat was going to be able to carry it rather it was their home State or not. Made evident by the fact no Democrat has carried that State sense 1996.

Did Nader carry his home State? No in fact he didn't carry any State.So Nader shouldn't of been in the race, because he had no chance in winning anything, but only being a spoiler. Gore didn't need to win Tennessee to win the Presidency so it's irrelevant.

Most of us who lived through the 2000 election know good and well Nader cost Gore the election and the rest just can't admit the truth either due to their affinity for Nader or their desire to have 3rd,4th or 15th party.

[Stargleamer]

249. I acknowledge that there was more than just one problem. . .

and you are right that Gore not winning his home state was a problem that cost him the election. Perhaps he was tainted by voter dissatisfaction with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It was difficult election year for Democrats, as historically it's hard for a president's party to win presidential elections 3 times in a row, although it can happen. Also, George McGovern lost his home state too, in a difficult election year.

But in my opinion, the butterfly ballots in that one Florida county were also a problem that had correct design of such ballots been carried out, Gore would have won.

If the Supreme Court had allowed the recount to go on and let all ballots be checked for legitimate votes by having vote counters check ballots having over- and undervotes for legitimate votes, I think Gore would have prevailed, so that was a problem costing Gore the election too.

But acknowledging that there were other problems, doesn't mean that Ralph Nader putting his name on the ballots in Florida in an election he knew was going to be close was not a problem too. Al Gore only lost by .009% in Florida. All it would have taken if Nader's name wasn't on the ballot would be for 540 would-be Green Party voters to decide that Al Gore was something of an environmentalist too and vote for him. Hillary Clinton had problems too, such as "her email messages" and James Comey, but that doesn't mean Jill Stein should have stayed on the ballots in crucial swing states, for in both cases THE STAKES WERE TOO HIGH!!!

[ClimateChangeisReal]

269. Nader proved Lincoln was right

"A house divided cannot stand". Nader knew exactly what he was doing. He knew he would take crucial votes from Al Gore by dividing the democratic party. That was his plan. Nader did not care because his big ego makes it impossible for him to care. It's long overdue for Nader apologists to face the reality that they helped create Rump with their vote for Nader in 2000. Hope you're happy, not.

[Kid Berwyn]

69. He's got a right to free speech, too.

No one has to agree with it, until the USA PATRIOT Act anyway.

[electric_blue68]

237. ding, Ding, DING!!! Oh... I Remember that BS!

[wolfie001]

47. *Jill Stein

She served her purpose. Both are discredited clowns.

[Kid Berwyn]

71. I didn't vote for her, but I did hear her say things few mention much any more.

In addition to supporting the civil rights of all People, she discussed economic justice and its role in building a sustainable future.

[Cha]

204. Jill Stein Also Lied when she Spewed in the Swing States that there was

no Difference between Hillary & TSF.

Stein is a big part of why Hillary Lost.. Her GD LIES. And grifting Shit.. and she was back at Again this time.

[DENVERPOPS]

77. Jill Stein

has been documented as a Russian Agent.........From years ago, there are REAL pictures of her in Russia, at a table with Putin and his cabinet members having dinner, on one of her many trips to visit Putin..........

And, as far as WBush doing anything for Aids is a joke........China was set to produce and sell AZT for 12 cents a pill...........(At that time, the American Producer was still selling it for 6-7 Dollars a pill when their "Patent" ran out)
An aids patient had to take 6-8 pills a day.
So WBush, gave like Billions in Aid to purchase the meds for the aids patients. The ringer was, and not disclosed by the Republican owned Mass Media, that he stipulated that purchased AZT? pills would be purchased from the American Producer at 6-7 bucks a pill, and not the Chinese manufactured pills at 12 cents a pill.......

[LisaM]

66. Ralph Nader is a liar.

Saying that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Bush and Gore, running in contested states when he said he wouldn't, and running under the auspices of the Green Party against the most pro-environmental candidate ever.

Typical of Nader to come out and wag his scolding finger and disclaim that he had a part in all this. We wouldn't have the Roberts court without Bush.

[JohnSJ]

79. Absolutely. +++

[Kid Berwyn]

81. "This is fascism" is how Nader described what Trump and Musk are doing.

What's really a shame: We wouldn't have had Pruneface Ronnie Reagan without George Herbert Walker Bush and his CIA chums arranging for the Ayatollah to hold the hostages in Iran, either. Elected leaders ignoring their treason came from both sides of the aisle.

A SHORT HISTORY OF EVERYONE WHO CONFIRMED REAGAN’S OCTOBER SURPRISE BEFORE THE NEW YORK TIMES

A lot of people beyond Ben Barnes have said that Reagan’s 1980 election campaign conspired to keep American hostages in Iran.

by Jon Schwarz
The Intercept, March 24 2023

ON SATURDAY, THE New York Times published a blockbuster story that said two prominent Texas Republicans flew across the Mideast in the summer of 1980 for secret meetings with regional leaders to urge them to tell Iran to keep the U.S. hostages in Tehran until after the election that pitted GOP candidate Ronald Reagan against then-President Jimmy Carter.

The Times reported that Ben Barnes, a key figure in Texas politics, said he made the trip with former Texas Gov. John Connally, a major supporter of Reagan’s campaign, and that when they returned home, Connally met in an airport lounge with William Casey, who’d been a top U.S. spy during World War II and was then Reagan’s campaign manager. Connally and Casey discussed the trip, according to Barnes, who The Times quoted as saying, “History needs to know that this happened.” After Reagan beat Carter in a landslide, Reagan appointed Casey head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Snip…

This memo from Beach and the mysterious cable from the Madrid embassy were somehow never turned over to the House investigation. Lee Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat who’d led the inquiry, wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016 asking for the cable. He did not receive it. For Kai Bird’s book “The Outlier,” which includes a chapter of additional evidence about an October Surprise, Bird submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the cable. The State Department likewise has not produced it for Bird — even after he filed a lawsuit in 2019 — informing him that they can’t find it.

At this point, even James Baker, first Reagan’s chief of staff and later his treasury secretary (and then Bush’s secretary of state), won’t say Casey wasn’t in Madrid. Asked about it by one-time Carter staffer Stuart Eizenstat, he responded: “Would I be surprised if Casey did it? There is nothing about Casey that would surprise me. He is a piece of work.”

Continues…

https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/october-surprise-ben-barnes/

So, yeah: Right now, I wish many other national figures would be as brave as Ralph Nader and talk about the fascism part out loud too.

[LisaM]

84. Brave? Nader has always reserved his criticism for the left.

Bravery would have been admitting his own role in this debacle (namely, this complicit SCOTUS that yes, can be laid at the feet of Ralph Nader).

Nader criticizing Democrats plays right into the Trump narrative.

[Kid Berwyn]

93. Nader has criticized power and wealth, like me and other FDR Democrats.

However, I can understand how you came to your conclusion considering how we Democrats outspent Republicans by a billion dollars on TV and still were unable to best a convicted felon and traitor when the votes got counted.

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/31/democrats-republicans-ad-spending-election-day

I still remember when Democrats wanted to take money out of political campaigning. Nader does too.

[LisaM]

97. And yet he facilitated Citizens United.

A Gore court would not have done that. Nader will always have his apologists, though.

[Kid Berwyn]

113. That's not really fair, is it?

First off, Ralph Nader worked on behalf of consumers, part of which led to the SCOTUS ruling in favor of pharmacists. That ruling later would be used to bring the case that led to the Citizens United ruling. Nader had zero to do with that.

https://newrepublic.com/article/147374/company-men-legal-struggle-citizens-united-corporations-rights-people

As for being an apologist, I want to know and share the truth, even when it doesn't agree with my politics.

[LisaM]

115. It's absolutely fair. Nader torpedoed Gore's campaign.

He was wrong, wrong, wrong about Al Gore and he (Nader) was dismissive about the impact a Bush presidency would have on the Supreme Court. You obviously feel differently, but I think it would be far more brave for Nader to own his own part in this debacle than to blame Democrats. In fact, there is a whole portion of this forum at the moment that is doing nothing but blame Democrats. Why should Hillary speak up now? She laid everything on the line against Trump and even wrote a thoughtful book about her loss afterwards. Nader is a narcissist who will never ever admit he was a spoiler in 2000.

[Kid Berwyn]

117. But that's not what I wrote about, is it?

I wrote that it's Nader's right to run for public office.

As a democrat, a Democrat, and a member of the Democratic Party, I think that is every one's right.

While I may not agree with Ralph Nader's opinions, I do support his right to hold and express them.

[GoreWon2000]

160. Nader ran as a Green party member in 2000

in the general election and NOT in the primary as a dem. Nader knew that running in the general election would hurt Al Gore and install pro big corporations and the wealthy Bush, the poster boy for the people Nader claims he hates. That's why Nader ran. Nader well knew what the stakes were for our country and he dd it anyway. Our country will never be the same because of Nader.

[oasis]

187. +100,000,000

[GoreWon2000]

234. I have no idea what you're referring to

Here we are 25 years later and Nader still refuses to take responsibility for helping to create tRump. It's time for Nader apologists to face the ugly truth about Nader.

[oasis]

250. I'm in agreement with you ONE ZILLION!!!

And then some.

[GoreWon2000]

252. Wonderful!

[Wifes husband]

206. And I have the right to be upset that Nader's actions put Bush in office

[Kid Berwyn]

235. But Nader didn't. It was the Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor and Souter ruling to stop the recount.

Because, if they'd allowed the recount to continue:

Florida 'recounts' make Gore winner

Martin Kettle in Washington
The Guardian, January 28, 2001

Al Gore, not George Bush, should be sitting in the White House today as the newly elected president of the United States, two new independent probes of the disputed Florida election contest have confirmed.

The first survey, conducted on behalf of the Washington Post, shows that Mr Gore had a nearly three-to-one majority among 56,000 Florida voters whose November 7 ballot papers were discounted because they contained more than one punched hole.

The second and separate survey, conducted on behalf of the Palm Beach Post, shows that Mr Gore had a majority of 682 votes among the discounted "dimpled" ballots in Palm Beach county.

In each case, if the newly examined votes had been allowed to count in the November election, Mr Gore would have won Florida's 21 electoral college votes by a narrow majority and he, not Mr Bush, would be the president. Instead, Mr Bush officially carried Florida by 537 votes after recounts were stopped.

Continued...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa

Nader had nothing to do with counting the votes. Bush, his brother and the Supreme Court, though, did.

[ShazzieB]

254. If Nader hasn't been on that ballot, SCOTUS would never have needed to get involved.

Without the hair's breadth close vote caused by Nader, there would have been a straightforward result that wouldn't have needed to be contested.

Look, I get it: you like Nader. You have that right. The rest of us have just as much right to hold him responsible for the outcome of that election.

[ShazzieB]

253. Having the right to do something doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing to do.

I don't hear anyone saying Nader didn't have the right to run. Some of us just think that's beside the point.

[Kid Berwyn]

256. True. And the BFEE counted the votes.

Not Ralph Nader.

GOP can't win fair and square, so they cheat.

One of my Junior ROTC instructors said, “ The best way to predict the future is to make it happen.”



So, the record is clear: In Presidential election after Presidential election, Republicans get away with treason.

1968 - Nixon-Agnew dealt with North Vietnam to sabotage Paris peace talks

1980 - Reagan-Bush dealt with Ayatollah hostage takers

1988 - Bush pardons Weinberger and other Iran-Contra traitors to avoid trial and exposing his own role

2000 - Bush-Cheney count on GOP-leaning Supreme Court to “win” Florida and, thus, US election

2016 - Trump calls on Russia for help to defeat Hillary Clinton

And after they “win,” We the People are told to, “Move on.” And the GOP gets away with it, again.



It’s Bush Family Evil Empire — the marriage of Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex/CIA - connected types that are rolling out Project 2025 today to dismantle democracy and build a fascist Amerika. That is not Nader’s fault, either.

[GoreWon2000]

155. Nader threw away his consumer protection work in 2000

when he siphoned off enough crucial votes from Al Gore with his big lie that there were no differences between Al Gore and W which helped to install big corporations best friend W in the White House.

[CrispyQ]

175. As soon as I saw Ralph's name in the post title, I knew this was going to be a Nader hate fest.

It always is when his name comes up. Every single time. You can bet money on it. 💵💵💵

[ShazzieB]

257. Nader is a controversial figure around here.

Of course bringing him up is going to stir up controversy. People have strong feelings about him, and there are reasons for that. The response to this o.p. should surprise no one.

[CrispyQ]

259. I'm certainly not surprised. I bet on 25-year-old outrage for $400. 🪙🪙🪙 -nt

[LetMyPeopleVote]

179. Then why did Rove fund Nader's campaign?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20146550

[GoreWon2000]

153. Nader needs to look in the mirror at his own actions

that made this nightmare possible. BTW, Nader owns investments in many of he big corporation he claims to hate. In addition Nader got $5 million in TV advertising money in 2000 from the Republican Leadership Council which is a subsidiary of the RNC. Nader used that repug money to run tv ads spewing his big lie that there were no differences between Al Gore and W in crucial battleground states like Florida

[LetMyPeopleVote]

180. Ralph Nader Was Indispensable To The Republican Party

Here are some facts for you to ignore
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20146689

[ClimateChangeisReal]

270. Nader made Rump/Musk fascism possible in 2000

Al Gore is the one speaking out against the Rump fascism and it was Nader who helped rob our country of Al Gore in 2000. Once again, Nader is talking out of both sides of his mouth.

[malaise]

91. Ding ding

We have a winner

[Kid Berwyn]

94. Guy asked a good question, too...

Who’s left, you might say, to stop Trump, who is on the road to a deep corporate fascist state?

The answer is: THE PEOPLE, taking their sovereign power under the Constitution to protest with specific demands, and to fully use the courts, give backbone to the media and launch a giant “You’re Fired” march on Washington in the Spring for a groundswell behind Impeachment. Trump is harming all Americans – Red State, Blue State, conservatives and liberals which can bring together a left/right movement changing Congress in the 2026 elections.

