Ralph Nader’s Dishonest, Sexist Rant Against Hillary Clinton

Nineties nostalgia is cute when it’s all about overalls and Nicki Minaj sampling “Baby Got Back,” but Ralph Nader is taking it too far, by trying to revive his all-too-successful late ‘90s campaign to convince huge numbers of American liberals that there is no meaningful difference between Republicans and Democrats.

In a recent interview with Larry King for Ora.TV, Nader launched a rather scurrilous accusation of secret Republicanism at Hillary Clinton that recalled his similar efforts against Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the ‘90s, only this time he added a sexist kicker to it. King asked Nader about recent accusations that Nader has lobbed at Clinton, namely that she evinces a “shocking militarism that is a result of trying to overcompensate for her gender by being more aggressive and macho,” and that she’s “reversing the tradition of women of peace.”

“But isn’t she moving more toward the left?” King asked.

Nader, in a performance that most of us who lived through the 2000 election remember, scoffed at this idea, painting Clinton as a warmonger who would put any Republican to shame. “She’s never seen a war she doesn’t like. When she was on the Senate Armed Services Committee, she never saw a weapon she doesn’t like,” Nader ranted.

Then he went full-blown sexist, decrying “the tradition of these macho women who, when they finally get responsible positions—like Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice—it’s like they have to out-macho the men instead of saying, ‘We come from a peace advocacy tradition.'” He then went on to spell out how women, in his eyes, have a unique responsibility to be peaceable, because of the historical origins of Mother’s Day