Again and again throughout the campaign, Nader implied that he thought Bush and Gore equally objectionable. "It doesn't matter who is in the White House, Gore or Bush, for the vast majority of government departments and agencies," Nader said in a news conference in September 2000.

"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," he told supporters in California a month later.

"It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote," Nader said in Philadelphia four days before the election, repeating a favorite refrain of his. "Both parties are selling our government to big business paymasters. ...That's a pretty serious similarity."

Nader also failed to challenge Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week when Donaldson said, "You don't think it matters. You've said it doesn't matter to you who is the president of the United States, Bush or Gore."

Nader replied, "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."