From his CounterPunch essay, "Trump's Autocratic Moves Toward Corporate Fascism":

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/03/trumps-autocratic-moves-toward-corporate-fascism/

[malaise]

96. And the people will stop it

Rec

[ClimateChangeisReal]

271. Nader helped make this nightmare possible

Nader has 0 credibility because of what he did in 2000. No one should ever forget!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

129. Nader gave W. Bush, the Iraq War, Citizens United and the gutting of the voting rights act

Link to tweet

Ultimately, George Bush won by a margin of 500+ votes in the state of Florida over Gore. And that was the ballgame. Ralph Nader peeled 97,000+ votes away from Gore. If only 600 of those 90,000 had voted for the major party candidate that more aligned with their values, things would have been very different.

When I was in my senior year of college, 9/11 happened. The country and western world rallied around Bush's resolute response to the traumatizing terror attacks. I was in NY at the time, and it was a terrifying moment for the nation.

But the consequences of Bush being in office at that moment were immense.

Bush's disdain for his dad's nemesis, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, led him to invent a rationale to invade a country that literally had nothing to do with 9/11. End result? He killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people, thousands of American troops, and spent over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money in the process.

Beyond the completely immoral and indefensible Iraq War, Bush was a complete disaster as a president. His "No Child Left Behind" effort turned public schools into standardized testing centers. He tripled down on fossil fuels and ignored climate change. His tax cuts for the rich helped contribute to the 2008 economic downturn that led to the Great Recession.

He was a terrible president.

In an alternate reality, Al Gore would have been president in 2001 when terrorists attacked America. Would he have gone into Iraq? Absolutely not. Would he have ignored global warming? 100% no! Gore was perhaps the preeminent proponent of fighting climate change at that time. Would he have passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy? No way.

This is a sliding doors scenario. What would have happened? We can't be sure. But one thing is for sure: those votes for Ralph Nader (in Florida in particular) were EXCEPTIONALLY consequential for the lives of millions around the world. Gore would have offered a more forward-facing, environmentally conscious & peaceful presidency that wasn't so rooted in grievance and privilege.

[Hekate]

156. This is a guy who truly gets the consequences of his vote in 2000. He voted in the margins where Nader & Stein work...

…the margins that siphon off just enough Democratic votes to make a GOP victory possible.

Thanks for this post.

[questionseverything]

168. Every news outlet that hand counted the votes after the supremes

Stopped the count, showed gore won

Btw hand counting votes in Florida is now illegal

There were over 100,000 “overvotes” in mostly black neighborhoods that weren’t counted originally…. They marked the ballot by gore’s name then also wrote his name in so clearly they supported gore.

The mistake vp gore made was not asking for the entire state to be hand counted

[GoreWon2000]

173. Florida law didn't allow statewide vote count in 2000

I spent 15 years working on election campaigns in Florida under the election laws that were on the books in 2000. In 2000, Florida election law did not allow for a statewide count of the votes. That authority was delegated to the counties after the repugs stole the 1876 election in Florida in which all of the votes were counted in Tallahassee and resulted in a fraudulent vote count. In 2000 all candidates had the right to challenge vote totals in the counties that they disagreed with the county vote total. This is what the Gore campaign did. The Bush campaign never challenged any county vote totals because most of the uncounted votes were located in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, the largest and most heavily democratic voting counties in Florida. In a prime time public speech during the dispute, Al Gore offered to stop all legal proceedings if W would agree to a statewide count of the uncounted votes. W refused because he knew that counting all of the votes meant victory for Al Gore. When the Florida Supreme Court ruled to count the uncounted votes W went running to his father's cronies on the SCOTUS.

[GoreWon2000]

148. Nader made tRump possible

with his big lie that there were no differences between dems and repugs and by siphoning off crucial Al Gore votes in Florida, New Hampshire and Arizona. Nader was in Miami the weekend before election day 2000 spewing his big lie and knowing full well what a crucial battleground state Florida was in 2000. It was Nader who made it possible for W to get close enough in Florida to have his little brother and Florida campaign co-chair Harris steal the election for him that the Rehnquist 5 then rubberstamped. tRump is now using W's Florida 2000 election stealing roadmap. FYI, 15 of my 24 years spent working on dem election campaigns were spent in Florida. To this day, Nader refuses to take responsibility for what he did to our country in 2000.

[Pris]

150. He is sexist. He minimized abortion rights when he ran

He is patriarchy personified.

[GoreWon2000]

169. Nader made this nightmare possible

by siphoning off enough crucial votes from Al Gore in Florida with his big lie that there ere no difference between Al Gore and W. There's no sugar coating this ugly truth.

[ShazzieB]

267. I've seen this argument before, too many times to count.

And my reply is always the same: Whether he had a RIGHT to run is completely BESIDE the point.

People have the RIGHT to do a lot of things. Doesn't necessarily mean they're all the RIGHT things to do, or even good choices. My parents both smoked themselves into early graves. They had every right to do that. Does that mean it was a good idea or the best choice they could have made? Hell fucking NO!

I have never heard a single soul say Nader did not have the right to run. That's because no one freaking cares, except people who think the fact he had the "right" to run somehow proves something or other. It proves BUPKIS.

[Feel Good Inc]

306. His lies about Al Gore absolutely did have something to do with that.

He has absolutely every right to run for president but he ran a disingenuous, lie-filled campaign that helped give us Bush. I think every dishonest person, regardless how endeared they are to a specific ideology, should be called out.

And Nader was as dishonest as Jill Strein (who also had a right to run for president) and other Green Party activist who lie about Democrats.

[PSPS]

12. Regardless of how true that may be, this editorial is excellent.

[gulliver]

45. It's just bitter, self-serving screed, and counterproductive

Everyone's a coward, including Dems, according to Nader. He robbed us of the Al Gore presidency that should have been. Nader discredits any idea he argues for.

[wolfie001]

48. Yep! Jill Stein too

Anything good they wanted to forward has been nuked by GWB and DJT. Yet at the end of the day, they can stroke their egos and say, "Well, I tried." Meanwhile, America's heading down the shitter.

[delisen]

49. I don't think it excellent. Nader has been not supportive of human rights of women.

Nader does not address the issue of the rights of women and his prominent role in denying that the Supreme Court would ever overturn Roe vs Wade. He does not address the fact that he preceded Trump in insisting that returning abortion rights to the states would not be a problem.

Nader is big on telling other people what they should do. I suggest Ralph Nader should volunteer at an abortion facility in a red state. Learn about the right of women to medical care. Accept responsibility for his own actions.

I will say one good thing about Nader. At least he did not have the nerve to include Al Gore in his criticisms of Democratic leaders.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

139. Do you care that Nader was funded by Rove?

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.

[Hekate]

159. Apologists for Nader *do not care* that Rove gave him money. Just as they don't care that Jill Stein...

…took money from Putin.

It really does make me wonder about some people.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

311. Rove used Nader as a tool

Nader took Rove's funding and got W elected

[Hekate]

314. That is the bitter, bitter truth

[Cirsium]

55. Still?

How sad is it that this is still being talked about?

Nader did not cause Gore to lose.

[Wifes husband]

207. Yes. He. Did.

[Cirsium]

224. No. He. Didn't.

..

[ClimateChangeisReal]

272. Repug leadership council paid $5 million for Nader's tv ad campaign

that was run in crucial states like Florida. The ad campaign touted Nader's big lie that their were no differences between Al Gore and W.

[Cirsium]

288. That may be

Never the less, there were more Democrats who voted for Bush than there were Nader voters. Also, we can't know that all the Nader voters would have voted for Gore, or voted at all.

Blaming Nader is really about maligning progressives in a less that honest way, based on the flawed assumption that it is progressives who (vote Nader/vote Stein/don't vote) and therefore cause the Democrats to lose. How about those who voted for Obama or Biden and then switched to Trump?

25 years later and people are still harping on the relatively small and unimportant issue of Nader voters, while ignoring the much bigger problem of Democratic voters switching to vote Republican. Of course, that would require a hard look at other factors: corporate donations, compromises with the Republicans, voter suppression, poorly run campaigns, the impact of white supremacy on politics, etc. Much easier to just blame Nader.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

309. Nader apologists can't handle the truth

that they got duped by Nader's big lie that there were no differences between Al Gore and W. Still think there are no differences between Al Gore and W? Now for a lesson on Florida politics. Your pointing to supposed dems who voted for W. The reality is, those votes came from northern Florida where many of the old racist dixiecrats lived who never got around to changing their voter registrations to repugs. In addition, there have been numerous post election studies done that show that the overwhelming number of the 97,000 Nader votes would've gone to Al Gore. One of them has been posted by another poster in this thread. Let's also not forget the more than 50,000 legally registered African-American dem voters that Jeb/Harris wrongly purged from Florida's voting roles on top of the several hundred thousand mostly democratic votes that the Rehnquist 5 stopped from being counted.

Nader's campaign was dishonest because it was based on a big lie. Nader really isn't the progressive that his apologists claim he is. For the record, Nader is an out of control egomaniac who took $5 million from the repugs to pay for his tv ad campaign that he ran in Florida spewing his big lie and his 2000 campaign financial disclosure forms shows that he invests in the big companies that he publicly claims to hate. Nader was a willing accessory to the killing of democracy in Florida in 2000 I guess the truth is too much for Nader apologists.

[Cirsium]

318. Nader apologists?

Nader apologists? Some projection there, I think.

I well understand the Dixiecrat phenomenon and Nixon's southern strategy. However, in 2000 24,000 registered Democrats voted for Nader in Florida, compared with the 308,000 registered Democrats who voted for George W. Bush. 11% of Democrats nationally voted for Bush.

...the overwhelming number of the 97,000 Nader votes would've gone to Al Gore.

But they didn't. They went to Nader. To claim that the left leaning Democratic voters should have been Gore's while the number of right leaning Democrats going to Bush is not noteworthy is inconsistent. (If any of that is actually true.) There are always a certain number of protest voters - Perot, Nader, Stein, Trump.

Let's also not forget the more than 50,000 legally registered African-American dem voters that Jeb/Harris wrongly purged from Florida's voting roles on top of the several hundred thousand mostly democratic votes that the Rehnquist 5 stopped from being counted.

Yes, I mentioned voter suppression.

Nader...dishonest...based on a big lie...isn't the progressive...out of control egomaniac...took $5 million from the repugs...invests in the big companies...willing accessory....

Whatever. I am not a Nader defender or apologist. I do think that the Nader/Stein/Trump effect would ever happen if the Democrats were not constantly triangulating and playing bipartisan footsie with the right wing. But, as I said, it is easier to just blame Nader (25 years later!!)

[ClimateChangeisReal]

319. Your desperation shows

Nader apologists are so desperate to take the heat off of Nader for making W's theft of the 2000 election possible that they'll twist pretty much anything to do so. FYI, lots of racist dixiecrats never bothered to change their registrations from dem to repug. Nader duped enough voters in Florida with his big lie that there are no differences between Al Gore and W to make it possible for W to get close enough in Florida to have his little brother and the Rehnquist 5 steal the election for him. It's long past due for Nader apologists to take responsibility for helping to put W in the White House which created Rump. It's time for Nader apologists to stop rewriting history. Have you no shame?

[Cirsium]

323. Desperation?

I am not a Nader fan. I have never advocated for third party voting. Perhaps you need to read more carefully. Meanwhile, you are just repeating arguments that have already been more than adequately challenged and discredited.

Can you not see how convoluted your reasoning is? Democrats who voted for Bush don't count because they were "Dixiecrats" who were too lazy to change their registration, Nader duped other Democrats somehow who were not "Dixiecrats," Nader said there was no difference between the two parties (although he actually never did say that), which then made it close enough so that Jeb and the Supreme Court could steal it. Whew!

Clinton won Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Hampshire and Florida in 1996. 4 years later, Gore lost all of them. That is not because of Nader.

I think it is the Nader attackers who are desperate. They know that Nader's contention that the Democrats are too much under the influence of big money is true, true enough that it creates a vulnerability for the party. Instead of whining about Nader for the last 25 years, how about we eliminate that vulnerability?

[ClimateChangeisReal]

324. Your desperation continues to show

FYI, Nader said many times that there were no differences between Al Gore and W as well as no differences between dems and repugs I watched him do it in tv interviews numerous times. In addition, Nader duped enough people with his big lie in Florida to make it possible for the Rehnquist 5 to carry out their judicial coup d'état. .Did Nader and those he duped really think that Al Gore would've appointed Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court, waged war against women's rights, ignore the threat of climate change, start a war against Iraq based on a lie like W did? You're the one who needs to read the response to this topic that included a post from someone who got duped by Nader in Florida in 2000 and has regretted his Nader vote for 25 years.
It's been common knowledge for years in Florida politics that there's a large number of dixiecrats in northern Florida who never bothered to change their registrations. You further fail to mention that the number of votes that Nader got in both Florida and New Hampshire was more than the vote difference between Al Gore and W in both of those states. There's the election right there. That's all on Nader
You also don't seem to know that Nader's 2000 campaign financial disclosure forms shows that he invests in the big corporations that he publicly claims to hate. That's called hypocrisy. You might want to google Nader's 2000 campaign disclosure forms. In addition, Nader got $5 million from the repugs to pay for his tv ad campaign that spread his big lie and that was run in the crucial battleground state of Florida. Again, Nader got 97,000 votes in Florida with his big lie. What Nader did in Florida in 2000 made the current MAGA SCOTUS possible along with the terrible Citizen's United ruling that has now exploded the amount of corporate money in elections. That's also on Nader.
You also fail to make any mention of the illegal felon purge where the cabal of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris purged more than 50,000 legally registered mostly African-American democrats by wrongly identifying them as felons in order to reduce the number of democrats able to vote in the 2000 election. Finally you fail to note the several hundred thousand Florida votes that sit uncounted in the Florida archives because of the corrupt Rehnquist 5. Had all of the uncounted votes been counted as Florida election law required, Al Gore would've won. Again, Nader made that possible. You're the one who can't seem to handle the ugly truth and hold Nader accountable for his behavior in 2000 that made possible the current nightmare our country is now living. A few years ago, Nader publicly bragged about writing to billionaires urging them to run for President. Want to bet that he sent such a letter to Rump?

