The Nader Haters

IN JANUARY, JOHN PEARCE started a website devoted to discouraging Ralph Nader from running for president. Four years ago, Pearce, a 49-year-old businessman, supported Al Gore. He watched in horror as Nader, then the Green party candidate for president, siphoned off progressive votes from Gore in several key states like Florida. Pearce, who lives in California, a state that Gore won handily, thinks Nader played the spoiler in the 2000 election. Were it not for Nader, he feels, Al Gore would be president today.

Pearce is not alone in thinking so. His RalphDontRun.net website, which features a humorous anti-Nader "web movie," became a pilgrimage site for progressives who feared another Nader run. When I first spoke to Pearce in mid-February, he told me that the response to RalphDontRun had been "overwhelming." Ten thousand people a day were visiting the site, which had been featured in the New York Times. Pearce had been interviewed on NPR and CNN. He had written an op-ed that ran in regional papers like the San Jose Mercury News and the Hartford Courant. Discouraging Nader from running again, he told me, had become his "full-time job." He was a man with a mission.

The mission, of course, failed miserably. On February 22, Nader announced on "Meet the Press" that he was launching his third campaign for president, this time as an independent. Because of the time difference between Washington and California, John Pearce did not see the "Meet the Press" interview until three hours after the show originally aired. But he said that he knew Nader was running before he watched the show. "We got 50,000 hits on Sunday," he told me last week. "We're up to 265,000 visitors to our site. It's just wild."

No one should have been surprised by Nader's announcement. Beginning last October, when Nader set up a presidential exploratory committee, it was clear that the activist wanted to run again. Around the time John Pearce set up his website, Nader began visiting radio and television studios, complaining that the country lives under a "two-party duopoly" which creates a "democracy gap." He said efforts by people like John Pearce to steer him away from the race were "contemptuous."

Democrats have several theories as to why Nader decided to run. Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, told Fox News that Nader's candidacy was an act of "ego." Pearce said he thought Nader was running out of "spite." Micah Sifry, a former editor of the Nation and the author of "Spoiling for a Fight," a study of third-party politics, said the run was the result of "a kind of stubborn devotion to principle." One progressive told me he thought Nader was concerned about his legacy.

Here's why Nader would be concerned about his legacy. In 2000, he and the Green party received 2.7 percent of the national vote. It wasn't enough for the party to receive federal matching funds. But it was enough for Nader to earn the title of spoiler. Nader received 97,488 votes in Florida. Gore lost the state to Bush by 537 votes. In New Hampshire, Gore lost by 7,211 votes. Nader received 22,188.

Democrats are confident Nader won't have the same impact on this year's presidential race as he did in 2000. Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, said the political landscape has shifted as a result of Bush's election. "Base vote will be an important factor for both parties," she told me. "Nader won't have as much oxygen to suck up as he did in 2000, when he ran to Gore's left on many issues."

Thomas F. Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, said the Democrats approached the 2004 election differently from the 2000 race. Schaller said that John Kerry, the likely Democratic nominee, ran a base-center campaign in 2004, which means he focused more on locking up key left-liberal constituencies during the primary fight than appealing to the moderate center. "Now Democrats can ignore Nader and not damage the base," Schaller said.

"If the 2000 election was a referendum on Clinton-Gore," said Micah Sifry, "there was room for a sizable progressive protest vote--which is what Nader really embodied." But we are now almost four years removed from the Clinton administration's treacly liberalism. Now "it's a referendum on Bush-Cheney," said Sifry. "The question for progressives is, Do you want four more years of this?" Sifry thinks the answer is obviously "no," and that progressives are likely to rally behind the Democratic nominee.

Will they? Imagine a college-aged pacifist living in Miami. He was against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was against both Bush tax cuts. He is vehemently anti-Bush. But when he looks at Senator John Kerry, he finds the senator's positions on some issues are closer to Bush's than he would like to admit. For example, Kerry voted for Bush's No Child Left Behind education bill. He voted for the Patriot Act. He voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

Furthermore, Kerry, as much as he criticizes the Bush administration's foreign policy, does not advocate an immediate, unilateral withdrawal from Iraq--a position popular with the antiwar left. Nader does. And when our pacifist looks at Kerry's tax policy, he notices the senator would preserve the Bush tax cuts for people making under $200,000 a year. Nader would scrap the whole thing.

Such reasoning is enough to worry some on the left. Nader might not receive the tens of thousands of votes in select states that he received in 2000, one anti-Nader progressive tells me, but in today's highly polarized political landscape, only a few thousand--or a few hundred--votes for Nader could be enough to swing the election to Bush. Again.

Before Nader can even begin to reprise his role as presidential spoiler, though, he must find a way to get on the ballot. When he ran for president on the Green party ticket, Nader was on the ballot in 43 states and Washington, D.C. Now he is not on the ballot anywhere. Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News, a newsletter that tracks third-party politics, says the problem this presents for Nader's candidacy is not insurmountable. In 1980, John Anderson did not declare his independent candidacy until April 24 and was able to get on the ballot in all 50 states. The things Nader needs most, Winger said, are money and volunteers.

But Nader has raised just $175,000 so far for his campaign. And on Meetup.com, a rough indicator of grass-roots support, only 1,397 people have signed up to attend Nader Meetups worldwide. That's not exactly a groundswell (John Kerry has 54,757 people attending his Meetups). In 2000, Nader filled Madison Square Garden to capacity. Now he would be lucky to fill McSorley's saloon. His reputation as spoiler has cost him many friends.

