Don't Even Think About It, Traitor

In response to Ralph Nader’s recent rant over Hillary Clinton, saying that Nader would enter the race if “panderer” Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party nomination for president next year, I would like to point out the following from this link, quoting Harvard professor Laurence Tribe in 2004 when Nader staged another failed presidential campaign…

Tribe alleges that Nader's decision to run is based more on ego than on a desire to improve the country. "For Nader to use the ballot box in states like Florida as a pulpit for his views, however progressive and enlightened some of those views may be, seems to me an inexcusable indulgence and a grave abuse of the electoral process," said Tribe.

"It is an abuse that Ralph Nader is perpetrating at incalculable human and ecological cost, and one that, among its many tragic consequences, risks fully erasing the great legacy that Nader would otherwise have left in his wake."

This is not the first time Professor Tribe has argued an important case stemming from Florida and impacting a presidential election. In 2000, Tribe represented Vice President Al Gore before the United States Supreme Court over the issue of whether ballots should be recounted in Florida. Many believe Nader was responsible for Gore's loss during the 2000 election, when Gore lost Florida by 537 votes. Nader garnered 97,000 votes in Florida during the 2000 election, votes which some believe would have gone to Gore.

I realize it’s probably fruitless to point this out to Nader, but I’ll try anyway.

He shares a large measure of responsibility for the failed Iraq war, the continued fouling of the environment, the ongoing quest to offshore our jobs, the corporate plundering facilitated by our happily-now-departed Repug congress and our red-state president, and the continual onslaught against the New Deal legacy that has protected the middle class of this country for decades and which has been, primarily over the last 30 years, severely eroded.

How Nader can still claim to be a champion of the rights of consumers and still carry on with all of this on his resume is one of life’s great mysteries as far as I’m concerned.

And one more thing: though I share some of his reservations about Senator Clinton, it is stupidly naïve of Nader to accuse her of “pandering” when every other politician does the same thing. That is an unfortunate fact; I think that it’s important to consider the degree of pandering, and on that score, Clinton is pretty typical (versus an extreme case like John McCain, who seems to flip-flop minute by minute).

Though I don’t support Hillary Clinton, I will have to if she wins the nomination of the Democratic Party, much like I did when Bob Casey defeated Chuck Pennacchio in the Democratic U.S. Senatorial primary. And if Nader truly cared about acting politically in the name of causes he professes to support, he would do the same thing, instead of whining like the old, tired egotist he has sadly become.