[Cirsium]

325. I did mention that

I did mention that that the number of votes that Nader got in both Florida and New Hampshire was more than the vote difference between Al Gore and W in both of those states. I did mention voter suppression.

You did not mention this:

Clinton won Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Hampshire and Florida in 1996. 4 years later, Gore lost all of them. That is not because of Nader. That is also not because of Dixiecrats in Florida, as you claim. The loss of those electoral votes dwarfs any Nader effect on the outcome.

Given all of that, why are people still obsessively blaming Nader? I believe it is to avoid facing the truth about the party, and to use Nader's 2000 candidacy as a pretext for beating up on the Left. That is what helps the right wing.

FYI, Nader said many times that there were no differences between Al Gore and W as well as no differences between dems and repugs I watched him do it in tv interviews numerous times.

Nader never said that, but his supporters, opponents, reporters and pundits often characterized his views that way.

Example:

RFK Jr. : "While I admire Mr. Nader's high-minded ideals, his suggestion that there is no difference between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush is irresponsible."

Nader's response: "I have indicated that there are 'few major differences' between the two parties, not that there is 'no difference between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush,' as Mr. Kennedy wrote."

Nader did say the following:

"It doesn't matter who is in the White House, Gore or Bush, for the vast majority of government departments and agencies."

"The only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door."

"It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote. Both parties are selling our government to big business paymasters. That's a pretty serious similarity."

"Because it's the permanent corporate government that's running the show here ... you can see they're morphing more and more on more and more issues into one corporate party."

I think running a spoiler campaign was a bad idea. But that was a very small part of the 2000 election fiasco. Rather than beating up on Nader and Nader supporters, it would be far more constructive to ask why it is that the Democratic party has struggled so badly against the extreme right wing and been so vulnerable to challenges from the Left.

Beating up on Nader and Nader supporters just makes the problem worse, but I suspect that too many Democrats would rather be right than win, and being right for them means trashing the Left and progressives at every opportunity. That is so self defeating. It is the same mistake the Whigs made in the 1850s. "We are better than the pro-slavery party, and if you criticize us you are helping them." The declining popularity of the Whigs was not because of opposition from the right (the slave power), it was opposition from the Left (Abolition). "It's Fremont's fault that we have Buchanan!" was the cry. The Whigs, while nominally anti-slavery were not an effective opposition force to slavery.

You also fail to make any mention of the illegal felon purge where the cabal of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris purged more than 50,000 legally registered mostly African-American democrats by wrongly identifying them as felons in order to reduce the number of democrats able to vote in the 2000 election. Finally you fail to note the several hundred thousand Florida votes that sit uncounted in the Florida archives because of the corrupt Rehnquist 5.

You are now arguing against the idea that the Nader candidacy was the determining or even major factor. I agree with you on that.

You're the one who can't seem to handle the ugly truth and hold Nader accountable for his behavior in 2000 that made possible the current nightmare our country is now living.

Good grief. You are giving a lot of people and organizations a pass by pinning the last 25 years on Nader. Even if your contention were true, do you have any idea how weak that is? One third party candidacy 25 years ago was enough to ripple the Democratic party and throw us into a fascist nightmare? Really? That would mean that Nader was right about the weaknesses of the party, not that he was wrong.

The seeds of our destruction are many. The unfolding catastrophe involved many players, and goes way back.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

329. You remain in denial about Nader

On the one hand you say that Nader cost Al Gore Florida and then in the same breath you say Nader didn't cost Al Gore Florida. You can't have it both ways. Your unfamiliarity with Florida politics is very apparent. You make no mention of the Bush brothers all out assault on American democracy in Florida with the many Florida election laws that they broke in order to lower the number of dems eligible to vote in Florida and also not count all of the Florida votes in 2000 because they knew W would loose if a dems voted in large number and if all of the uncounted votes were counted because Al Gore would've won Florida as well as nationally..This is fact.
You also don't seem to understand that the entire theme of Nader's 2000 campaign was that there were no differences between Al Gore and W. Nader ran tv ads stating this in key states like Florida and the repugs paid for these tv ads. Again, you further ignore the reality that had all of the uncounted Florida votes been counted, W would have lost.
Your Nader quotes prove my point. Nader clearly said that their were no differences between Al Gore and W and that it doesn't matter who's in the White House. That couldn't be further from the truth. Supreme Court appointments are just 1 example of why it matters who's in the White House. I watched Nader make these false claims in 2000.
Nader has earned every bit of the wrath that he continues to receive. Again, Nader isn't the progressive that you think he is. Nader's 2000 campaign financial disclosure forms clearly show that he's heavily, personally invested in the big corporations that he claims publicly to hate. Nader is a multi-millionaire. You clearly haven't read Nader's 2000 campaign finance reports, I have. You are again unaware that the repugs paid for Nader's $5 million tv ad campaign. Nader was in Miami the weekend before the election da 2000. Nader fired his own employees who tried to unionize because of how badly Nader was treating them.. Nader knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted W to win and he helped him be able to get close enough in Florida to have the Rehnquist 5 finish the W coup. It's time for you to face this ugly truth.
You also fail to acknowledge the pro repug and W media who went after Al Gore with a vengeance while they let W tell lie after lie. I suggest you browse the Daily Howler archive to get the detailed specifics of the media's assault on Al Gore.
It's the party leadership's complete, unilateral disarmament, rolling over and playing dead and total capitulation in response to W's theft of the 2000 election that's at the root of the party's problems. People don't like this kind of behavior one bit and it's showing in the polling. It's important to note that the current bulwark against Rump is coming from the blue states and not nationally.
One of the other posters to this Nader thread posted a link to a post from someone who voted for Nader in 2000 and who has regretted his Nader vote for 25 years.. You should go back and read that post.

[Cirsium]

330. Whatever

You are obsessed with Nader and merely projecting that onto me. I am not talking about Nader, I don't care a bout him at all. I am talking about the party. You haven't acknowledged nor addressed any of the points I have made.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

331. Nader truth is ugly

You haven't once acknowledged the ugly facts that prove that Nader isn't the progressive that you wrongly think he is. It's well documented fact that Nader played spoiler in 2000 and ran on a total lie. You're the one who just can't handle the ugly truth about Nader.

[Cirsium]

332. Give it up

I can't imagine anything less important right now.

I am not talking about Nader. I don't care about Nader one way or the other. I am talking about the obsession some people have with blaming Nader and the damage that does to the party.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

333. I'll never back down from the truth

Nader is the one who has done all of the damage by running on a big lie and siphoning crucial votes from Al Gore in Florida, New Hampshire, etc. in 2000. Nader fully meant to divide the democratic majority and that's what he did. Everyone but you understands this ugly truth. You're the one who refuses to face this ugly truth. Have you ever even worked on a campaign? I've worked on plenty of them.

[Cirsium]

334. As I said...

Some are obsessed with this.

Let's say everyone agreed with you about this. Then what? What difference would that make?

[ClimateChangeisReal]

335. Most dems understand Nader's responsibility for 2000

because the actual facts show the damage that he did. Apologizing for Nader despite 2000 is wrong on every level. Our country will never be the same because of what Nader did in 2000. It's time to face this ugly reality.

[Cirsium]

337. Nope

I am not apologizing for Nader.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

338. You're wrong

If you only go back and just read the responses in this particular Nader thread you'll that most dems hold Nader responsible for where our country s at today with a few known Nader apologists thrown in.. You continue to be in denial about what Nader's actions in 2000 have done to our country.

[Cirsium]

339. Okey dokey

So you know what I think better than I do?

I am not defending Nader. I don't care about Nader. Apparently you desperately need me to.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

340. Your words say otherwise

You claim to hate Nader while at the same time you defend his behavior in 2000 and you refuse to acknowledge the critical role Nader played in creating the disaster our country is now in.

[Cirsium]

341. Hate?

I didn't claim to hate Nader.

Yes, I absolutely deny that Nader played a critical role in creating the disaster our country is now in. You have yet to make a persuasive case that he did.

Clinton won Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Hampshire and Florida in 1996. 4 years later, Gore lost all of them. That is not because of Nader.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

336. Nader's actions in 2000

are why our country suffers so terribly today. People have every right to continue to call out Nader. Nader has no business complaining about what's happening in our country today because he helped to make it possible. It's time for you to face this ugly reality.

[Cirsium]

342. OK

I agree. People have every right to continue to call out Nader.

I also have every right to continue to speak out. So does Nader.

Hating on Nader accomplishes nothing. I think it is just a less than forthcoming way to attack those in the party with whom you disagree.

[Cirsium]

346. Correct

I deny that Nader played a critical role in making the current nightmare possible. You have yet to make the case that he did.

There was the Brooks Brother riot, the hanging chads, the butterfly ballot, and most importantly the bizarre Supreme Court decision that affected the outcome in Florida. Only when we ignore all of that do the votes for Nader seem important.

But even if we were to accept that Nader was the critical factor in Florida, why did the 2000 election "come down to" Florida anyway? You refuse to acknowledge this damning fact: Clinton won Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Hampshire and Florida in 1996. 4 years later, Gore lost all of them. That is not because of Nader. Had Gore won even one of those states we would not be having this discussion.

But even if we were to accept that Gore's loss was caused by Nader, so what? We have had 25 years to remedy that. It is not Nader's fault that we have failed to prevent and to stop MAGA.

But even if we were to accept the preposterous idea that Nader caused Trump and MAGA, so what? Of what practical value is that?

Let's say for the sake of argument that we all agreed with you that Nader is responsible for the fascist nightmare we are living. How would that change anything?

[Cirsium]

347. Interesting

The unilateral disarmament of the party leadership that's been going on since 2000? Explain that.

I didn't say Nader was a Dem.

The party leadership must be held accountable for its failure to act about what? What didn't the leadership do?

[DENVERPOPS]

83. The USSC corruptly

and without ANY legal standing what so ever threw the election.

Obviously Nader, and for that matter others siphoned off votes....

Here in Colorado, Dick Lamms wife Dottie ran for the U.S. Senate and would have been spectacular. She won the Primary with Josie Heath from Boulder losing, but still getting a chunk of votes in the Primary........So Josie Heath changed to independent, and in the election pirated enough votes by her loyalists, from Dottie Lamm, so that the Republican Candidate won the Senate Election..........

[alarimer]

86. More registered Dems voted for Bush than Nader

308,000 registered Democrats voted for Bush in Florida in 2000 vs 24,000 who voted for Nader. The margin was 537 votes.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/dont-fall-for-it-the-nader-myth-and-your-2016-vote/

In Florida, Bush won the votes of 308,000 Democrats, that is 12 times more Democrats than Nader’s mere 24,000. Gore also lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader. In addition, half of all registered Democrats did not even bother voting. For about one million Florida Democrats it was: Vote Bush or don’t vote. If one percent of any of those categories had voted for Gore he would have easily won Florida.

CNN’s exit polling showed Nader received the same amount of votes from both Republicans and Democrats: 1 percent. Nader also took 4 percent of the independent vote. Had Nader not run, Bush would have won by more in Florida. CNN’s exit poll showed Bush at 49 percent and Gore at 47 percent, with 2 percent not voting in a hypothetical Nader-less Florida race. (See articles at end of article for more details.)

[LetMyPeopleVote]

149. Your numbers are wrong. I trust Charlie Cook's numbers

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.

[Stargleamer]

182. Exit polling also showed Kerry beating Bush in Ohio in 2004. . .i

I find it hard to believe that a 537 vote loss couldn't have been made up among the the 97,000 Nader voters if he hadn't had been on the ticket.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

227. I went to Florida in 2004 as part of the Kerry Edwards voter protection team

We had 800 or so out of state lawyers just in Broward County. A total of 11,000 out of state lawyers were used in this effort. I had the option of going to Floridia or Ohio and I selected Florida. I was at the county party function election night and we were all excited about the early results in Ohio.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

273. Nader apologists don't understand Florida politics

Back then, most of those supposed "dem"s voting for W were treally he old racist dixiecrats from northern Florida who never bothered to change their registrations from dems to repugs. This is the Nader apologists way of coping with their guilty consciences.

[kacekwl]

107. You are blaming Nader

for the mess we are in today. I can think of hundreds at least since Nader. It's 2025.

[standingtall]

112. Nader absolutely contributed to the mess we are in today

Both John Roberts and Samuel Alito are on the Supreme court bench thanks to Nader costing us the 2000 election.

[Pris]

184. You are right! Nader was a spoiler

[Wifes husband]

208. Nader

Nader caused Bush to be selected president. Bad events occurred because of that.

Gore would have been a better president. That is just obvious

[ClimateChangeisReal]

274. No W without Nader and no Rump without W

Had Nader not run in 2000, W would not have needed the Rehnquist 5's help because We would not have been able to get close enough in Florida to have his little brother refuse to count the uncounted votes most of which were located in the most heavily democratic voting counties in Florida. W was such a disaster and that combined with W's theft of the 2000 election that killed democracy made Rump [possible.
The lengths the Nader apologists are going to try to massage their guilty consciences seems to know no bounds.

[Rebl2]

122. Would

like to see that as well.

[Bettie]

215. Does you still being angry at him

make anything in this piece not true?

[ClimateChangeisReal]

275. Nader would not have had to write it

if he hadn't run in 2000 and cost Al Gore enough votes in Florida which made it possible for the Rehnquist 5 to stop the legal Florida vote count and appoint W who then made the mess that created Rump. Here we are 25 year later and the Nader apologists are still in denial along with Nader.