But he has made new ones. In January, Nader attended a conference called "Choosing an Independent President 2004," held in Bedford, New Hampshire. What made Nader's appearance at the conference noteworthy wasn't so much the content of his speech. It was who he delivered the speech to. Sitting on the dais as Nader addressed the crowd were the event's organizers: Lenora Fulani, Fred Newman, Jacqueline Salit, Omar Ali, and Jim Mangia, all associated at one time or another with the New Alliance party, a now defunct political group that the FBI once described as "armed and dangerous." Adam Reilly, who covered the event for the Boston Phoenix, noted that most of the attendees were associated with the New Alliance movement as well.

New Alliance's history is a storied one. It was founded by Newman, a Stanford-trained psychoanalyst and onetime acolyte of Lyndon LaRouche. It was considered part of the far-left fringe. For many, Newman, whose disciples are schooled in something called "friendosexuality" and told to donate their life savings to his cause, is more a cult leader than a political figure. Fulani, an African-American Marxist and supporter of Louis Farrakhan, ran as the New Alliance candidate for president in 1988 and 1992. But she is most famous for serving briefly as the co-chair of Pat Buchanan's Reform party presidential campaign in 2000. Today, Fulani serves on the executive committee of New York's Independence party, which is controlled by Newman and his followers.

"Choosing an Independent President 2004" also featured appearances by emissaries from the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates Wesley Clark and Dennis Kucinich. The conference concluded without endorsing a presidential candidate. Last week, however, Fulani told me she was endorsing Nader. "I think it's pretty cool," she said. "I think Nader is a distinguished independent and he needs to be supported."

Fulani's endorsement means that Nader will likely be on the New York state ballot as the nominee of the Independence party. It also means that Nader has access to Fulani and Newman's activists. "They have developed a network of people, and in most states they have a whole stable of attorneys who are incredibly savvy about election law," says Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a progressive group. "They are real experts in this area, and they can deliver the state-level expertise and the state-level people to actually get Nader on the ballot."

But Fulani's support comes with a price. If Nader continues to reach out to Fulani, he will likely follow in the footsteps of Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan, whose work with the New Alliance crowd hastened--or maybe completed--their migration to the political fringe. When I offered this theory to Berlet last week, he chuckled. "You're talking about someone who is standing on a very tiny ice floe pulling up someone else with them on it," Berlet said, "and asking, Does it make them more isolated?" He paused. "It's hard to be more isolated than Nader is already."

Fulani's endorsement means that Nader will likely be on the New York state ballot as the nominee of the Independence party.

I wouldn't bet the farm on it -- even if I had a farm -- but NY may end up in play for Bush.

Were it not for Nader, he feels, Al Gore would be president today.

As I posted in this thread:

KARENNA GORE SCHIFF: Get Out, Mr. Nader - You're only fueling defeatism--and you defeated my father

Actually the commies/socialists in Florida cost Algore the state. Even without the colorblind Green (Red) Party. Add up the votes from the Worker's World Party, Socialist Party, and Socialist Worker's Party and he would have won.

Monica Moorehead WW 1,805 votes
David McReynolds Soc 618 votes
James Harris SWP 558 votes

Total commie votes that could have gone to Albert Gore Junior: 2981

I don't remember the exact number of their votes, but if Gore had won Florida, Republicans could have claimed that the Reform and/or Libertarian candidates had cost Bush the election.

BWAAAHAAHAAHAHA! The "progressives" (i.e. Marxists, Trotskyites, Greens and revolutionary anarchist losers) are in a tizzy because their hero, Ralph Nader, is running. If the wooden alien cyborg from Tennessee had won his own state, and the election, they'd be flocking to Nader instead of swallowing their commie pride and voting for Senator Flip-Flop Kerry.

Point well taken. Take Buchanan off the ballot and I don't think that the DemRats would have gotten away with blaming their lost votes on the Socialist candidate on the Butterfly Ballot.

I agree, NY state is doable for Bush, and California even moreso. Bush will win Florida and Texas. By the time Bush and the Eventual Democratic Nominee (EDN for short) debate, GWB will be able to remind viewers how Kerry, oops, I mean the EDN has flip-flopped on the liberation of Iraq, on Haiti, on WMDs, on Vietnam, on Howard Stern (apparently)...

The biggest problem for the so-called Democratic Party seems to be that primary and caucus turnout has reportedly been pretty poor. They're getting a candidate who no one likes, simply because those who hate Bush show up at the polls, and they are very few. That will translate into poor turnout in November, and crossover voting for the Prez.

I agree with Nader about just one thing that comes to mind -- "Al Gore Beat Al Gore."

The only spoiler in recent times was that midget Perot, without him we never would have had 8 years of Slick Willie. The democrats are afraid of Nader because they know what their constituents want and the truth is the Green (New American Communist) party represents the ideals that people like Kerry just don't have the guts to own up to. The only spoiling the Democrats will have to moan about in November is wondering how they lost New York and California to Bush.

i remember when we were in DC demonstrating at the press banquet (after the 2000 election), we saw nader and started cheering for him, he was so happy until he realized we were with FR! i loved it.

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