Ralph Nader....not again!

Ralph Nader announced today that he is launching another independent bid for the presidency, for what must be the fourth or fifth time now. My expected reaction would be anger and frustration (nothing sets me off more than third party spoilers, perhaps with the exception of ethnic minorities who support conservatice politics) but as I genuinely don't believe he'll sucker enough people into being a spoiler once again, I'm inclined to treat this as the slightly irritating non-story it is.

But I am angry at Ralph Nader and his inflated ego. He deserves so much credit for the work he has done to fight for the little guy for most of his career, but the blame for the last 7 years lies largely at his feet. His role in the 2000 election was a very large part in George W Bush defeating Al Gore, and the fact that he's not only unapologetic about that, but still somehow convinces himself that he was in the right, is especially grating.

Now, I am in no way against third parties. Infact, I would love to see a viable and competitive third party thats to the left of the position the Democratic Party currently occupies. I think the two-party system has serious flaws. I agree that the Democratic Party has been too timid and centrist for too long, and I believe that there is too much corporate influence even among some of the most progressive Democrats. But the way to build any politicial movement is from the bottom up, not the top down, and to launch quixotic bids for the highest office which hands the election over to the most conservative Republicans is the most self defeating thing I can think of.

Ralph Nader, over the past decade, has done nothing to build the kind of progressive movment he claims to care so much about, except to run for president every four years, ostensibly to influence the debate. He abandoned the Green Party after he had used it to help Bush steal the 2000 election from Gore, and moved to the Reform Party (which had previously nominated the likes of Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan) to launch an insipid attempt in 2004 to help Bush defeat Kerry. Bush did defeat Kerry, but he turned out not to have needed Nader's help.

Of course, anyone who is constitutionally eligible is totally entitled to run, under the banner of any political organization they see fit. However, they should also be held responsible for their the consequences of their actions. And Ralph Nader, for his failure to take any responsibility for the disastrous consequences of his deceptive and pigheaded run in 2000, should be a pariah to anyone who is even the least bit ticked at what the last 7 years have brought. Yes, Al Gore's run in 2000 was a lot more mediocre than it should have been. But if he had won, as he should have (and as he in fact did, before the Supreme Court gave it to W), there is no doubt that we wouldn't have seen the most of the mess of the last 7 years - Iraq, Katrina, corporate giveaways and abuse of the environment. And I am placing a large heap of the blame on Ralph Nader's feet.

Because Nader, with a straight face, and eloquently so, said there was no difference between Gore and Bush. Tweedledee and Tweedledum he called them. Does anyone actually think he was in anyway accurate? How could someone like Ralph Nader, who had spent his entire career battling against people like Bush, say he wasn't differentiable from Gore or Clinton? He was basically saying it was OK if Bush won, and essentially paving his way for doing so, because he was the exact same as Al Gore! Al Gore of An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore who has won a Nobel Prize for his leadership on climate change, and has been a loud and strident critic of this administration's disastrous foreign policy and abuse of the constitution. Ralph Nader said they were one and the same. If he infact mistakenly got it so wrong, he should be consigned to the rubbish dump of history, alongside the record company that passed on the Beatles.

And then he deliberately sabotaged Gore by actively campaigning not only in crucial swing states like Florida (we all know how that turned out), but other states such as Wisconsin and Oregon, so that Gore had to spend time and resources playing defense there. And he has made no bones about accepting donations and ballot help from Republican Party PACs, who obviously are grateful to him, as they should be.

Like I said, I don't think anyone is going to be that gullible again. And I don''t even know what vacuum he thinks he is going to fill. There is a large, thriving grassroots political movement which is in no way of his making. And all of the rich white college kids who formed his political base have developed a sweet sweet taste of Obamarama. So I fully expect that his ego trip will fall flat on its face and he'll return to the political Siberia he crawled out of to make his odious campaign announcement.