[malaise]

2. The sad truth

Way too much silence

[ClimateChangeisReal]

276. Al Gore is speaking out against Rump

[Autumn]

4. One thing for sure. when Ralpf Nader is right, he's right.

Thanks for posting this.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

144. 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

[ClimateChangeisReal]

277. Nader was wrong in 2000

and that's why our country suffers so terribly today. Here we are 25 years later and the Nader apologists still can't admit that their votes for Nader in 2000 helped make Rump possible.

[Autumn]

317. Whatever. Go find an older post.

[JohnSJ]

5. Sorry, but nader helped provide the path to the loss of the SC and the eventual accession of trump into the WH, with his

no difference between both political parties.

As flawed as the Democrats are since FDR, they are still hands down the better choice over their republican counterparts. There are no two sides two it.

Musolini had the trains coming on time.

Until Nader apologies for what he did in 2000:

F**K RALPH NADER.

[Autumn]

11. That was the supreme court. He had every right to run for president . The SC did not have the right

to stop the counting of the votes.

FUCK THE SUPREME COURT

[mzmolly]

37. Ralph said he would only run in safe states.

Last edited Sun Mar 16, 2025, 10:21 PM - Edit history (1)

He took money from people using that lie. He also said it didn't matter if Gore or Bush nominated our SCOTUS. F him too!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

183. Nader LIED about only running is safe states.

You are correct. Nader lied when he claimed to only run in safe states. Nader was funded by and was the tool of Karl Rove. Nader was running in close states where he could swing the election in favor of the GOP

Remember Ralph Nader? So forget about voting for Jill Stein!

Ralph Nader Was Indispensable To The Republican Party | HuffPost Latest News

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065

#USElection2024 #ThirdParty #GreenParty #JillStein

— Jonathan Emmesedi (@jemmesedi.c.im.ap.brid.gy) 2024-10-22T05:17:42.000Z

Link to tweet

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065

Furthermore, it seems that during the closing days of the 2000 political contest, Ralph Nader was choosing to campaign not in states where polls showed that he had a chance to win (of which states there were none), but instead in states where Gore and Bush were virtually tied and Nader's constant appeals to "the left" would be the likeliest to throw those states into Bush's column. One political columnist noted this fact: On 26 October 2000, Eric Alterman posted online for the Nation, "Not One Vote!" in which he observed with trepidation, that during the crucial final days of the campaign, "Nader has been campaigning aggressively in Florida [get that - in Florida!], Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. If Gore loses even a few of those states, then Hello, President Bush." This was prophetic - but also knowable in advance. Nader wasn't stupid; his voters were, but he certainly was not.

That list of states where Nader was concentrating near the end of the campaign consisted of the large states that were the closest between Bush and Gore. Everyone knew that Nader's appeal was being made to "the left," and Nader was concentrating his campaign now on sucking foolish leftist voters away from Gore. He was claiming to be the preferable leftist candidate. He wasn't campaigning at all to draw votes away from the conservative end of the political spectrum. So: Nader clearly was targeting to throw this "election" to Bush - and he succeeded in Florida, at doing precisely that.

Nader was actively working to swing the election to the GOP.

[mzmolly]

190. "Nader was actively working to swing the election to the GOP."

Absolutely agree.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

193. Nader's intentions were clear

Nader wanted the GOP to win

[mzmolly]

194. Yes, to "punish the Democrats"

[Cirsium]

63. It is ridiculous

The idea that Nader voters were owned by the Democrats is pure nonsense. There is no way to know if those Nader voters would have voted or Gore had Nader it been on the ballot, or voted at all. Many said that Bush was their second choice, not Gore. In any case, they did not vote for Gore, so they are not Gore voters - by definition. Also, there were right wing candidates on the ballot as well, who did about as well as Nader.

How did the Democrats respond to the third party threat from the Socialists in the 1930's? By moving to the Left. How have too many Democrats responded to third party threats in recent times? By whining and complaining and demanding that the party move to the right, and by attacking and suppressing the Left.

[vanessa_ca]

195. +100,000 -eom

[standingtall]

198. FDR didn't move all the way over to Hughie Long's left

The 1930s was almost 100 years. Very few people still around from then and most of those were to young to remember much about it. That was off the heels of the great depression those people would've voted for a broom stick over the republicans. They didn't have mountains of right wing talk radio or right wing cable news to brainwash people back then either. Besides Democrats have been moving left for better than 30 years now just not getting there quick enough for some people.

[Cirsium]

223. Really?

Democrats are moving to the Left? I missed that.

[standingtall]

225. Well then you haven't been paying attention

Was less then 20 years ago that no Democratic President was willing to say they were in favor of gay marriage . Even Obama would not come out in favor of it until sometime after he was elected. Plus there were all the Southern Democrats who left the party, because civil rights and desegregation was too much for them.

[Cirsium]

231. No, not really

The Republican party has increasingly used bigotry and fear mongering in their campaigns. That is the change, not the Democratic party moving to the Left.

Don't let the right wing media tell you how to think politically. The culture war issues are all manufactured by the right wingers. That is just a tactical move, it isn't their real agenda. It is a means to an end.

Famous right wing attorney the late Ted Olsen, a member in the Reagan and Bush administrations, argued in favor of same sex marriage in front of the Supreme Court. He saw no inconsistency between right wing ideology and same sex marriage. There isn't any.

Their real agenda is to privatize and militarize everything, to cripple and abolish the public sphere, to steal and exploit the public wealth.

That is the right wing agenda. To be on the Left means opposing that agenda. The Democratic party leadership has been steadily moving to the right on that.

[JohnSJ]

135. Doesn't cut it. He knew he was a spoiler and he knew what the stakes, and in 2016 he did the same false equivalency.

He is an self-centered jerk who helped pave the way for the SC with his bullshit.

and that some people still defend him.

[Autumn]

185. None of that matters. Anyone can run for President aslong as they meet the requirements

Be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years old and have been a resident of the United States for 14 years, Nader met all those requiremants. That's the system we have. No one is owed the presidency. Win or lose it's all on the candidate who is running , their campaign and it's their job to get the vote of the people. If they can't get the people to vote for them that's all on them.

[JohnSJ]

199. Of course he can run, but he knew by running he would be a spoiler and

and couldn’t win, and contributed to the SC we have today.

He wears the mantle of being an environmentalist, pro-consumer advocate, etc., but his actions say otherwise.

[Autumn]

200. I disagree. the SC stepped in, gave the presidency to Bush. When all the votes were finally counted,

after 9/11 Gore had won FL. Too late.

Fuck Sandra Day O’Connor

[ShazzieB]

260. Exactly.

People keep arguing that Nader had the right to run, like that makes everything okay. That's beside the point.

Having the rightto do something doesn't necessarily mean it's the right choice, the best choice, or even a good one. Nader made some bad choices in 2000. He had the tight to make those choices, but that doesn't mean they were good choices.

[JanMichael]

163. Yes.The Florida Voter Purge plus the SC was the death knell

Nader is not the reason that Gore lost. Plus those fucking butterfly ballots....

[ClimateChangeisReal]

278. Nader divided the dem majority

which made it possible for W to get close enough in Florida which made it possible for the Rehnquist 5 to carry out their judicial coup d'état. The Liberal democrats breaking away from the Labor party in the U.K. resulted in a century of rule by the Tory party. I fear that this is where our country is now headed thanks to Nader. Nader divided and the repugs have now conquered because of Nader.

[Autumn]

316. When the votes were counted AL Gore had won the election, but Bush had been installed.

FUCK THE SUPREME COURT. Had the court not stopped the count Al Gore would have been president. All my old life I have seen a third party person running for president. Had the SC not interfered Nader would have slid into the dust bin of historty for 'Unsafe at any Speed' and car seats for babies.

Interesting that you respond in August to a post of mine from March

[ClimateChangeisReal]

320. Nader made it possible

for W to get close enough in Florida and then run to the corrupt Rehnquist 5 to bail him out. Fyi, dates on a post shouldn't matter.

[Autumn]

322. Get your post count higher on someone else. Bye.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

133. Because of Nader, we got Roberts and Alito

Nader is responsible for Citizens United, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the election of trump

[JohnSJ]

137. Yup. He knew he was a spoiler, and he knew the SC was at stake, and in 2016 he sealed the deal for his fans by saying

saying there was no difference, along with trump has done some "good things" in 2016

https://www.aol.com/news/2016-05-13-ralph-nader-donald-trump-has-done-some-good-hillary-clintons-21376809.html

I have nothing good to say about that SCUM

[jrthin]

6. I loathe Ralph Nader. I wish he'd disappear from the face of the earth; but he's not wrong.

[PSPS]

18. I like Ralph Nader even with his shortcomings. I'm glad he's still on the face of the earth. And I agree he's not wrong.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

279. Nader helped the repugs destroy our country

What is there about that ugly truth to like?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. That's the last person I want lecturing me about anything. NT

[JohnSJ]

10. Exactly.

[PSPS]

19. Lecturing? His editorial is excellent and deserves attention.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

134. No it is not

Nader's latest essay is weak and poorly reasoned. I strongly disagree with your opinion

[ClimateChangeisReal]

280. Nader destroyed his credibility in 2000!

Our country wouldn't be suffering so terribly today if it hadn't been for Nader in 2000. It's time for Nader apologists to face this ugly truth.

[Hotler]

9. Hey everybody, a Ralph Nader thread, everyone dog pile on Ralph. Even if this essay make sense.

A lot of us here have been saying the same thing, where are our former elected leaders? The oath of office mentions defending against all enemies foreign and domestic. Not one person who took the oath has used it as leverage to declare the fascist a domestic enemy and call for immediate arrest. The reason, no marbles, no gumption.

[Autumn]

13. Pavlovian conditioning. It never fails.

[Hotler]

20. Is the essay wrong or, you just don't like who penned it. Just pretend Hillary wrote it. nt

[Autumn]

26. I said when Ralph is right he's fucking right. This essay is 100% right on.

Last edited Sun Mar 16, 2025, 12:38 PM - Edit history (1)

The usual reaction to Nader is a pavlovian response.
This might explain it

In Pavlov's famous experiment, dogs learned to associate a neutral stimulus (like a bell) with an unconditioned stimulus (food), resulting in a conditioned response (salivation) to the previously neutral stimulus alone.

[Hotler]

31. I misunderstood, I thought you were directing it at me. Sorry. nt

[JohnSJ]

15. There are plenty of people who have credibility and say the same thing, including Raskin, Schiff, AOC, etc. nader lost

any credibility he ever had when he said there was no difference between republicans and Democrats, and that encouraged enough people NOT to vote for the Democratic candidate, which opened the door to the dismantling of the SC acceleration of deregulation, the IWR based on a LIE, etc. etc. etc.

[Lonestarblue]

17. Exactly. Nader is not wrong in what he is saying. We have all been complaining about the need for more protests.

Editing to add: I don’t have to live someone to see that what they’re saying has a basis in truth.

[PSPS]

23. LOL. I guess so! This is an excellent essay.

One thing that makes it hard to get a truly effective resistance movement going in the US is its form of government. With the "winner take all" design, the shut-out party has absolutely no power at all except, maybe, in the Senate when Schumer is gone (he's making the media rounds now just to hawk his book while dodging questions about his capitulation.)

[GreenWave]

73. And don't anybody ever blame Texas for purging over 200,000 African American voters that cycle in Fl.

Yep! Just forgive and forget as we all know a few hundred votes is way more than over 200,000.

[alarimer]

90. It does make sense

And most people haven't really examined the truth about the 2000 election. The SC stopped the count when Gore would probably have won.

In any case, a number of articles have examined the voting and, surprise, more Democrats voted for Bush (or sat out the election) than voted for Nader.

[mzmolly]

176. What makes more sense, is Democrats told him so.

But, here we are.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

281. Nader has earned every bit of the dog pile he's getting and more

It amazes me that Nader apologists are still making excuses for Nader and are still refusing to take responsibility for their votes in 2000 that made the nightmare our country is now facing possible..

[tritsofme]

16. I couldn't give two fucks what this asshole has to say about anything.

[Passages]

21. A smart honest guy.

Some hate him for daring to engage in a democratic system that heavily favors the two-party system.

Gore's loss was not simplistically related to Nader, but he is an easy target.

The 2000 Presidential Election: Why Gore Lost

by GERALD M. POMPER

Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2001, volume 116, issue 2, page 201

The presidential election of 2000 stands at best as a paradox, at worst as a scandal, of American democracy. Democrat Albert Gore won the most votes, a half million more than his Republican opponent George W. Bush, but lost the presidency in the electoral college by a count of 271-267. Even this count was suspect, dependent on the tally in Florida, where many minority voters were denied the vote, ballots were confusing, and recounts were mishandled and manipulated. The choice of their leader came not from the citizens of the nation, but from lawyers battling for five weeks. The final decision was made not by 105 million voters, but by a 5-4 majority of the unelected U.S. Supreme Court, issuing a tainted and partisan verdict.

That decision ended the presidential contest, and George W. Bush now heads the conservative restoration to power, buttressed by thin party control of both houses of Congress. The election of 2000, however, will not fade. It encapsulates the political forces shaping the United States at the end of the twentieth century. Its controversial results will affect the nation for many years of the new era.

THE SHAPE OF POLITICS IN 2000

The Geography of the Vote
https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/pomper.htm

[mzmolly]

35. He doesn't know the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

That's not smart. He also said it didn't matter who appointed the SCOTUS. NOW, he's pointing fingers at others for enabling this mess when he helped get us here? Not interested in anything he has to say.

[Passages]

43. I keep getting a Gateway error trying to respond to you.

Sorry about that.

I believe Nader was a non-conventional guy who was not solely responsible for Gore losing, nor is he a terrible man who had nefarious desires for higher office.

[mzmolly]

100. Nader helped Republicans.

Jill Stein does the same. I’m not interested in hearing from either one of them.

[malaise]

36. Gore was robbed

Rec

[Passages]

41. I agree. I also see in the analysis why Gore's campaign could have been much

more successful than it was...without relying on blaming Nader. Currently, Democrats are in deep trouble, and ignoring Nader's good advice is a bad idea.

[mzmolly]

98. Screw

Nader. He doesn’t deserve anything but scorn. Does Karl Rove have any advice for us?

[ClimateChangeisReal]

284. Nader is a hypocritical, out of control, dishonest egomaniac

who stupidly divided the dem majority in order to feed his out of control ego. Nader apologists refuse to admit that the 97,000 votes Nader stole from Al Gore in Florida made the difference. Nader's entire campaign was based on the big lie that there were no differences between Al Gore and W. How is that honest? Lets not forget that the repugs funded Nader's tv ad campaign that was run in crucial places like Florida and that Nader was in Miami spreading his big lie the weekend before the election. BTW, Nader's financial disclosure forms n 2000 showed that he invested his own money in the big corporations that he claimed publicly to hate. No Nader dishonesty. is the fact that Nader treated his employees like dirt and fired some of them when they tried to unionize.

[Ping Tung]

24. Thanks, Ralph. Now is not the time for Politicss as usual and empty compromise with the fascists.

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place. Gandhi

[ClimateChangeisReal]

286. The denial that Nader apologists remain in is amazing

None of today's nightmare would be possible without Nader taking Al Gore votes in 2000 in Florida with his big lie that there were no differences between Al Gore and W. Still think there are no differences between Al Gore and W?

[JohnSJ]

25. Geez. Now we are going to put this jackass on a pedestal because he says something obvious. His actions in 2000 will

outlive any positive thing he says or does.

Maybe it is time for me to take a break from this place.

[malaise]

51. He's been on a pedestal for me since he gave me a seatbelt

That is all

[ClimateChangeisReal]

287. Nader destroyed his pedestal in 2000

by helping the repugs steal the 2000 election. Think the repugs supported Nader's consumer protection efforts? Think again. The repugs were only too glad to help Nader take votes from Al Gore. Where aws Nader's concern for his consumer protection efforts in 2000,. Nader flushed his consumer protection efforts down the toilet in 2000.

[ZRB]

68. And the usual suspects are here to defend him

It doesn’t matter how many elections certain far left spoilers cost us, the superfans will bend over backwards to carry water for them. The usernames all check out.

[DBoon]

27. This has been said before and not by Ralph Nader

[leftstreet]

29. DURec

[LuvLoogie]

30. Ralph Nader, Jill Stein, Cornell West...

are narcissists kneecapping Democrats.

[Hekate]

188. Yep. Our best and brightest...

[mzmolly]

32. F Nader, he was warned.

Does he see the 'differences' now?

[Auggie]

33. Silence may be complicity. Silence may be strategy.

Waiting until closer to mid-terms?

[JI7]

34. Nader was attacking Kamala Harris last year

The guy is a grotesque fraud .

[mzmolly]

39. I've alerted on this divisive attack on Democrats.

Public Citizen is a great organization but Nader is a narcissist who perpetually helps Republicans.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

132. I remember

Nader is an asshole who wanted trump to win just as he wanted W. Bush to win in 2000 and 2004

[Hieronymus Phact]

38. Ralph Nader?

What's he doing making noise? It's not a presidential election year!

[JI7]

40. Ralph Nader: "The election is between the fascism of Trump and the autocracy of Harris"

Nader is pessimistic about the future. He would not disclose how he plans to vote, but he clearly believes Trump poses the greatest threat. He framed the election as a “competition between [the] fascism of Trump and [the] autocracy of Harris in a two-party duopoly”. (Last year he told the Washington Post: “Autocracy leaves an opening. They don’t suppress votes. They don’t suppress free speech.”)

Prising apart the two-party duopoly has been a defining mission of Nader’s life; it has also led him to some unusual bedfellows. Ross Perot’s centrist Reform Party endorsed Nader in 2004, four years after Donald Trump sought its presidential nomination. In 2015 Nader praised Trump for not ruling out running as a third-party candidate and said he would be a “nightmare of the Republican corporate establishment”.

https://www.newstatesman.com/international-content/the-international-interview/2024/11/ralph-nader-interview-election-is-competition-between-fascism-donald-trump-autocracy-kamala-harris

[ZRB]

78. And he still his his fans gushing here.

His actions in 2000 directly led to the deaths of thousands or even millions in Iraq, but that's not the area of the Middle East Nader fans care about, so meh from them.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

147. This is the same as when Nader claimed that three was no difference between W Bush and Al Gore

Nader claimed that there was no difference between the Democratic Party and the GOP. Nader was wrong in 2000/2004 and was wrong on 2024

[La Coliniere]

42. Regardless of how you feel about Nader,

he is spot on here. This is no time to remain silent. As much as I despise the horrible Marine Le Pen, the French Nationalist/Fascist, as soon as she loses an election, she’s out there fighting for her wretched cause louder and stronger than ever. The woman never leaves the stage. She is relentless in her fight. We need that kind of fighting spirit here, right now. Kamala Harris…where are you? I was glad to see Tim Walz start to get vocal and begin fighting back, so good on him. We need the chorus of resistance to grow, fast and loud before it’s too late…which I fear it may already be.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

289. Nader made the current nightmare possible

There would be no Rump dictator now if it wasn't for Nader in 2000. Nader has no credibility berceuse of 2000.

[SCantiGOP]

44. I'm not a big fan of Mr Nader

But he is 100% on the mark with this viewpoint. We should all adopt this approach when talking to our Congress critters.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

290. Again Nader made the current nightmare possible

with his behavior in 2000.

[red dog 1]

46. George W. Bush "won" the 2000 election, with help from Nader.

(I'll never forgive Nader for that)

However, he's right about everything he says in the OP.

[Boomerproud]

53. Yes, totally mixed emotions about his statement.

The message is clear and correct, just a problem with the messenger for a lot of folks.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

291. Nader's concern for such issues was no where to be found in 2000

I'll also never forgive Nader for 2000.

[Botany]

50. Fuck you Ralph you made this all possible

You took republican money in 2000 in order to run TV spots in Florida
and you were able to suck enough votes to make it close enough that
w was able to steal Florida and as POTUS he put Roberts and Alito on
the Court and America got fucked. Why aren’t you dead yet?

I have seen your act up close and in person and you are a loathsome bag of
malignant rat mucus.

[NNadir]

52. Ralph is reponsible for the thugs on the Supreme Court.

He should shut the fuck up.

[Joinfortmill]

54. He has a fucking point.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

292. He destroyed his credibility in 2000

[Joinfortmill]

300. Ok. He still has a point.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

304. He doesn't have the credibility to make the point

since he destroyed his credibility in 2000 by playing such a central role in 2000 which created the current nightmare.

[Joinfortmill]

307. You have the last word.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

310. He has no point

because his behavior in 2000 helped make this nightmare possible.

[Joinfortmill]

312. We disagree.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

321. Nader has no business complaining now

because his behavior in 2000 made the current nightmare possible. Nader has 0 credibility now because of his behavior in 2000.

[MagickMuffin]

57. Hey Ralph, Why aren't you including Jill Stein and the Green Party

I haven’t heard sh!t from anyone within the Green Party. Hmmmm, Why is that?

Oh yeah, I’ll tell you why, Jill Stein is a Putin loving toady and doesn’t have anything to say. She is defending the take over of our government and democracy.

[sop]

58. Ralph repeating what millions of people already know doesn't make his opinion wrong, just worthless.

I can't believe people are still arguing Nader had nothing to do with Gore's loss. That's political illiteracy. They should learn how our two party democratic voting system works.

[Wifes husband]

210. Nader

The fact is he intended to be a spoiler, and he was.
He had no chance to win and he knew it. He damn sure did not HELP Gore.

By the way, listen to one of his speeches sometime. Prepare to be underwhelmed.

His essay says nothing that better respected democrats have not said. I have no respect for the man.

[Gimpyknee]

59. Ralph Nader?

I thought he was dead.

[LudwigPastorius]

60. Kamala Harris, the former Attorney General of...

California, U. S. Senator, and first woman Vice President, is a “hapless loser”?

What does that make you, Ralph?

Go fuck yourself in the ear.

[hlthe2b]

62. While he isn't wrong on his words and sentiment--

it is a bit rich coming from Nader...

[TheRickles]

64. Two things: #1 - Gore didn't even win his home state of NC. Hard to pin that on Nader.

#2 - The answer to Nader's questions about Dem silence may have a lot to do with threats of violence, blackmail, extortion and bribery. These are techniques that Trump learned during his apprenticeship with that Master of the Dark Arts, Roy Cohn.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

72. North Carolina is not Al Gore's home state. NT

[DFW]

95. And we thought the far right was loose with facts.

If someone counters with Harris not winning her home state of Wisconsin, I‘m taking a few days off.

[TheRickles]

102. To DFW and Mahatma: Yes, you are correct. Gore's home state is Tennessee. My bad.

But the point still remains that Gore lost his home state, and that's not on Nader. That's on him.

[standingtall]

124. Pretty big misrepresentation Tennessee was a deep red hell hole by the time Gore

ran for President. I remember hearing that same talking point being pushed by Fox news back in 2000. Tennessee had changed to the point that no Democrat could've won a national election there. Bush didn't win his home State of Maine and Trump didn't win his home State of New York either.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

293. Nader took 97,000 votes from Al Gore in Florida

with his big lie and repug financed tv ad campaign. That can be directly pinned on Nadr. It's time for the Nader apologists to face the ugly truth.

[Cirsium]

65. An observation

I suspect that people hate Nader because they don't agree with his politics. This "he caused Gore to lose" mantra - 20 years later!! - is a red herring.

[ZRB]

82. Wrong

His policy positions are great. The way he went about expressing them has caused 25 years of consequences, including mass death. Yeah, I'm still mad about it. Any Democrat who was alive at that time should still be blood-boilingly enraged.

[Cirsium]

87. Coincidence, then?

Is it just a coincidence, then, that the same people arguing against progressive policies are also going after Nader?

If it is true that Nader critics truly think "his policy positions are great" they should be pretty angry with Democrats for not adopting those policy positions, those very popular policy positions, those very progressive policy positions. That is the easy solution to the problem.

If Nader's 2000 campaign really caused "25 years of consequences, including mass death" the the problem is much bigger than Nader. He is still being used today for the purpose of going after the progressives who advocate for those great policy positions. That is the problem, not Nader (20 years later!!!).

Strange how there is so little criticism of this type over the years for George Wallace's 1968 campaign. That was far more damaging than Nader. Also, you might notice that the Republicans did not for a minute sit around whining about Ross Perot, and blaming him for their loss to Clinton.

I am still mad that Gore ran a weak campaign and rolled over at the end.

[ZRB]

92. "Progressives" have great policies

But are largely terrible at advocating for them, displaying a total lack of understanding of the political system and culture they reside in.

[DFW]

99. They have great expertise in at least one field

Mainly, trashing those who would be our/their allies.

If they were as good at helping instead of trashing, not only would there be more of us winning elections, there would be more of them winning elections.

Instead of bashing the Clintons, both in their late seventies, how about making pilgrimages to Pete Buttigieg and urging him to run? Oh, yeah, I ran into Nader at the 2008 Denver Convention that nominated Obama and Biden. What Nader had to say there was conspicuous, namely nothing.

[Cirsium]

116. We just hate them, don't we though?

So impractical, so unrealistic. They actually think we can change things! So naive. Time they wake up and smell the coffee ffs.

I just knew this wasn't about Nader at all.

[ZRB]

167. Certain ones, yes sometimes

When I think of all the elections and progress that their purity has cost us through their relentless Democrat-bashing. Yeah those progressives I absolutely can’t stand. I won’t forget the “they’re both the same” crowd that Nader spearheaded in 2000. I won’t forget the “hold feet to fire” crowd that sat out 2010 . I don’t forgive the 2016 sore primary losers that kept talking shit about the nominee and the party. I especially will not forget or forgive the latest iteration, the “Genocide Joe” brigade. It’s all generally the same crowd. They have done nothing to advance their policy goals and have helped enable endless destruction. Yeah those people I hate.

[Cirsium]

177. Purity lol

I was wondering when the "purity" argument would surface. It is bs in my opinion.

Election after election after election the progressives compromise, work within the system, get in line and vote Democratic. But that is never enough. No, we must also stop advocating for our positions, stop talking about them. Supposedly we are the ones demanding "purity" - though it is the moderate Dems who demand absolute loyalty, who demand that we accept their approach and philosophy lest we be accused of being "divisive" or "helping Republicans." What is more "purist" than that? They can criticize us, but we are not allowed to even disagree with them.

Your side will probably win as usual. You have the money and the powerful people on your side and we are nobodies. Isn't that enough?

[ZRB]

212. My "side" is the Democratic Party.

My desired domestic policies are largely in line with the far, far left. I just happen to also understand that 95 percent of what I'd like to see will never, ever happen, so I do the best I can and support the Democratic Party, the only non-fascist party in our country that can win.

This is a party that has had full control of government for only four out of the last 30 years. In those four short years they pulled us out of two depressions, saved multiple US industries, gave us our first national healthcare system (yeah yeah, it's far from perfect), recovered from the first global pandemic in over a century, brought 21st century infrastructure upgrades, made serious attempts to mitigate climate change; basically they've delivered bill after bill through razor thin majorities, only to turn around and get savagely punished in the midterms. It's bad enough our party has to face the mass ignorance of the average voter, but to be so accomplished in an extremely progress-limiting Federal system and still be screamed at from the far left as not being good enough, it makes my blood boil. Try to imagine what 6-8 years of full control might have brought us.

And the whole point of being salty with Nader is that no, progressives have NOT gotten in line. A large enough segment continues to actively cost the Democratic Party national elections. That's what Nader did in 2000 (and tried to in 2004, but wasn't needed).

[Cirsium]

217. Sure

No one says they oppose progressive positions. They don't need to. "Don't get me wrong, I agree with you BUT, you need to..." (be realistic, be practical, face reality, don't be purist, etc.)

"95 percent of what I'd like to see will never, ever happen."

That is where we part ways. I am certain that is not true, and I don't understand how a person can say that they would "like to see" things that they don't even think are possible.

"Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."

[ZRB]

238. I've paid attention to how the US Federal System works

The magical bully pulpit doesn't actually do anything when facing a Senate that gives Wyoming as much power as California. We are lucky to get 2 years of unified government out of every 16, and usually have to clean up a giant mess left by Republicans. Yet progressives demand that they achieve every political fantasy while they're at it, or else. It's a joke.

Attacking from the left hurts the party and is a pointless waste. As a strategy, it has achieved nothing but the enablement of Republican terror. It is indefensible.

[Cirsium]

239. Not credible

Your deep animosity toward progressives is revealed by your comments. Your pretensions that this is about practicality - given the nature of the system, Wyoming, etc. - are not in the least bit credible.

Advocacy from the Left is "a pointless waste" and is "indefensible" and has "achieved nothing but the enablement (sic) of Republican terror" and is "a joke?"

No progressives are demanding that the party "achieve every political fantasy while they're at it, or else" nor are progressive political positions a "fantasy." People are advocating for progressive positions, and you seem to have a big problem with that. Progressive positions on most issues are supported by a majority of the voters, so that is hardly a "fantasy."

I can't imagine anything more destructive to the Democratic party and more certain to create division, discouragement and defections than the sentiments you just expressed.

[ZRB]

241. I love progressive positions, just not the advocates.

My progressive positions include priorities like saving the planet from climate change. That's something Al Gore would have made a much better start on than W, but "progressives" said they were both the same. That was some effective advocacy there. I can think of plenty more examples where progressives sabotaged Democrats, but very few of where they helped win elections.

I favor winning elections to advance as much progressive legislation as possible, not stomping my feet, rewarding myself for my own purity, and LOSING EVERY TIME.

[Cirsium]

242. lol

Sort of the reverse on the fundies "hate the sin, love the sinner?"

No, you do not "love progressive positions." You merely want to say that you "love progressive positions." That gives you cover as you can then proceed to attack the progressive advocates.

It is not credible.

There were people in the 1850s saying "don't get me wrong, I support Abolition, but I am opposed to the Abolitionists." Were they really in support of Abolition? No. But they didn't want to say that. By claiming to merely oppose the Abolitionists, or their tactics or their rhetoric, they could effectively block Abolition without having to say they supported slavery. Many Whigs argued that they were opposed to slavery, but flavored a gradual approach as the "more reality" way to go, given the nature of the system. They said that the "radicals" were "hurting the cause," that Abolition was "impractical," it was a fantasy. They said we are lucky to get anything from the slave power, give the system that gave the slave states so much power.

The same dynamic played out with organized Labor struggles, with the Suffragette movement, with the Civil Rights movement.

"Don't get me wrong, I support voting rights, but that King character is too radical and confrontational me." That sentiment was pretty common in white neighborhoods in the 60's.

[ZRB]

243. No, I really just don't like the advocates

Due to their having a poor grasp of civics, the electorate, and the various cultures that comprise the country they live in. I swear a lot of these advocates have never met the mouth-breathing half-wits in the general public that call themselves "independents" or "swing voters." Some of those have to be won over. We have a Senate and an Electoral College. We don't have a parliament and ranked choice voting. The only path forward is unrelenting advocacy FOR the Democratic Party, not against it. Many in the far left quite obviously don't get this, hence the treatment of Nader as someone other than one of America's greatest villains.

[Cirsium]

244. lol squared

I can assure you that I have a very good grasp of civics, the electorate, and the various cultures that comprise the country they live in. It us kind of amazing that you think insults against those you disagree with is a plus.

Progressive politics are what wins over voters, and a will to fight and stand for something. The milquetoast "be pratical" cautious finger to the wind approach, the compromising, the pandering the condescension and paternalism - that is what the voters reject about the Democrats.

Strike one - "Progressives have a poor grasp of civics, the electorate, and the various cultures."

Strike two - We have to move to the right to get voters.

Strike three - We need to promote the party, not the policies that matter to people.

Next batter...

[ZRB]

245. I didn't call you any of those things. I'm talking about certain progressive advocates on the far left.

That's not necessarily you. I didn't say we need to move to the right. We do need to cater our messaging to get some of those voters in some states. It doesn't help when progressive advocates slam centrist Democrats in purple or red states, expecting that every district can elect an AOC.

I want Democrats to win so they can continue to pass progressive legislation, as they have in every brief window of power. You can choose to think whatever you like about my positions. I'll continue to support Democrats who can win, not third party spoilers responsible for countless deaths.

[Cirsium]

246. Oh, I see

That's not necessarily me you are insulting. You said it was progressives that you had a problem with. I took you at your word.

"I didn't say we need to move to the right...we do need to cater our messaging..."

OK. So which is it? You can't do both. Or do you mean lie to voters, say we are moving right and then don't? Or something? Actually the reverse works. Run like FDR, govern like Reagan. Obama ran on extremely progressive positions. Too bad that was not reflected more in the administration's actual actions.

I think almost every district could elect an AOC. I think that it will happen. How would you be with that? AOC's positions speak to the needs and aspirations of 80%+ of the population, no matter where they are. It seems like the right wing propaganda has beaten you down pretty badly. Stand up and fight ffs. "Brief window of power?" Damn, why keep surrendering?

"I want Democrats to win so they can continue to pass progressive legislation."

Never happens. Not how it works. Take a stand and you will get elected.

[ZRB]

247. Ok, based on this post, you really haven't met many Americans

An AOC in every district? Come on, this is getting comical.

Yes, brief window of power. That's what the Democrats get. Usually about 12-14 months every few decades where real legislation is possible. And they always have Republican messes to clean up, partially brought about by third-party voting petulant leftists.

"Never Happens." Did you see what Biden pushed through a Manchin-Sinema Senate in 21-23? Was that not progressive enough for you?

As to Barack Obama's promises, have you ever heard of a guy called Joe Lieberman? Are you aware of when Ted Kennedy died? Do you have any clue how legislation is advanced in the Federal System of the US? I'm beginning to think you don't.

[Cirsium]

248. Wrong again

I have been working in campaigns for 50+ years. Mostly in the districts the Dems ignore or taken for granted, the districts where most of the people live. The upscale suburbs where Democratic leadership focuses so much attention are more of a challenge, yes.

"Not progressive enough for me??"" lololol

It is not about me, nor about what I want. It is not about me when you are insulting me rather than addressing what I am saying, and the positions I support are not about me, they are about what is best for the most people and what would be most successful nor the party.

"As to Barack Obama's promises, have you ever heard of a guy called Joe Lieberman?"

Oh good grief. There are always excuses.

[ShazzieB]

261. I support progressive policies. I dont like Nader for COMPLETELY unrelated reasons

[Cirsium]

265. OK

What is it that you don't like?

[standingtall]

114. Maybe republicans aren't whinining about Ross Perot because they have the Supreme Court

and comparing the 92 election to the 2000 election is total false equivalency. Perot didn't run as a hard line conservative and held many centrist and even some left leaning economic positions and got a good chunk of what would've been Clinton voters. You'd have to figure out how much Clinton vote and how much Bush vote Perot got and recalculate electoral college math. If you gave Bush every Perot vote Bush Bush would've won in a landslide winning California and coming within an eyelash of winning New York which absolutely would not have happened. The 2000 election came down to just 500 votes in a State the size of Florida and Nader was clearly left winning and I doubt many of his voters would've voted for Bush and if they would it would only be, because Nader conditioned them to think that way with his both sides are the same message a lie we are still dealing with until this day. If Nader would've dropped out of the race and encouraged his supporters to vote for Gore or at least not promoted the both sides are the same narrative. Gore would've won and wouldn't have even been close enough for the Supreme Court to steal it.

[Cirsium]

118. It is Nader, then

It is his opinions you don't like, as I said. The fluky nature of the 200o election just offers a convenient pretext or bashing Nader, and, as we see with another poster, and as I predicted, bashing progressives as well.

Nader never said "both sides are the same."

"We scoured hundreds of news reports from 2000 looking for an instance of Nader saying Gore and Bush were the same, or that it didn't matter which was elected, or any equivalent phrase."

The "Nader says both sides are the same" is a creation of those who want to bash progressives or who look for a lazy excuse for failure. The "blame the voters" mentality, so common here, is what hurts the Democratic party, not Nader or Stein.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2008/jun/30/ralph-nader/nader-almost-said-gore-bush-but-not-quite/

I think it is likely that those who voted for Nader would have registered a protest vote for some candidate whether or not Nader was on the ballot, or perhaps not have voted at all. I they didn't vote for Gore, they are not Gore voters. Pretty simple.

Here are some things that Nader did say:

"It doesn't matter who is in the White House, Gore or Bush, for the vast majority of government departments and agencies."

"I have indicated that there are 'few major differences' between the two parties, not that there is 'no difference between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush."

"The only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door."

"It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote. Both parties are selling our government to big business paymasters. That's a pretty serious similarity."

"Because it's the permanent corporate government that's running the show here ... you can see they're morphing more and more on more and more issues into one corporate party."

Do you not think if someone said those things here, or anything even close, that they would get the same reaction as the mention of Nader does? Of course they would, and from the same members, as well.

Ergo, it is the opinions he expressed that people object to, not Nader's campaign and the 2000 election.

[sop]

85. I agree with most of Nader's political views, but I would never support a 3rd party candidate in our two-party system.

It's a politically stupid thing to do.

[Cirsium]

89. Not talking about that

I am not advocating third party voting. I am talking about people blaming Nader and Nader voters for the failures of the Democratic party.

[JI7]

101. Democrats have had more success than the Green Party

Why has the Green Party failed ? Of course that's assuming they actually support the causes they claim to.

I mean even at local and state level.

We can call out intentions and lack of honesty.

Nader refused to say how he would vote last year and was attacking Harris. He did nothing to stop Trump. And now he wants to lecture.

[Cirsium]

119. I am not a supporter

I am not a Green Party supporter and can't speak for them.

I am it defending Nader, either. I am defending the progressives who get smeared with this Green/Nader hate fest.

[JI7]

120. Nader engaged in Kamala hate fest last year when she was tryng to stop Trump

[Cirsium]

123. What he said

Here are some of the things he said.

The election is between the fascism of Trump and the autocracy of Harris.

...

They’re preparing to use this tiny Green Party as a scapegoat if they fail to defeat the worst Republican Party in history. Trump’s GOP is cruel, mean, power-hungry, imperial, demonstrably anti-worker, anti-children – blocked the child tax extension, for example – anti-women – Trump’s a major misogynist – bigoted against immigrants, and willing to somersault the entire government into a prostrating position before Wall Street. If you can’t landslide a party like that the way FDR and Truman would have, you have to look for scapegoats.

...

Twenty-five million workers make between $7.25 and $15 an hour. You raise it to 15 bucks an hour, which is low by European standards, and you answer the question of low-wage workers: ‘Why should I vote?’ Go vote for a raise – you’ve long earned it. Then they can make it authentic… by actually holding up the bill as they campaign around the country that would be passed in Congress if they win.

On the Republicans "populist" appeal:

It’s what I call the false populism of generic corporatists. They’ll talk about immigrants taking jobs, and they’ll talk about Democrats being out of touch with blue-collar workers. But when push comes to shove, they’re hardcore corporatists.

The overall issue here is the supremacy of corporate power over everything." FDR said 'the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself.' That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. Trump has provided tons of evidence that he wants to be a dictator.

...

Trump ushered in the era of political nicknames. Most of the press dutifully reported them, including his capital letters. The people nicknamed were not allowed a reply. Social media is now picking up on Trump’s nicknaming—they are calling Biden ‘Genocide Joe’ and Kamala ‘Holocaust Harris.’ Unless Harris breaks with Biden on his unconditional and illegal support (6 federal statutes) of Netanyahu’s genocides and mass slaughter daily in Palestine and Lebanon, she may lose the election just as Hubert Humphrey did in 1968 in a razor thin contest with Richard Nixon because he wouldn’t break with President Lyndon Johnson on the Vietnam War. Can’t say she wasn’t forewarned.

...

Trump should have been landslided by a Democratic party, say the vintage of Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman. This Democratic party is compromised in many ways in the direction of obedience to corporate priorities.

First of all, the party contracts out most of its campaign to corporate-conflicted political consulting firms and media firms. Most people think these consultants sort of stand on the byline and just wait for a call to get a request for advice.

No, no. They pretty much run the campaign. They raise the money with strings attached. They develop the strategies, the tactics, the language. They develop what the taboos are, what shouldn’t be talked about. That accounts, by the way, for the weaker portrayal of Gov. Walz in a debate with Vance. The Democratic National Committee had him tied up in knots about what he couldn’t say.

He wasn’t himself as he was governor in Minnesota. So, number one, when you contract out your campaign as candidates to corporatists, what do you think’s going to happen?

Well, the first thing that’s going to happen is you’re not going to have front and center a minimum wage increase at least to $15 an hour. That’s 25 million workers who would have gotten a raise.

That’s a lot of votes. You could have had a slogan “Go vote for a raise. It’s long been denied you, and you’ve earned it.” Instead, it’s a throwaway line.

She took several weeks even to use the number $15 an hour. It’s now $7.25 an hour federal. I know Connecticut and some of the states have higher minimum wages, but over half the states still stick with seven and a quarter.

The second thing, a party in thraldom to corporate campaign consultants does is it doesn’t increase the benefits. And Social Security, which have been frozen for over 50 years. Who’s a champion? Congressman John Larson, he’s been pushing Nancy Pelosi and the corporate Democrat in western Massachusetts, Richard Neal, who is a chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Month after month, he couldn’t get the bill to have a vote on the floor. When Nancy Pelosi was the speaker, this bill, by the way, was supported by 200 Democrats in the House. Kamala Harris and her handlers wouldn’t even talk about it. They talk about protecting Social Security as it is. No kidding. But not increasing benefits for the first time in over 50 years.

But it’s just an example. Cracking down on corporate crime, that comes in over 80 percent. Cracking down on corporate crooks, over 80 percent. That’s a lot of conservative voters, she never even talked about it. She sent her brother-in-law up to Wall Street, in her middle of her campaign to get advice on what she should say about tax policy. That’s not exactly a way to get votes, is it?

Increasing taxes on the wealthy. She mentioned that once in a while, but nobody listening to her really thought she was authentic. Again, it’s a throwaway progressive line that corporate Democrats send in the direction of what they think are some progressive voters.

But where does that come in? Eighty-five percent of the American people want higher taxes on the grossly under- taxed super-wealthy like Elon Musk and the big corporations.

So what is it? What did it come down to on Nov. 5? 230,000 votes switched in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin would have defeated Trump.

Seven million Democrats who voted in 2020 for Biden stayed home and expect to win the election against their Führer, Donald Trump, the chronic liar, the chronic criminal violator, the chronic narcissist, the chronic braggadocio, the chronic ignoramus.

That’s what the voters who turned out with a very narrow majority, very narrow majority elected an American Führer.

So here we go, Jan. 20. What are we going to do as progressives? What are we going to do when the Democrats blew the Senate and the House as well? We’re going to focus on the Democratic party.

[JI7]

125. Slotkin won Michigan unlike Kamala Harris

Stop with the bs.

[Cirsium]

128. Say what?

What bs is that and what does Slotkin have to do with this topic? All I did is post some of the things Nader actually said about Harris. That isn't bs, that is what he actually did say.

Since you raised the issue, why do you think Slotkin outperformed Harris?

[JI7]

131. I don't care for the bs of which Nader is a huge one

I don't care for the dishonesty.

[Cirsium]

145. Who is being dishonest?

Last edited Sun Mar 16, 2025, 07:15 PM - Edit history (1)

I merely posted what he actually did say. I was being honest.

As for Nader, you may disagree with him, ad he could well be wrong, but I think he is being honest.

[ShazzieB]

262. I was not aware of his stance on Harris until now.

My opinion on his role in the 2000 election is totally unrelated to anything he said in 2024, about Harris or anything else.

[Cirsium]

264. OK

Understood.

[sop]

103. People aren't blaming Nader for "the failures of the Democratic party."

They are blaming Nader for running a 3rd party campaign in Florida, telling his credulous supporters there was "no difference between Bush and Gore," and ultimately taking away enough votes from Gore to give the election to Bush.

Nader understood how elections work. He knew he had no chance of winning. It was a calculated move by Nader and his supporters to deny Al Gore the win, damn the consequences.

It's your right to vote for any candidate you choose. You can go on all day about the failures of the Democratic party and say it was the Supreme Court's fault. That's your prerogative.

However, voting for a 3rd party fringe candidate who cannot win, in a close election in a swing state, under our current two party electoral system, is a profoundly stupid political decision. Particularly if your goal is to advance a more progressive political agenda.

[Cirsium]

142. They aren't?

Sure looks that way to me.

[Stargleamer]

186. Well they aren't - they're blaming Nader for giving us Bush

and the RW justices he appointed who gave us the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Citizens United and other harms.

[Cirsium]

219. I don't understand

Those aren't failures? I say that job one is to stop the right wingers. When we don't, we have failed...to stop the right wingers.

If Nader's 2000 candidacy were enough to prevent us from stopping the right wingers we would have to be pretty darn weak and ineffective.

[NNadir]

110. I depise him for not being able to tell the difference between..

...Bush and Gore, demonstrating he is cognitively impaired but l also despise his attacks on science.

[Cirsium]

121. Yep

It is Nader's opinions that are the problem, as I said.

As I posted above, Nader never said that there were no differences between the two parties. He has consistently said that there is not enough difference.

Here are some of the things that Nader did say:

"It doesn't matter who is in the White House, Gore or Bush, for the vast majority of government departments and agencies."

"I have indicated that there are 'few major differences' between the two parties, not that there is 'no difference between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush."

"The only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door."

"It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote. Both parties are selling our government to big business paymasters. That's a pretty serious similarity."

"Because it's the permanent corporate government that's running the show here ... you can see they're morphing more and more on more and more issues into one corporate party."

If someone said those things here, or anything even close, that they would get the same reaction as the mention of Nader does? Of course they would, and from the same members, as well. Ergo, it is the opinions he expressed that people object to, not Nader's campaign and the 2000 election.

[standingtall]

127. Sounds like conditioning people to believe both sides are the same

"It doesn't matter who is in the White House, Gore or Bush, for the vast majority of government departments and agencies."

"I have indicated that there are 'few major differences' between the two parties, not that there is 'no difference between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush."

"The only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door."

"It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote. Both parties are selling our government to big business paymasters. That's a pretty serious similarity."

"Because it's the permanent corporate government that's running the show here ... you can see they're morphing more and more on more and more issues into one corporate party."

There were many differences between Gore and Bush. Gore was an environmentalist Bush wasn't. Gore would've never privatized social security Bush tried too. Gore was Pro Choice Bush wasn't. Gore supported minimum wage increases Bush didn't. Gore supported the right to organize and the right to strike Bush didn't.


"If someone said those things here, or anything even close, that they would get the same reaction as the mention of Nader does? Of course they would, and from the same members, as well. Ergo, it is the opinions he expressed that people object to, not Nader's campaign and the 2000 election. "

Got to deal with the reality of the times. Citizen United exist partly, because of Nader costing Gore the 2000 election. We may not like some of the things Democrats do, but we also understand these two thing. They are playing by the rules that been forced upon them and to change that they actually have to win elections in sufficient numbers and voting for 3rd party candidates or promoting the both sides are the same narrative like Nader did in 2000 isn't going to help anything.

[Cirsium]

140. Not helpul or relevant

It was a fluke that the election was so close and that it allegedly "came down to" Florida.

I think the Nader campaign reflected a dissatisfaction with the party, he didn't cause it.

But in any case, what good does bashing Nader do now? It is useful for trashing out all of the progressives in the party, I guess. The same people who are most opposed to the progressives are also the most opposed to Nader. That is why I say that Nader/2000 is a red herring, it is a pretext for bashing progressives.

Now according to some posters we are to believe that the Iraq war was Nader's fault. I guess we will have to ignore the 81 Democrats who voted for it in the House and the 29 Democrats who voted for it in the Senate.

The Senators:

Baucus, Bayh, Biden, Breaux, Cantwell, Carnahan, Carper, Cleland, Clinton, Daschle (D-SD), Dodd, Dorgan, Edwards, Feinstein, Harkin, Hollings, Johnson, Kerry, Kohl, Landrieu, Lieberman, Lincoln, Miller, Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Reid, Rockefeller, Schumer, and Torricelli.

[standingtall]

197. Define progressive

I consider myself a progressive. There will always be some dissatisfied. There will always be factions that say whoever isn't progressive enough as well as factions who claim whoever is too far left or too centrist, but we don't have to make it worse by suggested both sides are the same.


"Now according to some posters we are to believe that the Iraq war was Nader's fault. I guess we will have to ignore the 81 Democrats who voted for it in the House and the 29 Democrats who voted for it in the Senate."

That ignores the fact that if Nader hadn't cost Gore the election. There never would've been an Iraq war to begin with and therefore no vote on it and a pretty good chance there never would've been a 9/11 either.


"But in any case, what good does bashing Nader do now? It is useful for trashing out all of the progressives in the party, I guess. The same people who are most opposed to the progressives are also the most opposed to Nader. That is why I say that Nader/2000 is a red herring, it is a pretext for bashing progressives."

What good did Nader's thanks Hilary comment do shortly after Roe V Wade was overturned? Why because she ran for Presidency and loss, but won the poplar vote. So Nader's logic is Hilary run for President losses Roe V Wade gets overturned and it's her fault? Nader runs for President and had no chance of winning, but throws the election to Bush. Roe V Wade gets overturned by Judges appointed by Bush and Nader has no responsibility in what happened?

[NNadir]

214. What good is bashing Robert E. Lee? History matters.

[Cirsium]

218. By that logic...

Let's bash a former neighbor of mine, Hank Jones. He used to block my driveway with his car and never returned those tools he borrowed. Most importantly, though, he was always going on about the Democratic party leadership compromising with the right wing. So annoying. That kind of thinking has cost us a lot of elections and can only help the Republicans. History matters. I'm blaming Hank.

[NNadir]

228. I don't know your neoghbor and in his life as an asshole he didn't have the propaganda...

...access as Ralph Nader had.

[Cirsium]

236. Way over rated

That is way over rated. The talking points my neighbor repeats are shared by millions and millions of people, and much of that is spread by peer-to-peer word of mouth. That is the immense power of right wing media. In comparison, Nader has almost no effect on the national political discussion. I just don't ever hear anyone repeating Nader talking points. It is impossible to avoid the talking points from Trump and right wing media. There are 1,000 people ranting and raving against Nader for every one person praising him.

But let's say for the sake of argument that Nader had the kind of coverage Trump gets - 24/7, 365, for a decade. Are we to believe that would hurt the Democratic party? I think it would greatly help the Democratic party, just as organized Labor did, just as the Abolition movement helped the Republican party in the 1850's and 60's. I am certain of that.

The same arguments that we hear today went on back then. "Those radical Abolitionists are hurting the party! We need to be practical and realistic."

Only by making a set of improbable assumptions can Nader be blamed for anything.

We have to assume that most of the Nader voters would not have stayed home, would not have voted for some other third party candidate, or would not have voted for Bush.

Then, we have to accept this "it came down to Florida" line and assume that is where the election was won or lost, like a last minute field goal in a football game. It could well have "come down to" Wisconsin, or Oregon, or New Mexico, or New Hampshire, or Minnesota, or Iowa all of which had very close races.

By the way, it is a pretty weak Democratic campaign that struggles to win Oregon, New Mexico, and Minnesota and can't win the candidate's home state.

Then we have all of the voter suppression actions in Florida by the Republicans, and assume that was not a very major factor.

We have to ignore the influence Fox News had on the situation.

We have to ignore the Brooks Brothers riot.

We have to ignore the absurd Supreme Court decision.

We have to assume that Gore actually did lose Florida.

A lot went into Gore's loss. None of it had anything to do with Nader.

[ShazzieB]

263. This x 1000!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

136. Nader ran on the platform that there was no difference between the Democratic Party and the GOP

That position gave us the Iraq War, Citizens United, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and eventually a SCOTUS opinion on presidential immunity that got trump re-elected

[ClimateChangeisReal]

294. Nader apologists are in denial and can't face the truth

that they bought Nder's big lie and helped to put W in the White House which resulted in the nightmare our country is in today.

[cstanleytech]

70. The Democrats are saying things but the news media is not reporting it.

That's why the Democrats need to start hammering harder but not against Trump but against the cowardly actions of the Republicans in Congress that have decided to not uphold their oath of office that they took.
Also use it to hammer any Republican in office or running for office even at the country level for being a coward if they have not spoken out against the Republicans in Congress for their cowardice.

[kacekwl]

111. Exactly. The republican congress

is wholly responsible for trump, Musk, the corrupt Supreme Court, The Heritage Foundation, and every other calamity in the United States. They alone can stop this lawless chaos today. Have to pound them relentlessly.

[bronxiteforever]

74. Nader on 2024 election and Kamala Harris.

framed the election as a “competition between [the] fascism of Trump and [the] autocracy of Harris in a two-party duopoly”.

https://www.newstatesman.com/international-content/the-international-interview/2024/11/ralph-nader-interview-election-is-competition-between-fascism-donald-trump-autocracy-kamala-harris

[LetMyPeopleVote]

141. In 2000, Nader claimed that there were no difference between W and Gore

Nader was WRONG then and he was wrong in 2024

[Pris]

152. Yes, he was wrong. If gore had won we would be ahead with climate solutions

Nadar minimized Roe v. Wade in the most disgusting left wing male way - "oh it will never be overturned."
Fools

[ibegurpard]

75. He's right of course

Wrong messenger, at least for here, but he's right.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

295. He made this nightmare possible

[Justice matters.]

76. 90 million (yes, million) eligible voters did. not. vote.

Did. Not. Vote.

Why?

90 MILLION. Who. Did. Not. Vote. Is. The. Overlooked. Reason.

Is it because all the "leaders" are multimillionaires?

[ClimateChangeisReal]

296. Nader is a multimillionaire

who ran on a big lie that enough people bought because they didn't do their candidate research and here we now are. BTW, Al Gore was not a multimillionaire in 2000.

[LeftInTX]

80. I know: "We need to be like the Green Party"...maybe we will win!! SMH!

Last edited Mon Mar 17, 2025, 01:55 AM - Edit history (1)

[rso]

104. Nader

His points are correct, but he has no moral authority to lecture anyone as he’s the reason we lost Florida and the Presidency in 2000.

[ShazzieB]

266. "...he has no moral authority to lecture anyone..."

This is 1,000,000% true.

[mvd]

105. Yeah, some of his articles are good but..

without his interference, the election wouldn’t have been close enough for Bush to steal. History would be different. I can not forget that.

[kacekwl]

106. More and more

I'm beginning to think that the saying It's a big club and we're not a part of it is a fact.

[JohnSJ]

108. Where was this jackass in 2000 and 2016? Another after the fact loser, stating the

obvious, and we are now supposed to bow down and celebrate that he is speaking “truth to power”. Where was he when we needed him to loudly tell those people who were going to vote for Jill Stein over Hillary?

Missing in action, like most egotistical populists.

[Grokenstein]

109. Genius who helped create problem once again offers "advice" to deal with problem.

Rinse and repeat; second verse same as the first.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

126. No one should pay any attention to anything that Nader says about anything

Nader worked hard to give W Bush and to cause the defeat of Al Gore. I will never pay any attention to anything that this asshole has to say about anything.

Link to tweet

[Itchinjim]

143. Sit down and STFU, Ralphie.

You've done enough damage. Asshat.

[JohnSJ]

146. He should know, Where the F**K was he in 2016 when the stakes were even higher, and he still equated the Democratic

nominee equal to trump.

He is a jackass, and was never there when it REALLY counted.

Him and glenn greenwald.

[swampthingdc]

154. Do you pump gas still? Just saying..

I'd be REALLY surprised if ol' bringer of thine life-saving seat-belt was not using an EV..
heck regards to stein probably nice Tesla no ? jk.. that whole RT payout ? or .. . anyhew..
what is up w. no pardon for Reality Leigh Winner or did I miss something..

Do check Ida Vox com for a good time.. or one peoples' project yt

PS

Chevy EV premier mods say 2020 n' up .. same ops as tsla and distance.. styling better imho

[Prof. Toru Tanaka]

157. Fuck off, Nader.

You’ve done enough damage.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

164. Ralph Nader Was Indispensable To The Republican Party

I was headed to Florida for the second recount when Bush v. Gore came down. I went to Florida as part of the Kerry/Edwards Voter Protection Team. Nader was a tool of the GOP and was funded by karl Rove and the GOP.

Remember Ralph Nader? So forget about voting for Jill Stein!

Ralph Nader Was Indispensable To The Republican Party | HuffPost Latest News

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065

#USElection2024 #ThirdParty #GreenParty #JillStein

— Jonathan Emmesedi (@jemmesedi.c.im.ap.brid.gy) 2024-10-22T05:17:42.000Z

Link to tweet

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065

Ralph Nader was crucial to George W. Bush's win in 2000 against Al Gore. But Nader turned out to be superfluous to then-President Bush's win against John Kerry in 2004. Nader was trying to do damage to the Democratic Party, and he succeeded in 2000, but not in 2004. In fact, in 2000, he turned out to be the most indispensable person of all to the George W. Bush "win." And Nader was secretly ecstatic about that. Here are the details:

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 GOP and Karl Rove knew that Nader was helping the GOP which is why Rove and the GOP funded Nader's campaign. In addition, Nader was campaigning in states where Nader could help Bush win and NOT in states where he could stand a chance

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.

Furthermore, it seems that during the closing days of the 2000 political contest, Ralph Nader was choosing to campaign not in states where polls showed that he had a chance to win (of which states there were none), but instead in states where Gore and Bush were virtually tied and Nader's constant appeals to "the left" would be the likeliest to throw those states into Bush's column. One political columnist noted this fact: On 26 October 2000, Eric Alterman posted online for the Nation, "Not One Vote!" in which he observed with trepidation, that during the crucial final days of the campaign, "Nader has been campaigning aggressively in Florida [get that - in Florida!], Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. If Gore loses even a few of those states, then Hello, President Bush." This was prophetic - but also knowable in advance. Nader wasn't stupid; his voters were, but he certainly was not.

That list of states where Nader was concentrating near the end of the campaign consisted of the large states that were the closest between Bush and Gore. Everyone knew that Nader's appeal was being made to "the left," and Nader was concentrating his campaign now on sucking foolish leftist voters away from Gore. He was claiming to be the preferable leftist candidate. He wasn't campaigning at all to draw votes away from the conservative end of the political spectrum. So: Nader clearly was targeting to throw this "election" to Bush - and he succeeded in Florida, at doing precisely that.

Nader was a tool of Rove and purposely campaign in states where Nader could help Bush win.

I am sad that people are defending Nader. Nader claimed that there were no differences between the Democratic Party and the GOP in 2000 and 2004. Nader also claimed that there was no difference between trump and Kamala Harris. Nader is NOT a trustworthy source on anything.

[Hekate]

165. Thanks, as always, for the clear-eyed view

Ralph Nader & Jill Stein are both nasty pieces of work, and absolutely no friend of Democrats or Progressives.

To coin a phrase, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them.

[Celerity]

201. Surprised to see you use Eric Zuesse as the main part of your reply. Zuesse wouldn't last 10 minutes on DU.

your article

and here are some other Zuesse articles:

https://www.huffpost.com/author/eric-zuesse



more, from the often Dem-hating, Dem-bashing Counterpunch

https://www.counterpunch.org/author/mephuc/




Like I said, a suprising choice of authors you made.

[Oopsie Daisy]

170. 😍 Oh, Ralph! (Swoon!) Our savior!🙏⛪️ Nader will rescue us and set us on the path of righteousness! 🙄

[pat_k]

171. Nader has the right side of this stick on this one.

I've been wondering why the hell past presidents are standing mute. They can not possibly believe that pre-47 norms or decorum serve any purpose beyond enabling 47's insanity.

Do they fear their own attempts to push the boundaries of executive authority will somehow muddy the water?

I don't buy that one. There is no way they believe anything they did (except Bush's war crimes) holds a candle to what 47 and his fellow destructivists are doing.

So, if we let Bush out of it because he doesn't want his war crimes thrown at him, where the hell is Clinton? Where the hell is Obama?

Are they waiting for the Senate and House to make a clear declaration of the crimes being committed against us? Perhaps. Perhaps with the release of the sort of joint House/Senate Letter to America that Simon Rosenberg and others are lobbying for we will finally see them step up and endorse the self-evident truths that are put before the American people in such a letter.

Whatever the reason for their silence, I think our primary focus in this moment must be to Lobby Democrats in Congress to write a joint House/Senate "A Letter to America"

[ClimateChangeisReal]

297. Nader killed his credibility in 2000

[Meowmee]

172. Nader and the crazies who voted for him are why we are here f him

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

178. The last time I heard from Ralph Nader

he was at a Cisco shareholders meeting complaining his dividend wasn't high enough.

[Hekate]

189. Nice

[BannonsLiver]

222. He's also complained that Amazon doesn't pay a dividend.

He’s been a fraud for a long time.

[MustLoveBeagles]

192. While he may be right on this

He's not the most credible spokesman for it for reasons stated by others in this thread.

[ecstatic]

202. I hate the silence too but in fairness,

If I were one of them, it would be terrible if a microphone were placed in front of me because the blame would be equally dispersed. The bottom line is, tRump terrorized our country and was never held responsible by those with the power to do so. I'm still working to get past the failures that occurred in order to focus on the bullshit that's happening now.

Fast forward to the present, the mixed messaging from our party continues. There are Democrats who are actually enabling eLoon and tRump. The people nader referenced might be in a weird place of having to choose between being inauthentic during interviews and speeches or just staying silent in order to keep some semblance of unity.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

298. No forgetting Nader 2000 behavior

made Rump possible.

[OAITW r.2.0]

203. Fuck you Ralph. I remember 2000 when you told voters there wasn't a dime's difference between the 2 Parties.

You were a liar then, so I could give a shit what you think now.

[samsingh]

209. this imbecile gave us george w bush and the start of the destruction of democracy

i hate nader

[thought crime]

211. We need every voice, including Ralph Nader

Last edited Mon Mar 17, 2025, 06:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Trump never, ever shuts up. Some of our leaders can’t seem to speak up. Obama and Kamala Harris? Please, we need you to be seen and heard all the time. Make some noise!

But Nader isn’t just admonishing those who are MIA. He is warning about self-censorship and a real fear of retribution causing still more fear and dread. “Study Germany and Italy in the nineteen thirties.”

It looks serious. We need every public figure in our society to speak up and defend democracy, as Ralph Nader always does.

[ClimateChangeisReal]

299. Nader helped kill democracy in 2000

IT"S TIME FOR THE Nader apologists to face the reality that Nader's behavior in 2000 made it possible for W to get close enough in Florid to have his little brother and the Rehnquist 5 kill democracy and appoint W.. Nader's silence on W's theft of the 2000 election thanks to Nader taking 97,000 Al Gore votes has been deafening. Nader had no concern for democracy in 2000 and he has no concern for democracy now

[anamnua]

216. Fair enough, Ralph

But you contributed your fair share to the rot that has been slowly evolving in recent decades by torpedoing Al Gore in 2000.

[BannonsLiver]

221. Hope to celebrate his demise someday.

[Basso8vb]

226. Zero respect for the dude who handed 2000 to Shrub.

[sarchasm]

229. If Democrats electoral fate is determined as much by Nader as y'all are ascribe to him, then we're in deep trouble.

..just sayin' ...

[ClimateChangeisReal]

301. We're facing te facts about 2000

which are ugly. It's time for the Nader apologists to understand that they were duped by Nader's big lie and our country will never be the same because of it.

[RandySF]

230. Ralph who?

[Tommy Carcetti]

240. Mandela Effect going on...

...I could have sworn Nader had passed several years ago.

Guess not.

[Hotler]

255. Some may be on Epstein's list. nt

[B.See]

282. Haven't read all the other responses but

my two cents,

1. Nader like Stein was a spoiler. Their roles will forever be recorded in history as enablers of the demise of democracy.

2. Florida was a sham and their role in that election, a Trainwreck - DELIBERATELY so.

3. The "supreme" court gave DUBYA his residency by edict. And everyone knows it.

That being said, Nadar is correct in calling out those who've fallen silent. Though far be it from him to have the right to complain, given HIS role in it all.

(And no, Ralph, Kamala isn't 'hapless.' Judging from her last Colbert interview, I'd classify it more like, disappointment and DISGUST.)

[ClimateChangeisReal]

302. Nader has no moral authority to call out anyone else

given his role in 2000 as you so correctly pointed out.

[gordianot]

283. I have never been silent on my criticism of Trump or Nader.

[Itchinjim]

285. Sit down, shut the fuck up, and fuck off until the end of time,

Ralphie.

[underpants]

303. I brought chairs

[awesomerwb1]

305. Nader can f*** himself

[usonian]

308. Ralph Malf - "Stay Silent and Stay Powerless Against Trump's Tyranny" DOES THAT MAKE YOU READ THIS OBJECTIVELY?

I hate Nader. OK?

MALF is GREAT.

READ.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20553244
Now read the editorial I put out some time before this.

I'll copy and paste the entire fucking thing.
An open letter to Democratic leaders. This is our Normandy. Marshall all our forces or lose to fascist rule.


Nazis are in the streets pounding on doors.
We have a secret police force.
We have concentration camps in the U.S.

What are we doing?

We are attacking the fascist assault on America like a Normandy invasion by thousand bass boats armed with 22's with no coordination. no powerful, strategic leadership.

The Fascists have a playbook. We don't.
I posted some informative links in this post:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/13243807
The fascists have a playbook. Do we?

What are leaders doing?

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been criss-crossing the country taking the anti-rich anti-authoritarian message to people in blue and red states.

Senators and representatives have spoken out loudly and powerfully in congress, which remains a rubber stamp for the Hitler Wannabe.

Governors have spoken out and put up resistance to the attempted destruction of state autonomy.
I'll be short on names because that's not the point.

There is no modern-day General Eisenhower coordinating forces, working strategies to deceive the enemy and break the fascist assault.

In between elections, there is no ongoing political or ideological leadership.
Except DNC, and I'll say no more about that organization.

UNTIL SUCH LEADERSHIP STEPS UP,

All I can offer is a list of organizations planning and conducting rallies, protests, boycotts and strikes.
Please update the list here in Activist Headquarters.

I subscribe to the Indivisible mailing list, and as of today, Indivisible and NoKings are endorsing

One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism


https://www.nokings.org/rise


Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations, rollbacks of civil rights, weaponized courts, and full-scale attacks on our democracy. We don’t have to wait until it’s too late. We can stop this. But it’ll take all of us—not just single days of mass action, but sustained organizing in our communities.

That’s why this summer, we’re launching One Million Rising—a national effort to train one million people in the strategic logic and practice of non-cooperation, as well as the basics of community organizing and campaign design. This is how we build people power that can’t be ignored. You’re invited to join us—and lead.



In response to a post by Swede,
Nothing matters to them until it kicks in their front door and walks in and shits on their table.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220539610

I posted this:
Are WE waiting for them to kick in the door and shit on our tables? The time to take action is LAST YEAR.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20539639

Here's just the top of that post, in case anyone feels either:
a. despondent, or
b. powerless

We have collective power, under the leadership of organizations stepping up to the challenge.
Who will take the baton?

Now hear this:
Goddam it, we already have secret police and concentration camps.
Repeat:
Goddam it, we already have secret police and concentration camps.

Are we waiting for Leni Riefenstahl to stage a new military parade?


(repost)
The fascists have a playbook. Do we?
The fascist playbook has been acted out for years.
Here are some explanations.

10 Small Steps: Executing the Fascist Playbook
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/10-small-steps-executing-the-fascist-playbook_b_585dfec2e4b04d7df167cfab

The Fascists’ Playbook
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/05/08/the-fascists-playbook/

MORE AT THE LINK, and I leave you with this reminder of brave souls who did not give up in the face of impossible odds.
And who had outstanding leaders.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219813493

Hint:


Instead of that Nazi rally, this:



YOU'RE LIKE GERMANS ARGUING OVER THE COLOR OF YOUR VOLKSWAGEN AS HITLER BURNS BODIES AND YOU IGNORE THE STENCH.

I've had it with your 🔥 🔥 🔥 flame 🔥 🔥 🔥 wars.
YOU'LL ALL LOSE AND BE SENT TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS
WHERE YOU CAN ARGUE FOR YEARS MONTHS WEEKS DAYS before you're shot by Jan6 assholes

Nothing personal, of course.

[Skittles]

313. mum's the word from Obama? WTF is he talking about

Obama has been speaking up

and HAPLESS Kamala? WTF?

FUCK Nader, he helped get us where we are today

[LetMyPeopleVote]

315. How'd John Roberts get on the Supreme Court? I'm glad you asked ⬇️

Link to tweet

[lostincalifornia]

326. Who? from the jackass who started there is no difference between both parties, his 15 minutes of fame is over.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

327. Because of Nader, we have Citizens United, Shelby County (the gutting of the Voting Rights Act) and other bad rulings

Nader gave us two of the worse SCOTUS justices in the history of the Supreme Court (Roberts and Alito).

[Klarkashton]

328. Nader is another RFK jr shitbird. They used to do radio talk shows together, a regular conspiracy and "you should" rant

fest that always led nowhere.